By KAREN W. ARENSON | NY Times
Published: October 24, 2007

Trying to improve New York’s high school graduation rates, state education officials are proposing to place 12,000 potential dropouts a year in college classes while they are still in high school. The plan, approved yesterday by the state’s Board of Regents, “would provide funding for students to take genuine college courses and receive credit for high school as well as for college,” said the state education commissioner, Richard P. Mills.

“Instead of a four-plus-four plan — four years of high school and four years of college — students could actually complete high school and a bachelor’s degree in seven years,” the commissioner said. “And they would not be taking just random courses, but a set of courses accepted by higher education”

“Schools and colleges will be working together to pull youngsters who never would have had a chance, never would have considered a college career, to pull them into success,” he added.

A recent study of dual-enrollment programs in New York and Florida found that students in them were more likely to earn high school diplomas, to enroll in postsecondary education and to stay in college for more than one semester. The study, by researchers at the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University, also found that low-income students benefited more from such programs than other students did.

No legislation is required to put the program in place. But the department will include the proposal as part of a presentation to the governor’s budget division and legislators today, and ask for $100 million to pay for the program, which it hopes will enroll students in the fall of 2009. Department officials said yesterday that they had also begun to seek private financing and hoped to start the program even if they did not receive state money.

“It’s such a good model that we would figure out some way to make it work,” said Johanna Duncan-Poitier, senior deputy state education commissioner, one of the program’s architects.

Assemblywoman Deborah J. Glick of Manhattan, chairwoman of the higher education committee, called the proposal "a great idea” when it was described to her.

“Especially with the expense of college being what it is, if you can get kids from disadvantaged families to complete college work in high school, they would be saving substantial dollars," she said, and added that the program might eliminate “one of the most serious barriers to kids completing college.”

Leon Botstein, president of Bard College, which has worked with the New York City Education Department to create and run an early-college high school where students complete two years of college by the time they graduate, and plans to open a second such school soon, called the Education Department plan “a noble idea,” but expressed concern about its execution.

“The idea would be to improve the quality of teaching and the treatment of students as adults,” he said. “This is easier said than done. You can’t do it in the environment of the traditional high school. You need entirely different faculty. If you’re going to enroll disadvantaged students who are underperforming, you need people who have a mission to turn this around.”

Typically, high-achieving students do college work while still in high school, through course work at nearby colleges or in advanced classes in their schools.

But in the nationwide quest to reduce high school dropout rates, using a similar strategy for lower-performing students has been drawing growing attention. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, for instance, has been a significant backer of high schools that also offer college work, including a growing number in New York City. Education officials pointed to several New York programs as models for their new proposal.

One model for the Regents’ proposal was the City University of New York’s “College Now,” which provided courses to more than 29,000 high school students last year. Nearly 300 city high schools participate.

Another model was the early college high schools, where students graduate from high school with a year or two of college credits, that have sprung up in New York City and elsewhere in recent years. Officials also pointed to programs for high school students offered by the State University of New York and some private colleges.

Joseph P. Frey, an associate education commissioner, said the department did not have a specific model in mind but hoped to attract many high schools and colleges into collaborations next year, when it solicits proposals.

“It is not clear that there is one best pathway,” he said. “We want a diversity of approaches here.”

“One of the critical intents is to get students excited about what they could do, and to get them to work at a highly competitive level,” Mr. Frey added. “That is something that would assist students to stay in school, and to not need remediation in college. And it will save money over the long term.”

Labels: Dropouts, dual enrollment

posted by Patricia Lopez at 11:17 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Andy Guess | Inside Higher Ed
October 24, 2007

State bans on affirmative action often leave public universities straining to reach out to minority students without falling afoul of the law. Whether inspiring changes in admissions policy, as Proposition 209 eventually did in the form of the University of California at Los Angeles’s “holistic” review system, or spurring a greater commitment to outreach programs, colleges seeking to keep their populations as diverse as possible often turn to methods that could indirectly boost minority enrollment.

The University of Michigan is the latest system to confront the effects of such bans. Proposal 2, the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, passed by voter referendum last November and prohibits “state and local government from discriminating against or granting preferential treatment to any individual or group based on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin in the areas of public employment, public contracting and public education.” In the views of administrators, who have fought the initiative at every turn, the law leaves the university’s hands tied both at the admissions stage and in the financial aid office, where scholarships can no longer be directed specifically to members of underrepresented groups.

But that doesn’t preclude outside, private organizations from stepping in. The Alumni Association of the University of Michigan — a private, nonprofit group that is legally separate from the university system — last week announced its plans to begin offering scholarships next fall that would consider race and gender in its selection process. The association sees the program as a way to bolster the campus’s minority recruitment efforts despite the legal restrictions imposed on the university itself.

“Our board of directors was very interested after Proposal 2,” said Catherine Niekro, the association’s vice president for marketing and communications, to “help maintain and build diversity on campus.”

By all accounts, the university isn’t complaining. “The University of Michigan welcomes all resources that support access to higher education and, specifically, those that have the potential to assist qualified admitted students to fulfill their dreams and potential at U-M,” Kelly Cunningham, a spokeswoman, said in an e-mail.

The alumni association’s program is still in the planning stages; questions such as the specific admissions criteria and how many scholarships will be initially offered have not yet been settled. Niekro said the alumni board hoped to hash out the details over the next several weeks. The “seed money,” she said, will come in the form of $650,000 from the organization’s endowment, with subsequent donations — directed to the scholarship fund — expected not only from interested alumni but from corporations as well.

Niekro said the plan was not initiated with the university’s involvement. But “campuswide, the response has been pretty positive,” she said. “They’re our friends, but they’re not us,” said another university spokeswoman, who added that they’d first heard rumors about the alumni plan over the summer.

Initiatives by outwardly affiliated, but legally separate, alumni associations aren’t new. The University of Texas at Austin’s alumni group, the Texas Exes, began offering similar scholarships (such as the Black Texas Exes Challenge Grant Scholarship) after a federal appeals court ruled Texas’ affirmative action policies unconstitutional in 1996. Like the Michigan effort, the scholarships are privately funded; they factor in both need and academic achievement.

The UCLA Alumni Association also offers minority scholarships, but it can continue to do so only because its program was “grandfathered” in — that is, it existed before Proposition 209 passed in 1996 and could therefore remain in operation, although a legal web hampered any subsequent fund-raising efforts because the endowment is managed by the UCLA Foundation, which has explicit ties to the university system. Earlier this year, a private group of black UCLA alumni announced a $1.75 million fund for African-American students raised independently of both the university and the official alumni association.

Such private scholarships aimed at minority students serve as a way to attract students who might otherwise be tempted by generous financial-aid packages at competing private universities.

“My thought process is that ... individuals have found a way to support students that might not necessarily have the opportunities to be able to fund their education. And because Proposition 209 specifically focuses on institutions [not] being able to do it, these private organizations, that really can fund students for any criteria they want, become more important,” said George Brown III, the assistant director for alumni scholarships at UCLA’s alumni association. “Private institutions don’t have same problems,” he added, so as a result, “public institutions feel the brunt of trying to recruit viable minority students.”

The problem may be particularly acute in Michigan, suggested Edward P. St. John, a professor of higher education at the university. “The need for improvement in student aid is an artifact of the failure of the state of Michigan to invest sufficiently in need-based student aid,” he said in an e-mail. “Michigan ranks far below other states in the Great Lakes region and the national average for states on this funding of need-based grants. It is extremely difficult [for] prepared, low-income students to pay for public four-year colleges in the state; the net costs after Pell and state grants are far in excess of expected family contributions plus subsidized loans at federal lending limits for low-income students. This is a severe and extreme injustice specific to Michigan.”

Potential Legal Pitfalls

Whether the Michigan plan passes legal muster comes mainly down to whether it is, in fact, completely separate from any state-affiliated entities that would fall under the purview of Proposal 2. Roger Clegg, the president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity, which opposes affirmative action, noted that in essence, neither the university nor the alumni association would be able to assist the other in administering the minority scholarship program.

Michigan’s association, as an independent 501©(3) organization, doesn’t appear to have such a connection with the university; still, its Web site does reside on the university’s umich.edu domain, the Alumni Center is located on campus and its mission statement calls the group “a committed partner of the University.”

Beyond Proposal 2, Clegg said, the plan could violate federal law: “If the agreement with the recipients of the scholarship money amounts to a contract, then they are covered by 42 [United States Code] section 1981, which forbids racial discrimination in contracting.”

“If there’s no connection with the university ... and if the organization is itself not considered a part of the state, and if this is potentially a gift, if there is no contractual issue, then it might be able to do this,” he concluded.

On the potential legal issues involved, at least, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund agrees. Anurima Bhargava, the director of the fund’s education practice, pointed out that “scholarships are not immune under federal or state laws.”

Along with the American Civil Liberties Union, the NAACP filed a lawsuit last December seeking a “declaratory ruling” that Proposal 2 would not apply to policies at public universities that consider race in addition to other factors in admissions.

“Proposal 2 was not intended nor should it be interpreted to prohibit the efforts of alumni and other concerned citizens to ensure that students of color and women have access to higher education,” Bhargava said.

Meanwhile, St. John suggested that despite the current focus on financial aid and admissions, the post-affirmative-action landscape in the state will need to look earlier —- and concentrate on income groups — in order to increase access for underrepresented students.

“[Proposal] 2 has accentuated the need for increasing the university’s commitment to outreach, including partnerships with high schools, and to need-based student aid. However, these critical issues were evident long before [Proposal] 2 was put on the ballot. The passage of [Proposal] 2 has made it more evident that [the university] cannot afford to abdicate its responsibility to improve fairness in access,” he said.

“The University of Michigan is now responding to critical needs in the state by taking steps to equalize enrollment opportunity for admitted students across income groups. Many students — whites and minorities — will benefit from these new efforts.”

Labels: affirmative action, higher education

posted by Patricia Lopez at 11:09 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Update on the release of the Leininger capitol video during the 2003 voucher battle. -Angela

Oct. 24, 2007, 10:33PM
Court hears appeal on Capitol surveillance video

By GARY SCHARRER
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau

AUSTIN — It's a legal case that joins conservative Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott with a liberal political magazine against the Department of Public Safety over what a surveillance camera saw in a back hall of the state Capitol.

Lawyers for the Texas Observer argue that the camera is clearly visible and that the videotape is subject to scrutiny under the state's Public Information Act because it does not betray any confidential security measures.

Lawyers for DPS argue that bad guys, including potential terrorists, might be able to detect blind spots and weaknesses in the security system if the agency is forced to share video with the public.

"It's a very interesting case ... a very tough case," said Third Court of Appeals Justice David Puryear, who presided Wednesday over a three-member panel hearing the dispute.

The Observer wants to look at only one tape in an effort to validate reports that political mega-donor James Leininger of San Antonio camped out behind the House chamber May 23, 2005, to lobby legislators on a school voucher bill.

"We thought it was important that the public know that one of the largest campaign contributors in the state was talking to state representatives and trying to get them to change their vote on an issue of paramount importance to the future of the state," Observer executive editor Jake Bernstein said after the hearing.

The Observer has won the early rounds, including an attorney general's opinion that the tape contents belong to the public and a district court ruling along the same lines. But the nonprofit investigative publication has not yet seen the tape.

"We still want to know if, in fact, (Leininger) was on there or not," Bernstein said.

It could take the appellate court months to rule, with the losing party possibly petitioning the state Supreme Court. So far, DPS has spent at least $165,000 of to defend its position.

"The whole key of this case is the precedent that it would set," said Austin lawyer Raymond White, a partner in the law firm of Diamond McCarthy, which represents the agency.

Allowing the public to see the videotape from one surveillance camera means that every tape in each part of the Capitol would be subject to public scrutiny, he said.

Collectively, the videotapes show how the Capitol security system works, White told the justices.

gscharrer@express-news.net

Labels: investigation, Leininger, Vouchers

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 3:02 PM 0 comments Links to this post

AUSTIN Robert Scott comes into the top job at the Texas Education Agency with a political resume many would covet. But his first tests will require at least as much expertise in education as politics.


New TEA chief has done his homework, but real test is ahead
08:09 AM CDT on Thursday, October 25, 2007
By KAREN AYRES SMITH / The Dallas Morning News
kayres@dallasnews.com


The strong ally of Gov. Rick Perry has come into one of the most powerful jobs in Austin vowing to crack down on TAKS test cheating, craft new curriculum standards and build new tests in core subjects to replace the state's controversial graduation exam.

First up, Mr. Scott says, is to attack cheating on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills tests more aggressively. Potential steps include putting monitors in schools with questionable scores and punishing educators who cheat, including by pulling their credentials. Fifty-three such cases are pending. He also would consider revoking a school's accountability rating over TAKS cheating.

With criticism still lingering that TEA's response to past allegations of cheating was too lax, Mr. Scott said he is determined to find the best way to use statistics and on-the-ground investigations to snag cheaters.

"It's a matter of public trust and public confidence in the system," he said.

His plans pose an ambitious agenda for someone who has never taught or led a school. It's also likely to regularly throw him in the middle of intense controversies. But the 38-year-old lawyer has shown he can weather tough situations.

He finished law school while working as a key adviser to the head of TEA and raising two kids on his own after a divorce. Back at TEA in 2003, he laid off 200 people to fill a budget gap.

Mr. Perry appointed him to his current job after telling former Commissioner Shirley Neeley that she was no longer needed. Mr. Scott had been her chief deputy, and it's no secret the two had their differences in the nearly four years they worked together, including over how to handle allegations of TAKS cheating.

Mr. Scott also starts his new job with an ethics investigation hanging over him about accusations that he steered a lucrative TEA contract to a friend. Mr. Scott denies those claims. State Auditor John Keel is investigating, but he won't comment on the probe or say when he will finish.

Mr. Scott's selection offends some who say the state's top education official ˆ setting policy for 1,033 districts, 197 charter operators and 4.6 million students ˆ should be an educator. Mr. Scott responds with typical directness: He's already run TEA's day-to-day operations, and he knows education policy better than most.

The true test will come in the next few months.

"His leadership style is to be discovered," said Mavis Knight, a state board of education member from Dallas. "It's one thing to be second in command. It's an altogether different thing to be the first-in-command individual."

Policy fascinates him

At 38, the intense new commissioner looks younger than most on his staff. He considers the label "policy wonk" a compliment and says he reads education research that interests him at home at night. After hours, he often e-mails back and forth with staff.

Mr. Scott first fell for government work as a college freshman when he read an article titled "Redundancy, Rationality and the Problem of Duplication and Overlap," about how organizations operate.

"It just turned me on in terms of policy and government," he said.

After he graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, Mr. Scott landed a job as a messenger in the state Senate and then as an aide to then-state Sen. Gene Green. After earning his bachelor's degree in government, Mr. Scott worked on school finance issues for Mr. Green. It was his introduction to education policy.

"I am certainly no expert in the field of statistics, what you would normally call a wonkish person," Mr. Scott said. "If you want to say I'm someone who enjoys spending all of his days and nights thinking about education policy then, yes, that is pretty accurate."

Kids and law school

When Mr. Green was elected to Congress, Mr. Scott joined his staff in Washington. There, he became immersed in a battle over federal funding for schools, sparring with the powerful likes of Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy. He was only 24.

When his marriage ended a few years later, Mr. Scott took primary custody of his children, Jonathan and Katie, who are now in ninth and eighth grades in Austin public schools. He worked as an executive assistant to then-TEA Commissioner Mike Moses and enrolled in UT law school at the same time. His children would later walk across the stage with him at graduation in 2000.

"It almost killed me," Mr. Scott said. "I look back at that point and it was pretty much just running on adrenaline for two years. I really loved law school. In terms of mental engagement, it was a lot of fun."

On the job, Mr. Scott worked on rewriting curriculum standards that dictate the all-important content of everyday lessons and tests. The rewrite touched nerves when it dealt with such controversial issues as sex education.

"He handled all the tension and anxiety that went with that very well," said Dr. Moses, who later became superintendent of Dallas schools.

In 2001, Mr. Perry hired Mr. Scott as an education adviser. Two years later, the governor named him interim TEA commissioner after former Commissioner Felipe Alanis left.

Within months, Mr. Scott and his team faced the unpopular job of having to cut 200 TEA employees to help avert a budget shortfall.

Mr. Scott said he has assured his staff that TEA is in a different position today than 2003 and he intends to work collaboratively with agency leaders.

Mr. Scott became TEA's chief deputy commissioner when Ms. Neeley was named commissioner in 2004. They came at their jobs from different perspectives.

"He would always look at things from a policy standpoint and the governor's standpoint, and I would look at it from how it would impact that classroom teacher, that school, that superintendent and more importantly that student," Dr. Neeley said. "We were very open about it. It was never a secret."

Shortly before Dr. Neeley left TEA, a report by the agency's inspector general found several problems with contracting practices. The report suggested that Mr. Scott steered a $100,000 contract to a friend.

Mr. Scott said it's a case of mistaken identity. He said the contract was negotiated by an employee with the same name who works in the agency's regional service center in Waco.

The other Robert Scott, who goes by the nickname Rob, declined to discuss the investigation this week.

The state auditor's office began investigating the report and was still working on the probe when the governor named Mr. Scott TEA commissioner last week.

When asked about the timing of the appointment, a governor's office spokeswoman said only that Mr. Scott was the most qualified candidate for the job.

Not a teacher

Mr. Scott's appointment was controversial for some.

Linda Bridges, president of the Texas Federation of Teachers, said her group would have preferred that an educator take the helm.

"We always have felt that if you've toiled in the field, you understand what it takes to get the job done," she said.

But state Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, chair of the Senate Education Committee, said she believes an education background isn't necessarily required. She is a former teacher.

"I really do think you weigh that experience, but you have to base the decision on whether the individual can handle that type of job," she said.

Mr. Scott said his lack of experience in the classroom will lead him to listen closely to others.

While some policies are under his control, others are not. For example, he said he would support a pilot voucher program, but he said such a plan would have to come from the Legislature.

"If you've got an at-risk student and there is something you can do for that kid, and they're not being served well now, we would be crazy not to try it," Mr. Scott said.

Whatever the issue, Mr. Scott remains, foremost, a student of policy.

"You know you're cut out for politics when you walk by the Capitol and you get goose bumps, and you know it's time to go when you walk by and get hives," Mr. Scott said. "I haven't gotten to the hives stage yet and I'm still just amazed I get to work in that building."

SCOTT'S PLANS
Mr. Scott faces several critical tasks in his new job. Here are the details of some of his plans:

TEA reorganization

Mr. Scott plans to reorganize the agency to better serve programs that have been mandated by the Legislature, including a Virtual Schools program that will provide for online courses.

TAKS cheating

Mr. Scott said that he wants to tackle the problem more aggressively and that he has asked his staff to begin examining what steps the agency might take. Possibilities include putting monitors in schools with suspicious scores, punishing educators who cheat by possibly pulling their credentials and conducting statistical analyses of scores. He said he would also consider revoking a school's accountability rating for cheating.

New curriculum standards

The agency has started reviewing the state curriculum. Mr. Scott said new curriculum guidelines must be clear and more grade-specific to better prepare students for college. The goals must be measurable, he said. Instead of telling students just to write a persuasive essay, for example, the state should direct students to write an essay that uses research, anticipates counterarguments and includes proper citations.

End-of-course tests

The Legislature recently directed the agency to develop tests to measure high school students' performance in core subjects. The students must pass those tests to graduate. The tests will replace the current exit TAKS test in 2011. Mr. Scott said the agency will conduct pre-tests to measure the new tests before they are given to students.

Vouchers

Mr. Scott says he would support a pilot voucher program, but authorization for any such program would have to come from the Legislature. He said it would be worthwhile to see whether vouchers would help at-risk students, but he believes public schools would remain the schools of choice for most parents.
ABOUT ROBERT SCOTT
Age: 38

Family: Single with two children, ages 14 and 13, who attend Austin public schools

Education: Bachelor's and law degrees, University of Texas at Austin

Professional experience: Legislative aide to Rep. Gene Green, a former state senator and current Democratic congressman from Houston; adviser to former TEA commissioners Mike Moses and Jim Nelson; senior adviser to Gov. Rick Perry for public education; chief deputy commissioner, Texas Education Agency. He served as interim TEA commissioner twice ˆ in 2003 and 2007.

Summer reading: The Road by Cormac McCarthy and an almanac of Texas history

TEA salary: $180,000

TEA term: Expires January 2011

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/102507dnmetrobertscott.373b1ac.html

Labels: Texas politics

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 2:34 PM 0 comments Links to this post

This is a bombshell. This report out of a Wisconsin conservative think tank called the Policy Research Institute titled, Fixing the Milwaukee Public Schools: The Limits of Parent-Driven Reform," takes the wind out of the sails of pro-voucher advocates. It argues that the limits of vouchers to create the competitive, free-market environment that conservatives seek. However, this is unlikely to deter advocates who nevertheless feel that they are double-taxed whenever they have to pay for other children's public education while they pay for their own children's private education.

Labels: Vouchers

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 2:31 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Lois Meyer (see earlier post) refers to Navarrette's recent column. I tracked it down so others could read this, too.
Navarrette hasn't spent time in schools and it shows. -Angela

Turning back the clock on education reform
UNION-TRIBUNE

September 30, 2007

This could be the end of the line for No Child Left Behind. And some educators couldn't be happier.

The 5-year-old education reform law – one of the most important of its kind in the last half-century – is controversial, though it should not have been. After all, what it proposes is fairly tame. It requires that all students perform at grade level in reading and math by 2014 and relies on regular tests to gauge how well students – and by implication, teachers and administrators – are doing toward reaching that goal. It also separates data by racial and ethnic subgroups to get a sense of which groups of students are in the greatest distress. Lastly, it helps students with limited English by preventing schools from testing them in their native language in perpetuity.

That's NCLB in a nutshell. The law is up for reauthorization this year, and it has the misfortune of having to get through a Congress that is now controlled by Democrats, who get their assignments from teachers unions that ply them with campaign cash.

Those unions would like to see NCLB ground into itty-bitty pieces. They're so desperate to maintain control over the educational process and help their members duck accountability that they're willing to put their own interests before those of children. That isn't new. Public schools have, for generations, crafted an environment that caters to the needs and wants of the adults who work in the schools rather than those of the children who attend them.

How many days should there be in the school year? How long should the school day be? What tests should we give, and when should we give them? And what should be the consequences when students don't do well?

Does anyone really believe that when the grown-ups sit down in school board meetings or state legislatures to make these decisions and others about how schools operate that what's top of mind is the interests of children who don't vote, or give money, or twist arms, or pay union dues? If so, they need to grow up.

Interestingly, the law is also encountering token resistance from some Republicans who represent suburban school districts for whom the main issue is local control. These districts want Uncle Sam to butt out of the educational system and leave schools, teachers and administrators to run things as they see fit.

With critics on the right and the left, it's no wonder that NCLB is in trouble, at least in its current form. By current form, I mean with teeth, brains and a heartbeat.

Democrats don't have the guts to kill the law outright because they don't want to advertise to voters that they're the party that rolled back education reform. So they'll have to settle for watering down the law and making it easier for schools to hide how poorly they're doing by burying low-performing students under mounds of loopholes and a lack of transparency.

Luckily, NCLB has a ferocious defender in the form of U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings. As someone who is obviously committed to the law and to preserving its intent, Spellings isn't afraid to square off against powerful opponents of NCLB such as Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor.

When Miller joined last month with Rep. Buck McKeon, R-Santa Clarita, the committee's ranking Republican, to put together a “discussion draft” of changes they'd like to see made to NCLB, Spellings took a look at what they had in mind and then – on Sept. 5 – fired off a letter of her own laying out her concerns with what they had in mind. Among them: that the proposed changes would make it harder to disseminate information about how students were doing while making it easier for low-performing schools to avoid having to make improvements and offer options to students and parents. Letting schools off the hook in this way would, Spellings wrote, undermine a “bright-line principle of NCLB” and cripple the law.

Which, of course, would be fine with those who want to return to the old status quo. For the good of our children and the future they will visit upon us, let's hope that Spellings can stop them. If she can't, and No Child Left Behind is dismantled, we'll all pay the price – and for many years to come.

Navarrette can be reached via e-mail at ruben.navarrette@uniontrib.com.

Find this article at:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/op-ed/navarrette/20070930-9999-lz1e30navarre.html

© Copyright 2007 Union-Tribune Publishing Co. ? A Copley Newspaper Site

Labels: NCLB, NCLB reauthorization

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 12:36 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Bob Lenz | SF Gate
October 22, 2007

As Congress considers an update to the No Child Left Behind Act, here's a piece of advice: Scrap the title.

Designing educational policy to leave no child behind is the equivalent of driving forward by looking in the rear view mirror. If our policymakers want to move America's children along the road to success, they should make earning a college degree a defining goal and remake "No Child Left Behind" into "A College Diploma in Every Hand."

The single biggest ticket to a life of opportunity is a college degree. Americans with a bachelor's degree earn roughly twice as much as those with a high school diploma. For young people who are the first in their families to graduate from college, a degree has the potential to dramatically change their life outcomes and end generations of poverty.

If college success is a measure of our education system's success, however, America just is not making the grade. Half of all students who enroll in four-year college drop out, and rates for black and Latino students are even more dismal. We have designed elementary and high school education to get kids into college, but we haven't taught them what they need to succeed once they get there.

It is necessary - but not enough - for students to be able to pass the California high school exit exam (the CAHSEE), which requires, at best, an eighth-grade standard for math, reading, language and writing. Passing the required college-prep curriculum approved by the University of California and California State University systems does little more to prepare students to succeed in college.

Studies show that the lack of self-management, critical thinking and effective communication skills are major reasons why students drop out of college in their first year. Students also don't get far in college without problem-solving and technology skills, as well as the ability to collaborate and be creative. Meaningful college preparation is less about teaching facts than empowering students to think.

By redesigning our education system so that most students have become proficient in reading, writing and math by eighth-grade, high schools could focus more on the skills needed for college success. High school students would not just learn history or science; they would practice being historians and scientists.

We could give students more opportunity to work individually and in teams to investigate, analyze and synthesize information - putting skills to work to enhance true learning - and to present their findings with new technologies. And we can rigorously assess performance to ensure that each meets clearly defined academic goals.

Critics argue that schools are barely teaching to existing testing standards, so adding additional college performance requirements is not feasible. The truth is that a well-designed college-prep curriculum can actually improve test scores. Consider two charter public high schools in San Francisco: City Arts & Technology and Metropolitan Arts & Technology. Both were founded by Envision Schools to provide underserved students with a rigorous college-performance curriculum, and both boasted the largest test-score gains of any San Francisco public high school in each of their second years. Of course, small schools and large schools are different, but City Arts ranked at the top when compared against similar schools in 2006, and both schools are expected to rank well when the similar-school scores for 2007 are released.

The schools accomplished these results despite the fact that two-thirds of their students tested at a fifth-grade level when they entered ninth grade. When you challenge students to put their mark on a subject, they will be more motivated to master the facts.

Rather than use standardized testing as the sole measure of learning, Congress should use college attendance and achievement rates for accountability in any comprehensive education bill. And California policy-makers, who have touted 2008 as a Year of Education Reform, should allow student portfolios and other performance assessments to be considered as part of the formal admissions process for the state's university system.

You are what you measure, and if the federal government and the state universities aren't actually measuring college performance, then the vast majority of schools won't have the incentive to evolve. And if our schools aren't giving it the old college try, we'll never empower students to do so.

Bob Lenz is the chief education officer and founder of Envision Schools, which operates four public high schools in the Bay Area.

Labels: college readiness, NCLB reauthorization

posted by Patricia Lopez at 8:29 PM 0 comments Links to this post

I'm happy to post this editorial by Dr. Lois Meyer who wrote this upon hearing Jonathan Kozol speak at her campus.
-Angela

Hungering for Educational Justice
Lois M. Meyer
University of New Mexico
lsmeyer@unm.edu


National Book Award-winning author and educator Jonathan Kozol recently explained to an almost overflow audience at the University of New Mexico (UNM) why he appeared thin and weak. For three months he has been on a hunger fast for educational justice. Why? Because he can no longer stomach the gross injustices he witnesses in classrooms and schools across the nation. Last July 1, two days after the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Brown vs. Board of Education, the historic 1954 decision that outlawed segregated schools and mandated school integration, Kozol began his hunger fast against “the racist agenda inherent in the federal education reform act [No Child Left Behind} signed into law by President Bush in 2001”. His hunger strike is partial – he supplements a liquid diet with some solid nourishment at his doctor’s request to sustain life. But, he added, “I’m old now so I’m not afraid to do or say what I believe is right.”

We don’t hear much about hunger strikes these days. Obesity, sure, bulimia, maybe, but not hunger strikes. Our appetite for the likes of American Idol and Desperate Housewives seems insatiable, while the idea of self-inflicted hunger as a principled act of political protest and personal conviction causes us intellectual if not gastric distress. Fasting for justice seems way more extreme than Extreme Makeover. Non-violent hunger fasts may have helped Gandhi and Cesar Chavez tumble colonial empires and unionize California lettuce fields, but that was decades ago. Today both nonviolence and hunger fasting seem to have been deleted from our consciousness and from our menu of possible political actions.

And fasting for educational justice? How would that improve the test scores of low achieving children, or help failing schools meet Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP)? In this age of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), even our concept of educational justice is so shrunken and deformed by government spin that we act as though test scores - rather than children’s creativity and excitement about learning, or the priorities and cultural rights of parents and communities - are what matter.

Many in the UNM crowd of new and experienced teachers, school administrators, university students and professors, and concerned parents, were familiar with what Kozol has said and done in the past. He has worked in inner-city schools for more than 40 years, giving voice to children’s experiences of public schooling in disturbing books such as Death at an Early Age, The Shame of the Nation, and Savage Inequalities. His newest book, Letters to a Young Teacher, recounts his year-long dialogue with an inexperienced first-grade teacher in a segregated Black school in his home town, Boston. In it he promises to describe “the joys and challenges and passionate rewards of a beautiful profession” – teaching.

Kozol made good on his promise, and in doing so, he fed a deep hunger in the audience that night. Public school teachers are hungry to hear a public figure of Kozol’s stature commend them with awe and pride and gratitude for their skills and commitment to teaching. NCLB lays the blame for children’s poor test scores on teachers and schools, and by implication, on parents and communities, especially poor communities of color. It ignores mounds of data that document the increasing inequalities among communities and social classes in family income, health supports, even basics like adequate food and housing, all factors that influence performance on achievement tests and students’ opportunities to learn. Instead, NCLB’s single-minded and simplistic solution to educational inequalities is to hold educators, children and parents “accountable”. In other words, they are blamed and shamed as the “cause” of the educational “failure” of the very children our society refuses to insure and opts instead to segregate, underfund, push out of school, and ignore.

In stark contrast, Kozol celebrated the contributions of education professionals as the strength and soul of public education. He encouraged especially young teachers and those who are preparing to teach: “Teachers I meet today are some of the most gifted and enthusiastic I have ever seen. Especially those who teach young children should not permit themselves to be drill sergeants of the State or trainers for corporate global capitalism.”

Children command most of Kozol’s attention, real children with names like Pineapple and Ariel and Shaniqua who populate the classrooms where he visits and volunteers time. He denounced the educational injustices these children endure in the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth – resegregated schools; overcrowded classrooms; narrow, test-driven curricula; rote, drill-and-kill teaching methods. Though labeled by NCLB as “failures”, the spirit of these children is inspiring – most still hunger to learn.

The federal law’s misplaced, child-damaging priorities are masked in deceptive rhetoric about “standards” and “excellence” and “global competitiveness”. NCLB pretends to address quality education for children but its real concerns are different. “Why should kindergartners care about the global marketplace?” Kozol demands. “They care about bellybuttons and elbows and furry caterpillars.” Curiosity about their world and joy in discovery, not test scores or world markets, are what propel young children to learn.

Some words never appear in NCLB at all, “words like curiosity, creativity, laughter, and delight.” Some parents and communities, and undoubtedly legislators, can demand for their children the best education money can buy, an education that still challenges and delights. But too many Black and Hispanic and Native American kids, and those with special needs or those who are still learning English, are force-fed a stripped down, debased and test-driven curriculum. Kozol’s conclusion was unflinching: “It is deeply hypocritical to hold 8 or 9 year olds accountable for their academic achievement but not hold Congressional delegates and the president accountable for not providing poor kids with the same education they themselves insist on giving to their own kids.”

Syndicated columnist Ruben Navarrete Jr.’s recent column (“Dismantle No Child Left Behind and Watch us Fail”, Oct. 1) is a stark example of the deceptive education talk fueled by NCLB. Navarrete claimed to speak in defense of the needs and wants of children “who don’t vote, or give money, or twist arms, or pay union dues”. Yet Navarrete never talked about children at all, not about their feelings, their interests, their dreams, or their reaction to being labeled as “failures”. Instead, Navarette’s column berates teachers unions, the Democratic-controlled Congress, and “certain Republicans” for seeking to eliminate the most punitive NCLB requirements. Navarrete applauded U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings as a “ferocious defender” of NCLB.

Ferociously defending NCLB is a far cry from defending children and quality instruction and educational justice for all. Kozol understands, as did Gandhi and Chavez before him, that hunger for educational justice demands principled political action if we are to dismantle federal education legislation that intellectually starves our neediest children.

Labels: high-stakes testing, NCLB, segregation

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 5:03 PM 0 comments Links to this post

By TERRY WEBSTER
Star-Telegram staff writer
October 21, 2007

HURST -- L.D. Bell High School sophomore Mady Escamilla is one of hundreds of native Spanish-speakers in the Hurst-Euless-Bedford district.

But unlike most of her peers, Escamilla scored a 5 -- the highest possible score -- on an Advanced Placement Spanish exam while she was a freshman at Hurst Junior High School.

The course and the exam, typically given to high school juniors and seniors, requires students to do college-level work, school officials said.

Escamilla's score was high enough to earn her college credit.

It's all part of the state AP Spanish Language Middle School Program.

"The purpose of the class is to encourage students who would never think of taking an AP class, and to give them that confidence once they do well," said Bettye Edgington, H-E-B advanced academics coordinator.

The passing rate of native Spanish-speakers taking the AP Spanish exam is much higher than the passing rate of Anglo students taking the AP English exam, Edgington said.

Escamilla, 14, arrived in the U.S. from Mexico about nine years ago knowing no English. Today, one cannot tell that she was not born and raised here.

"It was pretty tough getting used to everybody and the brand-new culture," she said. "It made it easier that we were in bilingual classes."

Escamilla said an older brother, then in middle school, struggled more than she did because there was no formal program for Spanish-speakers.

At Hurst Junior High, teachers noticed Escamilla's talent for writing and higher-level thinking skills, such as those required in the AP curriculum.

Early in the ninth grade, teachers encouraged her to switch to the AP Spanish class.

"They told me they were going to work with me, and by the end of the year, I would take the [AP] exam," Escamilla said. "I spoke Spanish at home every day, but it's not like I practiced writing and everything."

The end-of-course exam covers grammar, correct verb usage, and writing and speaking Spanish, Escamilla said. Those who score high can receive college credit.

"I really wasn't worried throughout the whole year, but when the day came, and everybody was expecting so much, I wondered, 'What if I don't really meet their expectations?'" she said.

But she exceeded them.

"She was exhausted," said Billie Grawunder, a Spanish teacher at Hurst Junior High. "It was mentally very challenging for her."

Escamilla was among 20 students chosen for the pilot year of the program last year. This year, the district has added 26 ninth-graders, Grawunder said. Scores from the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills are used to select the students.

This year, Escamilla is taking classes that will prepare her for the district's International Baccalaureate program, and she may take the IB exam in Spanish this year, allowing her the chance to earn additional college credit.

Escamilla was also among about 20 students from Dallas-Fort Worth who were chosen to meet former Mexican President Vicente Fox when he traveled to the area this month.

"I do owe a lot to my teachers," she said. "I've had some pretty good ones."

Mady Escamilla

Age: 14

Hometown: Hurst

Education: Sophomore at L.D. Bell High School

Family: Mother, Lorena; stepfather, Eliseo; two brothers, Rodrigo, 17, a senior at Bell; and Misael, 18, a college student

Hobbies: Art and photography

Labels: Advanced Placement courses

posted by Patricia Lopez at 9:41 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Jenny LaCoste-Caputo | San Antonio Express-News
10/20/2007

An unprecedented effort to re-create high schools is under way along the South Texas border, where just 52 percent of students graduate in four years.

Six high schools debuted the new approach this fall, and four more are in the planning stages. In five years, a total of 18 schools from Brownsville to Laredo will implement the high school redesign project, affecting more than 31,500 students.

The program, First Things First, requires students to choose an area of study for their four years of high school.

It will provide a more personalized educational experience by creating small learning communities at each high school, and assigning each student a family advocate.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is underwriting the program to the tune of $12.1 million. New Jersey-based Institute for Research and Reform in Education, which developed First Things First, is providing training and support.

The border is a crucial testing ground. Nearly 90 percent of the roughly 363,000 school-age children in the region come from poor homes, and 40 percent come to school speaking little or no English — both contributing factors to the low graduation rate.

At Weslaco East High School, Principal Sue Peterson welcomed 500 ninth-graders three years ago. This year, the school has 335 seniors. Her school is one of the six participating in the high school redesign program.

"We know we have a problem when we have 500 incoming ninth-graders, and then four years later, where are they?" Peterson said. "But it's not just about dropouts, it's about being college ready. Too many of our kids are taking remedial courses when they go to college."

Proponents acknowledge the program is an experiment, but note it has helped schools in Kansas City, Kan., and, closer to home, at Houston's Lee High School.

Supporters also say it's something of a corrective measure at a time when school districts — especially in Texas, where high school football is nearly a religion — aren't likely to turn back from building bigger and bigger traditional high schools.

Steve Amstutz, principal of Lee High School in Houston, said the connection between teachers and students is the linchpin of the program. His school on Houston's southwest side faces tough challenges, including this year enrolling 200 students newly arrived from other countries. His students speak 40 different languages and hail from 70 different countries.

The fastest-growing minority group on campus is made up of refugees from African nations, Amstutz said.

Now in its seventh year with the program, Lee High School has seen gains. In 2001, Amstutz's students scored at the seventh percentile in reading on a nationally norm-referenced test. Now, they score in the upper 20s.

"That still stinks, but it's a lot better than it was," he said. "We're making steady progress."

A six-year evaluation of schools in Kansas City, where First Things First is in place at all grade levels, found it had significant impact. After four years, researchers with Youth Development Strategies, Inc., a nonprofit research organization based in New Jersey, found higher reading test scores at all levels, higher math scores at elementary and middle schools, higher graduation rates and lower dropout rates.

How it works

In South Texas, teachers, administrators, students and parents all had a say in what the small learning communities would focus on.

At Weslaco East, students can choose one of six areas of study: health science; technology, media and communications; design and engineering; government, law and criminal justice; arts and education; or business and finance. Peterson rearranged classes so each learning community has its own wing — much like a college setup.

Jim Connell, president and co-founder of IRRE, said small learning communities foster a close-knit feeling and ensure that several adults know each kid.

"There are structural reasons to do this, to get to the smaller numbers, and then there are functional reasons," Connell said. "Here's an area that these kids have some interest in, and the adults in the area have an interest in, too."

Another telling statistic? Six years ago, Amstutz needed eight police officers on his Houston campus full time. Today, he needs one.

"Now teachers know these kids and know them well over a long period of time," he said. "We feel that's the pretext for doing good instructional work."

Students will see teachers for two or three years, much like what happens at a small school. Because all the school's English teachers are spread throughout several learning communities, for instance, no one teacher will work at only one level, which means they'll see the same kids again in 10th or 11th grade.

Teachers from all disciplines also meet together regularly, a switch from traditional planning in which all the math teachers meet together or all the science teachers meet together.

"You've got teachers committed to improving their practice and you've got them sharing the same kids," Connell said. " Instead of one person responsible for screwing a screw in over and over, you've got a team of people responsible for building a car."

Family advocacy also is critical. Each teacher, librarian, counselor, coach and, in some cases, principal, has a group of about 15 kids they are responsible for shepherding through four years of high school.

The groups meet once a week and get to know each other and share problems or concerns. The advocate contacts each student's parents and becomes a liaison with the school.

At Weslaco High School, JROTC instructor Roberto Rodriguez said the family advocacy component and the small learning communities mean every student will have the benefit that kids in programs like JROTC or athletics get.

"There are a lot of kids that teachers didn't know in the past. They were just a number, just paperwork," he said. "Having someone know your name and know what you're going through makes a difference. I've seen it work."

Facing new challenges

Major change doesn't come without opposition. Officials with the Texas Education Agency's Region One district said they've had to do a fair amount of convincing to get some school leaders and faculty on board.

Originally, seven border high schools were to open under the redesign this year, but the school board in Edcouch-Elsa ISD pulled its lone high school out of the agreement.

Some veteran teachers also have balked at the changes, which included going from a schedule of seven classes a day to block scheduling, which consists of 90-minute classes on alternating days.

"A lot of the older teachers are concerned. They've seen so many changes come and go," said Carlos Garza, a theater arts teacher at McAllen ISD's Memorial High School, which is scheduled to make the switch in 2008. "We're getting a lot of training on this, though. I think it's going to be interesting to try something new."

The new program also stumbled over football after IRRE researchers explained how the schools would need to redesign their schedules.

Because athletic programs, especially football, often get their own class periods in Texas public schools, scheduling academic classes, as well as figuring out how to keep from pulling athletes out of their small learning communities to go to practice, became a problem.

"This was something we had never encountered. It was a learning experience for us," Connell said. "We got beat up a little over that."

The compromise was to pilot different models at the six high schools on the border and four high schools in Austin, which are also implementing the program this year. At Weslaco East, for example, football players meet every other day during a class period. On the days they don't meet during class, they come to school early to meet with their team. Austin uses a similar model.

Connell agrees that sports often keeps kids in school. But, he said, all kids need to benefit from the kind of attention focused on athletes.

"The fact is, not all kids are athletes. Even though there are more kids in extra-curricular activities here (in the Valley) than in any other district we've seen, it's still less than half the kids," he said.

Baltazar Herrera, 15, a football player at Weslaco East, often has to be at school at 7:20 a.m. for football practice. He's not a fan of the scheduling change.

"The classes seem really long," he said. "They're 90 minutes, and that seems like a long time to spend on one thing."

Baltazar's mom had a different take, he said: "She likes it. She said it sounds a lot like college."

Cassie Torrez, 15, said she enjoys the new way of doing business and she thinks classmates who don't like the changes will come around. She especially likes the once-a-week meeting with her family advocate.

"Our group leader told us she was our mother away from home," Cassie said. "I like that concept."

Kent Ewing, Austin ISD's executive director for the office of redesign, is convinced the new approach is making a difference in his district, where the stakes are high. All four high schools in the program — Reagan, Travis, Lyndon B. Johnson and Johnston — are struggling, and Johnston is facing closure if test scores don't improve.

"At Johnston we're seeing a huge improvement in attendance," Ewing said. "You can just feel the difference on campus. Everything is more focused."

Labels: Region 1, small learning communities

posted by Patricia Lopez at 11:58 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Add to that the collateral consequences from a felony conviction.

By RYAN S. KING and ANGELA MARIA ARBOLEDA | The Modesto Bee
July 30, 2007

Largely obscured by the rancorous debate surrounding U.S. immigration policy is the emergence of a trend that should be a cause of concern to all Latino communities: the explosion of the number of Latinos in prison.

There were 55,000 Latinos doing prison time in the United States in 1985. That figure has increased by more than 400 percent in 20 years, a substantially steeper rate of increase than for whites or blacks.

Currently, there are more than 450,000 Latinos in U.S. prisons or jails.

With one-in-six Latino males born today expected to spend some time in prison during their lives, the future portends devastating consequences for Latino communities.

This incarceration data stands in stark contrast to a growing body of research suggesting that Latinos, who now make up more than one of every five persons held behind bars, are less likely than other groups to commit crime and that the immigration of the 1990s may have been partially responsible for the historic declines in crime.

Causes for rising Latino incarceration are complex, but an important explanatory factor is the "war on drugs." Despite using drugs at a rate proportionate to their share in the general population, Latinos are twice as likely as whites to be sentenced to a state prison on a drug charge. Nearly one in four Latinos sitting in prison has been convicted of a drug offense.

Differential patterns in law enforcement -- where the police choose to pursue the war on drugs -- play a greater role in determining who is arrested and sentenced to prison than general trends in drug use.

Add to that the collateral consequences from a felony conviction.

These can include barriers to employment, denial of certain licenses, lack of access to education and housing aid, loss of voting rights, and, in some cases, deportation.

Such "invisible punishments" create substantial obstacles to a successful re-entry to the community and increase the likelihood of recidivism.

Despite this spate of distressing news, there are efforts that can be undertaken to stem the tide of disproportionate Latino incarceration.

First, lawmakers should heed the growing chorus of public officials, including high-ranking criminal justice practitioners, and revisit the wisdom of our current drug control strategy. This "lock 'em up" approach has resulted in a half-million people behind bars.

It takes a toll on communities of color while doing little to address the underlying causes of drug abuse. Investing in proven prevention and treatment strategies is far more productive than warehousing people. It's a much more effective tool to enhance public safety.

Secondly, state legislaturesshould expand upon the reforms implemented in 22 states since 2004 and reconsider such punitive sentencing provisions as mandatory minimums that expose individualsto punishments grossly disproportionate to the conduct for which they have been charged.

Restoring discretion to sentencing judges would permit full consideration of the circumstances of the offense. This could prevent the reoccurrence of cases like that of first-time offender Weldon Angelos, who, because of inflexible sentencing enhancements, was sentenced to prison for 55 years.

His offense? Three marijuana sales while possessing a weapon he never used.

The criminal justice system does not exist in a vacuum. Crime and its associated costs generally reflect a failure to provide equal access to resources such as education, employment, housing and health care. Inequalities in the criminal justice system extend far beyond policing, courts and corrections.

True reform can be achieved only when we seek to bring a broad range of community stakeholders to the table, and invest not merely in police and prisons but in neighborhoods and people.

King is a policy analyst with The Sentencing Project. E-mail him at rking@sentencingproject.org. Arboleda is associate director, criminal justice policy, with the National Council of La Raza. E-mail her at aarboleda@nclr.org.

Labels: incarceration rates

posted by Patricia Lopez at 11:17 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Referrals depend on where kids live, not their behavior, group says.

By Joshunda Sanders | AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Friday, October 19, 2007

Texas Appleseed, a nonprofit public interest group, said Thursday that 167 school districts in Texas refer students to disciplinary alternative education programs at a rate that is more than twice the state's average, even when they have the option not to. Texas has 1,037 school districts.

"More than 100,000 students are referred to (alternative education programs) each year," said Ron Lewis, a Houston lawyer and the incoming Appleseed chairman. "Two-thirds of those students are referred at the discretion of school districts."

The report documents disparities among districts in how students are treated and recommends more standardized rules and increased state oversight.

"Where you go to school, and not your behavior, dictates whether you'll be referred" to an alternative education program, Lewis said.

Researchers for the group said that a history of disciplinary referrals is the single most important factor in determining whether a student will drop out of school. The alternative programs are often the last step for troubled youths before they enter the criminal justice system.

The report found that alternative education students are five times as likely to drop out as their peers in mainstream schools.

Appleseed Executive Director Rebecca Lightsey said that numerous studies have established a link between school dropouts and incarceration. Eighty percent of all Texas prison inmates are school dropouts, and one in three Texas Youth Commission inmates is a dropout, according to the Appleseed report.

When a student is suspended or removed from a classroom for violating school conduct policies, officials can refer that student to an alternative classroom. But in many cases, such placements are not required, and districts have the choice of imposing other sanctions, such as in-school or at-home suspensions.

The Austin school district was cited in the report for referring a disproportionate number of African American, Hispanic and special education students to alternative education programs.

But it was praised for beginning a program that emphasizes early, intensive intervention for some students that is meant to reduce disciplinary referrals.

The report said the Austin, Bastrop, Leander, Lockhart, Round Rock and Taylor school districts referred a disproportionately high percentage of special education students to alternative schools.

For instance, in Austin, special education students make up 12 percent of the total enrollment in the district. But special education students made up 38 percent of all alternative education referrals between 2001 and 2006.

The state average for all referrals is 2 percent of students, the report said.

Some school districts were criticized for sending prekindergarten and kindergarten students to alternative programs. State law says children younger than 6 can be referred to such programs only for taking a firearm to school.

The report listed districts that sent more than 10 prekindergarten and kindergarten students to alternative education and those that sent more than 40 first-graders.

The Leander school district was the only Austin-area district listed. Between 2001 and 2006, Leander referred 19 prekindergarten and kindergarten students and 40 first-graders, according to the report.

A copy of the report is at www.texasappleseed.net/news.shtml.

Labels: alternative ed programs, incarceration rates

posted by Patricia Lopez at 11:04 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Spotlight on shady ranking of schools

Nanette Asimov, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 16, 2007

No one has done a formal study, but the circumstantial evidence is there: Some California high schools are quietly boosting their statewide academic ranking by sending their lowest-scoring students into alternative programs that have separate tests.

On Monday, supporters of a law signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said it offers a way to stop the practice while giving educators stronger incentives to keep students from dropping out of school.

The law won't take effect for at least four years. But it will require that test scores of students who are sent to alternative schools be counted in the original school's Academic Performance Index, the school-ranking system that now relies only on test scores.

In addition, dropout rates for eighth- and ninth-graders will be used to help calculate each school's API.

Although there are no hard data to prove that schools boost their rankings by shunting the lowest-scorers to alternative schools, continuation schools or other dropout prevention programs, anecdotal evidence suggests the practice is widespread.

And the system itself invites the habit, said state Sen. Darrell Steinberg, the Sacramento Democrat who wrote the new law.

"I believe the vast majority of public educators are well-intentioned, but the system provides a perverse incentive," Steinberg said. "Your scores are likely to go up if you move kids with significant challenges on."

Almost 300,000 students - nearly 15 percent of the state's 2 million high school students - attend an alternative program, says the California Legislative Analyst.

Jan Treff, president of the California Association of Supervisors of Child Welfare and Attendance, whose members work on behalf of truants and expelled students, had urged Schwarzenegger to sign Steinberg's bill, SB219.

"Now no one is going to get shoved in a corner to play with a puzzle while everyone else takes the test," Treff said. "This gives us more teeth to monitor what's happening."

The state's nonpartisan Legislative Analyst bluntly described the problem in a report in February called "Improving Alternative Education in California."

The report said: "The state's accountability system allows schools and districts to use referrals to alternative schools as a way to avoid responsibility for the progress of low-performing students."

Holding the original school accountable for students' progress in an alternative program encourages schools to make a referral only if it would benefit the student, the report said.

The California School Boards Association opposes the new law because of its provision adding dropout rates to the Academic Performance Index, said Executive Director Scott Plotkin.

As it is now, the API relies only on math and English scores to rank schools. Plotkin said there's no point in "loading up the API" with non-academic measures.

"We'd like to have additional indicators, but we'd rather have them focused on student achievement," he said - such as history scores.

The new law goes into effect on July 1, 2011, at the earliest. The state would first have to have a data system in place that would let schools calculate their dropout and graduation rates accurately.

Now, educators merely guess at those rates because they can't track the thousands of students who leave school without telling administrators where they're going.

The problem creates ripple effects in the state's ability to allocate funds and create effective programs for needy students. And it's been the subject of growing scrutiny.

Schwarzenegger allocated $65 million in his spring budget to develop the data system, but the funding was cut during budget negotiations over the summer.

Labels: Dropouts

posted by Patricia Lopez at 9:44 PM 0 comments Links to this post

KIPP Austin hoping to build on success by serving more students.

By Raven L. Hill
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Thursday, October 18, 2007

An East Austin charter school is launching a $4.6 million expansion plan that will add nine schools in as many years.

KIPP Austin College Prep's plan will bring the enrollment to more than 5,000 students in kindergarten through high school by 2016. The charter school received money from the Charter School Growth Fund in Colorado.

KIPP Austin, which stands for the Knowledge Is Power Program, currently has 360 children in the fifth through eighth grades, mostly African American and Hispanic students from families with low incomes.

"Our mission is to get kids on track for success in four-year universities," said Jill Kolasinski, KIPP Austin's founder and chief executive officer.

KIPP Austin pulls students from five school districts: Austin, Del Valle, Manor, Pflugerville and Round Rock. It hopes to open five schools at its current location and others across the city, adding a grade a year, Kolasinski said.

The school, housed at the former Travis State School on FM 969 near Decker Lane, is part of a growing national network of KIPP academies, started by two Houston teachers in 1994.

The Houston chain plans to expand from eight to 42 schools in the next decade under a $100 million plan. Nationwide, the 57-school KIPP network expects to expand to 100 campuses.

Known for offering a longer school day and week, small classes and teachers who take homework questions at all hours, KIPP academies are frequently lauded as examples of quality charter schools.

KIPP Austin previously announced plans to open a high school with 90 ninth-graders, adding a grade each year through a $700,000 grant from the Texas High School Project, a consortium of public and private groups.

After deciding to open the high school, KIPP Austin officials said, they realized that they could better serve students with more resources and more campuses, Kolasinski said.

About 150 students are on the waiting list for admission.

Officials said that they have successfully appealed an "academically unacceptable" rating the campus received in August for special education students' performance and that since opening in 2002, the campus has been rated "academically acceptable."

Kolasinski said the grant money will also allow the school to decrease its focus on fundraising.

"Employees won't always be in startup mode," she said.

Austin school district officials said they plan to remain competitive. The district's enrollment is expected to reach up to 101,329 students in the next decade.

The district opened an all-girls academy this year and has been exploring the possibility of a boys school as well. A districtwide high school reform effort is under way as officials try to enhance specialized and magnet programs.

"We're going to keep doing everything that we can to provide a diverse, effective, meaningful education that prepares our kids for productive, well-paying jobs," district spokesman Andy Welch said.

Labels: charter schools

posted by Patricia Lopez at 8:46 PM 1 comments Links to this post

Thu, Oct. 18, 2007

No Child Left Behind dilemma: What does 'proficient' mean?

Halimah Abdullah | McClatchy Newspapers, Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — Getting all students working at grade level, or “proficient,” in reading and math by 2014 as the No Child Left Behind law mandates is the new Holy Grail of American education.

But some education experts say that provisions in the five-year-old law that allow states to set their own proficiency standards for their standardized tests — a critical component of measuring “adequate yearly progress” toward No Child Left Behind's reading and math goals — undermine that quest.

“There’s a huge problem in that the level of difficulty varies so differently from state to state,” said Michael Petrilli, vice president for national programs and policy at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a Washington-based education organization. “They (students) are all going to go to college and compete for the same jobs, and they are getting a different education based on an accident of zip code.”

In some cases, differing definitions have meant that states such as California and South Carolina, which have some of the highest proficiency standards, have lowered the scores needed to pass, according to a recent Fordham Institute study. In other states, it's meant that after years of taking relatively easy tests in elementary schools, students stumble when faced with more difficult tests in middle school, the report found.

The concerns over setting proficiency standards are part of a broader and age-old American debate over who — the federal government or state and local entities — should have primary control over education.

According to the Fordham report, fourth-graders in Wisconsin are expected to know the difference between fact and opinion after reading simple sentences. Fourth-graders in Massachusetts, however, are expected to understand fact vs. opinion after reading passages with the same level of difficulty as those found in the works of Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy.

Wisconsin Department of Instruction officials questioned the methodology of the Fordham report, which compared the proficiency standards of 26 states that administer both their own exams and tests by the Northwest Evaluation Association, a nonprofit testing group. Fordham’s findings on Wisconsin’s relatively lower fourth-grade reading standards are echoed in a report published in July by the National Center for Educational Statistics.

Fordham “wants a national standard, so of course their research is going to reflect this,” said Patrick Gasper, a communications officer with Wisconsin’s Department of Instruction. “We don’t necessarily believe it’s in the best interests of the states to have a national standard. While we’re open to guidance from the federal government, we believe the states know best what’s in the best interest of their students.”

No Child Left Behind is a major expansion of federal authority over state and local educational policy, said Andrew Rudalevige, an assistant professor of political science at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania.

In order for Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, then chair of the House education committee, to persuade Republican members to vote for the bill, “he had to argue that it respected state autonomy,” Rudalevige said. “National standards of proficiency were sacrificed to the principle of local control over education.”

Five years later, No Child Left Behind, which faces a contentious reauthorization, has weathered similar scrutiny over whether some states have set the bar too low for students or if the law defines “proficiency” too narrowly by relying so heavily on standardized tests.

“There is recognition on Capitol Hill that the standards are too low,” said Amy Wilkins, a vice president of Education Trust, a Washington-based research and educational advocacy group. “But in the American psyche there is ingrained this idea of local control. The question is, how do you reconcile the two?”

As one of the law’s authors, Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, is concerned that the public's trust in Congress’ ability to legislate education matters has been eroded.

“Chairman Miller feels that has diminished the credibility of Washington in the minds of the American public,” said Tom Kiley, Miller’s spokesman. Lawmakers “don’t have the credibility to say here’s where the national standards will be.”

The U.S. Department of Education is in a similarly complicated position when it comes to proficiency standards. The department approves states’ accountability plans for meeting the mandate, but steers clear of gauging the rigors of standardized tests used to meet those goals or monitoring the passing score needed to be considered proficient on math and reading tests.

“NCLB gives states and local governments the power to solve their own problems,” said Jo Ann Webb, an Education Department spokeswoman. “It encourages local control.”

Some educational experts point to such tests as the Nation’s Report Card, given biennially to a sampling of fourth- and eighth-graders across the country, as a way to gauge how students are doing. But while NCLB requires that all states participate in the Nation’s Report Card, the material tested isn’t aligned with any state’s curriculum, and the standard for proficiency is higher than NCLB standards in many states.

At least 30 states have joined with Achieve Inc., a bipartisan, nonprofit organization that works to help states raise academic standards, in an effort to link proficiency standards, testing and other measures of student performance to what will be expected of kids when they graduate high school and enter either college or the workforce. The effort, dubbed the American Diploma Project, also has gained support among state and federal lawmakers for its focus on what students will need to know to compete globally.

According to a study by the National Center for Education Statistics of mathematics and science achievement of fourth-graders in 25 countries, in 2003 American students ranked in the middle of the pack behind students from Chinese Taipei, Japan and Singapore.

-------------

The Fordham Institute's study can be found here.

The National Center for Educational Statistics study (PDF) is here [pdf].

To view Achieve Inc.'s American Diploma Project Network, go here.

To see how U.S. students rank worldwide, see here.

McClatchy Newspapers 2007

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/20587.html

Labels: cut scores, NCLB, proficiency levels

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 2:16 PM 0 comments Links to this post

The tapes should be made available to the public, period. -Angela


DPS argument over tapes is weak and waste of money
By The Editorial Board | Tuesday, October 16, 2007, 03:35 PM

The Texas Department of Public Safety says its refusal to turn over videotapes of goings-on in a back hallway of the Capitol during a legislative session is a matter of state security. It’s a weak argument, and both Attorney General Greg Abbott and a state district judge have rightly rejected it.

But DPS continues to waste taxpayer money, paying $165,000 in legal fees so far to fight disclosure of the videotapes, shot from security cameras in the back hall behind the Texas House chamber at the Capitol.

The Texas Observer, the liberal publication, filed an open records request for copies of the tape in connection with a May 23, 2005, legislative battle over a bill to enact a pilot school voucher program, as American-Statesman staff writer Mark Lisheron reported in Sunday’s editions. The Observer wants to see if James Leininger, a wealthy advocate for school vouchers from San Antonio, was in the back hallway lobbying and, if so, with whom he met.

Jake Bernstein, the executive editor, said the magazine is engaged in “an exercise to see what we can find out” - a basic mission of a free press.

Citing the Homeland Security Act, DPS refused access to the videotapes. DPS and its lawyers aren’t saying much. But in court filings the department has claimed that the tapes “contain critical, sensitive information” regarding details of Capitol security.

Bernstein said he believes the department is worried most about setting a legal precedent that would make it easier for others under different circumstances to force it to give up more information about security procedures and plans.

The department’s position hasn’t passed muster with the attorney general, a conservative Republican who understands the importance of openness in government.

Abbott’s office told the department that it had “not adequately shown how the submitted video taken from Capitol security cameras relates to the specifications, operating procedures, or location of a security system used to protect public property from an act of terrorism.”

But the department persisted, even hiring private attorneys to pursue its case in the courts once the attorney general said it was wrong. A state district judge, Stephen Yelenosky of Austin, ruled against the department. The department then took its case to the 3rd Court of Appeals, which has scheduled a hearing for Oct. 24, and the department appears willing to go to the Texas Supreme Court, if necessary. The American-Statesman has filed a brief in support of disclosure.

Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, chairman of the Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee, has criticized the department’s resistance to disclosure, saying it was “simply wrong on this issue. This has nothing to do with security. I can think of no conceivable reason why DPS should be using taxpayer funds to hire private attorneys” to fight the attorney general’s ruling.

Carona, the attorney general and the judge are right, and DPS ought to back down on this issue. There may be some security information that truly needs protection, but videotapes of people moving about in a public hallway in the Capitol during a legislative session don’t qualify.

Labels: Leininger, Vouchers

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 10:52 AM 0 comments Links to this post

By KENT JACKSON, Staff Writer
Wednesday, 17 October 2007

Eric Medina grew up in the Dominican Republic and attended a five-room schoolhouse.
When he was 14, he moved to Hazleton and entered Hazleton Area High School, that has 88 classrooms.

“When you come to the big school, you are afraid to talk,” Medina said.
Unfamiliarity with English also added to his reluctance to speak.
“I went right to English class. I didn’t know nothing about English,” he said. “I worked to learn English. It was so difficult to me.”
The work paid off.

Medina made the honor roll and graduated from Hazleton Area last year with a scholarship from the Migrant Education Program that helps him attend Luzerne County Community College.

Reflecting on high school, Medina said he liked the idea of students teaching each other and also thinks teachers of English as a Second Language should know Spanish.
His comments point to a weakness that educators at the high school seek to address to meet goals of No Child Left Behind, a federal law.

Overall, students at the high school met the goals of the law as measured by their scores on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment or PSSA, a standardized test.
Latinos, however, missed the target – as did students from families with low incomes and students with special needs.

On the PSSA, 25.2 percent of Latinos at the high school were proficient in math, whereas the target was 45 percent.

In reading, 30.7 percent of Latinos scored proficient, but the target was 54 percent.
“The students who do speak English here – they don’t want to help the new student,” Medina said.

He also said teachers of English as a Second Language (ESL), should know Spanish, at least in the newcomers program.

In the newcomers program, students with limited knowledge of English stay together for hours, learning science, history, math and English from teachers certified to teach those subjects.

A teacher certified in English as a Second Language also stays with the class.
The high school didn’t have the program when Medina arrived.
Instead, he was excused from a portion of regular classes for English as a Second Language class.

About a dozen students were in the ESL classes, which Medina liked because his teacher also knew Spanish.

“That way she could help us with the homework,” Medina said.
Last year, Medina’s younger brother was in the newcomers program.
“The problem was (the students) were speaking Spanish in class and did not understand the teacher,” Medina said.

English as a Second Language classes, however, aren’t just for students who grew up speaking Spanish.

Although Spanish is the native language for the majority of students trying to learn English in Hazleton, the ESL classes over the years have included students from Switzerland, Vietnam, Egypt, Sudan, Albania, Bulgaria, the former Yugoslavia, Russia and Italy.

Patty Cassarella said the ESL program has grown during her 16 years as a teacher.
The program, which had two teachers then, has 26 now and more structure.
As soon as students enroll, they complete a survey and if necessary take a placement test to measure whether they should be in an ESL program.

After students advance from the newcomers program, they progress through four different levels of ESL classes.

They take yearly tests to measure their progress and are monitored after they leave the program for regular classes.

“It takes from seven to 10 years until they really do know their academic language as close to a native speaker as they’re going to get,” Cassarella said.
In the shelter of the newcomers program, teachers also get familiar with students, build on what they know and learn about their goals.

We “try to determine what their needs are and whether they need (English) for their work, to go to college, to raise their children and hone in on that subject matter,” Cassarella said.

Parents can talk to a bilingual secretary to learn what will be expected of their children in the high school and what they must do to prepare for college.
“The parents are very interested in being involved. It’s very important for them to understand the needs of their children,” Cassarella said.

Seniors help younger students as a service project required for graduation.
Latino students also can work on assignments and English skills in after-school and summer sessions like the Migrant Education Program that awarded a scholarship to Medina.

Now that Medina is in college and majoring in computer science, he joins in more readily.

“I know a little bit of English I can talk. I can participate in class,” he said.
History is his hardest class.

“You have to remember the date, who did this, who did that,” said Median, who also has to comprehend and write English for the history class.

“I guess the math is the very easy class. You only have to deal with numbers,” he said.

kent.jackson@standardspeaker.com

Labels: English language learners

posted by Patricia Lopez at 1:06 PM 0 comments Links to this post

By IAN URBINA | NY Times
October 17, 2007

RICHMOND, Va., Oct. 16 — A Virginia state panel on Tuesday rejected a controversial proposal to create the country’s first state-run facility where illegal immigrants arrested for certain crimes could be held until federal officials deport them or while awaiting trial.

Instead, the panel recommended that the state provide additional money so local officials could build more jail space to house immigrants awaiting deportation. It also called on local jail officials to check the immigration status of all inmates and deny bail to most illegal immigrants who committed crimes.

In recent years, Virginia has become a testing ground for some of the strictest policies in the nation to curb illegal immigration.

This week, officials in Prince William County, Va., were weighing proposals to deny county services to illegal immigrants and to direct the police to jail those immigrants who could not show documentation proving they were in the United States legally.

This year, state lawmakers submitted a proposal to fine employers who hired illegal immigrants $10,000 and to revoke the business licenses of anyone in the state convicted of hiring illegal immigrants. In 2003, the state was the first to pass a measure making it a crime to give illegal immigrants driver’s licenses.

“Residents of our state are really frustrated when an illegal alien commits a crime and that person is let go after serving time, and we’re trying to correct that problem,” said State Senator Ken Stolle, Republican of Virginia Beach, who is chairman of the panel that acted on Tuesday, the Illegal Immigration Task Force of the State Crime Commission. “These measures are not targeting all immigrants, just those who commit crimes.”

In Virginia, local jail officials keep only about 25 percent of the money that federal immigration officials pay per bed for illegal immigrants waiting to be deported, with the rest going to the state. The panel called for that amount to be increased to 100 percent and to increase the amount the state provided to counties to build new facilities. This extra revenue would enable local jail officials to add jail beds for illegal immigrants and eliminate the need for a centralized facility.

But immigration advocates say they worry that toughening immigration enforcement would have a chilling effect on crime victims and witnesses who may be in the country illegally, and they questioned whether increasing the amount of money available to county officials would create a financial incentive to round up people who are suspected of being illegal immigrants.

“Even without any new measures, this chilling effect is a problem,” said Jeanne L. Smoot, director of public policy for Tahirih Justice Center, an advocacy group in Falls Church, Va., for battered women, adding that women were more than twice as likely not to report violence against them if they were illegal immigrants.

The proposals in Virginia are further indications of how state and local officials are getting ahead of the federal government on the immigration issue and sometimes pushing measures that federal officials are unwilling or unable to support for legal, logistical or financial reasons.

Illegal immigrants who are arrested are currently placed in local jails, federal facilities or private prisons, and once they finish their sentences, those convicted of nonviolent offenses are often released because federal immigration officials say they lack the resources to detain them.

Last year, the state police in Virginia notified federal immigration officials of about 12,000 illegal immigrants in their jails. But the federal officials only picked up about 690, according to state officials.

State Delegate David B. Albo, Republican of Fairfax County, who is co-chairman of the state immigration task force, said that Virginia had an estimated 300,000 illegal immigrants.

Hope Amezquita, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia, testified before the task force that the proposal to deny bail to virtually all illegal immigrants accused of committing crimes might be unconstitutional.

It would create a whole class of people who are exempted from due process, Ms. Amezquita said, adding that the Constitution guaranteed that each criminal defendant, regardless of status, get an individualized review of their case.

Before the panel’s recommendations can be adopted, the Crime Commission, the General Assembly and the governor must act on them.

Critics say the proposals are being driven by politics in a year when all 140 seats of the General Assembly are up for election.

“In Washington, here in the state Capitol, and even here in this building, illegal immigration is a debating exercise,” William Campenni, 67, a retired engineer, said at the task force hearing. “In towns like my Herndon, it is a drive-by shooting, a D.U.I. fatality, a drug turf battle, a serial killing sniper, a deteriorating neighborhood.”

Mr. Campenni added that though he had never been a victim of crime at the hands of an illegal immigrant, his wife was afraid to go to areas of their town that she used to visit regularly.

Mr. Albo said that illegal immigrants who committed violent crimes or felonies usually received sentences of more than a year, which gave federal immigration officials enough time to process their deportation. But illegal immigrants convicted of lesser charges, like drunken driving or domestic violence, often are released on bond and never return for their court date, or serve just days or weeks and are released.

The panel wants to hold most illegal immigrants and only release them on bail if lawyers can prove they are not a flight risk.

Asked why he had abandoned his idea of creating a centralized facility, Mr. Stolle said that countless people had told him the idea sounded too much like “a concentration camp” for immigrants.

Labels: detention centers

posted by Patricia Lopez at 12:55 PM 0 comments Links to this post

By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: October 17, 2007

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — In December, the United Nations took up a resolution calling for the abolition of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for children and young teenagers. The vote was 185 to 1, with the United States the lone dissenter.

Indeed, the United States stands alone in the world in convicting young adolescents as adults and sentencing them to live out their lives in prison. According to a new report, there are 73 Americans serving such sentences for crimes they committed at 13 or 14.

Mary Nalls, an 81-year-old retired social worker here, has some thoughts about the matter. Her granddaughter Ashley Jones was 14 when she helped her boyfriend kill her grandfather and aunt — Mrs. Nalls’s husband and daughter — by stabbing and shooting them and then setting them on fire. Ms. Jones also tried to kill her 10-year-old sister.

Mrs. Nalls, who was badly injured in the rampage, showed a visitor to her home a white scar on her forehead, a reminder of the burns that put her into a coma for 30 days. She had also been shot in the shoulder and stabbed in the chest.

“I forgot,” she said later. “They stabbed me in the jaw, too.”

But Mrs. Nalls thinks her granddaughter, now 22, deserves the possibility of a second chance.

“I believe that she should have gotten 15 or 20 years,” Mrs. Nalls said. “If children are under age, sometimes they’re not responsible for what they do.”

The group that plans to release the report on Oct. 17, the Equal Justice Initiative, based in Montgomery, Ala., is one of several human rights organizations that say states should be required to review sentences of juvenile offenders as the decades go by, looking for cases where parole might be warranted.

But prosecutors and victims’ rights groups say there are crimes so terrible and people so dangerous that only life sentences without the possibility of release are a fit moral and practical response.

“I don’t think every 14-year-old who killed someone deserves life without parole,” said Laura Poston, who prosecuted Ms. Jones. “But Ashley planned to kill four people. I don’t think there is a conscience in Ashley, and I certainly think she is a threat to do something similar.”

Specialists in comparative law acknowledge that there have been occasions when young murderers who would have served life terms in the United States were released from prison in Europe and went on to kill again. But comparing legal systems is difficult, in part because the United States is a more violent society and in part because many other nations imprison relatively few people and often only for repeat violent offenses.

“I know of no systematic studies of comparative recidivism rates,” said James Q. Whitman, who teaches comparative criminal law at Yale. “I believe there are recidivism problems in countries like Germany and France, since those are countries that ordinarily incarcerate only dangerous offenders, but at some point they let them out and bad things can happen.”

The differences in the two approaches, legal experts said, are rooted in politics and culture. The European systems emphasize rehabilitation, while the American one stresses individual responsibility and punishment.

Corrections professionals and criminologists here and abroad tend to agree that violent crime is usually a young person’s activity, suggesting that eventual parole could be considered in most cases. But the American legal system is more responsive to popular concerns about crime and attitudes about punishment, while justice systems abroad tend to be administered by career civil servants rather than elected legislators, prosecutors and judges.

In its sentencing of juveniles, as in many other areas, the legal system in the United States goes it alone. American law is, by international standards, a series of innovations and exceptions. From the central role played by juries in civil cases to the election of judges to punitive damages to the disproportionate number of people in prison, the United States is an island in the sea of international law.

And the very issue of whether American judges should ever take account of foreign law is hotly disputed. At the hearings on their Supreme Court nominations, both John G. Roberts Jr. and Samuel A. Alito Jr. said they thought it a mistake to consider foreign law in constitutional cases.

But the international consensus against life-without-parole sentences for juvenile offenders may nonetheless help Ms. Jones. In about a dozen cases recently filed around the country on behalf of 13- and 14-year-olds sentenced to life in prison, lawyers for the inmates relied on a 2005 Supreme Court decision that banned the execution of people who committed crimes when they were younger than 18.

That decision, Roper v. Simmons, was based in part on international law. Noting that the United States was the only nation in the world to sanction the juvenile death penalty, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority, said it was appropriate to look to “the laws of other countries and to international authorities as instructive” in interpreting the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.

He added that teenagers were different from older criminals — less mature, more susceptible to peer pressure and more likely to change for the better. Those findings, lawyers for the juvenile lifers say, should apply to their clients, too.

“Thirteen- and 14-year-old children should not be condemned to death in prison because there is always hope for a child,” said Bryan Stevenson, the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, which represents Ms. Jones and several other juvenile lifers.

The 2005 death penalty ruling applied to 72 death-row inmates, almost precisely the same number as the 73 prisoners serving life without parole for crimes committed at 13 or 14.

The Supreme Court did not abolish the juvenile death penalty in a single stroke. The 2005 decision followed one in 1988 that held the death penalty unconstitutional for those who had committed crimes under 16.

The new lawsuits, filed in Alabama, California, Florida, Missouri, North Carolina and Wisconsin, seek to follow a similar progression.

“We’re not demanding that all these kids be released tomorrow,” Mr. Stevenson said. “I’m not even prepared to say that all of them will get to the point where they should be released. We’re asking for some review.”

In defending American policy in this area in 2006, the State Department told the United Nations that sentencing is usually a matter of state law. “As a general matter,” the department added, juvenile offenders serving life-without-parole terms “were hardened criminals who had committed gravely serious crimes.”

Human rights groups have disputed that. According to a 2005 report from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, 59 percent of the more than 2,200 prisoners serving life without parole for crimes they committed at 17 or younger had never been convicted of a previous crime. And 26 percent were in for felony murder, meaning they participated in a crime that led to a murder but did not themselves kill anyone.

The new report focuses on the youngest offenders, locating 73 juvenile lifers in 19 states who were 13 and 14 when they committed their crimes. Pennsylvania has the most, with 19, and Florida is next, with 15. In those states and Illinois, Nebraska, North Carolina and Washington, 13-year-olds have been sentenced to die in prison.

In most of the cases, the sentences were mandatory, an automatic consequence of a murder conviction after being tried as an adult.

A federal judge here will soon rule on Ms. Jones’s challenge to her sentence. Ms. Poston, who prosecuted her, said Ms. Jones was beyond redemption.

“Between the ages of 2 and 3, you develop a conscience,” Ms. Poston said. “She never got the voice that says, ‘This is bad, Ashley.’ ”

“It was a blood bath in there,” Ms. Poston said of the night of the murders here, in 1999. “Ashley Jones is not the poster child for the argument that life without parole is too long.”

In a telephone interview from the Tutwiler Prison for Women in Wetumpka, Ala., Ms. Jones said she did not recognize the girl who committed her crimes. According to court filings, her mother was a drug addict and her stepfather had sexually molested her. “Everybody I loved, everybody I trusted, I was betrayed by,” Ms. Jones said.

“I’m very remorseful about what happened,” she said. “I should be punished. I don’t feel like I should spend the rest of my life in prison.”

Mrs. Nalls, her grandmother, had been married for 53 years when she and her husband, Deroy Nalls, agreed to take Ashley in. She was “a problem child,” and Mr. Nalls was a tough man who took a dislike to Ashley’s boyfriend, Geramie Hart. Mr. Hart, who was 16 at the time of the murders, is also serving a life term. Mrs. Nalls said he deserved a shot at parole someday as well.

Labels: incarceration rates

posted by Patricia Lopez at 11:52 AM 0 comments Links to this post

What a great approach and use of technology for language acquisition. I'm tempted to say "revolutionary" given the name of the middle school. -Patricia

By WINNIE HU | NY Times
October 9, 2007

A ban on iPods is so strictly enforced at José Martí Middle School that as many as three a week are confiscated from students -- and returned only to their parents.

But even as students have been told to leave their iPods at home, the school here in Hudson County has been handing out the portable digital players to help bilingual students with limited English ability sharpen their vocabulary and grammar by singing along to popular songs.

Next month, the Union City district will give out 300 iPods at its schools as part of a $130,000 experiment in one of New Jersey's poorest urban school systems. The effort has spurred a handful of other districts in the state, including the ones in Perth Amboy and South Brunswick, to start their own iPod programs in the last year, and the project has drawn the attention of educators from Westchester County to Monrovia, Calif.

The spread of iPods into classrooms comes at a time when many school districts across the country have outlawed the portable players from their buildings -- along with cellphones and DVD players -- because they pose a distraction, or worse, to students. In some cases, students have been caught cheating on tests by loading answers, mathematical formulas and notes onto their iPods.

But some schools are rethinking the iPod bans as they try to co-opt the devices for educational purposes. Last month, the Perth Amboy district bought 40 iPods for students to use in bilingual classes that are modeled after those in Union City. In South Brunswick, 20 iPods were used last spring in French and Spanish classes. And in North Plainfield, N.J., the district has supplied iPods to science teachers to illustrate chemistry concepts, and it is considering allowing students in those classes to use iPods that they have brought from home.

''It's an innovation,'' said Frank Belluscio, a spokesman for the New Jersey School Boards Association, which selected Union City educators to speak about the iPod classes at the group's annual conference in Atlantic City Oct. 24-26. ''Most people think of the iPod as just entertainment.''

At José Martí, the silver iPods, with built-in video screens, cost about $250 each and are passed out at the beginning of class along with headsets and Spanish-to-English dictionaries. The iPods are collected at the end of class, and school officials said that none have disappeared or been broken.

In one recent class, eighth-grade students mouthed the words to the rock song ''Hey There Delilah'' by the Plain White T's as they played the tune on the iPods over and over again. The braver ones sang out loud.

''It speaks to me,'' said Stephanie Rojas, 13, who moved here last year from Puerto Rico and now prefers to sing in English. ''I take a long time in the shower because I'm singing, and my brothers are like, 'Hurry up!'''

Pedro Noguera, a sociology professor at New York University who studies urban schools, said that more districts were using new technologies like iPods to connect with students. For instance, he said, teachers have designed video games around history lessons and assigned students to re-enact novels and plays on YouTube.

''You know the No. 1 complaint about school is that it's boring because the traditional way it's taught relies on passive learning,'' Mr. Noguera said. ''It's not interactive enough.''

In many affluent communities, iPods have evolved into an essential accessory for students. In 2004, Duke University led the way by outfitting its entire freshman class with iPods that were preloaded with orientation information and even the Duke fight song. While Duke no longer gives away iPods, it maintains a pool of them that are lent to students for classes. Last spring, 93 of the 2,000 or so courses at Duke required iPods.

The Brearley School, a private girls school on Manhattan's Upper East Side, has used iPods to supplement foreign-language textbooks and its music, drama and English classes. Every Brearley student in seventh through ninth grades is required to buy or rent an iPod.

Here in Union City, the iPods are a splurge for many of the immigrant families who live in this densely packed urban center, once known for its embroidery factories. About 94 percent of the district's 11,000 students qualify for free or reduced lunches.

The Union City district, which has a $197 million annual budget, places a priority on bilingual classes because more than one-quarter of its students are learning basic English skills. District officials said the stakes are high; 4 of the district's 12 schools have been identified as needing improvement under the federal No Child Left Behind law, largely because not enough bilingual students have passed the state reading and math tests.

Grace Poli, a media specialist at José Martí, said that she approached district officials about buying 23 iPods for an after-school bilingual program in 2004 after being struck by students' passion for them. Spanish-speaking students seemed bored by their English-language textbooks, she said, which they found outdated and irrelevant.

The program became so popular that it was added to the regular school schedule the following year, and in 2006, Ms. Poli received 60 more iPods. Last May, the district decided to buy 300 iPods to expand the program to other schools this fall.

Ms. Poli scoured the music charts for songs that appealed to students, compiling an eclectic mix of tunes by Shania Twain, Barry White, U2 and the Black Eyed Peas. She downloaded their songs to the iPods and typed out the lyrics. Then she deleted all the nouns -- and in turn, the verbs and adjectives -- forcing the students to fill in the missing words and learn their meaning.

In class, they sing or recite the completed lyrics back to her.

''A lot of our bilingual kids are very shy, and they feel like outsiders,'' said Ms. Poli, whose parents immigrated from Ecuador. ''You have kids who never said a word in English, and now they're singing Black Eyed Peas. It was a lot of work, but it was worth it.''

Ms. Poli has also downloaded audio books, including the Harry Potter series, and added recording devices to the iPods so that students can listen to their pronunciation as they read poetry or talk with one another.

While the iPods have been used mainly in bilingual classes, the district plans to try them with students who have learning disabilities and behavioral problems as part of the program's expansion, which is set to begin next month. Last year, Ms. Poli helped an alternative education class create podcasts of test-taking tips that were shared with the entire school.

Ms. Poli said her Spanish-speaking students -- known around the school as Pod People -- have been able to move out of bilingual classes after just a year of using the digital devices, compared with an average of four to six years for most bilingual students.

Geri Perez, the principal at José Martí, said parents have requested that their children be enrolled in the iPod-equipped classes. Ms. Perez, who does not speak Spanish, said that bilingual students who once shied away from talking to her have gained self-confidence and now come up to her in the hallways.

Dianelis Cano, 13, who moved here from Cuba less than two years ago, said that she had learned so much English that her mother, a saleswoman in a clothing store, bought her an iPod over the summer as a reward for good grades. Dianelis loads her own songs onto the iPod to practice English outside school, though she also includes Spanish music.

''I'm going to check your iPod to make sure there is English music there,'' Ms. Poli teased her. ''I'm going to make home visits.''

Labels: language learning

posted by Patricia Lopez at 10:48 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Linda Darling-Hammond | SF Gate.com
Sunday, October 14, 2007

One of the central lessons of No Child Left Behind is that if school sanctions are tied to test scores, the testing tail can wag the schooling dog. And a key problem for the United States is that most of our tests aren't measuring the kinds of 21st century skills we need students to acquire and that are at the core of curriculum and assessment in high-achieving countries.

While a debate rages about whether our tests should be created at the national or state level, this argument is focused on the wrong issue.

We need to focus on the quality of our standards and assessments rather than fighting over who administers them. Unless we change the way we think about learning and testing, it won't matter who makes the tests. They will still be a major part of the problem of American education, rather than the solution.

The plain truth is that the United States is falling far behind other nations on every measure of educational achievement. In the latest international assessments, the United States ranked 28th out of 40 countries in math - on par with Latvia - 20th in science, and 19th in reading, even further behind than a few years ago. In addition, these other countries surpass us in graduation rates and, over the last decade, in higher education participation as well.

Although 60 percent of our high school graduates go off to college, only half of these are well-enough prepared to graduate with a degree - far too few for the knowledge economy we now operate. So, while our own youth are often unprepared for modern employment, Silicon Valley lobbies for more H-1B visas to bring in skilled workers to fill high-tech jobs.

Among the highest-achieving countries, some - including Japan and Singapore - have national standards and tests. Others - such as China (where Hong Kong and Macao score well), Australia and Canada - have state-level standards and tests. Top-scoring Finland focuses primarily on local assessment. While these countries manage their systems differently, they have in common a curriculum focused on critical thinking, problem solving and examinations that require students to solve complex real-world problems and defend their ideas orally and in writing.

In most cases, their assessment systems combine centralized (state or national) assessments that use mostly open-ended and essay questions with local assessments given by teachers, which are factored into the final examination scores. These local assessments - which include research projects, science investigations, mathematical and computer models and other products - are mapped to the syllabus and the standards for the subject and are selected because they represent critical skills, topics and concepts. They are generally designed, administered and scored locally.

By contrast, our multiple-choice tests - which focus the curriculum on low-level skills - are helping us to fall further and further behind. Another part of the problem is that the standards used to guide teaching in many states are a mile wide and an inch deep: Most high-achieving countries teach (and test) fewer topics each year and teach them more thoroughly so students build a stronger foundation for their learning.

Whereas students in most parts of the United States are typically asked simply to recognize a single fact they have memorized from a list of answers, students in high-achieving countries are asked to apply their knowledge in the ways that writers, mathematicians, historians and scientists do.

In the United States, a typical item on the 12th grade National Assessment of Educational Progress, for example, asks students which two elements from a multiple choice list are found in the Earth's atmosphere. An item from the Victoria, Australia, high school biology test (which resembles those in Hong Kong and Singapore) describes how a particular virus works, asks students to design a drug to kill the virus and explain how the drug operates (complete with diagrams), and then to design and describe an experiment to test the drug - asking students to think and act like scientists.

Locally, students in other countries also complete required assessments like lab experiments and research papers that help evaluate student learning in the classroom. These assessments, which together count at least half the total examination score, allow the testing of complex skills that cannot be measured in a two-hour test on a single day. They ensure that students receive stronger learning opportunities. And they give teachers timely information they need to help students improve - something that standardized tests that produce scores several months later cannot do.

These assessments in other nations are not used to rank or punish schools, or to deny promotion or graduation to students. (In fact, several countries have explicit proscriptions against such practices.) They are used to evaluate curricula and guide professional learning - in short, to help schools improve.

By asking students to show what they know through real-world applications of knowledge, these other nations' assessment systems promote serious intellectual work that is discouraged in U.S. schools by the tests many states have adopted under No Child Left Behind. Although some states, such as high-scoring Connecticut, Maine, Vermont and Nebraska, have created assessments that resemble those in other countries, the requirements and costs of No Child have led an increasing number of states to abandon their challenging performance assessments for more simplistic machine-scored tests.

A growing body of research has shown that as more stakes become attached to such tests, teachers feel pressured to teach a multiple-choice curriculum that does not produce skills as they are used in the real world. Fully 85 percent of teachers in a recent poll said they feel the tests encourage them to teach in ways that are counterproductive.

As one teacher put it: "I have seen more students who can pass the (state test) but cannot apply those skills to anything if it's not in the test format.

I have students who can do the test but can't look up words in a dictionary and understand the different meanings. ... As for higher-quality teaching, I'm not sure I would call it that. Because of the pressure for passing scores, more and more time is spent practicing the test and putting everything in test format."

Studies confirm that as teaching looks more like testing, U.S. students are doing less writing, less science, less history, reading fewer books, and even using computers less in states that will not allow their use on standardized tests.

Indeed, as state test scores have gone up under No Child Left Behind, scores on other tests measuring broader skills have not. Data on the National Assessment of Educational Progress show that the rate of improvement in math achievement has slowed considerably since No Child was passed in 2002, and reading achievement has completely stalled, with declines at the eighth-grade level. This is likely because a test prep curriculum in the early grades does not provide the foundation that students need to do higher-level work later on.

We need to encourage our schools to teach and evaluate the higher-order thinking and performance skills that leading nations emphasize in their systems, and this requires major changes in No Child Left Behind.

The draft House bill for reauthorizing No Child, under the leadership of the chairman, Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, would begin to rectify this situation by permitting states to use a broader set of assessments and encouraging the development and use of performance assessments, like those used abroad.

These changes, though not yet as far-reaching as they ultimately need to be, are a necessary step in the direction needed to create a globally competitive curriculum in U.S. schools.

As the House bill is revised and the Senate bill is drafted in the coming weeks, creating the incentives for a 21st century education system - rather than one pointed at the factory model of the past - should be a leading priority.

Linda Darling-Hammond is the Charles E. Ducommun professor of education at Stanford University, where she has created the Stanford Educational Leadership Institute and the School Redesign Network. Contact us at insight@sfchronicle.com.

Labels: NCLB reauthorization

posted by Patricia Lopez at 10:08 AM 0 comments Links to this post

John Crace, Guardian
October 15, 2007

In the school size debate, the New York model is instructive, writes John Crace.

IT MAY not have the burnt-out tenements of Bonfire of the Vanities but the north Bronx is still the kind of neighbourhood that looks to have seen much better days.

Then again, it's hard to know if the Kennedy High School campus ever had a good day; surrounded by high wire fencing and with a vast, eight-storey concrete structure at its core, it looks more like a correction centre. In fact, Kennedy has its own force of more than 160 full-time police officers, and all students go through airport-style security at the entrance, creating long queues and delays.

Yet education policy advisers are now wondering if this could be a model for other secondary schools. So what's going on?

The only clue is a series of five Hogwarts-style heraldic shields high up on the front wall. Kennedy isn't one school; it's five.

Ten years ago, the city's high schools, with few exceptions, were magnets for violence and under-achievement. And Kennedy was up there with the very worst. With more than 4000 students from one of the most deprived areas in New York, it was rife with gang warfare and survival was often a higher priority than education.

Fewer than 40 per cent ever managed to graduate with even the lowest, local diploma.

Since the 1980s, the New York education department priority was to improve pre-kindergarten, elementary and middle schools - the theory being that if children got the basics right early on, then the problems in high school would start to sort themselves out. Yet the key issues of low expectations, few learning supports, student alienation and a curriculum lacking relevance to post-secondary were completely neglected - seen as too difficult.

Then, about 2000, several wealthy charitable organisations, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation, got involved, putting up big bucks to support those committed to changing failing high schools.

In 2001 New Visions, a New York-based education reform organisation, joined forces with the New York City department of education to launch the New Century High Schools Initiative (NCHSI).

Throughout the 1990s, New Visions had helped to create about 30 small elementary, middle and high schools across the city and the NCHSI was the ideal platform to develop 200 more. "There's no set curriculum," says Lili Brown, one of its vice-presidents. "Instead we prefer to think of disciplined innovation. There are core performance and attendance targets and each school must adhere to our principles of effectiveness but, within these parameters, there is flexibility for educators, administrators and non-profit organisations to create schools that fit in with the aspirations of the local community."

The idea that students might do better in a small school, where it is easier to implement personalised learning programs, is a bit of a no-brainer. Making it a reality is more of a headache. You can't just bulldoze a concrete campus and build five new ones, because it's too expensive and time-consuming even for the Bill Gates squillions. Iris Zucker was head of Morris High School in south Bronx when she and her deputy, Kirsten Larson, decided to join the project. "We set out to give it (their school) an international identity by taking 50 per cent English language speakers and 50 per cent English language learners."

The result, Marble Hill School for International Studies, began in September 2002 but missed the city's deadline for students in 8th grade making their high school applications, so none of its first cohort of roughly 100 had selected the school. It wasn't easy for the teaching staff, either; the school was initially just five rooms on the top floor of the Kennedy campus. The other teachers in the main Kennedy school refused to let them eat in their canteen. "I suppose it felt to them as if we were unwanted lodgers who had turned up uninvited," says Larson, who this year took over from Zucker as Marble Hill head, trying to be diplomatic. "They just felt a bit threatened by us."

By the end of first year, Marble Hill students were outperforming their expected academic and attendance rates and the school had more than 600 for applications for its second intake.

The small school movement had made its point, and five years on, there are now three other schools of roughly 430 students each co-existing with the Kennedy High School and Marble Hill on the same site.

Marble Hill now has a graduation rate of 94 per cent but Zucker insists it's not just size that matters. "What you have to do is use the advantages size brings; roughly half of all our students are following their own personalised learning plans - a percentage that would be almost unachievable in a larger setting."

It is also raised expectations.

"Virtually none of our students had ever been to an off-Broadway show in Manhattan before they came here," Larson says. "We have now been on trips to Senegal and China and the kids can't wait for the next one.

"We're also beginning to make a name for ourselves outside the city; we have a student who was moving to the Bronx from North Carolina and picked us because we offered Japanese, and one of our graduates was recently awarded a Fulbright scholarship to a top college."

First-year student Diana Ryan chose Marble Hill for its opportunities - "I wanted an education with a global perspective. Marble Hill seemed more interesting and challenging than other schools and I want to join the peace corps when I leave" - while 12th-grader Wahdah al Shugaa, who has been there since the second year, finds peace enough at school. "Here I can get on with my work with no interruptions."

While Marble Hill is working, the other schools on the Kennedy campus don't look nearly as inviting, and few other small schools across the city are getting quite such spectacular results, though they are still consistently out-performing the huge, 4000-student high schools.

No-one is pretending it's all perfect. Gang culture hasn't been entirely eliminated, though principals keep the schools apart by staggering start, lesson and meal times and banning students from each other's premises.

Even so, all the evidence suggests small schools work. -- GUARDIAN

Labels: academic freedom

posted by Patricia Lopez at 9:12 AM 0 comments Links to this post

By Nikita Stewart
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 14, 2007; Page C12

Dozens of young people ages 11 to 21 painted a bleak picture of the District's public school system yesterday during the D.C. Council's first hearing on youth issues, a monthly free-for-all allowing those 21 and younger to talk about topics that affect them.

The council chambers at the John A. Wilson Building was so packed that people spilled out into the hallway during the seven-hour hearing. Another room was opened to accommodate the overflow.

Youths focused overwhelmingly on the school system, describing students who disrupt classes and teachers who don't teach. They also worried about violence in their neighborhoods and a lack of extracurricular and after-school activities.

Hezekiel Gregory, 11, told council members that "someone came to school with a knife" when he was enrolled at Harriet Tubman Elementary School. He now attends a public charter school, where he said he learns more and feels safer.

Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray (D) said he held the session, televised live on cable in the city, because he was so inspired by the number of young people who showed up for a hearing in February on the mayor's school takeover plan. All told, 59 youths testified yesterday.

The council approved the takeover, allowing Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) to take the helm of public schools. Although some facilities are improving, most students said their education is not.

Francisco Velasquez, 17, a senior at Dunbar Senior High School, said he had a teacher who gave only two tests during an entire semester, both of which were "open notes." Victoria Cortez, 16, a junior at Wilson Senior High School, said one of her teachers "has his days when he doesn't feel like teaching."

"That's usually every Friday," she said.

Bright spots included testimony about nonprofits that are working with young people. Some students smiled and giggled about teachers who had reached out to them or made learning fun. Velasquez lit up when he talked about the history teacher he had last year. "He was really a good teacher," he said.

When Tiara Brawner, 17, testified about her education at H.D. Woodson Senior High School, she said "Mr. P" was her favorite teacher. "If you're watching, Mr. P, don't say I didn't acknowledge you," she said.

Mr. P is math teacher Aris Pangilinan; none of the students could pronounce his last name.

But some students said that there are not enough teachers and support staff at their schools and that the good instructors can't do their jobs because of troublesome students.

Donnell Kie, a junior at Ballou Senior High School, said there is only one counselor for more than 300 students. Other speakers said they need guidance on how to find decent housing, jobs and higher education options after graduation.

Labels: teacher quality

posted by Patricia Lopez at 10:51 PM 0 comments Links to this post

This is very interesting. This is a case that might makeit to the Texas Supreme Court. Access to the tapes has become a looming issue despite the fact that what started all this was a request for the tapes in order to see if philanthropist, pro-voucher supporter and funder, James Leininger, violated the law during the 2003 legislative session. We should all stay tuned to see how all of this develops.

A larger issue, of course, is freedom of the press, a constitutional right.

-Angela

Capitol security at issue in court fight over videotapes
DPS has spent $165,000 in effort to keep information from the public.

By Mark Lisheron
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, October 14, 2007

Over the past two years, the Department of Public Safety has sent more than $165,000 of taxpayer money on attorney's fees to keep videotapes recorded by security cameras in a back hall of the Capitol secret. The case could go to the Texas Supreme Court — despite rulings by the attorney general and a state district judge that the tapes should be made public.

The agency has insisted from the start that it will not give the tapes to the Texas Observer, a small-circulation, nonprofit investigative newspaper, because they reveal details that would compromise security at the Capitol. Attorney General Greg Abbott and District Judge Stephen Yelenosky have ruled that argument baseless.

Undaunted, the DPS is pressing on. Its attorneys are scheduled to make their case again Oct. 24 before a panel of three judges at the 3rd Court of Appeals.

The department's persistence in the matter has infuriated the chairman of the state Senate's Transportation and Homeland Security Committee. Sen. John Carona has promised his committee will find out how the case has been allowed to go on this long. The committee is expected to meet in November.

"The DPS is simply wrong on this issue," said Carona, R-Dallas. "This has nothing to do with security. I can think of no conceivable reason why DPS should be using taxpayer funds to hire private attorneys. This is simply an agency giving political cover for the Legislature. This is a misuse of public funds."

DPS Director Tommy Davis declined to comment because the case is pending, a spokesman for the department said. Raymond White, the attorney representing DPS, did not return telephone calls.

Ernest Angelo Jr., chairman of the Public Safety Commission, a panel of appointees overseeing the department, defended the decision to hire private counsel with tax dollars.

"Security is the issue," Angelo said last week. "Obviously, we decided there was a principle to defend the agency's security measures. Any time you hire lawyers, it's going to cost big bucks."

Gov. Rick Perry, who appointed Angelo and is responsible for the other four appointments to the Public Safety Commission, has taken no position on the case because it is still being argued, spokeswoman Krista Moody said. Perry believes DPS has followed proper procedures in the case, Moody said.

The saga began on May 26, 2005, when the Austin-based Texas Observer made a formal request to the DPS, which oversees Capitol security, under the Texas Public Information Act, for tapes recorded on May 23, 2005.

Jake Bernstein, executive editor of the biweekly newspaper, was trying to verify rumors that on that day James Leininger, one of the state's wealthiest Republican campaign donors, was in the hall behind the House chamber lobbying lawmakers to pass a pilot school voucher program. Such lobbying just outside the chamber is against House rules.

An amendment to launch the pilot program failed in the House, and the DPS denied the Observer's request, citing the Texas Homeland Security Act.

The videotapes "contain critical, sensitive information that relates to many specifications, operating procedures and locations of the Capitol security system, of which they are an integral part," according to a DPS brief filed with the appellate court. A terrorist could capitalize on such information, compromising the ability of the department to protect people who work in or visit the Capitol.

After reviewing the tapes, Assistant Attorney General Ramsey Abarca wrote to DPS staff counsel on Aug. 26, 2005, that their contents had nothing to do with security.

"The department has not adequately shown how the submitted video taken from Capitol security cameras relates to the specifications, operating procedures, or location of a security system used to protect public property from an act of terrorism," Abarca wrote in a letter to DPS counsel. The department, Abarca said, must release the video to the Observer.

The department responded by asking the attorney general for permission to hire private lawyers to get the opinion of a district judge. On April 12, Yelenosky ruled that the DPS had five days to turn over the tapes. DPS attorneys immediately filed an appeal.

Bernstein said he thinks that speculation by Carona and others that the DPS is perpetrating some kind of political cover-up is off-base. Bernstein said he believes the department is convinced that giving up the tapes will set a precedent that will leave security vulnerable to increasingly intrusive open records requests.

The case for the Observer has become far less about Leininger's whereabouts and much more about the DPS abusing homeland security law at considerable expense to taxpayers, Bernstein said. When the Observer made an open records request to obtain invoices for its legal fees, the DPS complied, and the newspaper posted them on its Web site in late September.

"Beyond this being a frivolous lawsuit, what I find a little depressing is the DPS is proceeding like there is this bottomless bag of money from which to draw," Bernstein said. "It just never occurred to us that they would carry this as far as they have."

Should the department lose its appeal, Angelo said, he expects to take and supports taking the case before the Texas Supreme Court. Not only could taxpayer-funded legal fees double by then, but attorneys for the Observer could demand reimbursement from the state if the Supreme Court were to side with the newspaper.

So far, Kator, Parks & Weiser, an Austin law firm, has represented the Observer for no charge, in sympathy with the newspaper's open records argument, said Jeremy Wright, the lawyer assigned to the case. The firm will have rung up more than $75,000 in fees by the time the appeal is completed and could easily top $100,000 if the case reaches the state Supreme Court, he said.

"Their argument has been the same from the beginning," Wright said. "What you have is the government using the Homeland Security Act as an excuse to keep from the public basic information they are entitled to."

Carona said he is impatient with an increasing tendency of state agencies to go to court rather than give up materials the attorney general deems public. The number of lawsuits filed challenging an attorney general's ruling that records be made public was 88 in 2006, up from 76 in 2005 and 64 in 2004, according to the attorney general's records.

Whether the Public Safety Commission will continue to support the legal blockade cannot be determined because the commission lacks a quorum. Last session, the Legislature approved adding two seats to the three-member commission. Angelo continues as chairman, and Perry recently appointed San Antonio attorney Allan Polunsky to replace Louis Sturns, who stepped down to take an appointment as judge in Tarrant County District Court. The three other commission appointments remain unfilled.

The DPS position continues to have support from the top. "I'm a taxpayer too, but with the importance of homeland security, I think we have an obligation to follow this case to the end," Angelo said. "A lot of cases don't get resolved until you take them to the top."

mlisheron@statesman.com; 445-3663

Find this article at:
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/region/legislature/stories/10/14/1014tape.html

Labels: Leininger, Vouchers

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

Axel Koester for The New York Times
Martha Sanchez, who has three children in Los Angeles schools, picking up her daughter, Catherine, a third grader. Ms. Sanchez said that as students grew older, the schools seemed to give up.

This account reveals the prevailing need that our nation has to invest in our schools. This punishing approach adds insult to injury. -Angela

October 16, 2007
Failing Schools Strain to Meet U.S. Standard

By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO
LOS ANGELES — As the director of high schools in the gang-infested neighborhoods of the East Side of Los Angeles, Guadalupe Paramo struggles every day with educational dysfunction.

For the past half-dozen years, not even one in five students at her district’s teeming high schools has been able to do grade-level math or English. At Abraham Lincoln High School this year, only 7 in 100 students could. At Woodrow Wilson High, only 4 in 100 could.

For chronically failing schools like these, the No Child Left Behind law, now up for renewal in Congress, prescribes drastic measures: firing teachers and principals, shutting schools and turning them over to a private firm, a charter operator or the state itself, or a major overhaul in governance.

But more than 1,000 of California’s 9,500 schools are branded chronic failures, and the numbers are growing. Barring revisions in the law, state officials predict that all 6,063 public schools serving poor students will be declared in need of restructuring by 2014, when the law requires universal proficiency in math and reading.

“What are we supposed to do?” Ms. Paramo asked. “Shut down every school?”

With the education law now in its fifth year — the one in which its more severe penalties are supposed to come into wide play — California is not the only state overwhelmed by growing numbers of schools that cannot satisfy the law’s escalating demands.

In Florida, 441 schools could be candidates for closing. In Maryland, some 49 schools in Baltimore alone have fallen short of achievement targets for five years or more. In New York State, 77 schools were candidates for restructuring as of last year.

Some districts, like those in New York City, have moved forcefully to shut large failing high schools and break them into small schools. Los Angeles, too, is trying small schools, along with other innovations, and David L. Brewer III, its schools superintendent, has just announced plans to create a “high priority district” under his direct control made up of 40 problem schools.

Yet so far, education experts say they are unaware of a single state that has taken over a failing school in response to the law. Instead, most allow school districts to seek other ways to improve.

“When you have a state like California with so many schools up for restructuring,” said Heinrich Mintrop, an education professor at the University of California, Berkeley, “that taxes the capacity of the whole school change industry.”


As a result, the law is branding numerous schools as failing, but not producing radical change — leaving angry parents demanding redress. California citizens’ groups have sued the state and federal government for failing to deliver on the law’s promises.

“They’re so busy fighting No Child Left Behind,” said Mary Johnson, president of Parent U-Turn, a civic group. “If they would use some of that energy to implement the law, we would go farther.”

Ray Simon, the deputy federal secretary of education, said states that ignored the law’s demands risked losing federal money or facing restrictions on grants. For now, Mr. Simon said, the department is more interested in helping states figure out what works than in punishment. “Even a state has to struggle if it takes over a school,” he said.

A federal survey last year showed that in 87 percent of the cases of persistently failing schools, states and school districts avoided wholesale changes in staff or leadership. That is why, Mr. Simon said, the Bush administration is proposing that Congress force more action by limiting districts’ options in responding to hard-core failure.

In California, Jack O’Connell, the state superintendent of schools, calls the law’s demands unreasonable. Under the federal law, 700 schools that California believed were getting substantially better were counted last year as failing. A state takeover of schools, Mr. O’Connell said, would be a “last option.”

“To have a successful program,” he said, “it really has to come from the community.”

Under the No Child law, a school declared low-performing for three years in a row must offer students free tutoring and the option to transfer. After five years, such schools are essentially treated as irredeemable, with the law prescribing starting over with a new structure, new leadership or new teachers. But it also gives schools the option of less sweeping changes, like reducing school size or changing who is in charge of hiring.

Those in charge of troubled schools in Los Angeles admit that the absence of serious penalties coupled with the growing number of schools branded as low-performing is breeding bitterness. But they are not sure what to do.

Carmen Schroeder, the superintendent of District 5 — and Ms. Paramo’s boss — has taken over hiring decisions and keeps a close watch on the lowest performing schools. Ms. Schroeder said she would like to go further and shut some down if there were any place to transfer the students.

That is not so easy when 59 of the 91 schools in her district, the largest of eight in this sprawling city, consistently fall short of standards.

Beyond that, the federal law does not trump contract agreements, and so teachers have generally not lost their jobs or faced transfer when schools stagnate.

In Los Angeles, as the law’s 2014 deadline draws nearer, the promised land of universal high achievement seems more distant than ever.

Schools that serve low-income students are packed, despite new construction. In poor neighborhoods, students are on staggered schedules, starting school in different months and scattering what was once summer vacation into smaller breaks.

Students lose momentum, forget lessons and come out with 17 fewer days of instruction a year. “That’s why our kids are not passing the high school exit exams,” said Ms. Johnson of Parent U-Turn.

Not all states are facing huge numbers of failing schools. Some were late establishing testing systems, and so lack results over five or more years. Others may have small poor populations, better teaching or easier exams.

But the tensions voiced here are echoed by parents elsewhere, as well as by school officials.

At Woodrow Wilson High one recent morning, teachers broke into small groups over coffee studying test scores for areas of weakness. But there were limits to what they would learn.

The teachers analyzed results for the entire school, not for their own students. Roberto Martinez, the principal, said he had not given teachers the scores of their own students because their union objects, saying the scores were being used to evaluate teachers.

“And who suffers?” asked Veronica Garcia, an English teacher at Wilson. “The kids suffer, because the teacher never gets feedback.”

A. J. Duffy, president of United Teachers of Los Angeles, said the union supported test score reviews provided they did not affect teachers’ jobs. Mr. Duffy said the federal law glossed over the travails of teaching students living in poverty. “Everyone agrees that urban education needs a shot in the arm, but it is not as bleak as the naysayers would have it,” he said.

That is not a view shared by many parents. Martha Sanchez, whose three children attend public schools here, said that as students grew older, the schools seemed to give up.

Her eldest, Gonzalo, attends eighth grade at John Adams Middle School, where only 22 percent of students passed the state exams in English and math this year. It is not hard for Ms. Sanchez to see why.

When Gonzalo struggled over equations, she said, his teacher called him slow rather than going over the material again. Ms. Sanchez said that she had complained, but that the teacher had denied the comment. It was only through the private tutoring, available under No Child Left Behind that he managed to pass seventh grade math, she said.

The principal, Joseph P. Santana, said he did not recall Ms. Sanchez’s complaining, but could not rule it out. “There are 1,600 of them,” he said, referring to the students, “and only one of me.”

Still, Ms. Sanchez is not a big fan of the law. Just weeks into the school year, she said, teachers are focusing almost solely on material likely to appear on state exams. Forget about igniting a passion in children, she said.

“Maybe the system is not designed for people like us,” she said.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/16/education/16child.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

Labels: NCLB

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 10:04 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Gloria Padilla | San Antonio Express-News
10/12/2007

I did not realize just how small a minority I belong to as a graduate of a community college.

The number of students who graduate from community colleges, transfer to a four-year university and get a degree pales by comparison to the number of students who are enrolling in community colleges across the country.

Each fall, there are news releases touting the great strides in enrollment, but there are never media alerts about how many students failed to successfully complete the school year — or even first semester. Perhaps it's time to focus on that.

Spending 12 months at Texas Southmost College in Brownsville — now a part of the University of Texas at Brownsville — before transferring to the University of Texas at Austin as a junior was a matter of economics for me. Placement tests helped me fulfill requirements for an associate degree quickly and signing up to participate in the community college graduation ceremony was an excuse to party with friends afterwards.

Not graduating after two years in Austin was not an option for me and the close-knit circle of women with whom I transferred to UT. Many of us were first generation college students; some were first generation high school graduates, for whom English was a second language.

There was a lot riding on us; many of us had younger siblings who were counting on us.

Perhaps a major factor in our success was that we all moved into the same small apartment complex. The living and learning community we developed away from home provided the support we needed to succeed.

Some community colleges are now working on something similar to help their students. They are investing in establishing small learning communities to help students succeed; studies show it works. My college friends Letty, Abby, Olivia, Diana, Duck, Lissy, Hilda, Elsa, Sylvia and Mayra would be surprised to learn we were ahead of our time.

Much has changed since I went to college. Great progress has been made to provide access to higher education through the community college system, but more focus is needed on ensuring student success.

For many first-time college students, a community college is where they have to go to get ready for college courses.

Many new college students, an estimated 38 percent of community college students in the state and 24 percent of student in public four-year universities, spend their first few semesters on campus taking remedial courses in math, reading and writing, according to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.

Success for students taking developmental math class often falls into single digits.

Research indicates that the chances of success decrease if a student has to take a remedial course more than once. Unfortunately, repeating a remedial course happens more than some community college officials are willing to discuss.

Any way you add up the numbers, they don't look good in the effort to build a college-educated work force.

National statistics indicate that, on average, only 70 percent of high school students in the country graduate with a regular diploma.

We know all high school graduates don't immediately head off to college. But if we know that one in three of those that do end up at a Texas community college need remedial classes, it does not take a genius to realize the magnitude of the problem facing us.

gpadilla@express-news.net

Labels: higher education

posted by Patricia Lopez at 1:57 AM 0 comments Links to this post

By ELISSA GOOTMAN
Published: October 12, 2007

In Madonna G. Constantine’s classroom at Columbia University’s Teachers College, emotions can run high. “People have cried in class,” said Dr. Constantine, 44, a professor of psychology and education who specializes in the study of how race and racial prejudice can affect clinical and educational interactions. “Uncovering those issues, students often get to a place where it can be painful.”

In an interview in her office, a suite peppered with academic tomes and mugs from psychology conferences, Dr. Constantine said she remained mystified over who could be responsible for leaving a noose dangling on her office door at Teachers College this week.

“I really don’t have any idea of who could have done that,” she said. “Is there anything that I’ve experienced that’s close? I would say no.”

As she gave a round of interviews yesterday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice joined the investigation into the noose being conducted by the Hate Crimes Task Force of the New York Police Department.

A police spokesman, Paul J. Browne, said yesterday that there were still no suspects.

College officials and the Police Department sparred publicly yesterday over the department’s request that Teachers College turn over hours of video from a number of security cameras. But college officials said there was no camera in the hallway by Dr. Constantine’s office.

In a separate case, the president of Columbia University, Lee C. Bollinger, reported that an “anti-Semitic smear” had been found yesterday in a bathroom in a campus building, Lewisohn Hall. The police said a swastika and a caricature of a man wearing a yarmulke had been drawn in black ink on a stall door.

In the noose case, Mr. Browne said yesterday that the police were “disappointed and surprised” that Teachers College had refused to turn over its security camera footage without a subpoena. “It is always important to get information as soon as possible,” he said. “You don’t want to give the perp time to concoct a story or cover their tracks.”

But Susan H. Fuhrman, the president of Teachers College, said she was “surprised and distressed” to learn of the police criticism. She said the subpoena policy was standard for educational institutions, adding, “We have students here whose privacy we try to protect.”

She said that the college was committed to cooperating with the police and that by the time the police arrived with the subpoena early yesterday evening, the college had already downloaded the video to hand over to officers.

“There’s been open communication all along with the Police Department,” she said.

As for Dr. Constantine, Dr. Fuhrman said she had heard “nothing but accolades” from her students. “She’s well respected in her field,” she said. “Probably her work engenders passionate debate, but I could name 100 other people here who you can say the same thing about.”

In the interview, Dr. Constantine described growing up in Lafayette, La., the third of five children. Her father works as a bartender at a private club for people in the petroleum industry; her mother was a teacher’s aide working with special education students.

Her parents, who attended college but did not graduate, saved their money to send their children to Catholic schools.

Asked how she became interested in psychology, Dr. Constantine joked about growing up watching “The Bob Newhart Show.” But she also noted, “my personality is naturally one that helps people.”

When Kolone Scanlan, a doctoral student, popped by Dr. Constantine’s office yesterday with a bouquet of flowers and a card, it was Ms. Scanlan who broke out into tears and Dr. Constantine who offered words of comfort.

As an undergraduate and master’s student at Xavier University in New Orleans, Dr. Constantine noticed that psychology textbooks tended to lump women, poor people, black people and disabled people under the umbrella “disadvantaged populations.”

“It was written in a very condescending manner, as in these people do dah dah dah dah dah,” Dr. Constantine said, which made her think, “I want to be able to change some of the text.”

She earned her Ph.D. in counseling psychology at the University of Memphis, and spent five years working in the counseling and mental health center at the University of Texas at Austin before going into academia, first at Temple University. She came to Teachers College in 1998 as an associate professor and earned tenure in 2001, with, she said, more than 30 published articles under her name.

“Most people may go up with 15 or 20,” she said. “I figured as a black woman, I needed to at least double that.”

“Your scholarship is evaluated differently,” she said. “People think that I and other black scholars are studying issues of race because we’re black and because it’s personal. But if I’m studying racism, that’s not about me, right, that’s often about white people, who have certain types of attitudes about people of color, and so forth.”

Dr. Constantine was promoted to a full professor in 2003. But her time at Columbia has not been conflict-free. In May, she filed a defamation lawsuit against another professor in her department.

No detailed complaint has been filed in the case, and Dr. Constantine, who was accompanied during the interview by her lawyer, Paul J. Giacomo Jr., declined to elaborate on the case.

One key concept in Dr. Constantine’s scholarship is “racial microaggression,” which she explained as the often subtle ways in which racial differences can plague relationships between even well-meaning therapists and their clients, or supervisors and their trainees. For Dr. Constantine, colorblindness is neither possible nor desired.

“We have some of the most well-meaning, well-intentioned students I have ever met, and I really enjoy working with them,” she said. “Well-meaning and well-intentioned doesn’t mean effective.” Proclaiming oneself to be colorblind, she added, “is not a helpful perspective in counseling and therapy.”

Does Dr. Constantine think her work could be connected to the noose, hardly a microaggression, but, in her words, “a very, very aggressive act?”

“I haven’t ruled it out that it’s connected,” she said. “I teach courses on racial and cultural issues.” She added, “There are things that I say that have pushed people’s buttons, because it challenges the status quo.”

For now, Dr. Constantine says she is done with the interviews and ready to return to her private life. She was eager to attend her boyfriend’s daughter’s wedding this weekend, she told friends she encountered in the hallway.

And upon arriving at the office door where the noose recently hung, she did not flinch but reached for the doorknob with confidence, saying, “I’m just a nerdy academic who likes to be in her office and do research.”

Labels: higher education, racism

posted by Patricia Lopez at 1:52 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Len Ramirez
CBS5.com

(CBS 5) SAN JOSE High school students whose first language is Spanish sometimes had problems continuing their education. But National Hispanic University along with Latino College Prep are helping English-language learners address those issues.

NHU shares its campus and some of their faculty with Latino College Prep, a charter high school which only serves students whom English is a second language. The president of the University says combining the two schools demystifies college for students, especially those who would be the first in their family to go.

Click here to see video

Labels: California, English language learners, schools within schools

posted by Patricia Lopez at 1:09 AM 0 comments Links to this post

The theme-based programs suggested in this article sound similar to the Small Learning Communities used in South Texas (Edcouch-Elsa High School). For anyone who's interested take a look at Llano Grande, the organization who designed the project. www.llanogrande.org -Patricia

Overemphasis seen on ratcheting up standards at expense of broader view of academic ‘rigor.’
By Erik W. Robelen | Ed Week
October 5, 2007

In a new paper arguing that the ongoing national push to dramatically improve American high schools has gotten off course, two Univesity of California education professors take aim at what they see as an overemphasis on states’ adoption of higher standards for graduation and more-rigorous tests.

“The push to enhance rigor and standards behind the high school diploma is seriously flawed,” write W. Norton Grubb, an education professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and Jeannie Oakes, an education professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, in the paper. “Any gains come at the expense of other goals for high school reform, including equity, curricular relevance, and student interest.”

For the rest of this story click here

Labels: California, high school

posted by Patricia Lopez at 11:49 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Important discussion on evidence pertaining to vouchers in Washington, D.C. Read on. -Angela

Voucher Program Puts D.C. Kids at Risk, Study Says
By Theola Labbé
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 11, 2007; A01

A voucher program designed to send low-income children in the District to better-performing private schools has allowed some students to take classes in unsuitable learning environments and from teachers without bachelor's degrees, according to a government report.

The shortcomings are detailed in a draft prepared by the Government Accountability Office about the $12.9 million D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program. The GAO said the program lacks financial controls and has failed to check whether the participating schools were accredited.

The report, obtained by The Washington Post, assesses how the D.C. government, federal education officials and the nonprofit Washington Scholarship Fund have handled the voucher program, which is in its fourth year with 1,900 students and 58 participating private schools.

The findings are likely to stoke debate about the merits of the country's first federally funded K-12 scholarship program and widen the political divide over vouchers, which Republicans favor as a form of school choice. The GAO undertook the study at the request of three Democrats, Sens. Richard J. Durbin (Ill.) and Edward M. Kennedy (Mass.) and District Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton.

The controversial voucher program was passed by Congress in 2004 to give low-income families the option of using $7,500 toward private school tuition. The average D.C. applicant is a single parent who makes $17,000 a year and has four children.

Students in Ohio and Wisconsin are also taking part in similar programs. But in the District, the report says, instead of giving poor children access to better learning environments, program officials put children at risk by failing to certify whether all of the participating schools had the required operating permits.

In a random sample of 18 schools reviewed by the GAO, two lacked occupancy permits, and four lacked permits needed for buildings used for educational purposes. At least seven of the 18 schools were certified as child development centers but not as private schools. In one case, a school was operating in a space designed for a retail store, the report says.

The schools were largely allowed to self-report that they were in compliance with city regulations, the report says, increasing the possibility that students were being ill-served without proper oversight.

"Self-certification without review to verify that the certifications are factual increases the risk that federal funds intended to allow children from low-income families to attend private schools will result in some students attending schools that are not in compliance with the District law," the report says.

The Washington Scholarship Fund, which operates the program under a contract with the U.S. Department of Education, told GAO investigators that it conducted site visits at 42 schools, but the GAO could confirm a visit to only one school.

Some schools told fund officials that they had certain amenities, such as a gymnasium or an auditorium; the report says they did not. Parents might have been misled when they reviewed the list of participating schools and their programs, the report says.

Gregory M. Cork, president and chief executive of the fund, said it has no capacity to enforce whether private schools comply with D.C. laws.

"We're not a government oversight agency," Cork said. "We report the characteristics of schools as they report them to us. Occasionally, a school might fill in the wrong blank. What we do take seriously is to match our families with the schools they choose and the learning environments that are best for their children."

Samara Yudof, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education, said the report could be revised before it becomes final. She also said it "presents an incomplete picture" of the program.

D.C. State Superintendent Deborah A. Gist said in a statement that Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) has designated her office to assume oversight of the program. Gist said she will assign staffers to the task.

"We will aggressively move to ensure that our students are adequately served," Gist said in a statement.

Victor Reinoso, deputy mayor for education, said yesterday that the administration is preparing a response to the draft report.

The report also says that the fund had high turnover and weak internal controls for handling the federal grant money. It attributed those issues to a rapid three-year expansion because of high parent demand.

Cork said yesterday that the nonprofit program has improved operations. One example cited was shifting from paper invoices to an electronic system.

A report in May from the Georgetown University Public Policy Institute showed that of 100 parents and students surveyed, most were satisfied with the program, and about 90 percent said they would remain at least another year.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/10/AR2007101002529.html

Labels: Vouchers

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 7:35 PM 0 comments Links to this post

This piece in alternet.org seriously challenges Walmart's claim that they provide benefits to communities. -Angela

Wal-Mart Short-Changes Public Schools
By Phil Mattera, Corporate Research Project
Posted on October 11, 2007, Printed on October 12, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/64943/

When Wal-Mart proposes to build another of its giant stores, local residents often raise concerns about increased car and truck traffic, a loss of open space, higher crime rates and other negative impacts that they argue will lower the quality of life in the neighborhood and thus depress property values. The company responds to these concerns by painting a different picture, claiming that its stores provide substantial benefits to communities.

Yet what Wal-Mart does not disclose in site fights--but is revealed for the first time in a new report by Good Jobs First -- is the extent to which the company later in effect concedes the point about reduced property values. Once a store has been in operation for a while, Wal-Mart frequently challenges the assessed value that local officials assign to it for tax purposes. In an effort to cut the property tax it pays to local governments--revenue that pays for public education, police and fire protection and other vital services--Wal-Mart routinely tries to belittle the value of its own facilities.
Good Jobs First discovered this behavior in a labor-intensive, nine-month investigation of Wal-Mart's property tax behavior at more than 500 stores and distribution centers around the United States. We researched local property tax records, looking at assessment appeals on both real property (buildings and land) and business personal property (fixtures and equipment), and found what appears to be a company policy of systematically challenging assessments.

While we did not explore the merits of individual appeals, the high volume of these actions suggests that Wal-Mart, rather than occasionally disagreeing with particular valuations, is engaged in a large-scale effort to roll back its assessments, lower its tax payments and thereby increase its after-tax profits. Our finding that the challenges are handled at the corporate level rather than by individual store managers reinforces this conclusion.

Our key findings:
An examination of a 10 percent random sample of Wal-Mart's 2,833 Supercenters and discount stores in operation as of the beginning of 2005 finds that at least one assessment challenge has been filed at 35 percent, or more than one-third, of the stores. Applying that rate to all Wal-Mart stores, we estimate that the company has brought challenges at more than 1,000 of its retail outlets nationwide.
An examination of all of Wal-Mart's giant distribution centers in operation as of the same date shows that 40 percent have had an assessment challenge--this despite the fact that many of the warehouses had previously been granted property tax abatements (exempting them from property taxes in whole or in part as an economic development subsidy) when they were first built.
At many locations, Wal-Mart has filed challenges in multiple years -- either because it was not initially successful or because it wanted an even bigger tax reduction. We estimate that the company has filed a total of more than 2,100 appeals at its stores and distribution centers nationwide.
Our findings are consistent with Wal-Mart's reputation for relentless cost-cutting; they suggest that the company treats property taxes the same way it treats suppliers and workers. But in this case, entire communities are affected. For only two things can happen when large companies like Wal-Mart reduce their property tax payments: either local public services are cut back or small businesses and homeowners are asked to pay more in taxes. Usually, it is some of both.

Our numbers probably understate the true extent of Wal-Mart's challenges to its assessments, given that they do not include all the informal initiatives taken by the company, which are often not reflected in the local government records we obtained. Our figures also exclude those appeals that were filed but later withdrawn by the company before the hearing date. Finally, our totals are limited by the fact that many local governments keep appeals records for only a limited number of years. The earliest data we were able to obtain were usually from the mid-1990s.
As aggressive and persistent Wal-Mart is in these challenges, the company frequently loses. In fact, when it comes to Supercenters and discount stores, Wal-Mart is denied more assessment reductions than it is granted. Wal-Mart's win rate in appeals at these stores is only 45 percent. The rate at distribution centers is higher (64 percent), but the company still loses more than one-third of those cases. For stores and distribution centers combined, Wal-Mart's win rate is just under 50 percent. There are no comparable statistics available on other companies or on commercial property owners in general.

Wal-Mart's mixed record can be attributed to the worthy efforts of assessors such as those in Johnson County, Arkansas, the company's home state. When Good Jobs First phoned and said we were calling about Wal-Mart, a county official immediately responded: "We just kicked their butt." The company had tried to get the valuation of its distribution center in Clarksville reduced from $33 million to $23 million. The county refused, so Wal-Mart sued. When we contacted the county, a circuit court judge had just ruled in its favor. "Wal-Mart pushes, pushes and pushes," a county official said, "but I'm not bowing down to them."

Thanks to such perseverance by local officials, the total dollar value of tax savings that Wal-Mart has achieved in its appeals has apparently been kept to a moderate level. We found that the cumulative tax savings achieved by Wal-Mart at outlets that have had successful appeals averages $43,000 per store; at distribution centers it is $289,000. We estimate the company's cumulative tax savings nationwide for all Supercenters and discount stores at about $23 million; for all distribution centers the amount is about $6 million. This puts Wal-Mart's total cumulative tax savings in the neighborhood of $30 million, or roughly $3 million a year over the last decade.

Wal-Mart does not disclose how much it pays in annual property taxes nationwide, but a few years ago a company official implied that the amount was about $400 million. If that is still the case, the amount it is recouping through assessment appeals is approaching one percent of its total property tax bill. The amount it seeks through those challenges is much higher, yet the sums involved would still be tiny for a company with $350 billion in revenues and $11 billion in profits. The fact that Wal-Mart goes to such lengths in assessment challenges is another example of its obsession with cost cutting.

The amounts involved in the appeals are also a far cry from the hundreds of millions of dollars Wal-Mart has received in economic development subsidies, which Good Jobs First documented in our 2004 report Shopping for Subsidies, now updated on our website Wal-Mart Subsidy Watch (www.walmartsubsidywatch.org). If local government officials were less vigilant in defending their property valuations from Wal-Mart's appeals, it is likely that the gap between the two sets of numbers would be much smaller. In some cases, the two tax avoidance methods go together. We found 12 cases of Wal-Mart distribution centers with property tax abatements or exemptions that also filed assessment appeals.

There are significant variations in the frequency of assessment challenges from state to state. In Texas, where the challenges are called appraisal protests, Wal-Mart engages in the practice to a much greater degree than we found in other states. In our research, Texas accounts for the largest absolute number of both total appeals and total successful protests. Because of the high numbers for Texas that turned up in our random sample, we did additional research on other Wal-Mart stores in the state. As a result, we documented more than 100 other locations in the Lone Star State with protests that have brought Wal-Mart more than $6 million in total tax savings. (These additional Texas findings are summarized separately from the random sample.)

Here are the top six states in percentage of stores in our random sample that have at least one challenge (limited to those with 5 or more stores in the sample):

Texas.................................................................... 83%

Colorado............................................................... 71%

Kansas.................................................................. 71%

California.............................................................. 67%

New Hampshire..................................................... 60%

Georgia................................................................. 55%

The states with the most frequent appeals are not always those in which Wal-Mart has the most success. While Texas has the most appeals, the company's success rate in the state is only 43 percent, far below the 82 percent success rate in Florida, for example. In California, the state where we found the second largest number of appeals, its success rate is even lower -- 25 percent.

There is no clear relationship between the frequency of Wal-Mart's challenges and the property tax rates in different states. The list above includes Texas, which is considered to have high property taxes (it has no state income tax), and California, which since Proposition 13 has had low property taxes--as well as states that are not necessarily high or low.

Although Wal-Mart's overall campaign to downsize its property tax payments has been blunted in some states, the company has enjoyed substantial gains in certain individual communities. We document more than 20 locations at which Wal-Mart has won total tax savings of more than $100,000. For example:

In 2004 Wal-Mart proposed that the assessment of its distribution center in Tomah, Wisconsin be lowered from $43.6 million to $23 million. The city resisted, but Wal-Mart kept up the pressure. This year the matter was finally settled, with the city agreeing to drop the assessment to $31.4 million and refund the company more than $300,000 for each of three years--a total of $949,000.
Wal-Mart has filed 11 separate challenges at its distribution center in the northern California city of Red Bluff. The company first appealed for the years 1994-1996 but got no change. It then appealed for the years 1997-2002 and reached agreement on changes for each year, achieving total savings of $644,000 -- a substantial amount but much less than what Wal-Mart was seeking. The company returned with appeals for 2005 and 2006 and recouped another $150,000.
Even when local governments defeat a Wal-Mart appeal entirely, there still may be substantial costs for the community. Assessors told us of major cases in which they had to spend tens of thousands of dollars on outside lawyers, appraisers and other consultants to prepare their defense.

Overall, what we found strongly suggests that Wal-Mart approaches assessment appeals -- as with most things -- in a centralized, systematic way. The company apparently sees assessment appeals as another way to improve its bottom line. That may be gratifying to shareholders, but it is another example of how the colossal company pursues policies detrimental to the fiscal health of the communities in which it operates.

The text of this article is drawn from: Philip Mattera, Karla Walter, Julie Farb Blain and Colleen Ruddick, Rolling Back Property Tax Payments: How Wal-Mart Short-Changes Schools and other Public Services by Challenging Its Property Tax Assessments (Washington, DC: Good Jobs First, October 2007); available online at http://www.goodjobsfirst.org/pdf/walmartproptax.pdf.

Phil Mattera is the director of the Corporate Research Project of Good Jobs First.

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/64943/

Labels: Walmart

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 10:31 AM 0 comments Links to this post

I'd argue that in most cases the schools lost interest in the students, rather than believing that "these students lost interest in school" -Patricia

By KATHERINE CROMER BROCK
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
October 9, 2007

GRAPEVINE -- English teacher Melissa Little stood in the back of her Grapevine High School classroom, monitoring 13 students who were studying independently with laptop computers or huddled in groups of two or three.

She recalled how a teacher affected her life when she was a high school sophomore -- and not for the better.

"He asked me why wasn't I reading fast enough; was I just stupid?" said Little, 32. "I've never in my life felt so worthless. And therefore I struggled academically."

Little believes that all students need someone to believe in their potential.

That's a big part of Grapevine-Colleyville's new high school academies.

The Panther Academy at Colleyville Heritage High and the HOPE Academy at Grapevine High offer extra help to students who lack credits or need tutoring to pass the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills. Fifth-year seniors -- students who did not have enough credits to graduate last year with their class -- were recruited to attend the academies at the beginning of the year.

"We have a real special opportunity to find out what we can do to make them successful," Little said.

School within a school

Grapevine High's Harnessing Opportunities for Personal Education, or HOPE, Academy meets in a quiet room near the back corner of the school library.

On Thursday morning, six students sat with Little, discussing the components of writing a personal narrative. Three teens gathered at a table, chatting while they took a break. Four others were scattered throughout the room, working on biology, English and government assignments on laptops.

Seventeen students are in the academy at Grapevine, with more joining the class every week, said Lorimer Arendse, associate principal of academics.

Each student has an individual lesson plan. There are four teachers -- one each for English, math, science and social studies -- who rotate between Grapevine and Colleyville Heritage, which has 24 students in the program.

Academy students are kids who were chronically absent, and those who didn't succeed in a traditional classroom. Now, they have one-on-one attention and a flexible schedule. If a student only needs English credit, she can attend for one period, and then leave. Students who need TAKS help will come in for tutoring closer to test time.

"At some point, these students lost interest in school," Arendse said. "Now we want to get them interested again."

Small goals

Eighteen-year-old Jacob Brown of Colleyville admits it freely. He skipped class. He wasn't interested, so he didn't go. Then when he tried to go, he was overwhelmed with how far behind he was.

"In class, it seems like you're not getting anywhere," Brown said.

With only 18 of the 26 credits he needed to graduate, Brown had two options: drop out or keep working.

Most of his classes are freshman- and sophomore-level, but the teachers in the academy break the tasks into small, manageable goals. When Brown reaches a goal, he is rewarded with a snack or the chance to listen to music.

And if he skips, he knows that school officials will "hunt you down," Brown said.

"I never thought about school until now," he said. "And they don't make it seem like it's too hard for us to achieve."

Teachers are the difference between struggling in regular school and succeeding in the academy, said Francisco Guevara, 18, of Colleyville.

Guevara should be a senior, but he lacks the credits. He works full time at Metro Cinema to help support his family. The academy teachers understand his situation, but they don't let him slide on schoolwork.

"Before, if you skipped, they really didn't say anything," Guevara said. "These are probably the first teachers I've ever met that care about us and want us to succeed."

Little said the academy students are her "kind of kids."

"It's a privilege for me to get to know them one-on-one, and to find out where their skills are and recognize where their potential is, and watch them realize that they've had it all along," Little said. "So many teachers just give up on them, and that's heartbreaking for me. It's our job to make sure that they leave here knowing that they're loved, they're cared for, and they're worth something."

Big rewards

Most academy students are upperclassmen, but in the future, some freshmen or sophomores could benefit from the small-school atmosphere.

Students may catch up enough in an academy to rejoin their peers. Others may be able to transfer to Bridges, the district's alternative school.

Student completion rates will be part of the state's accountability system this year, so the district stands to benefit from students sticking it out and graduating.

Ninety-five percent of students must graduate or stay in school for a school to be rated exemplary.

But the greatest benefit is to the students who earn their diplomas, the students said.

"I made too many bad decisions while I was here," said Eduardo Perez, 18, of Grapevine, a fifth-year senior who last year turned himself in for participating in burglary and vandalism at the high school. "I didn't really have a goal."

Then Perez spent the summer doing landscaping work. It was hot, hard and not where he saw himself ending up. He re-evaluated his priorities.

"Working for my uncle in the yards was not fun," he said. "I got poison ivy and sunburn. I don't want that. You just don't give up and quit."

Katherine Cromer Brock, 817-685-3813

Labels: schools within schools

posted by Patricia Lopez at 3:37 PM 0 comments Links to this post

By ELISSA GOOTMAN and AL BAKER
NY Times
October 11, 2007

A day after a noose was found hanging on a black professor’s office door at Columbia University’s Teachers College, protesting students chanted “no diversity, no university” and confronted university officials at two emotional meetings. The police said that their hate crimes unit had mounted a full investigation, including testing the rope for DNA.

The professor, Madonna G. Constantine, whose specialty is race, racial identity and multiculturalism, stood before protesters at midday and thanked her supporters.

“I am upset that the Teachers College community has been exposed to such an unbelievably vile incident,” she said, “and I would like us to stay strong in the face of such a blatant act of racism.”

Baffled and anguished students and professors wondered how this could happen at Teachers College, which cherishes its image as a bastion of liberalism and multiculturalism.

“I think we are all pretty much mystified as to why it happened,” said George A. Bonanno, a professor of psychology. “This is an institution that prides itself on having open dialogue about race and fairly progressive ideas.”

At an afternoon news conference, Deputy Inspector Michael Osgood, commander of the New York Police Department’s Hate Crimes Task Force, said, “Right now we have no suspects, but we will go down all investigative pathways.” He ruled out any possibility that Professor Constantine had hung the rope herself.

“Our victim is a victim,” he said at police headquarters.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said yesterday, “I think the noose thing is despicable and disgraceful.” A white Queens woman was arrested recently for throwing a noose around a tree and threatening to hang her black neighbor’s children from it.

Dr. Constantine, a professor of psychology and education, counts as her scholarly interests topics that include mental health issues of people of color and immigrants. She is a director of a yearly conference that brings together leaders in education and psychology.

Those who know Dr. Constantine say that she has had a rivalry with another professor, and in May filed a lawsuit charging her with defamation.

The other professor said yesterday that she was on sabbatical, found the noose incident “utterly reprehensible,” and denied she had anything to do with it.

For Columbia students, the incident had particular resonance coming so soon after demonstrations against the Jena Six case in Louisiana, in which white students hung nooses outside a high school and were not prosecuted. A white student was later beaten and six black students were initially charged with attempted murder; thousands have protested the case.

Columbia was also the site recently of demonstrations against Jim Gilchrist, a founder of the Minuteman Project, a group opposed to illegal immigration, and an appearance by the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that left students divided over the boundaries of free speech.

“It’s like throwing a match on a haystack,” said Christien Tompkins, 21, a senior who is co-chairman of the United Students of Color Council. “This obviously really touched a nerve for a lot of folks.”

Mr. Tompkins was one of about two dozen students who met with Columbia’s president, Lee C. Bollinger, to discuss the case yesterday afternoon.

At that meeting, Mr. Tompkins said, students have used the noose as a point of departure to talk about other issues, including Columbia’s plans to expand into adjacent neighborhoods.

“It’s the latest and maybe most visible and extreme case of a climate of racism that we face in our entire society but of course is manifested at Columbia as well,” he said.

Mr. Bollinger, in an e-mail message sent to students and faculty, wrote, “An attack on the dignity of any member of our community is an assault on all of us.”

At a separate meeting, 600 Teachers College students and faculty members gathered to air their own grievances before Susan H. Fuhrman, the president of Teachers College, and other administrators.

“I came here from Virginia,” said one black doctoral student, who did not identify herself. “I’ve been here since 2003 and there has been incident after incident. It’s not so different from the South.”

Earlier in the day, more than 100 students rallied outside Teachers College and marched in Professor Constantine’s support. Her colleagues said it seemed particularly jolting that this had happened to a professor whose work is devoted to issues of race.

Professor Derald Wing Sue, who has collaborated with Professor Constantine on such work as a book called “Addressing Racism,” said, “That’s her area of expertise, so in some sense I think it’s personally devastating and upsetting to her.”

“It could be a discontented student, it could be conflicts with colleagues, it could be the type of work that Professor Constantine does on racism that pushes buttons,” he said. “Teachers College is very devoted to a social justice agenda, but it’s a microcosm of a larger society when issues of race and racism are discussed.”

Dr. Fuhrman said yesterday that she would work to retain and recruit more minority faculty members, and offer students more scholarships.

“There’s nothing good about this incident, this is horrible,” she said. “But we should be doing this talking, and if it takes this thing to make us do this, so be it.”

Elizabeth Dwoskin and Elias E. Lopez contributed reporting

Labels: higher education, racism

posted by Patricia Lopez at 3:25 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Tuesday, October 9, 2007
KVUE.com

The University of Texas unveiled a new statue Tuesday depicting civil rights leader Cesar Chavez.

The statue, which was unveiled in a celebration to honor Chavez' legacy for social justice, was placed on the university's West Mall between Battle Hall and the West Mall Office building.

It is the first statue of a Hispanic person on the UT campus.

Chavez, who died in 1993, co-founded the National Farm Workers Association and fought for the rights of farm laborers and minorities.

"What he did-- the fact that he didn't use large corporations to start a movement-- but invidvidual people-- getting at the initial person, using a person to move people," said Stacey Torres, Cesar Chavez statue committee.

Students voted for a statue depicting Chavez in 2003 with a referendum election and the proposal was approved by university regents. The Texas Legislature had to pass a bill allowing the university to collect student fees to fund the statue.

"We are proud of the students of The University of Texas at Austin for conceiving and bringing this concept to fruition on the campus," said Dr. Juan Gonzalez, vice president for student affairs, in a news release. "We also want to recognize the significant achievement of the committee in the realization of this long-time dream of the students."

Workers were preparing the site and foundation for the statue over the summer.

Student fees paid for the statue. Leftover money was to be put into a scholarship fund.

posted by Patricia Lopez at 3:21 PM 0 comments Links to this post

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 9, 2007; Page A01

José Marinay wears tailored suits, plays racquetball twice a week and displays photos of family-owned racehorses in his Annandale office. For years, the Colombian-born businessman thought he had little in common with the area's illegal immigrants, often villagers from Mexico and Central America who sleep 10 to a house and push lawn mowers or scrub pots for a living.

But the battle in Prince William County, where a measure to curb illegal immigration has thrown the Latino community into turmoil, changed his mind.

"This situation has brought together people who never would have sat in one room before," said Marinay, 50, who owns a real estate settlement company that has offices across Northern Virginia and a mainly Latino clientele. Since the measure was passed in July, he said, business has fallen 80 percent at his Manassas office, and he will probably close it. He also said a sense of growing hostility toward Latino immigrants has affected him.

"I dress well, and I drive a nice car. But on the weekends, when I am in shorts and sandals and I haven't shaved, I look Latino enough to scare a few folks," Marinay said. "There is a definite chill in the air. We may be a fragmented community, we may eat or celebrate in different places, but now they are looking at us in the same way. If we don't unite and work together, we will all sink."

Although not yet enacted into law, the resolution passed by the Prince William Board of County Supervisors has created a sense of siege and solidarity throughout the county's wider Latino community of about 30,000. Rumors circulate that people will be arrested if they board buses or drop off their children at school. Some legal residents, who bought homes and opened businesses, expecting to stay for years, say they are thinking of leaving.

"When we came to Manassas 20 years ago, it was a beautiful place. We were full of enthusiasm and optimism. But in the last three months, that has all gone away," said Carlos Alvarado, 45, a Salvadoran immigrant whose variety store sells fresh corn tamales, pi¿atas and frilly girls' dresses. Many customers are too broke or scared to shop, he said. "Everyone is talking about moving to Maryland or North Carolina, and I am almost bankrupt."

Sponsors and advocates of the resolution assert it is neither anti-Latino nor anti-immigrant. They insist it is aimed at stopping the steady influx of illegal immigrants during the past decade, who they complain are crowding neighborhoods and burdening schools. The measure would deny some services to illegal immigrants and allow local police to turn them over to federal officials.

At first, the region's Latino community was conflicted in its response, reflecting differences in class, education levels, immigration status, national origin and ideological roots. Within the business community, potential allies saw each other as economic rivals first.

The split was exacerbated by the confrontational actions of a group in Virginia, Mexicans Without Borders, that staged a number of protests against the measure, including a one-week store boycott in August. The group has called for a one-day countywide work stoppage today. Last month, the group put up a huge Liberty Wall in Manassas with a sign that condemns "racism against Hispanics." The sign was half torn down by vandals last weekend.

Many established Latino immigrants in Northern Virginia said they disapproved of such tactics, saying they feared the efforts would turn community goodwill against them, too. But as the firestorm over illegal immigration has spread, more affluent Latinos in the area, including entrepreneurs from Colombia and Venezuela, have come to realize they have a personal and economic stake in resolving the issue.

In August, a regional Latino business coalition was formed to seek subtler ways to fight anti-immigration measures, such as through personal lobbying and economic power. Coalition leaders said that it was hard to get some entrepreneurs involved but that more are being spurred to action by a mixture of self-interest, guilt and sympathy for those they once considered a lower class of immigrant.

"This is definitely not business as usual. If people can't buy groceries, they can't buy cars or houses," said Marinay, a coalition official. Other members work in real estate, banking, entertainment and insurance. "We are a wealthy group, and we have invested millions in this region," he said. "Why can't we get these people off our backs? It's our own fault for not being united."

Ricardo Juarez, a leader of Mexicans Without Borders, said that despite their tactical differences, he has come to appreciate the efforts of Marinay's committee. At a county hearing last Tuesday, Juarez and several Latino business owners testified against the resolution, using nearly identical arguments and similarly polite tones.

"We can march. They can lobby. We are each doing our part," Juarez said later. "We all want to solve the problem, and we all have to coexist in the community."

Ruben Andrade, who owns several cafes and clubs in Prince William, embodies the contradictions that have pulled successful Latinos in several directions on illegal immigration. A war refugee who came to the United States 25 years ago, he worked menial jobs and faced his share of discrimination. Now, he prides himself on running stylish establishments and criticizes Latino laborers who pick fights in bars and throw trash in the streets.

"We need to educate our people," Andrade said. "If your neighbor asks you to pick up your garbage, you don't tell them to go to hell. You need to learn English and respect the rules." On the other hand, he said, "this law will hurt the entire community. It is not against illegal immigrants; it is against all Latinos, and we must fight it together."

In Maryland, where attitudes toward immigrants have been more relaxed, at least one measure similar to Prince William's has been proposed in the city of Frederick, and Latino leaders throughout the state's suburbs are increasingly worried that the illegal immigration controversy will engulf the region.

A handful of Latino businessmen in Montgomery and Prince George's counties have joined meetings of the Virginia coalition. Gilbert Mejia, a Salvadoran restaurant owner, was the host of a recent meeting at his La Frontera restaurant in Gaithersburg. He said the fear of arrest and harassment among Latino immigrants has become so widespread that business at his restaurant has fallen sharply this summer.

"Look at this place. Normally, we would be full for lunch," said Mejia, gesturing around a room full of empty tables. "People are afraid the attitude from Prince William will drift here, that Maryland will be the next target. I have been in this country 27 years, and I've invested hundreds of thousands of dollars. We need to know what's coming our way."

In Prince William, many immigrants who have never joined a protest or a committee, but have spent years quietly securing a niche for their families, find themselves drawn to the unfamiliar fray of public debate. Last Tuesday, about 200 Latinos filled an overflow room outside a supervisors meeting in which the July resolution was being discussed, although a final vote was postponed.

One was Jesus Calva, 40, who lives with his wife and two children in Lake Ridge, a woodsy townhouse community. Calva entered the United States illegally as a teenager and started working as a tree trimmer for $3 an hour. Today, he makes $27 an hour with a large construction company, and he helped rebuild the Pentagon after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack. On his living room wall is a certificate of thanks signed by former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

"I have always appreciated this country, and it really upsets me to hear about this law," said Calva, who spoke briefly at last Tuesday's hearing. Afterward, he strode outside, sat down on a curb and began to weep in frustration. "Even when I was illegal, I worked hard for everything I got, and I paid a lot of taxes," he said. "If they don't like us, why don't they just say so? I love my home, but I don't want to live in a place where I am hated."

Labels: immigration

posted by Patricia Lopez at 2:52 PM 0 comments Links to this post

By Brandi Grissom / Austin Bureau
El Paso Times
10/08/2007

Austin -- A report to Gov. Rick Perry about higher education found some disturbing trends.

The Governor's Business Council, a group of Texas business leaders that advise the governor, report that 25 to 34 year olds in Texas were less educated than the two preceding generations. And minorities, whose populations are increasing fastest, were getting the fewest degrees.

Among several recommendations in the report, the business leaders said Texas should emphasize both teaching undergraduates, especially minorities and those with low incomes, and increasing research capabilities.

The report stops short of specifically outlining how the state should realign universities but calls for reorganization where there is population growth and focusing on regional economic needs.

Texas has not handled the challenge of building top-tier universities well, said University of Texas System Chancellor Mark Yudof.

While Texas has two so-called flagship universities -- typically those with more than $100 million in federal research grants, selective admissions, low student-faculty ratios and competitive salaries -- California has eight such public institutions.

"We're a bit behind," Yudof said.

The seven universities hoping to move that number up for Texas are the University of Texas at El Paso, UT San Antonio, UT Dallas, UT Arlington, Texas Tech University, the University of Houston and the University of North Texas.

The schools are striving for more research dollars and building their academic offerings.

But achieving top-tier status will require more investment from the state so that the schools can hire more faculty, increase salaries and purchase equipment.

"Some would hope there could be a funding mechanism that could elevate more flagships into tier-one status," Texas Tech University regent Rick Francis said. "But that is going to elicit jealousies."

Legislators, he said, often have trouble supporting additional funding for a university in an area other than their own.

They "like to bring home the goodies so to speak," Francis said.

That makes it difficult to find consensus on which universities get the financial boost to achieve top-tier status.

If and when legislators decide to invest in creating more top-tier universities, UTEP President Diana Natalicio said her campus is prepared to take on the challenge.

The research budget at UTEP has increased from about $7 million in 1990 to $45.7 million in 2006.

The number of doctoral programs at UTEP has grown from two in the 1990s to 14 today.

By 2015, Natalicio said she expects that lagging graduation rates at the school will improve and that the research budget will grow to $100 million.

"We're ready to go now," she said.

Yudof said UTEP is a strong competitor for top-tier status and having the new Texas Tech University medical school in El Paso helps.

But, he said, the school also must figure out how to maintain its mission of educating a largely low-income Hispanic population with many first-generation college students while increasing its quality and selectivity.

For any of the top-tier competitors, he said, change won't happen quickly even with an infusion of state dollars. Texas, he said, would be fortunate to create two to four such schools in the next 10 to 20 years.

"If you want to hold the bar that high, you have to be realistic about how much it's going to cost and how long it's going to take to get there," he said.

State Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, leads the Senate Subcommittee on Higher Education.

Legislators, she said, have seemingly little appetite to take on the controversial subject of higher education reorganization.

Those who want to bring to their communities the prestige and economic development that top-tier universities generate should pressure their local lawmakers for more investment in all of the state's institutions and in student financial aid, she said.

Texas, Zaffirini said, cannot have great higher education without both quality undergraduate education and world-class research.

"We have to do both," she said. "That's what excellence is all about."

Labels: higher education

posted by Patricia Lopez at 2:37 PM 1 comments Links to this post

Irving parents withdrawing kids, may keep them out

October 4, 2007
By KATHERINE LEAL UNMUTH / The Dallas Morning News
kunmuth@dallasnews.com

Immigrant parents who fear deportation are "on the run" and are withdrawing their children from public schools, Irving ISD Superintendent Jack Singley said Wednesday.

Mr. Singley estimated that 90 children have withdrawn from school in the last week because of the deportation fears in Irving, where a police program has prompted warnings by the Mexican Consulate. The superintendent hopes their parents will re-enroll them somewhere else.

"My concern is that some of them won't put those children in school anywhere because they're on the run," he said. "They get this notion that someone is going to actually come to school and snatch their children."

More than 33,000 students attend Irving public schools. Administrators fear that many more than just the 90 children who withdrew from school are frightened for themselves and their families.

District guidance counselors will meet on Friday to discuss what kind of plan, if any, they should develop to reassure students that they are safe at school regardless of their family's immigration status.

"We've had kids nervous about their parents being deported," said Jose Villaseñor, Irving ISD's director of responsive counseling. "The younger kids are nervous."

Recently, the Mexican Consulate began warning Mexican citizens to stay out of Irving because the city's Police Department has been working with federal immigration authorities to identify illegal immigrants who have been arrested and deport them. Irving police have turned over more than 1,600 people to immigration officials since the program began last year.

More than 1,000 protesters, most Hispanic, gathered outside Irving City Hall last week to raise concerns about racial profiling and about deportations separating families.

Irving Mayor Herbert Gears defended his city's policy Wednesday.

"If they're not being booked into our jail, there's nothing they should be worried about," he said.

He said parents need not fear that immigration officials or police will pick up their children from school campuses.

"Hopefully, people aren't making the wrong choice about whether or not to live in Irving," he said.

Many people in Irving support the City Council's immigration policy, Mr. Gears said. Many of them believe illegal immigrants overburden social services and overcrowd public schools.

The school district had a peak enrollment Sept. 25 of 33,189 students – up only slightly from last year.

Last year about 66 percent of students were Latino and 36 percent had limited English skills – the highest percentage of any school district in North Texas.

Mr. Singley said he does not know how many illegal immigrant children attend Irving schools. School districts typically don't ask the immigration status of their students. Public schools are required to provide a free education to illegal immigrant children.

Mr. Singley raised his concerns at the mayor's human relations advisory committee meeting on Tuesday. He and other community leaders discussed what sort of action plan might help those affected by deportations.

"There are children left behind, and there are families that have been traumatically affected by the deportation of a family member," committee Chairman Rene Castilla said. "What is the role of the community?"

Many of the children are American-born citizens and need psychological help, he said.

Pedro Portillo, pastor of Santa Maria de Guadalupe Lutheran Church, said a parishioner with school-age children has told him she would move out of Irving because her husband was deported.

Mr. Gears plans to visit Nimitz High School today to speak with the Latinos Stand Up club, a student group dedicated to improving the education of Hispanic students.

Club sponsor and Spanish teacher Netanya Even said it's important for students to stay informed, know their rights and help dispel rumors.

"Obviously they're concerned about the welfare of their families, but there are larger social issues, too," Ms. Even said. "Some of them are concerned about racial profiling, feeling frustrated and asking, 'Why are we a group that's not wanted?' They feel resentful."

Nimitz senior Abigail Carranza, 17, an American citizen, said she's also afraid.

"I don't like driving anymore because I don't want them to pull me over," she said. "We're all scared that they're pulling over anyone that's a little darker."

Labels: immigration and education

posted by Patricia Lopez at 12:05 PM 0 comments Links to this post

By MARTHA DELLER and DIANE SMITH
Star-Telegram
October 3, 2007

Jorge Cornel, who came from Mexico at age 5, spoke little English when he entered White Settlement's dual-language program five years ago. Now, the Liberty Elementary fourth-grader confidently answers questions in Spanish and English and reads chapter books in both languages.

"It's very awesome to speak two languages," Jorge said. "My grandma speaks only Spanish and I can speak to her in Spanish."

As more Hispanics make Texas their home, dual-language programs are becoming increasingly popular in schools statewide.

School districts in Arlington, Cleburne, Everman, Grand Prairie, Joshua and White Settlement started dual-language programs several years ago, as did the Birdville and Castleberry school districts. Fort Worth, Mansfield and Weatherford school districts began programs this year and Crowley officials are considering a program.

School officials say students in dual-language programs learn English faster than those in English as a second language and traditional bilingual programs. They also perform better on tests, including the TAKS, than those in the other programs.

"The transitional model was doing away with their native language," said Birdville bilingual-ESL consultant Nora Fabela, who supervises dual-language classes in three schools.

Fort Worth officials believe their dual-language classes will be as successful as in other districts.

The district began its one-way dual-language program this year for pre-kindergarten and kindergarten students at 37 schools. But not everyone is on board with Fort Worth's new program, which has been criticized by some parents who fear their children won't learn English as well as in ESL or traditional bilingual classes.

Greenbriar Elementary School parent Ileana Casas opted not to enroll her child. But she said some parents who were unaware of the change didn't believe that they had a choice.

Some English-speaking Hispanic parents say people wrongly assume that they want their children to be bilingual and fear that the district is selecting by ethnicity and last names.

"The national language of the United States is English, not Spanish," Casas said. "If I want my kids to learn Spanish, I'll teach them at home. We should have voted on what parents wanted and have Spanish as an elective."

Bilingual director Margaret Balandran says the district informed parents about the program last spring and held forums to explain it.

"I'm not trying to push a program to parents," she said.

Balandran said children whose native language is not English are assessed to determine their dominant language, but parents still have the right to choose another program. Research shows that dual-language students learn faster and, in the long run, outperform English-dominant students in all core subjects, she said, citing research done by Virginia Collier of George Mason University that included two million students.

Higher scores

In Everman, where the program is in its second year, officials say the two-way dual-language program is confirming that research.

While Fort Worth serves only Spanish speakers, English and Spanish speakers learn both languages together at most other area districts. Balandran said Fort Worth is considering that program for next year.

Some Everman parents initially had similar concerns about the dual-language program, which began 60 years ago in the U.S. and has spread throughout Texas in the last 15 years.

.Despite those concerns, Spanish-speaking parent Maria Sandoval enrolled her daughter in Hommel Elementary School's program so she could help her with homework. Now, she's glad she did.

"By December, I could tell that Mayra was learning to read and write both Spanish and English," Sandoval said through an interpreter.

English-speaking parent Jennifer Bell said her daughter learned Spanish so quickly, she now reads Spanish books to her younger brother.

"Cora thinks in Spanish and English," Bell said. "She is so fluent, people start speaking to her in Spanish."

The popular program expanded from Hommel to Souder Elementary School this year and Superintendent Jeri Pfeifer plans to include two other schools if she can hire more bilingual teachers.

Everman Assistant Superintendent Cathy Anderson said dual-language first-graders had higher test scores than those in traditional bilingual or English as a second language classes. By sixth grade, data shows the performance gap is even greater.

"That's what intrigued us about dual language," Anderson said. "We felt it was best for the kids."

Support from parents

Officials in the White Settlement school district, now in its fifth year of dual language at Liberty Elementary School, also praise the program.

Spanish and English speakers are split into two classes; younger students learn language arts in their native language and other subjects in their second language. Older students are paired to allow the two groups to help each other in all subjects.

Bilingual coordinator Amy Ferguson said Spanish-speaking parents were worried that their children would not learn English and English-speaking parents were concerned that their children would fall behind in core subjects. Those parents became supporters of the program when all third-graders at Liberty passed the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills reading test -- and 20 percent had perfect scores.

Assistant Superintendent Nugget Cunningham said third-graders took the TAKS in their native language, but all fifth-graders are expected to take the tests in English.

"Research says ages 4 to 10 is the best time to acquire languages," she said. "We believe it's not only going to help with their academic skills, but skills used in the workplace."

That research impressed district administrator Frank Molinar, whose children are in the program. Molinar understands Spanish but says he isn't fluent enough to speak it at home. He was surprised that his son could converse with his Spanish-speaking grandmother six weeks into the program.

"My mother was impressed not only with his vocabulary but his pronunciation," he said. Teachers Eva Valenzuela and Cherise Brooks say most fourth-graders can speak and read chapter books in both languages. That pleases both Spanish-speaking parents who want their children to be fluent and literate in both languages, they said.

State mandate

Dual-language programs in Texas have increased from fewer than 10 to 234 in 10 years, from 1995 to 2005 according to University of Texas-Brownsville associate professor Richard Gomez.

School officials attribute the increase to a shortage of bilingual teachers and a mandate from the state that requires districts with at least 20 non-English-speaking students to offer bilingual classes. Districts can use one bilingual teacher to teach Spanish and one ESL teacher to teach English instead of needing two bilingual teachers for the two classes. Fort Worth successfully asked the state to waive that requirement last year.

Lake Worth officials started a pilot program this year because Miller Elementary School's bilingual kindergarten class was too large. They split the class, with bilingual and ESL teachers for different subjects. Bilingual coordinator Susan Casey wants to add English speakers next year.

"It allows Spanish-speaking students to learn English and gives English-speaking students a step up in the world by having two languages," said Casey, citing observations of a teacher with a daughter in an Arlington dual-language class.

Diamond Hill Elementary bilingual teacher Laura Tracy teaches language arts, science and social studies in Spanish. Mary Caldwell teaches math in English.

"I know you can count to five in Spanish, but we're going to count in English, Caldwell told her pre-kindergarteners, who marched while chanting "One, two, three, four, five!"

Next door, other students spelled their names for Tracy, who is teaching them to read Spanish books and science lessons about los cinco sentidos, the five senses. She envisions the day when her students will move from English to Spanish without thinking.

"It's a good approach to learning a second language," she said.

Teaching strategies

English as a second language (ESL): Students are taught mostly in English, helping non-English speakers learn their subjects while learning English.

Bilingual education: Students begin classes in their native language, then make a transition to English as they move to higher grades.

One-way dual language: Non-English speakers alternate learning in English and in their native language. The goal is for students to become bilingual, bicultural and bi-literate.

Two-way dual language: English-speaking and non-English speakers are taught together, alternating between classes to learn both English and the other language with a goal of becoming fluent and literate in both languages.

About dual language

Dual language programs began 60 years ago in the United States and spread throughout Texas in the last 15 years. The number of programs in schools or school districts increased from fewer than 10 in 1995 to 234 in 2005, researchers say.

School officials attribute the rapid growth in Texas dual-language programs to the shortage of bilingual teachers to meet state requirements that districts with at least 20 non-English speakers offer bilingual classes. Dual-language allows districts to use one bilingual teacher to teach Spanish and an ESL teacher to teach English instead of needing two bilingual teachers for two classes.

Fort Worth is among 167 Texas school districts that asked the state to waive that requirement. Fort Worth is among the districts that got the waiver.

Educators say dual-language students learn faster and have higher test scores than those in ESL or traditional bilingual classes. White Settlement officials said 100 percent of their dual-language students passed the third-grade TAKS reading test last year. In the long run, researchers say, dual-language students outperform English-dominant students in all core subjects.

Source: Star-Telegram research
Martha Deller, 817-390-7857 Diane Smith, 817-390-7675

Labels: dual language education

posted by Patricia Lopez at 11:02 AM 1 comments Links to this post

October 5, 2007

Push to Revamp High Schools Off Track, Scholars Say
Overemphasis seen on ratcheting up standards at expense of broader view of academic ‘rigor.’
By Erik W. Robelen /Edweek.org


In a new paper [pdf] arguing that the ongoing national push to dramatically improve American high schools has gotten off course, two University of California education professors take aim at what they see as an overemphasis on states' adoption of higher standards for graduation and more-rigorous tests.

“The push to enhance rigor and standards behind the high school diploma is seriously flawed,” write W. Norton Grubb, an education professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and Jeannie Oakes, an education professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, in the paper. “Any gains come at the expense of other goals for high school reform, including equity, curricular relevance, and student interest.”

The paper argues that discussions of “rigor” too often use a narrow definition that neglects higher-order-thinking skills, applications of learning in unfamiliar settings, and academic depth in favor of breadth.
And many proponents of higher standards and rigorous tests, the authors contend, have little to say about how their imposition will enhance student performance generally. The authors say many urban high schools simply lack the capacity to meet the standards.


Vol. 27, Issue 07, Page 12

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 10:48 AM 0 comments Links to this post

San Antonio Express-News
Editorial 10/01/2007

School districts, like the communities they serve, are unique. Some are large. Others are small. Some are wealthy. Others are poor. Some are ethnically homogenous. Others are diverse.

There are more than 1,000 independent school districts in Texas. As different as they are, the principal way the Texas Education Agency grades them all is by looking at test scores on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, which will be phased out beginning in the 2011-2012 school year.

There always have been and always will be opponents of standardized testing. Critics claim, with merit, that it forces schools to "teach to the test," rewards testing ability rather than academic performance and puts undue pressure on students. But standardized testing is one of the few ways available to measure school district accountability.

A different and more specific criticism is that the TAKS puts some districts at a distinct disadvantage. Small districts with a homogeneous student body have a much greater chance of TAKS achievement than large, diverse districts. In the latter, the TEA rates the performance of a larger number of subgroups, each of which must demonstrate achievement for the district to obtain the highest ratings.

An increasing number of school administrators and state legislators are calling for a change to the current formula. Given the diversity of school districts, the desire to change the way the state measures educational performance is understandable. That desire, however, should not mask an effort to evade accountability that serves the educational interests of all Texans.

Labels: editorial, TAKS

posted by Patricia Lopez at 9:40 AM 0 comments Links to this post

October 1, 2007
Statesman.com

COLLEGE STATION, Texas — A record number of black and Hispanic students applied and were accepted to Texas A&M University this fall, but their representation in the freshman class remained even with the previous two years.

Hispanics make up 14 percent and blacks 3 percent of the 8,078 freshmen enrolled this fall, according to the university's preliminary counts. That's the same as 2005 and 2006.

"We still face the challenge of convincing minority students who are admitted to actually enroll," interim President Eddie Davis said in a recent talk with faculty members.

The state's second-largest university has been working to boost minority enrollment, but it does not consider race as a factor in admissions.

The school has invested more than $30 million in minority-recruitment programs, including scholarships for first-generation students and new recruitment centers in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and South Texas.

The university has two recruitment centers in the Rio Grande Valley, where recruiters make house calls to prospective students to assist in the application and financial aid process.

Of the minority students who were accepted this fall, 49 percent of Hispanic students and 43 percent of black students enrolled. That's a seven-point drop for both groups from two years ago. About 60 percent of admitted white students enrolled.

"The real problem is that, even with a larger number of applications and larger number of admits, the yield sank," said Alice Reinarz, Texas A&M's assistant provost for enrollment.

At the University of Texas at Austin, Hispanics make up 20 percent of the freshman class, up from 18 percent two years ago. Black students make up 6 percent, compared with 5 percent in 2005.

But A&M officials said their efforts are working. Two high schools in Laredo, where the newest recruitment center is located, are among the university's top three feeder schools for Hispanic freshmen.

Reinarz said the increase in minority applications and admissions shows the strategy is "on the right track."

To advance the drive for minority students, A&M plans a $125 million fundraising campaign to finance scholarships. The school also plans to increase the size of awards and to make financial-aid offers to prospective students earlier in the year, school officials said.

Andrew Garza, a senior studying biomedical science, said the university needs to do more to make itself known to Hispanics.

"A lot of them are choosing to stay home, but we're getting some," said Garza, executive director of the school's Hispanic Presidents Council. "It's going to take time."

State Rep. Garnet Coleman, a Houston Democrat and member of the Legislative Black Caucus, said Texas A&M's increases in minority enrollment were easy because so few attended the campus to begin with. He said the school sends a mixed message by not considering race in admissions.

Labels: higher education

posted by Patricia Lopez at 1:03 AM 0 comments Links to this post

By ELYSE ASHBURN
San Diego
October 1, 2007

College leaders are mistaken if they believe that cultural differences make Hispanic high-school students, especially recent immigrants, less likely to attend college than their white counterparts, the president of the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute told community-college trustees and presidents on Friday.

"It is not culture but cognition -- a lack of understanding of the American education system on the part of parents that are foreign born," said Harry P. Pachon, who is both a professor of public policy at the University of Southern California and head of the institute, a nonprofit research group that focuses on issues affecting Hispanic communities.

Mr. Pachon said financial-aid programs in the United States were particularly difficult for Hispanic families to understand. For example, there is no Spanish word for "grant." To bridge that linguistic gap, Mr. Pachon said many colleges refer to grants as "dinero gratis," or free money. While that sounds like an appealing offer, the term doesn't quite capture the American concept of a financial-aid grant.

Mr. Pachon was the day's keynote speaker at the annual meeting of the Association of Community College Trustees here. Several hundred college leaders gathered to hear him speak.

He cautioned them that many myths about Hispanic people in the United States -- including the notion that they are largely undocumented, prefer to speak only Spanish, and are almost entirely low-income -- persist in the popular imagination. Those stereotypes are not supported by research, he said.

The Hispanic population is growing rapidly in the United States, in large part because of legal immigration and because the Hispanic birth rate in the country outstrips that of white Americans.

To reach this growing pool of potential students, Mr. Pachon said, colleges must produce marketing materials in Spanish, employ bilingual staff and faculty members, and market aggressively to Hispanic-Americans through the Internet, Spanish- and English-language television, and other outreach efforts.

The overall college-going rate in the United States -- and the country's economic health -- is at stake, Mr. Pachon said. "Latino education is not a Latino issue," he said. "It's an American issue."

Earlier in the day, at another session, several trustees outlined ways that Palomar Community College District and Mira Costa College, both in northern San Diego County, were working to improve the educational outlook for Hispanic boys.

Trustees at those colleges said they became alarmed four years ago when they realized that, at some high schools, 50 percent or more of Hispanic boys were dropping out. "We can't afford to let that continue," said Mark R. Evilsizer, a member of the Palomar district's Governing Board.

The colleges started a nonprofit group called Encuentros: Hombre a Hombre, which is Spanish for "coming together, man to man," to deal with the dropout problem. The group puts on a career and education conference for about 500 Hispanic boys each year, and holds a smaller leadership academy through a partnership with California State University at San Marcos.

But the most potentially wide-reaching project is a high-school and middle-school curriculum that the colleges developed in conjunction with a local school district. The courses, based on a book that is also called Encuentros: Hombre a Hombre, will be geared toward boys and will teach Hispanic culture and history. The high-school course is expected to satisfy a language-arts requirement needed to matriculate at public universities in the state.

The curriculum is awaiting final state approval, but one middle-school teacher already incorporated parts of it into one of his courses. The results were promising. The boys' grade-point averages climbed from an average of 2.19 to 2.61 after taking the course, and their disciplinary referrals dropped markedly.
Mr. Evilsizer, of Palomar, said the curriculum would allow Encuentros to reach many more Hispanic boys than the group can through the conference and the summer institute. "I think our impact is going to be greatest here," he said. "As trustees, this is something we can do. We can broker partnerships within our community."

© 2007 by The Chronicle of Higher Education

Labels: higher education

posted by Patricia Lopez at 12:57 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Feds reveal most descriptive details for a border wall, triggering another uproar in deep South Texas

By Juan Castillo
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Monday, October 01, 2007

For the past year, South Texas officials and residents have seethed over federal plans to build a wall along the Rio Grande and the U.S. border with Mexico in 2008. They also complained that federal officials were keeping locals in the dark about exactly where the fencing would go and its design.

Last week, the government removed the veil of uncertainty, disclosing the most detailed descriptions to date about the fence's design, proposed locations, construction schedule and potential environmental impact.

According to documents posted in the Federal Register, the fence would be at least 16 feet high and 3 to 6 feet underground, "aesthetically pleasing," semitransparent and capable of withstanding cutting or penetration — as well as the crash of a 10,000-pound vehicle (about the size of an armored Humvee) traveling 40 mph. It would be built in 21 segments totaling 70 miles in length between Roma and Brownsville.

If federal officials approve the plan, construction of the barrier could begin next spring and continue through 2008.

Building fences means building roads, lighting and other infrastructure, too. That requires clearing 60-foot-wide swaths of land and affecting more than 500 acres during construction, mostly along levees maintained by the International Boundary and Water Commission in the Rio Grande flood plain. However, some portions will encroach on private lands and might also enter environmentally sensitive and federally protected terrain, according to the plans.

Opponents who live and work in one of illegal immigration's busiest corridors have reacted with a mix of anger, frustration and a stiffened resolve to fight the fence.

Brownsville Mayor Patricio Ahumada Jr. said Wednesday that the city is considering filing a lawsuit to block the construction.

"We're opposed to a fence as a community," said Ahumada, adding that city officials will meet Tuesday with attorneys who specialize in environmental law.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and U.S. Customs and Border Protection released the maps of the proposed fence locations and other documents as they began an environmental impact study that will allow public comment through mid-October. Most fence segments will be near ports of entry and cities such as McAllen, Brownsville, Harlingen and Rio Grande City.

Critics concede that there is a need for tightened border security but contend that fencing isn't nearly as effective as more officers and more technology, such as sensors and cameras. Moreover, they say a border fence will harm the economy, quash property rights and cut off farmers and ranchers from the lifeblood of the Rio Grande, as well as send an unfriendly message to their neighbors in Mexico. The county is Texas' biggest trading partner.

They also fear that a fence will destroy vast habitat and wildlife, which the federal government has spent decades and millions of dollars preserving. Tens of thousands of riverfront acres are protected, feeding a growing and lucrative ecotourism industry.

Nancy Brown, a public outreach specialist with the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge near Alamo, said she remained hopeful that ongoing talks with customs and border protection officials will yield fence design and placements that are wildlife-friendly.

"We're biologists, and it's our job to protect wildlife," Brown said. "Putting in a pedestrian fence that is 16 feet high and wiping out 60 feet of brush, yes, that could be harmful. Is it going to be? We can't say for sure yet."

In 2006, Congress approved fencing along 700 miles of the border with Mexico, and President Bush signed the bill into law. Only 370 miles will be actual fence — the rest will be vehicle barriers and a ''virtual'' fence of agents, sensors, cameras and other technology.

"For the first time in the history of our country, we have the national political will to secure our nation's borders, and with that, we are working toward providing our agents on the front line with the tools they need to accomplish their mission," said Michael Friel of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Critics acknowledge that their opposition puts them at odds with a congressional mandate to secure the southern border. But some charge that the fight against illegal immigration is caught up in concerns about the threat of terrorism, resulting in a border fence idea that is an ineffective response to both.

"This is a horrible reaction by interior America and their legislators," Ahumada said. "They want to see a fence. Well, put a freaking fence in their back yard. Why should we pay the price because they're overreacting?"

Amid the clamor of opposition, supporters of a fence are relatively quiet, giving at least the appearance that they are greatly outnumbered in the Valley.

Joe and Sharon Metz, who farm on about 1,100 riverfront acres near the tiny community of Abram, said they and their neighbors overwhelmingly welcome a fence.

They are fed up, they said, with illegal immigrants darting through their neighborhoods and their yards at all hours of the night. "It just gets really old," Joe Metz said.

Labels: immigration

posted by Patricia Lopez at 12:46 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Oct. 9, 2007, 10:07AM
Texas near the top for raking in federal dollars
by BENNETT ROTH
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — Texas has long viewed itself as a conservative bastion, but the Lone Star State ranked third in the nation between 2000 and last year in receipt of federal dollars, raking in aid and contracts worth more than $1.2 trillion.

An analysis by a private watchdog group found that state agencies and a number of congressional districts were major beneficiaries of the federal largesse. For example:

• Rep. Ron Paul has long crusaded against a big central government. But the maverick GOP lawmaker and presidential contender also has represented a congressional district that is consistently among the top in Texas in its reliance on dollars from Washington. In the first nine months of the federal government's 2006 fiscal year alone, it received more than $4 billion in federal aid.

• The Texas Transportation Department has lately warned of a budget crunch. Yet the highway-building agency raked in more federal funds than all but three other state agencies around the nation in the first three quarters of the 2006 fiscal year: $2.9 billion
These and other findings are included in a state-by-state breakdown of federal spending by the group OMB Watch.

The analysis provides an insight into where federal dollars are flowing and underscores what Southern Methodist University political science professor Cal Jillson calls the "pork-barrel libertarianism" philosophy of many Texans.

"Texans like to think of themselves as the modern-day Marlboro Man," he said, "small government, low taxes and deregulation and 'keep your hands out of our pockets and I will take care of myself.' But they reach out to Washington every time there seems to be federal money available."

Proponents of federal aid argue that Texas — the second most populous state in the nation, behind California — deserves to get every dollar back from Washington that it pays in federal taxes.

Adam Hughes, the director of fiscal policy for OMB watch, said that the districts where federal dollars end up is more a reflection of the demographics of an area than the political ideology of its representatives.

So much of the money, he said, comes from such mandated programs as Social Security and Medicare.

He said the programs, over which lawmakers have little short-term control, help explain why Paul's district ranks among the top in Texas in receiving federal funds — more than $31 billion from 2000 through most of the 2006 fiscal year.

It is difficult to make comparisons among Texas' congressional districts before the 2006 fiscal year because a Republican redistricting plan approved by the Texas Legislature shifted a number of boundaries, including those in the Gulf Coast district represented by Paul.

But Paul's district ranked in the top five in the state in federal aid before the redistricting.

His current district, which includes Galveston and reaches into Brazoria County, draws a substantial amount of federal flood insurance payments.

A longtime libertarian, Paul has held that federal spending should be limited to what is prescribed in the Constitution. He routinely votes against appropriations bills.

Paul's spokeswoman, Rachel Mills, said the congressman is aware that his district ranks high as a recipient of federal dollars.

She said Paul will continue to support federal grants to the district,"as long as taxes are taken by force from the people of Texas."

She added, "While Congressman Paul strongly believes that federal spending is out of control, the government has made promises to people in the form of Medicare and Social Security that many rely on, and it would be wrong to break those promises."

Lawmakers have greater leverage over the doling out of private contracts by the federal government. They can insert earmarks into spending bills that direct money to companies or groups operating in their district.

From the federal government's 2001 through 2006 fiscal years, which run from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30, the Texas congressional district that received the most in federal contracts was represented by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Sugar Land. He resigned last year amid a legal controversy.

The district ranked sixth in the country in fiscal year 2006 in receipt of federal contracts. It took in $3.6 billion then and received more than $11 billion in contracts from 2000 through this year.

Hughes at OMB Watch said DeLay was "able to exercise a lot of control in steering spending to his district."

Private contracts related to NASA's Johnson Space Center, which is in the district, likely accounted for the high level of federal spending there, Hughes said.

Texas ranked third among all states between 2000 and this year in the dollar amount of federal contracts, about $200 billion, as well as direct financial aid, which exceeded $1 trillion over that period.

In direct federal financial support, Texas trailed just two states, Florida — whose federal aid is boosted by a large number of senior citizens who qualify for Social Security and Medicare — and California.

Texas' state agencies including the Transportation Department ranked among the top nationally in gathering federal dollars.

In the first three quarters of the 2006 fiscal year when the transportation agency received $2.9 billion, only three other agencies — the Louisiana Division of Administration, the Mississippi Development Authority and the California Department of Social Services — received more. The period included the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Texas transportation officials, however, recently warned of funding shortfalls that they said could hurt the agency's ability to pay for future projects.

Chris Lippincott, a spokesman, said the federal funding for 2006 spiked in part because Texas was reimbursed by the federal government for some large projects, including Houston's Katy Freeway.

Lippincott noted that in the 2005 fiscal year the agency ranked seventh in federal funding.

Among the other state agencies receiving more federal funds that year were the California Department of Transportation, the Texas Education Agency and the Texas Department of Human Services.

From 2000 to 2006, TEA received the most federal aid of any state agency in Texas, taking in $20 billion, followed by the Transportation Department, which got $14 billion.

Baylor College of Medicine ranked ninth, with $1.9 billion, and the University of Texas Health Science Center ranked 10th, with $1.8 billion over the six-year period.

The transportation spokesman said his agency expected federal funding for Texas projects to drop for the 2007 and 2008 fiscal years.

But when asked whether the Texas Transportation Department deserved to be one of the top recipients of federal aid because of the state's large population, Lippincott replied, "Damn right."

bennett.roth@chron.com

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5197934.html

Labels: NCLB, school finance

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 9:39 PM 0 comments Links to this post

By DAVID LEONHARDT | NY Times
September 30, 2007

In another time, it wouldn’t have been too hard to guess where Frances Harris would have ended up going to college. She has managed to do very well in very difficult circumstances, and she is African-American. Her high school, in the Oak Park neighborhood of Sacramento, was shut down as an irremediable failure the spring before her freshman year, then reopened months later as a charter school. Midway through high school, her father developed heart problems and became an irritable fixture around the home. She also discovered that he was not actually her biological father. That was a man named Leroy who, when her mother took Harris to see him, simply said his name was George and waited for her to leave. In Harris’s senior year, her mother lost her job at a nursing home and the family filed for bankruptcy.

Harris somehow stayed focused on teenage life. She earned an A-minus average and she distinguished herself as a debater. Her basketball teammates sometimes teased her for using big words, but they also elected her co-captain. As she led me on a tour of her school and her neighborhood one day this summer, she introduced me around with an assured ease that most adults can’t manage, even if her sentences are peppered with “like,” “you know” and “Oh, my God.” Her bedroom in the bungalow she shares with her parents is a masterpiece of teenage energy, the walls covered with her prom-queen tiara, her purple-and-white basketball jersey (No. 3) and photos of her friends. “The hardest part of high school,” she says, “was to be smart and cool at the same time.” She decided her dream college was the University of California, Los Angeles.

Ten or 20 years ago, Frances Harris almost certainly would have been admitted. Her excellent grades might not have even been necessary, because Berkeley and U.C.L.A. — the jewels in the U.C. system — accepted almost all of the African-Americans who met the basic application requirements. To an admissions officer, Harris would have seemed like gold: diversity and achievement, wrapped up in a single kid.

But in the early 1990s, the elite campuses began to pull back from their aggressive affirmative-action policies, and in 1996, California voters passed the California Civil Rights Initiative, also known as Proposition 209. After that, race could no longer be a factor in government hiring or public-university admissions. The number of black students at both Berkeley and U.C.L.A. plummeted, and at U.C.L.A. the declines continued throughout the next decade. The reasons weren’t entirely clear, but they seemed to include some combination of the admissions office taking Proposition 209 to heart and black students falling further behind in the academic arms race. (Harris, for instance, scored a 22 on the ACT test — slightly above the national average and well below the U.C.L.A. average.) The changes on U.C.L.A.’s campus were hard to miss. In 1997, the freshman class included 221 black students; last fall it had only 100. In the region with easily the largest black population west of the Mississippi River, the top public university had a freshman class in which barely 1 in 50 students was black.

A U.C.L.A. graduate named Peter Taylor, a 49-year-old managing director at Lehman Brothers in Los Angeles, remembers picking up The Los Angeles Times outside his house on a Saturday morning in June of last year and reading that piece of news. Taylor, who is black, is a third-generation native of the city and one of U.C.L.A.’s most active alumni. Within days of reading about the latest decline in the number of black students, he began a campaign to reverse it. At a reception to honor U.C.L.A.’s new acting chancellor, a law professor named Norm Abrams, he greeted Abrams with a big smile and said, “Well, Norm, you’re stepping right into it, and you’ve got to deal with it.” Abrams soon named Taylor to lead a task force of students, faculty, alumni and outsiders from places like the Urban League and the First A.M.E. Church. It spent the next year trying to get more black students to apply, more black applicants to be admitted and more black admits to enroll. In essence, Taylor’s group was trying to figure out how to bring a student like Frances Harris to U.C.L.A. without breaking the law — or at least without getting caught. What they have achieved may well show us the future of affirmative action.

Peter Taylor’s office on the 25th floor of the MGM Building in Century City looks out over the Fox movie lot and a golf course; in the distance downtown Los Angeles rises. Taylor has lived in an artsy neighborhood of Los Angeles called Silver Lake since he was a child. In the aftermath of the Watts riots, his father, then a school administrator and one of the few black men to hold such a job, became the principal of Locke High School in South-Central Los Angeles. Taylor himself went on from U.C.L.A. to earn a master’s degree in public policy and work for Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign before joining Lehman Brothers. When we were talking in his office, he apologetically interrupted our conversation and spent 10 minutes on the phone trying to persuade the person on the other end not to make any changes in a coming bond offering. There was, he kept saying, no point in doing something that might upset the market. But Taylor’s cautious, corporate style can be deceiving. He doesn’t mind a good fight. “Prop. 209 has made things more challenging,” he said. “It has created a new paradigm. But there are still things that can be done.” I asked him whether those things might include civil disobedience, and Taylor surprised me by replying: “Exactly when you cross over into civil disobedience is not always clear. And I probably come down on the side of pushing the outer limits. I’m much more of the attitude of, ‘So what if someone sues?’ If you lose, you at least define the line a little more clearly. You say, ‘Mea culpa,’ and you don’t do it anymore.”

The heart of California’s higher-education problem, according to Taylor, is that Proposition 209 created a patently impossible situation. The law says that universities can’t consider race, even though race has an enormous effect on the lives of applicants. California’s best high schools offer so many A.P. and honors classes — which confer bonus points on a student’s G.P.A. — that the average G.P.A. of white and Asian freshmen at U.C.L.A. is now 4.2. At many of the largely black high schools around Los Angeles, it is sometimes impossible to do much better than a 4.0, because of the relative lack of A.P. classes. Black students at better high schools have a much easier time, but it’s not as if they are keeping up with their peers. Even if U.C.L.A. tried to get around Proposition 209 by giving a big leg up to low-income applicants, it wouldn’t increase its black population very much. At every rung of the socioeconomic ladder, the academic record of black students is worse than that of other groups. As Taylor says: “There is a great deal of pressure to look for a proxy for race. There is no proxy for race.”

He and many other defenders of affirmative action consider this to be a self-evident fact, but there has also been a good deal of social science to support the view that the specific problems surrounding race — including discrimination — endure. One illustrative study found that résumés with typically black names are less likely to lead to job interviews than those with typically white names. Other recent studies have looked at intelligence testing. There have long been two uncomfortable facts in this area: Intelligence, indisputably, is in part genetic; and every intelligence test shows a gap between black Americans and others. For a long time, scientific research wasn’t very good at explaining this gap. But it has gotten better lately. For one thing, the gap between white and black adults has narrowed significantly since 1970, according to work by the noted researchers William Dickens and James Flynn. Four decades is too short a time period for the gene pool to change, but it’s not too short for environment to improve. Most intriguing, Roland Fryer and Steven D. Levitt, two economists (the latter is one of this magazine’s Freakonomics columnists), have found there to be essentially no gap between 1-year-old white and black children of the same socioeconomic status.

There are still vigorous debates about all this work — intelligence tests of 1-year-olds are iffy, for instance — but it points in one direction. Innate intelligence may be partly genetic, but it doesn’t seem to vary by race. So while race may not be the only source of disadvantage in today’s society, it is certainly one of them.

Since affirmative action began in the mid-1960s, it has had both an explicit role and an implicit one in American life. Explicitly, it has been about race and, to a lesser degree, sex — a policy to make up for centuries of oppression and to ensure diversity. But there has always been a broader notion to affirmative action as well. It has been the most serious effort of any kind to ensure equality of opportunity, without regard to wealth or poverty. When all else failed — the War on Poverty, welfare, public schools — affirmative action would be there to help less-fortunate Americans overcome the circumstances of their origins. “Ability is not just the product of birth,” Lyndon Johnson said when he effectively created affirmative action during a graduation speech at Howard University in 1965. “Ability is stretched or stunted by the family that you live with and the neighborhood you live in — by the school you go to and the poverty or the richness of your surroundings. It is the product of a hundred unseen forces playing upon the little infant, the child and, finally, the man.”

The more expansive idea of affirmative action as a counterweight to those “unseen forces” has become tightly linked to the self-image of American universities. Above all else, they are supposed to be meritocracies. To be truly meritocratic, a college must be diverse — or else accept that some groups in society have less merit than others and their underrepresentation can’t be helped. University administrators clearly reject this second view, and as a result the best colleges are now filled with students of both sexes and every imaginable race and religion. If you were to ask admissions officers whether they also gave special consideration to low-income applicants — whether they gave them credit for overcoming Johnson’s unseen forces — the officers would say that, absolutely, they did.

In truth, however, they did not. Three years ago, William Bowen (the former president of Princeton) and two other researchers discovered what was really going on. They persuaded 19 elite colleges — including Harvard, Middlebury and Virginia — to let them analyze their admissions records. The easiest way to understand the results is to imagine a group of students who each have the same SAT scores. Holding that equal, a recruited athlete was 30 percentage points more likely to be admitted than a nonathlete. A black, Latino or Native American student was 28 percentage points more likely to be admitted than a white or Asian student. A legacy received a 20-percentage-point boost over someone whose parents hadn’t attended that college. And low-income students? They received no advantage whatsoever. A poor white kid from upstate New York would be treated no differently from a white kid in Chappaqua. Frances Harris would get no more of a leg up than the black daughter of corporate lawyers.

Bowen says he doesn’t believe that admissions deans were lying when they said that their affirmative-action programs took social class into account. The colleges apparently put even more stock in the polish that comes with affluence — the well-edited essay, the summer trip to Guatemala, the Arabic language lessons. In any case, the poor lose.

There are some big problems with this approach to affirmative action. For one thing, it rests on a very rickety base of political support. Colleges often resort to huge preferences to create a racially diverse student body, especially if they haven’t been giving any advantage to low-income applicants, who are of course disproportionately minorities. And many of the beneficiaries of the preferences end up being upper-middle-class minority students, since they tend to have better test scores than poor minorities. The helping hand that goes to these relatively well-off nonwhite students strikes many people as unjust. It makes it seem as if affirmative action isn’t making good on its larger promise. Affirmative action becomes about mere diversity — and not even all forms of diversity — rather than fairness. Politically, that has made it weaker and weaker.

In the mid-1990s, a businessman in California named Ward Connerly began making some of these very criticisms. Connerly was born in Louisiana in 1939; his father left the family, and his mother died when he was a little boy. So he was sent West to Sacramento to be raised by his grandmother. He eventually began working for the state government, where he became friends with Pete Wilson, a young Republican legislator. After Wilson was elected governor in 1990, he named Connerly to the University of California’s board of regents, and Connerly began pressuring the university to cut back on race-based preferences. His efforts culminated in Proposition 209.

Connerly, not least because he is black, was the politically perfect face of the anti-affirmative-action movement. He argued then, as he still does, that the patchwork of diverse campuses and workplaces created by affirmative action has deluded the country into thinking that it is solving its racial problems. In truth, he says, the policy has actually made it harder for blacks to close the achievement gap with whites. “It’s not genetic, I’m convinced,” he told me this summer. “So what is it? I think it’s largely self-imposed by black people who don’t put as much emphasis on academic achievement as they once did and as other groups do now.” Connerly will tell you that he ended up going to college (at Sacramento State) because his grandmother pushed him to read books all the time.

Many people reject his argument as simplistic, if not worse. But whatever you think of his solution, it’s hard not to find some truth in his critique of traditional affirmative action. Certainly, voters seem to feel this way. Last year, Michigan passed an initiative identical to Proposition 209, and, thanks to Connerly, several other states are likely to vote on such proposals next year. Soon, more universities may find themselves in the same situation as the University of California.

There is almost an iron law of higher education: the more selective a school is, the fewer low-income students it has. At Harvard and Yale, only about 10 percent of undergraduates receive federal Pell Grants. (Typically, students from the bottom 40 percent of the income distribution are eligible for the Pell.) Even at top public universities, the share is often 15 percent or less. The colleges that are filled with poor and middle-class students almost invariably have low graduation rates. So their graduates are more likely to end up on the wrong side of the 21st century’s educational divide. A bachelor’s degree seems out of reach to a large portion of the American population, and, as a result, other countries have closed the gap in educational attainment with the United States over the last generation.

There are really only two exceptions to the rule, two universities that are both elite and economically diverse: U.C.L.A. and Berkeley. A chart on U.S. News & World Report’s Web site does a nice job of summarizing just how unusual they are. It lists the percentage of Pell Grant recipients at each university in the magazine’s famous Top 25 ranking. U.C.L.A. tops the list, at 37 percent, and Berkeley comes next, at 31 percent. In third place is Columbia, with just 15 percent.

To be fair, the main explanation for this gap is demographic happenstance. California is filled with low-income immigrant families, especially from Asia and Latin America, with high-achieving children. But a set of deliberate policies also plays an important role. The University of California accepts far more transfer students, mainly from community colleges, than most colleges. At U.C.L.A., about one-third of the admitted students arrive as transfers instead of as freshmen. When I was on campus, I met a 27-year-old Mexican immigrant named Daniel Flores, who was admitted three years ago as a junior even though, as Flores told me, “I barely graduated high school.” His first job after high school was in one of U.C.L.A.’s dining halls, where he realized that he would need more education if he ever wanted to make much more than minimum wage. He then enrolled in a community college in West Los Angeles and excelled there. When he was 18 years old — the only point in life when elite colleges usually consider candidates — no sane admissions officer would have let him in. By the time he was 23, it was clear he had mainly just lacked for good opportunities. Earlier this year, he graduated from U.C.L.A.; and there are hundreds of other students with life stories not so different from Flores’s who are walking through the Italianate buildings on the university’s lush campus.

If anything, Proposition 209 may have helped keep the U.C. campuses as economically diverse as they are. Desperate to maintain some racial diversity, university officials set up outreach programs in lower-income school districts, as James Traub described in this magazine several years ago. One of them, run by U.C. Davis, which is outside of Sacramento, visited Frances Harris’s elementary school. It was around this time that Harris first told her parents that she planned to go to college. Over the years, when things got tough, they both made a point of reminding her of her vow. “At times I got discouraged, and they said, ‘You’ve said you’re going to go to college, and you’re going to go,’ ” she recalled. A framed “reservation for college” certificate from the Davis program still hangs in her bedroom.

After the initiative passed, the U.C. campuses also put more weight on students’ socioeconomic backgrounds when they made admissions decisions. Richard Sander, a U.C.L.A. law professor who has become a critic of affirmative action, studied admissions data at Berkeley and found that, all else being equal, lower-income students had a better chance of getting in after 1997 than before. Together, these various class-based efforts have helped the share of Pell Grant students at both U.C.L.A. and Berkeley to hold steady over the last decade, even as it has declined at many similar colleges.

You can make an argument, in fact, that the single most impressive university in the country today is U.C.L.A. It receives more freshman applications than any other — 50,744 this year — and, unlike many of its peers, it can legitimately claim to be an engine of opportunity. About 90 percent of its students, whether they enter as freshmen or transfers, eventually graduate. What City College of New York was to the 20th century, U.C.L.A. is to the 21st.

And now, maybe, it is figuring out ways to solve its race problem.

One night in march of this year, Peter Taylor and three other U.C.L.A. alumni met in his office to go over a big stack of U.C.L.A. applications from students who had already been admitted. Over sandwiches, the four of them — none of whom was a university employee — helped determine how much financial aid each student would get. This was one of the “bureaucratic cover-me exercises,” as Taylor puts it, at the heart of the new diversity push at U.C.L.A.

In the previous few months, Taylor and his group had raised $1.7 million for scholarships, the plan being to offer virtually all of it, immediately, to admitted black students. The easiest thing to do would have been to hand over the money to the U.C.L.A. Foundation, which holds and invests the university’s endowment, and then allow financial-aid officers to give it away as they saw fit. But U.C.L.A.’s general counsel said that allowing the foundation to handle funds specifically set aside for black students might violate the law. And letting the financial-aid office disburse the money almost certainly would have done so, since Proposition 209 prohibited colleges from recruiting students and offering scholarships based on race. But it didn’t prevent student and alumni groups from doing so. In effect, Taylor and his task force began outsourcing work that normally would have been done by the university.

Students and alumni stepped up their recruiting efforts. They visited high schools and set up a phone bank, with the help of a sympathetic alumnus who owned a call center, to reach out to black high-school seniors. Southwest Airlines donated plane tickets, helping black students who had been admitted to visit the campus. (A survey in 2005 had shown that admitted students were far more likely to choose U.C.L.A. if they had visited it. If you’ve been to the campus, this won’t surprise you.) One program that greeted prospective black students, called Black by Popular Demand, was run by the African Student Union and the Black Alumni Association. Another program — Scholars Days — was aimed broadly at less-than-privileged students, and it was run by the university. The two were scheduled to overlap.

This outsourcing was the second part of the task force’s two-pronged strategy. The group also urged U.C.L.A.’s faculty senate last year to alter the admissions process. In the past, the admissions office divided every application between two readers: one evaluated a student’s academic record, the other looked at extracurricular activities and “life challenges.” Berkeley, by contrast, had taken a more holistic approach, with a single reader judging an entire application, and Berkeley was attracting more black students than U.C.L.A. Why? Maybe the holistic approach takes better account of the subtle obstacles that black students face — or maybe the readers, when looking at a full application, ended up practicing a little under-the-table affirmative action.

Last fall, U.C.L.A. made the switch. Two applications readers I interviewed said that they had received clear, written instructions not to consider race and that they hadn’t. (There are 150 readers in all, a mix of university employees and paid outsiders.) On the other hand, applicants seemed to understand that something had changed. Daniel Fogg, a computer programmer in the admissions office and an application reader, told me that he noticed more students mentioning race in their essays this year.

Whatever the reasons, every phase of Taylor’s campaign turned out to be a success. More than 2,400 black students applied last spring, up 13 percent from the previous year. Their admission rate rose to 16.2 percent, from 11.5 percent. Of those who were admitted, slightly more than half said yes, up from 41 percent in 2006. In all, about 200 African-American freshmen started classes last week, double the number the year before.

One of them was Frances Harris. Back at her high school in Sacramento this spring, a group of seniors decided to celebrate their school’s turnaround by photocopying their college acceptance letters and taping them to the walls. An entire hallway was filled with hundreds of letters. Until I stood in the hallway with Harris, I wasn’t sure it was possible to find any part of today’s college-application process inspiring. Eleven of the letters were hers, including ones from Pitzer College, Boston University, U.C.L.A. and U.C. Davis. (Berkeley rejected her.) She liked B.U., but it seemed too far away, especially from her mother’s perspective. So Harris’s decision came down to Pitzer, which offered her nearly a full scholarship, and U.C.L.A. In the end, a $1,000 scholarship from Taylor’s group, a campus visit (flight courtesy of Southwest) and a phone call from U.C.L.A.’s director of financial aid — a combination of official recruiting and outsourced recruiting — pulled her toward U.C.L.A. “The biggest thing was seeing so many beautiful, intellectual black young students, being cool and having discussions about calculus,” she said. “It was so pure. I was so impressed. It was amazing.”

Harris’s parents and her biological father all attended her high-school graduation. In late July, her parents drove her to Los Angeles so she could attend a six-week voluntary summer school that is officially open to incoming freshmen of all races but is dominated by black and Latino students. I saw Harris on campus in August, and she told me that she missed her friends from home but was happy to be a college student. On her first paper, in English composition, she got a B-plus, and on her second she got an A-minus. She’s thinking about becoming a pre-med student. Next summer, she plans to go to Washington to work as an intern with the new chancellor of the school system there, Michelle Rhee, whom Harris met through her high school.

A few weeks after getting to U.C.L.A., Harris wrote an e-mail message to P. K. Diffenbaugh, one of her old teachers, telling him to send some of his current students to visit her soon, so they could get excited about college. “In my comparative English class we read a book a week. It goes superfast so encourage your students not to fall off,” she wrote. “It’s like the major leagues. . . . Academia!!!!”

The big question that hangs over U.C.L.A.’s success, of course, is whether the university broke the law. Looking at the numbers, it’s hard not to conclude that race was a factor in this year’s admissions decisions. The average SAT score for admitted African-American students fell 45 points this year, to 1,738. For Asian, Latino and white students, the averages were much more stable. “I’m quite confident that U.C. factors race in, in various ways,” said Sander, the U.C.L.A. law professor and affirmative-action critic. “There is no way to explain the disparities otherwise.” He has filed a public-information request that would allow him to examine the data more closely.

In particular, U.C.L.A.’s experience suggests that some tension between race and class in the admissions process may be inevitable. Even as the number of low-income black freshmen soared this year, the overall number of low-income freshmen fell somewhat. The rise in low-income black students was accompanied by a fall in low-income Asian students — not a decline in well-off students. U.C.L.A. administrators say they don’t fully understand why.

In a way, though, the question of whether race was a factor is itself misplaced. Proposition 209 forbids universities to consider race, but it doesn’t stop them from considering disadvantage. So what if U.C.L.A. is somehow taking into account the disadvantages that black students face because of their race? Isn’t that legal? And isn’t it just? As Tom Lifka, a U.C.L.A. assistant vice chancellor who oversees admissions, said, “It’s the fallacy of 209 that you can immediately move to a system that doesn’t take account of race and that treats everybody fairly.” Lifka said he was confident that U.C.L.A.’s current system could withstand legal scrutiny.

I asked these same questions about race and fairness of Connerly, who does favor preferences based on socioeconomic status (as do almost 85 percent of Americans, according to a 2005 New York Times poll). His first objection was constitutional: he believes the Supreme Court has given colleges very narrow instructions on when and how to consider race. Beyond that, he finds it hard to imagine that colleges would be able to strike the appropriate balance. “I suppose you could craft some kind of system that says, ‘We’re going to acknowledge that there has been and continues to be discrimination in our society,’ ” he said. “But I believe it is almost impossible to decide on the acceptable range — say, from 1 to 10 — to take race into account.”

He may well be right. But it sure seems worth the effort. Somewhat accidentally, U.C.L.A. appears to have gotten much closer to the ideal answer than most American universities. Unlike those of other elite colleges, its student body isn’t dominated merely by the best and brightest of the upper middle class. U.C.L.A. has also figured out how to do a bit better by the standard diversity benchmarks than it had been doing. Despite all the political heat that still surrounds the issue in California, its universities seem to be pointing to a better version of affirmative action — one that uses a little less race and a lot more class. “What would be nice is if we could craft a social compromise that could keep the best of the program while admitting some of its flaws,” says Sander, who supports the idea of affirmative action, despite his criticisms of the current system. “It’s way beyond, ‘Mend it, don’t end it.’ Let’s fundamentally restructure this and be much more aware of class. If we did that, we’d build a much bigger consensus and take a lot of wind out of the sails of Ward Connerly.” Such a consensus might show us, finally, how to put the accomplishments of a student like Frances Harris into the right perspective.

Labels: affirmative action

posted by Patricia Lopez at 9:29 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Educator, author has harsh criticism for recent ‘No Child Left Behind’ legislation

By Colleen Walsh | Harvard News Office
September 27, 2007

At times as he spoke in the Memorial Church last Thursday (Sept. 20) Jonathan Kozol, educator, activist, and author, sounded more fervent than an impassioned man of God preaching eternal salvation.

“I’m 71 years old; I’m too old to bite my tongue. … I intend to keep on fighting in this struggle ’til my dying day,” he said.

But the salvation that Kozol was advocating was for the public school system in the United States, a system that, in his view, requires, if not divine intervention, at least a drastic overhaul.

In an appearance co-sponsored by the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s (HGSE) Askwith Education Forum, the Cambridge Forum and the Harvard Book Store, Kozol discussed his new book “Letters to a Young Teacher,” a series of letters he wrote to “Francesca” a “glorious, excited, glowing, first-grade teacher” at an inner-city school in Boston. Through the correspondence, the book examines topics Kozol has addressed throughout his career, but focuses in part on the fairly recent “No Child Left Behind” legislation, a bundle of requirements that he argues kill the ability of children to learn and develop through their own curiosity.

The law, passed in 2001, requires, among other things, that all students in primary and secondary schools perform at grade level in reading and math by 2014. It mandates greater school accountability and includes punitive measures for those schools that fall short. Kozol contends that the law disproportionately affects inner-city schools and drives away promising young teachers by forcing them to use a scripted curriculum that only prepares students to take tests and not actually engage and learn.

He claimed that the law was “created as a shaming ritual by which to discredit the entire concept of our public schools by holding up impossible demands without the funds to pay for them.”

Kozol graduated from Harvard in 1958 and was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford. In 1964 he took a job as a teacher in a public school in Roxbury, which led to his book “Death at an Early Age: The Destruction of the Hearts and Minds of Negro Children in the Boston Public Schools.” The work received the National Book Award in Science, Philosophy and Religion in 1968. He has written numerous books on the subject since.

Recently, Kozol has spent a lot of time in Washington, D.C., urging the Democratic leadership in Congress to make what he calls “radical change” to No Child Left Behind in part by drastically reducing the amount of high-stakes testing. A vote to reauthorize the federal law is expected this fall, with the Bush administration pushing to broaden its scope. Kozol is also mobilizing teachers with Education Action, a network of educators whom he hopes will carry on his efforts. He encouraged people in the crowd to sign up.

“I pray the young people will join in forces with us older guys,” he said. “Honestly … we need you to carry on.”

To further his cause, the Boston native has been on a partial hunger strike since July and has lost 29 pounds. His slender frame and at times hoarse voice were evidence last week of the toll his fast has taken. He called the hunger strike a way to “keep faith with the kids who trusted me” and to promote his campaign for the need for sweeping change.

At the beginning of his talk, Kozol asked those in the crowd who were teachers to raise their hands. The air was quickly filled with scores of arms, and a loud wave of applause acknowledging them echoed around the hall.

“I always feel safer when I am in a room with teachers,” he said.

What followed were his stories of the touching, silly, fascinating world of the children he met through his visits to Francesca’s classroom. He testified to the child’s ability to engage and blossom in the presence of a gifted, dedicated guide. But his lightness was punctuated by serious moments. His voice registered a grave tone as he warned of the impending doom of the country’s public education system should it remain, as he claims, broken by No Child Left Behind.

During the questions that followed, Kozol encouraged dissent. Responding to one audience member, who asked how teachers and parents should oppose “moronic mandates,” he said they could simply boycott the tests as some communities have done.

“I’d like to see more suburbs doing that because they can afford to take that risk,” he said.

He also addressed his feelings toward Teach For America, an initiative designed to encourage a selective group of college graduates and professionals to teach in schools — often in urban areas — for two years. Kozol said the program was marred by the lack of teaching experience of its members.

With its resultant high turnover rate and limited training, he contended, “it sort of like builds in instability in inner-city schools … and throws people into the classroom knowing nothing about children.”

He urged new teachers who join the program to make “an inward promise to yourself that you are going to stay for seven years.”

Many young teachers and students stood in a long line after the talk, waiting to have Kozol sign copies of “Letters to a Young Teacher.”

“He really has a love and appreciation for kids and that comes through when he talks,” said Andy Shin, who is enrolled in HGSE’s School Leadership Program. “His voice reminds us what really is important, which is kids.”

Labels: NCLB reauthorization

posted by Patricia Lopez at 8:04 PM 0 comments Links to this post

By JEFF CARLTON – Associated Press
Sep 27, 2007

RICHARDSON, Texas (AP) — Ten-year-old Peter Choi said he prefers playing dodgeball to crunching out abdominal curl-ups. But the modified sit-ups that the fifth-grader at Arapaho Classical Magnet School says sometimes make his stomach hurt are here to stay, part of the statewide physical fitness test introduced Thursday by the Texas Education Agency.

State officials believe the Fitnessgram test, which allows physical education teachers to record and compare fitness levels of students, will help change what one health expert called "the fitness and fatness of our youth in Texas." The test — which measures aerobic capacity, body composition, muscular strength, muscular endurance and flexibility — will be used in every gym class in the state in grades three and up.

"The health and overall fitness of our kids has an importance of a nature that a lot of people have not grasped," said Jeff Kloster, the TEA's associate commissioner for health and safety. "We are looking at over 3 million lives we will touch in the state of Texas this year."

The Legislature required mandatory testing in a bill passed earlier this year. The bill also mandates 30 minutes of daily "moderate to vigorous" physical activity, or 135 minutes a week, for children up to fifth grade. For students in sixth through eighth grades, 30 minutes a day, 125 minutes a week or 225 minutes over two weeks is required.

The emphasis on fitness is needed in Texas, lawmakers said. Forty-two percent of the state's fourth graders, 39 percent of eighth-graders and 36 percent of 11th-graders are overweight or at risk of being overweight, according to a 2007 report from the Texas comptroller. The same study concluded that the more education people get, the less likely they are to be overweight or obese.

More than 8,000 Texas schools will receive the Fitnessgram test this fall to prepare for the spring testing period. Results from the first testing period will go to the TEA to get a picture of overall fitness among Texas students, who will be retested annually.

Health experts say there is a correlation between physical fitness and good grades.

"Students who are fit and healthy have an academic edge over those who do not," Arapaho Classical principal Susan Horowitz said.

The Fitnessgram test, developed by aerobics pioneer Dr. Kenneth Cooper, includes a skin fold test, curl-ups and push-ups. Another exercise tests flexibility, with students sitting with one bent leg and one straight leg and then reaching forward as far as they can.

In the trunk lift, which tests trunk extensor strength, students lie on their stomachs and raise their upper body while the teacher measures the distance between the students' chins and the floor. The last test is called the pacer, a paced 20-meter run that increases in intensity as time progresses.

The results are recorded on a report card that allows parents and teachers to identify the physical strengths and weaknesses of each student. Results, unattached to students' names, also go to the TEA, which will compare the fitness data to students' grades, attendance, obesity, disciplinary problems and school meal programs.

Arapaho Classical's Lisa Jackson, a gym teacher for 30 years, said she sees more obese students today than three decades ago.

"Teachers who have not been using the fitness test, it gives them a starting point for designing their curriculum to get their kids healthier and more fit," Jackson said.

Labels: Fitnessgram test

posted by Patricia Lopez at 6:17 PM 0 comments Links to this post

By The Associated Press
September 21, 2007
Portland, Ore.

Some Oregon high schools are adopting Mexico's public school curriculum to help educate Spanish-speaking students with textbooks, an online Web site, DVDs and CDs provided free by Mexico to teach math, science, and even U.S. history.

The Oregon Department of Education and Mexico's Secretariat of Public Education are discussing aligning their curricula so courses will be valid in both countries.

Similar ventures are under way in Yakima, Wash., San Diego, Calif., and Austin, Texas.

"Students come to us with such complex issues," said Tim King, director of Clackamas Middle College and Clackamas Web Academy, where a virtual course using Mexico's learning materials got started this week.

"We've had to change in order to fit into each school scene, become more complex and open ourselves up to new situations."

Oregon officials say the approach is intended as a supplement to keep students learning in Spanish while also gaining English skills.

Until now, Oregon school districts generally have relied on bilingual aides or used Spanish material different from the English material others are studying.

"That's not enough," said Patrick Burk, chief policy officer with the superintendent's office of the Oregon Department of Education. He said the idea is minimal disruption for immigrant Latinos.

"The availability of resources is astounding," said Burk, who flew to Mexico with Oregon curriculum officials in August to discuss making equivalency standards official. "We're able to serve the students so much better if we're working together."

Mexico has made its national curriculum available to communities across the U.S. since 2001 to encourage Mexican adults and youths to continue an education often abandoned back home due to limited resources.

"We wanted people to be aware that they have to study," said Patricia Ramos, the director of national affairs for Mexico's Institute for Adult Education and National Advisory of Education for Life and Work.

"You have to dare to study and make use of technology because that way, it will be easier to adapt to where you now live."

In other places, the curriculum was used to educate students' parents, rescue dropouts and even teach inmates. A program exists now at MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility in Woodburn.

The program caught the attention of public schools such as Reynolds High School in Troutdale and Marshall Night School, an alternative school based at Marshall High School in Portland.

At Marshall, the material has been used in night school and may soon move into daytime classrooms.

At Reynolds, educators began using part of Mexico's curriculum to teach a Spanish literacy class.

Students learned punctuation and sentence structure in Spanish and then saw improvement in English progress, said Dale Bernardini, a teacher who handles the partnership for Reynolds School District.

This fall, textbooks, DVDs and Mexico's curriculum Web were introduced in Francisco Rico's math classroom at Reynolds.

"We're just ahead with all the materials," he said. "We have the Web site where students can do exercises ... they can learn through visual and audio. We were having trouble bringing something that would be familiar to their culture."

In Washington state, nearly 30 schools have already implemented Mexico's curriculum into the classrooms.

In Oregon, learning materials are free, but districts must pay for staff. So far, two computer servers supporting Mexico's Web site cost the state about $10,000 to install and about $2,200 annually to maintain.

One of the biggest challenges will be finding more Spanish-speaking instructors, said Burk of the Oregon Department of Education.

He said about 15 percent of Oregon students are Latino, compared with 2 percent of teachers.

Labels: bilingual education, curriculum

posted by Patricia Lopez at 6:08 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Appropriate comment by Thomas Friedman on activism (or lack thereof) today among our twenty-somethings. These are critical times. -Angela

October 10, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Generation Q

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
I just spent the past week visiting several colleges — Auburn, the University of Mississippi, Lake Forest and Williams — and I can report that the more I am around this generation of college students, the more I am both baffled and impressed.

I am impressed because they are so much more optimistic and idealistic than they should be. I am baffled because they are so much less radical and politically engaged than they need to be.

One of the things I feared most after 9/11 — that my daughters would not be able to travel the world with the same carefree attitude my wife and I did at their age — has not come to pass.

Whether it was at Ole Miss or Williams or my alma mater, Brandeis, college students today are not only going abroad to study in record numbers, but they are also going abroad to build homes for the poor in El Salvador in record numbers or volunteering at AIDS clinics in record numbers. Not only has terrorism not deterred them from traveling, they are rolling up their sleeves and diving in deeper than ever.

The Iraq war may be a mess, but I noticed at Auburn and Old Miss more than a few young men and women proudly wearing their R.O.T.C. uniforms. Many of those not going abroad have channeled their national service impulses into increasingly popular programs at home like “Teach for America,” which has become to this generation what the Peace Corps was to mine.

It’s for all these reasons that I’ve been calling them “Generation Q” — the Quiet Americans, in the best sense of that term, quietly pursuing their idealism, at home and abroad.

But Generation Q may be too quiet, too online, for its own good, and for the country’s own good. When I think of the huge budget deficit, Social Security deficit and ecological deficit that our generation is leaving this generation, if they are not spitting mad, well, then they’re just not paying attention. And we’ll just keep piling it on them.

There is a good chance that members of Generation Q will spend their entire adult lives digging out from the deficits that we — the “Greediest Generation,” epitomized by George W. Bush — are leaving them.

When I was visiting my daughter at her college, she asked me about a terrifying story that ran in this newspaper on Oct. 2, reporting that the Arctic ice cap was melting “to an extent unparalleled in a century or more” — and that the entire Arctic system appears to be “heading toward a new, more watery state” likely triggered by “human-caused global warming.”

“What happened to that Arctic story, Dad?” my daughter asked me. How could the news media just report one day that the Arctic ice was melting far faster than any models predicted “and then the story just disappeared?” Why weren’t any of the candidates talking about it? Didn’t they understand: this has become the big issue on campuses?

No, they don’t seem to understand. They seem to be too busy raising money or buying votes with subsidies for ethanol farmers in Iowa. The candidates could actually use a good kick in the pants on this point. But where is it going to come from?

Generation Q would be doing itself a favor, and America a favor, if it demanded from every candidate who comes on campus answers to three questions: What is your plan for mitigating climate change? What is your plan for reforming Social Security? What is your plan for dealing with the deficit — so we all won’t be working for China in 20 years?

America needs a jolt of the idealism, activism and outrage (it must be in there) of Generation Q. That’s what twentysomethings are for — to light a fire under the country. But they can’t e-mail it in, and an online petition or a mouse click for carbon neutrality won’t cut it. They have to get organized in a way that will force politicians to pay attention rather than just patronize them.

Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy didn’t change the world by asking people to join their Facebook crusades or to download their platforms. Activism can only be uploaded, the old-fashioned way — by young voters speaking truth to power, face to face, in big numbers, on campuses or the Washington Mall. Virtual politics is just that — virtual.

Maybe that’s why what impressed me most on my brief college swing was actually a statue — the life-size statue of James Meredith at the University of Mississippi. Meredith was the first African-American to be admitted to Ole Miss in 1962. The Meredith bronze is posed as if he is striding toward a tall limestone archway, re-enacting his fateful step onto the then-segregated campus — defying a violent, angry mob and protected by the National Guard.

Above the archway, carved into the stone, is the word “Courage.” That is what real activism looks like. There is no substitute.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/10/opinion/10friedman.html?th&emc=th

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 10:25 AM 0 comments Links to this post

I encourage everyone to see this report titled, “Mass Incarceration in the United States: At What Cost?”, based on a Joint Economic Committee Hearing on Thursday, October 4, 2007. The statistics are shocking.

Education is always a good antidote, but we also need better criminal justice policies.

Go here if you'd like to listen to the actual hearing.

-Angela

"The racial composition of America’s prisons is alarming. Although African Americans
constitute 14 percent of regular drug users, they are 37 percent of those arrested for drug
offenses, and 56 percent of persons in state prisons for drug crimes. African Americans serve
nearly as much time in federal prisons for drug offenses as whites do for violent crimes.
A black male who does not finish high school now has a 60 percent chance of going to jail. One
who has finished high school has a 30 percent chance. We have reached a point where the
principal nexus between young African-American men and our society is increasingly the
criminal justice system.
Moreover, we are spending enormous amounts of money to maintain the prison system. The
combined expenditures of local, state, and federal governments for law enforcement and
corrections personnel total over $200 billion. Prison construction and operation has become
sought after, if uncertain, tools of economic growth for rural communities.
Are there ways to spend less money, enhance public safety, and make a fairer prison system?"

Hard questions are being asked because crime rates are going down at the same time that incarceration rates are going up. The problem is not more crime, but rather sentencing policies. This is worth reading.

Labels: incarceration rates

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 2:11 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Teacher's teacher strikes nerve
Portland lecture - Jonathan Kozol finds a receptive audience filled with educators
Thursday, October 04, 2007
WADE NKRUMAH
The Oregonian

I t didn't take long Wednesday night for Jonathan Kozol to win over the nearly 400 people who showed to hear him speak at First Congregational United Church of Christ.

As he was in downtown Portland in front of an audience with a high concentration of teachers, he targeted the right combination of perceived evils: President Bush and the No Child Left Behind Act.

Kozol, a 71-year-old author and activist, delivered his points through "Francesca," a teacher in a Boston elementary school who is the focal point of his most recent book, "Letters to a Young Teacher."

"She got so angry when she'd hear the president say, 'All we want to do is get our teachers to aspire to excellence,' " Kozol said. "She'd say: 'Thank you Mr. President. I never thought of that before. I thought my goal was to struggle to achieve mediocrity.' "

It was one of many moments that brought laughter from the audience.

And such passages and statements were the type that met the expectations of Sean Haskell, a 36-year-old Southeast Portland resident and band teacher at H.B. Lee Middle School.

"He's willing to take a very unpopular, very realistic look at what is happening in our society," Haskell said. "And he's willing to back it up with statistics. It kind of goes outside the mainstream arguments that you hear discussed in the media."

Kozol's visit comes on the heels of Portland Public Schools announcing the hiring Monday of Carole Smith as its new superintendent. The 46,300-student district -- Oregon's largest -- is facing tough challenges, including closing the achievement gap -- largely between white and black students -- at its schools, and particularly high schools.

And for Kozol, No Child Left Behind is not the answer. Implemented in 2002, the federal law aims at improving performance of U.S. primary and secondary schools by increasing standards of accountability for states, school districts and schools.

No Child Left Behind fans have credited it for raising student achievement to record levels. Critics have pointed out that achievement was rising faster in the years before that law took effect than it has since 2003.

Haskell, who has read Kozol's book "Savage Inequalities," is among the doubters.

"No Child Left Behind was not designed by teachers or with much input from the educational community," he said.

Kozol, often mixing his tone between mocking of a system he thinks is failing children and teachers and empathy for those same children and teachers, said, "There are thousands of wonderful young people -- probably hundreds of thousands -- like Francesca coming into our public schools today.

"I meet them everywhere," he added. "It's not hard to recruit them."

Kozol said they'll even go to the inner city, poorest rural and reservation schools. The problem is keeping them once they get there, he said. And that's what needs to be fixed.

"This is their way of fighting on the front line of democracy," Kozol said. Still, he said, 50 percent quit within the first three years.

"And when I asked them why they're feeling demoralized; they're ready to quit, thinking of quitting. Again and again, the No. 1 answer they give me is, it's this sense of constant anxiety within these test-driven inner city schools," he said.

"The sense that every minute of the school day you're under this scrutiny of stern business-minded technocrats in Washington or in the state capitals . . . There's no room for my personality. There's no room for me to hear my children's real voices."

That, Kozol believes, need to change.

He said in the wealthiest suburbs it's different. "They don't like this testing nightmare," he said. But, he said, those districts have residents with the financial resources to insulate themselves from being punished by having their federal money withheld if they don't follow the rules.

"So, the richest suburbs can say, 'Take it,' " Kozol said. "But the inner city schools are running scared."

And Kozol wonders if this really is what the president had in mind with No Child Left Behind.

"When President Bush was selling this to Congress . . . he kept saying, 'All we want to do is help the teacher, identify where little Shaniqua's weaknesses were,' " Kozol said.

"Now, I don't want to be mean to President Bush," he said, "but sometimes I wonder what planet he lives on."

Wade Nkrumah: 503-294-7627; wadenkrumah@news.oregonian.com

©2007 The Oregonian

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1191473732282930.xml&coll=7

Labels: NCLB

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 4:01 PM 0 comments Links to this post

My, how things have changed in 8 years: "...only one percent of voters in a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll said education was their primary concern." It's exciting to see the pre-k community make progress on their agenda for universal pre-K. To Edwards' credit as well that this is a priority of his. -Angela

Putting Education on the '08 Agenda

Given the prominence of issues like Iraq and health care, is there room for the candidates to say smart things about improving public education? Edwards' new policy plan suggests there's hope.

Sara Mead | October 2, 2007 | web only


Remember the 2000 presidential campaign? If it seems like it happened in another lifetime, maybe another country, think how education wonks must feel. That was the year that American voters told pollsters that education was their number one concern in the presidential election. The Republican candidate, George W. Bush, broke with years of Republican platforms calling for the abolition of the Education Department to make education -- and an expansion of the federal role in it -- a centerpiece of his campaign, and virtually every photo op featured him surrounded by a crowd of smiling African American children. The Democratic candidate, Al Gore, used the luxury of a budget surplus to propose significant new federal investments in education, particularly universal preschool. Presidential debates featured heated exchanges over education.
Fast forward eight years, through September 11, the launching of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Hurricane Katrina, the return of giant federal deficits, the collapse of the technology and housing bubbles, and the 2000 campaign's emphasis on education seems almost quaint. Education didn't rate a passing mention in last week's Democratic debate. Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and John McCain don't even list education as a category in the "issues" sections of their Web sites. Even though Bill Gates and Los Angeles real estate mogul Eli Broad have invested millions in an aggressive media campaign to make education a major issue in the 2008 presidential election, only one percent of voters in a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll said education was their primary concern.

Yet, despite all the new issues that have emerged in the past eight years, the educational challenges the United States faced in 2000 haven't gone away: There's still an enormous achievement gap between poor and affluent students, our schools are more racially and economically segregated than ever, and barely half of African American and Hispanic students entering our high schools graduate within four years. Is there room for the 2008 presidential candidates to say smart things about improving public education in the United States? The education policy plan John Edwards recently put forward suggests there may yet be.

Edwards' plan focuses in three key areas:

Early Education: Edwards would provide federal funds to help states create or expand high-quality universal pre-kindergarten programs, starting in low-income areas with struggling schools. Pre-kindergarten would be free for low-income students with tuition on a sliding scale to make it affordable for working families. To support development for children under age four, Edwards would fund local "smart start" partnerships, modeled after a successful North Carolina initiative, to provide services -- including health, child care, and parenting programs -- for young children and their families.
Teacher Quality: Edwards' plan would provide bonus pay to encourage good teachers to work in high-poverty schools. It also includes $5,000 bonuses for National Board Certified teachers working in high-poverty schools, for veteran teachers who mentor rookie teachers, and for all teachers in high-poverty schools that have good academic performance and satisfied parents. The plan would support first-year teachers by offering them mentorship and reduced responsibilities, and would create a National Teacher University, modeled after the military's Service Academies, to prepare 1,000 teachers annually to work in high-need schools and serve as a model for other teacher preparation programs nationally.
Low-Performing Schools: Edwards' plan would create a School Success Fund to turn around failing schools by focusing resources on the neediest schools and sending in turnaround teams of experts to help them improve. It would also create, over four years, 1,000 new high-performing schools, including small schools, charter schools, and magnet schools that foster socioeconomic integration. This plan builds directly on policies Edwards proposed earlier this year to increase the number of schools serving children from diverse economic backgrounds.
By and large, these are smart ideas with potential to appeal to both education reformers and the elements of the Democratic base that are skeptical of education reform. There's a strong base of research on both the effectiveness of high-quality pre-kindergarten and the importance of teacher quality. Unfortunately, there's an equally strong body of evidence showing that low-income kids systematically get less access to high-quality preschool and qualified teachers than do their more affluent peers. Edwards is exactly right to make these disparities a top priority. Similarly, Edwards' proposals to turn around low-performing schools address a glaring shortcoming in NCLB, which has done a much better job of identifying low-performing schools than providing them with help to improve.

Two broader points are at least as noteworthy as the plan's policy specifics. First, there's a nice thematic coherence between these proposals, which focus on educational equity for low-income students, and Edwards' broader anti-poverty and pro-equity campaign themes. Second, Edwards has managed to combine a serious rhetorical assault on NCLB with policy proposals -- better tests, looking at student learning gains over time, help for struggling schools -- that are fairly consistent with the law's intent, and would improve, rather than eviscerate, its accountability.

That's significant for the debate in Washington right now over NCLB. House Education Committee Chairman George Miller (D-CA) has been pushing to reauthorize the legislation by the end of the year. The National Education Association, which is unhappy with a draft NCLB bill circulated by Miller's staff, has been urging Congress to "go slow" on NCLB, perhaps because NEA leaders think they'll get a better deal from a Democratic president in 2009. But hopes -- or, depending on one's perspective, fears -- that a Democratic president will dismantle NCLB's testing and accountability seem misplaced. Edwards and Chris Dodd, the only other presidential candidate to offer a comprehensive education plan, are proposing policies that would fix the most pressing problems in NCLB -- such as low-quality state standards and tests that fail to measure higher-order skills, encouraging teaching to the test -- while maintaining the law's core commitment to standards and accountability in public education. In fact, some of Edwards' and Dodd's proposals for NCLB are quite similar to provisions in Miller's draft legislation.

Reforming NCLB may be controversial, but universal pre-K is shaping up to be a big winner in 2008. Three Democratic candidates -- Hillary Clinton, Dodd, and Edwards -- have now put forward detailed proposals for universal pre-kindergarten, a policy Bill Richardson also supports. That reflects both the strong research supporting greater investment in high-quality pre-K and the growing momentum of the national pre-K movement. As the only leading Democratic candidate who has not articulated a clear position on early childhood education, Barack Obama may face pressure from that pre-K movement to either articulate his early education policy, or explain why he doesn't think universal pre-kindergarten is a good idea. Obama could also be asked for a concrete policy agenda to match his passionate rhetoric on education equity. In a July speech to the NEA, he promised to unveil an ambitious teacher quality plan in the coming months -- a promise that so far hasn't been met. Edwards' plan could remind journalists and education advocates of Obama's unmet promise.

The release of Edwards' plan is less likely to prompt education policy specifics from other leading candidates, however. As the Democratic frontrunner, Hillary Clinton has little incentive to engage on controversial K-12 education issues, and seems content to focus on her strong universal pre-K policy and proposals to improve college access. Richardson, who has penned op-eds denouncing NCLB, seems to be targeting an audience that doesn't need to know much more than that about his education views. And Republicans have been virtually silent on education, reflecting the deep divisions within their base over NCLB and the federal role in education generally.

Education isn't going to be the deciding issue in the 2008 election, and Edwards' proposals aren't going to change that. Nevertheless, Edwards and Dodd deserve credit for putting forward promising education agendas that don't simply pander to anti-NCLB sentiment but put forward real solutions. The leading Republican candidates' apparent discomfort on education offers an opening for Democrats to regain their dominance on an issue Bush almost won from them in 2000 -- but only if they can resist the urge to pander to anti-NCLB sentiment and instead offer smart alternative ideas to improve public education.

http://www.prospect.org//cs/articles;jsessionid=aJVYLiWX-gTdINmDMv?article=putting_education_on_the_agenda

Sara Mead is a senior research fellow in education policy with the New America Foundation.

Labels: universal pre-k

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 2:05 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Difficulty of TAKS is below average, study says
09:47 PM CDT on Wednesday, October 3, 2007

By TERRENCE STUTZ / The Dallas Morning News
AUSTIN – Tests used by Texas and other states to measure students' academic progress have created a false impression of success – particularly in reading and in elementary grades – according to a new study by a conservative think tank that evaluated testing programs in 26 states.

The study by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute found that the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, or TAKS, is below average in terms of difficulty, although the level of difficulty on the test increased from 2003 to 2006 – the two testing years that were examined by researchers.

"Texas is one of the few states in this study whose cut scores [minimum required proficiency levels] have become more challenging over time. Even so, the state's expectations are not consistent from one grade to the next and policymakers should consider more closely calibrating them to ensure equivalent difficulty at all grades," the study said.

Researchers for the Fordham Institute and the Northwest Evaluation Association, which co-sponsored the study, said that Texas' "cutoff scores" for math and reading proficiency in most grades are below the median level of difficulty for the 26 states in the study.

Chester E. Finn, president of the institute who served as assistant secretary of education in the Reagan administration, said the study highlights a central flaw in the No Child Left Behind Act – allowing states to set their own definition of what constitutes proficiency on their state tests.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/100407dntextesting.31559cb.html#

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 2:02 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Young immigrants should be given a chance to succeed in America -- even if they entered illegally.
Washington Post Editorial
Wednesday, September 26, 2007; Page A18

TENS OF thousands of illegal immigrants graduate from American high schools every year, having entered the United States as children or young teenagers with their parents. They may be computer geniuses, talented artists, gifted debaters, entrepreneurial whiz kids or superb athletes, but it doesn't really matter; most of them, no matter how bright and ambitious, face insurmountable obstacles to success -- through no fault of their own. Although they grew up here and may seem culturally and linguistically indistinguishable from their native-born peers, they cannot share their classmates' high hopes and bright prospects.

Moved by their stories, senators from both political parties are sponsoring a measure that would give these youngsters what America has always given promising newcomers: a chance. The legislation, known as the Dream Act, would apply only to those who entered the country at age 15 or younger, have lived here for at least five years and have unblemished records. Upon graduating from high school, they would be granted conditional legal status for six years, a grace period in which they would have to spend at least two years enrolled in a four-year or community college or serving in a branch of the U.S. military. If they satisfied all those conditions while staying out of trouble, they would qualify to become legal permanent residents.

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According to the Urban Institute, an estimated 360,000 undocumented immigrants who have already finished high school could be eligible right off the bat for six-year conditional legal status under Dream's provisions; 65,000 more would graduate annually and become eligible in the coming years. Many would elect to join the armed forces, thereby providing the military, which is struggling to meet recruitment targets, with a high-quality pool of potential recruits. Many others would enroll in institutions of higher education, instantly improving their long-term prospects to be well-paid, taxpaying, high-achieving members of society. If, as members of Congress and the Bush administration routinely acknowledge, there is to be no mass deportation of illegal immigrants, the Dream Act goes some way toward ensuring that the youngest and most promising immigrants will benefit this country for many years to come.

The Dream Act has been offered as an amendment to the Defense Department's appropriations bill and could face a floor vote in the Senate this week. Predictably, the anti-illegal-immigrant forces are howling about a new "amnesty." Let them use whatever word they choose. But let's also be clear about the victims if the measure is defeated -- promising young English speakers who had no say about how they were brought to this country. Most will stay here, in the only land where they feel at home. The real question is whether America is big enough and wise enough to offer them a future or will doom them to lives on the margins.

Labels: dream act, immigration and education

posted by Patricia Lopez at 8:06 AM 0 comments Links to this post

By Howard Witt | Tribune senior correspondent
September 25, 2007

AUSTIN, Texas - In the average New Jersey public school, African-American students are almost 60 times as likely as white students to be expelled for serious disciplinary infractions.

In Minnesota, black students are suspended 6 times as often as whites.

In Iowa, blacks make up just 5 percent of the statewide public school enrollment but account for 22 percent of the students who get suspended.

Fifty years after federal troops escorted nine black students through the doors of an all-white high school in Little Rock, Ark., in a landmark school integration struggle, America's public schools remain as unequal as they have ever been when measured in terms of disciplinary sanctions such as suspensions and expulsions, according to little-noticed data collected by the U.S. Department of Education for the 2004-2005 school year.

In every state but Idaho, a Tribune analysis of the data shows, black students are being suspended in numbers greater than would be expected from their proportion of the student population. In 21 states—Illinois among them—that disproportionality is so pronounced that the percentage of black suspensions is more than double their percentage of the student body. And on average across the nation, black students are suspended and expelled at nearly three times the rate of white students.

No other ethnic group is disciplined at such a high rate, the federal data show. Hispanic students are suspended and expelled in almost direct proportion to their populations, while white and Asian students are disciplined far less.

Yet black students are no more likely to misbehave than other students from the same social and economic environments, research studies have found. Some impoverished black children grow up in troubled neighborhoods and come from broken families, leaving them less equipped to conform to behavioral expectations in school. While such socioeconomic factors contribute to the disproportionate discipline rates, researchers say that poverty alone cannot explain the disparities. "There simply isn't any support for the notion that, given the same set of circumstances, African-American kids act out to a greater degree than other kids," said Russell Skiba, a professor of educational psychology at Indiana University whose research focuses on race and discipline issues in public schools. "In fact, the data indicate that African-American students are punished more severely for the same offense, so clearly something else is going on. We can call it structural inequity or we can call it institutional racism."

Academic researchers have been quietly collecting evidence of such race-based disciplinary disparities for more than 25 years. Yet the phenomenon remains largely obscured from public view by the popular emphasis on "zero tolerance" crackdowns, which are supposed to deliver equally harsh punishments based on a student's infraction, not skin color.

That's not what the data say is happening. Yet the federal Education Department's Office of Civil Rights, which is charged with investigating allegations of discriminatory discipline policies in the nation's public schools, has opened just one such probe in the past three years. Officials declined requests to explain why.

There's more at stake than just a few bad marks in a student's school record. Studies show that a history of school suspensions or expulsions is a strong predictor of future trouble with the law—and the first step on what civil rights leaders have described as a "school-to-prison pipeline" for black youths, who represent 16 percent of U.S. adolescents but 38 percent of those incarcerated in youth prisons.

Relatively few school districts scattered across the country have begun to acknowledge the issue of racial disparities in discipline and tried to do something about it.

In Austin, after administrators discovered that black youths accounted for 14 percent of the school district's population but 37 percent of the students sent to punitive alternative schools, they introduced a program in some schools based on encouraging positive student behaviors rather than punishing negative ones.

At one school, Pickle Elementary, which serves mostly Hispanic and black students, the results were dramatic—disciplinary referrals dropped from 520 in 2001-2002 to just 20 last year.

"I am not going to give up on a child and suspend him or send him to an alternative school," said Julie Pryor, who was the principal of the school when the behavioral program was implemented and is now a district administrator. "Washing our hands of a child will never change his behavior, it just makes it worse. These are children. It's up to us to be creative to find ways to help them behave."

But academic experts say many more school administrators, when confronted with data showing disparate rates of discipline for minority students, react like officials in the small east Texas town of Paris and strenuously deny accusations of racial discrimination.

Paris is the sole school district in the nation currently under investigation by the federal Education Department to determine whether higher discipline rates for black students there constitute institutionalized discrimination. The probe has been under way for more than a year.

"The school district has been a leader and very progressive when it comes to race relations," Dennis Eichelbaum, the attorney for the Paris Independent School District, said in an interview earlier this year.

That perspective is not shared by the families of many of Paris' black students, who make up 40 percent of the school district's nearly 4,000 students.

"They say there's no racism here, but if you go inside a school and look in the room where they send the kids for detention, almost all the faces are black," said Brenda Cherry, a Paris civil rights activist who assembled some of the complaints that sparked the federal investigation. "Unless black people are just a bad race of people, something is wrong here."

Exactly why black students across the nation are suspended and expelled more frequently than children of other races is a question that continues to perplex sociologists.

Socioeconomic factors are certainly at play, researchers believe.

"Studies of school suspension have consistently documented disproportionality by socioeconomic status. Students who receive free school lunch are at increased risk for school suspension," according to "The Color of Discipline," a 2000 study by Skiba and other researchers in Indiana and Nebraska. Another study concluded that "students whose fathers did not have a full-time job were significantly more likely to be suspended than students whose fathers were employed full time."

But those studies and others have repeatedly found that racial factors are even more important.

"Poor home environment does carry over into the school environment," said Skiba, who is widely regarded as the nation's foremost authority on school discipline and race. "But middle-class and upper-class black students are also being disciplined more often than their white peers. Skin color in itself is a part of this function."

Some experts point to cultural miscommunications between black students and white teachers, who fill 83 percent of the nation's teaching ranks. In fact, the Tribune analysis found, some of the highest rates of racially disproportionate discipline are found in states with the lowest minority populations, where the disconnect between white teachers and black students is potentially the greatest.

"White teachers feel more threatened by boys of color," said Isela Gutierrez, a juvenile justice expert at the Texas Criminal Just