By PETER SCHMIDT
THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
Thursday, March 27, 2008

New York

Texas essentially became the site of a large-scale education experiment as a result of two developments in the 1990s. The first was a 1996 federal-court decision, Hopwood
v. Texas, that barred the state's public colleges from using race-conscious admissions. The second was state lawmakers' subsequent move to guarantee Texans who graduate in the top 10 percent of their high-school classes admission to a public college of their choice.

Over the past decade, researchers have examined how those two developments have affected both colleges' enrollments and students' achievement. Findings from the newest wave of such studies, being presented here this week during the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association, suggest that both developments have had a profound effect on a wide range of public collegesâ."not
just the most selective ones. Many of the effects were unpredicted or belie popular perceptions.

Parsing the results of the court ruling and 10-percent law is difficult for several reasons. Texas has undergone major demographic changes over the past decade, with the number of high-school graduates increasing by 50 percent and the number of Hispanic high-school graduates rising by 78 percent from 1994 to 2004. Besides coming under the sway of the 10-percent law, top universities responded to the Hopwood decision by adopting a host of other policies that may have affected their minority enrollments, including aggressive recruitment and outreach efforts and broad expansion of financial-aid offerings.

But in crunching enrollment numbers from the state's two flagship higher-education institutionsâ."the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M Universityâ."the researchers felt they were able to draw several major conclusions.

The co-author of many of the papers presented here was Marta Tienda, a professor of sociology, demographic studies, and public affairs at Princeton University who is a principal investigator for the Texas Higher Education Opportunity Project. Among the papers' key findings:

Guaranteeing students admission to a flagship university did not necessarily guarantee that they would enroll. Ms. Tienda; Sunny X. Niu, an associate research scholar at Princeton University's Office of Population Research; and Sigal Alon, an assistant professor of sociology ant Tel Aviv University, report in one paper that neither flagship experienced big increases in black and Hispanic enrollments as a result of the 10-percent law, despite increases in the numbers of black and Hispanic students eligible for admission. Drawing upon past research, the authors suggest that financial concerns and attending high schools without strong college-going traditions kept many such students from applying or matriculating.

The 10-percent law failed to bring about nearly as much socioeconomic diversity on the flagship college campuses as had been hoped. A paper written by Ms. Tienda and Dawn
Koffman, a statistical programmer in Princeton's population- research office, found that the lion's share of the rise in applications to the two flagships came from affluent high schools. As of 2003, four years after the law went into effect, class-rank-eligible students from poor high schools were only half as likely as their affluent counterparts to apply to the University of Texas at Austin, and both flagship campuses remained dominated by wealthy students.

The average SAT and ACT scores of students enrolled at less-selective public institutions rose as high-scoring students who were not in the top tenth of their class were crowded out of the University of Texas at Austin by top-10-percenters, according to a paper written by Ms. Tienda and Mark C. Long, an assistant professor of public affairs at the University of Washington at Seattle.

Similar findings are contained in a paper written by Mariana Alfonso, a research economist at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, and Juan Carlos Calcagno, a researcher at Mathematica Policy Research, based in Princeton, N.J. In addition to looking at enrollment trends at Texas A&M at College Station, they studied trends at Texas Tech University, which is in the middle of the state's public colleges in terms of selectivity, and Texas A&M University at Kingsville, a nonselective institution that admits all applicants.

Their paper concludes that the Hopwood decision led to a shift in black and Hispanic students from highly selective institutions such as Texas A&M at College Station to less- selective institutions, largely because "the elimination of affirmative action has discouraged minority students from applying to the selective universities." The Texas 10-percent plan appeared to increase the likelihood that black and Hispanic students would be admitted to moderately selective Texas Tech and to bolster their enrollments at Texas Tech and the Kingsville campus of Texas A&M. But it did not increase the likelihood of their being admitted to the College Station campus or bring about increases in minority enrollments beyond what could be expected given demographic changes in the state.

The paper by Ms. Alfonso and Mr. Calcagno suggests that if state policy makers and college administrators want to increase minority enrollments at selective colleges, they should focus on trying to expand the black and Hispanic applicant pools by taking steps such as working to improve high-school quality, setting up more dual-enrollment programs allowing high school students to earn college credit, and waiving college application fees. The papers written by Ms. Tienda and her colleagues contain similar recommendations for increasing the size of the minority and low-income applicant pool.

Copyright © 2008 by The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Labels: top ten percent plan

posted by Patricia Lopez at 2:50 PM 0 comments Links to this post

TEXAS AFT LEGISLATIVE HOTLINE–THURSDAY, MARCH 27, 2008
(copyright 2008 Texas AFT)

Teachers testifying before the Joint Select Committee on Public School Accountability in Austin today strongly criticized aspects of the current test-driven accountability system. They were joined in that critique by other educators and, we are happy to report, by some committee members themselves.

While crediting the accountability system with steering more instructional resources toward students who need help to pass the state exams, the teacher witnesses urged the committee to help put the state's standardized test back in its proper place. With administrators and schools being judged primarily on the basis of standardized-test results, the consequence is that students and their teachers are forced to spend too much precious time on test-taking skills, squelching opportunities for students to explore their subjects more deeply, the teachers said.

Among the teachers invited to testify was master teacher Robin Turner, a Texas AFT member whose third-grade class of struggling students in Austin ISD benefits from her expertise as a Milken Foundation prizewinner and a National Board certified reading teacher. Turner, a member of our Education Austin affiliate, vividly described the letdown her students felt recently when they were forced to turn from a science lesson that had them deeply engaged to yet another tedious drill in TAKS skills. Turner also spoke out on behalf of colleagues who asked her to describe their testing calendars, showing inordinate amounts of time spent on test prep and on a multitude of standardized tests in addition to the TAKS.

Turner welcomed the committee's talk of moving toward a "growth model" that would reward students and their schools for achieving substantial gains. Right now the accountability system revolves almost entirely around getting a certain percentage of students to achieve a level of minimum proficiency, instead of rewarding and recognizing significant student gains, whether above or below that level. The status quo thus creates a strong incentive to neglect students other than those who are "on the bubble," just shy of meeting the minimum proficiency standard.

Other teachers echoed some of Turner's key points. Susan Creighton, a Texas AFT member who teaches gifted high-school students in English language arts in Flower Mound ISD, decried "the complete waste of my time" and students' time on TAKS essay-writing drills, mandated by her district despite the advanced level of her students. The narrow test-taking skills on which she and her students are required to spend days of preparation are just not relevant to the college-level writing and reasoning that it is her job to help them develop, Creighton said.

The teacher witnesses also repeatedly distinguished the beneficial use of standardized tests to identify deficiencies from the destructive use of tests to label students and punish schools as failures based on a narrow, one-day snapshot of their performance. On this point they were on common ground with panels of superintendents, principals, and educational experts who testified earlier in the day.

The emphasis ought to be on supports, not sanctions, said Michael Cohen, president of Achieve, Inc., a national education-reform group that pushes for higher academic standards. This position was powerfully reinforced by testimony from Texas school administrators, who talked about the harm done by slapping an "academically unacceptable" label on a school because of a shortfall on one out of 36 performance indicators. Instead of this "gotcha" system, one principal suggested, why not give parents and taxpayers a truer picture of the school's overall performance with a rating that looks more like a grade-point average, reflecting performance across the full range of subjects and subgroups?

Superintendents and principals also noted that the punitive approach inevitably tends to deter good educators from going to work on struggling campuses, because their professional reputation can be damaged even if they work wonders but their students still after a year or two fall short of the required passing rates on standardized tests. One member of the select committee, herself a principal, bore personal witness to this problem. She said she had been assigned to a struggling campus because of her successful track record with disadvantaged students, then found herself yanked away to another campus after two years, under the state law passed in 2006 that mandates a principal's removal if her campus is rated low-performing for two years in a row.

Even the select committee's most dogged defender of the current system, lawyer-lobbyist Sandy Kress, felt compelled by the end of today's hearing to speak in support of corrective action to curb the excesses of testing drill and practice, which he termed a "problem with school or district implementation." Other committee members of the select committee signaled their interest in going much further to reform the system.

Rep. Diane Patrick, Republican of Arlington, for example, said the legislature has made some progress by moving toward end-of-course tests in high school but has more work to do in order to reduce the harmful effects of the TAKS testing regime at the elementary level. Committee co-chairs Florence Shapiro, a Republican senator from Plano, and Rob Eissler, a Republican representative from The Woodlands, also acknowledged the need to clear up confusion created by sometimes conflicting federal and state accountability ratings.

We'll have more gleanings from today's hearing to share with you in the future. It is still too early to tell if the select committee's eventual recommendations will reflect fully the powerful testimony heard today. But we continue to be encouraged by the tone of this discussion, in which most members of the committee seem to agree that there is something seriously awry with the current system and that it is their job to help fix it.

Labels: TEKS Standards

posted by Patricia Lopez at 2:43 PM 0 comments Links to this post

By Angela Davis
Wed Mar 19, 2008

Both race and racism are profoundly historical. Thus if we discard biological and thus essentialist notions of "race" as fallacious, it would be erroneous to assume that we can also wilfully extricate ourselves from histories of race and racism. Whether we acknowledge it or not, we continue to inhabit these histories, which help to constitute our social and psychic worlds.

Neoliberalism sees the market as the very paradigm of freedom and democracy emerges as a synonym for capitalism, which has reemerged as the telos of history. In the official narratives of US history, the historical victories of civil rights are dealt with as the final consolidation of democracy in the US, having relegating racism to the dustbin of history.

The path toward the complete elimination of racism is represented in the neoliberalist discourse of colourblindness. Equality can only be achieved when the law, as well as individual subjects, become blind to race and fail to apprehend the material and ideological work that race continues to do.

When obvious examples of racism appear to the public, they are considered to be isolated aberrations, to be addressed as anachronistic attributes of individual behaviour. There have been a number of such cases in recent months in the US: the noose that was hung on a tree branch by white students at a school in Jena, Louisiana as a sign that black students were prohibited from gathering under that tree; the public use of racist expletives by a well-known white comedian; the racist and misogynist language employed by a well-known radio host in referring to black women on a college basketball team, and finally, recent comments regarding the golfer Tiger Woods.

But if we see these individual eruptions of racism as connected to the persistence and further entrenchment of institutional and structural racism that hides behind the curtain of neoliberalism, their meanings cannot be understood as individual aberrations.

In the cases we have discussed, the racism is explicit and blatant. There is no denying that these are racist utterances. What happens, however, when racism is expressed, not through the words of individuals, but rather through institutional practices that are "mute" - to borrow the term Dana-Ain Davis uses - with respect to racism?

'Mute' racism

The inability to recognise the contemporary persistence of racisms within institutions and other social structures results in the attribution of responsibility for the effects of racisms to the individuals who are its casualties, thus further exacerbating the problem of failing to identify the economic, social, and ideological work of racism.

There is a similar logic undergirding the criminalisation of those communities, which are vastly over-represented in jails and prisons.

By failing to recognise the material forces of racism that are responsible for offering up such large numbers of black and Latino youth to the carceral state, the process of criminalisation imputes responsibility to the individuals who are its casualties, thus reproducing the very conditions that produce racist patterns in incarceration and its seemingly infinite capacity to expand.

The misreading of these racist patterns replicates and reinforces the privatisation that is at the core of neoliberalism, whereby social activity is individualised and the enormous profits generated by the punishment industry are legitimised.

One in 100

On February 28 of this year, the Pew Center issued a report about incarceration in the United States entitled "One in One Hundred: Behind Bars in America 2008". According to the report, one in one hundred adults is now behind bars on any given day. While the numbers themselves are shocking, the vastly disproportionate numbers of people of colour in jails and prison is for the most part responsible for the figure "one in one hundred."

In 1985, there were fewer than 800,000 people behind bars. Today there are almost three times as many imprisoned people and the vast increase has been driven almost entirely by the practices of incarcerating young people of colour.

Although the figures are not comparable, one can argue that a similar dynamic drives imprisonment here in Australia, with imprisoned aboriginal people accounting for ten times their proportion in the general population.

According to neoliberalist explanations, the fact that these young black men are behind bars has little to do with race or racism and everything to do with their own private family upbringing and their inability to take moral responsibility for their actions. Such explanations remain "mute" - to use Dana-Ain Davis's term again - about the social, economic, and historical power of racism. They remain "mute" about the dangerous contemporary work that race continues to do.

'Individual deviancy'

The incarceration of youth of colour - and of increasing numbers of young women of colour (women have constituted the fastest growing sector of the incarcerated population for some time now) - is not viewed as connected to the vast structural changes produced by deregulation, privatisation, by the devaluation of the public good, and by the deterioration of community.

Because there is no public vocabulary which allows us to place these developments within a historical context, individual deviancy is the overarching explanation for the grotesque rise in the numbers of people who are relegated to the country's and the world's prisons.

According to Henry Giroux, "racism survives through the guise of neoliberalism, a kind of repartee that imagines human agency as simply a matter of individualised choices, the only obstacle to effective citizenship and agency being the lack of principled self-help and moral responsibility."

Because racism is viewed as an anachronistic vestige of the past, we fail to grasp the extent to which the long memory of institutions - especially those that constitute the intimately connected circuit of education and incarceration - continue to permit race to determine who has access to education and who has access to incarceration.

While laws have had the effect of privatising racist attitudes and eliminating the explicitly racist practices of institutions, these laws are unable to apprehend the deep structural life of racism and therefore allow it to continue to thrive.

Psychic reservoir of racism

This invisible work of racism not only influences the life chances of millions of people, it helps to nourish a psychic reservoir of racism that often erupts through the utterances and actions of individuals, as in the cases previously mentioned. The frequent retort made by such individuals who are caught in the act is: "I'm not a racist. I don't even know where that came from" can only be answered if we are able to recognise this deep structural life of racism.

The deep structural racism of the criminal justice system affects our lives in complicated ways. What we acknowledged more than a decade ago as the US prison industrial complex through which racism generates enormous profits for private corporations can now be recognised as a global prison industrial complex that profits the world over from postcolonial forms of racism and xenophobia.

With the dismantling of the welfare state and the structural adjustment in the southern region required by global financial institutions, the institution of the prison - which is itself an important product marketed through global capitalism - becomes the privileged site into which surplus impoverished populations are deposited.

Thus new forms of global structural racism are emerging. The deep structural life of racism bleeds out from the US criminal justice system and is having a devastating effect on the political life of the nation and the world.

Angela Y Davis is Professor of History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is a civil rights activist and former Black Panther. This is an edited transcript of the Vice-Chancellor's Oration, which she delivered at Murdoch University on March 18, 2008.

Labels: incarceration rates, racism

posted by Patricia Lopez at 2:01 PM 0 comments Links to this post

By Brandi Grissom
El Paso Times
03/27/2008

AUSTIN -- Texas education leaders developing new English and reading standards acquiesced Thursday to pressure from teachers and lawmakers, allowing for more Hispanic input.

"I'm pleased that there was a compromise and that they just didn't shutout the Hispanic expertise," said Rene Nuñez, State Board of Education member from El Paso.

The State Board of Education spent hours discussing a new reading and English curriculum that will be in place for the next decade, defining test standards and the contents of textbooks. Educators and lawmakers had criticized the proposed curriculum, saying it was too prescriptive and ignored Hispanic students' needs.

Board Chairman Don McLeroy said last week there was no time to make major changes to the curriculum because it needs to be adopted in time to have new textbooks for the 2009-2010 school year.

In a public hearing Wednesday, though, the board heard impassioned pleas for more input on the curriculum from bilingual educators and from experts with knowledge about how Hispanic students learn.

"If we're not meeting the needs of those individual children, especially our English language learners, they are at a tremendous disadvantage," said Paul Haupt, state coordinator for the El Paso, Texas and International reading associations and a consultant for Socorro Independent School District.

Teachers also objected to a reading list, which they said removed flexibility, especially to choose books that would help students learning to read in English.

Statewide, nearly half of the 4.6 million students in public schools in the 2007-2008 school year were Hispanic, according to the Texas Education Agency.

Eighty-nine percent of El Paso County's 173,000 students were Hispanic.

Board member Geraldine Miller said she was hurt that some believed the board was intentionally excluding Hispanic students.

"We do not ever want to disenfranchise these children," Miller said.

The board unanimously agreed to eliminate the reading list and to consider input from Hispanic teachers and two experts, including Elena Izquierdo, University of Texas at El Paso bilingual education professor and president of the Texas Association for Bilingual Education.

The board will meet in May to take a final vote on the revised English and reading standards.

"We have to do what's right here," Izquierdo said. "It's important to our kids in school; it's important to teachers."

Brandi Grissom can be reached at bgrissom@elpasotimes.com; (512) 479-6606.

Labels: TEKS Standards

posted by Patricia Lopez at 1:03 PM 0 comments Links to this post

By Steve Taylor and Joey Gomez | Rio Grande Guardian
March 29, 2008

EDINBURG, March 29 - Why is that the Rio Grande Valley, with over one million residents, lacks an interstate highway, a veterans’ hospital, and offers far fewer doctoral programs at its universities than other areas of the state that have far fewer people?

Some of the 300 or so students who assembled for Youth Town Hall Meeting at the Abundant Grace Community Church in Edinburg on Friday said it was because the Valley does not punch its weight at the ballot box.

Because, historically, turnout at general elections is much lower than in other parts of the state and nation, the region can be ignored by politicians in Austin and Washington, D.C., the students told the Guardian.

“We want to change that. Our youth does not want to live in poverty, having problems getting jobs and getting an education, like our parents had. They want to vote and get their voice heard by the president,” said Stephanie Leal, a 17-year-old student at Mercedes High School.

“In the Valley, we try the most to get educated. Because they (politicians) ignore the Valley, we try harder to be heard. We want people to know where the Valley is.”

Friday's town hall meeting was the first of two focusing on young people that are being organized in the Valley this spring by the Marguerite Casey Foundation and its grantee non-profit groups. The meetings are laying the groundwork for the Equal Voice for America’s Families campaign, a yearlong effort to create and build support for a national agenda of family values. The second Youth Town Hall meeting takes place at South Texas College’s Pecan Campus in McAllen on April 10.

Students from across the Valley participated in Friday’s event. They were asked to debate and list the issues that matter to them, and to focus on national and local policies that affect their families’ ability to prosper. Those issues will be collated and presented at regional town hall meetings later in the year. They will then be presented to the presidential candidates before the November election.

Jessica Oioque, another 17-year-old Mercedes High School student, said her top issue was improving communication between children and parents. “The way you communicate within families is crucial. If you have communication with your family, you have far less problems,” Oioque said.

Oioque said the town hall meeting was fun, informative, and challenging.

“We have to voice our opinions, especially us kids. Not everybody, like parents, listen to us. This was our chance to speak out loudly. We did not argue about anything, we came up with reasonable answers,” Oioque said.

Oioque said young people in the Valley were striving to get a good education because they have seen first hand the struggles their parents and grandparents have gone through.

“We care tremendously, for that reason. We have seen how our parents were raised and seen how they did not have the benefit of a college education. It was very hard. Many parents dropped out of high school and struggled. You want to be better than that. You want to change things, especially here in the Valley. Hardly anybody outside of the Valley knows where we are,” Oioque said.

Leal, like Oioque a member of the U.S. Army’s Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, said the town hall meeting was fun because she got to meet students from across the Valley.

“We were all talking about our future and the values we have with our families. Everybody was pumped up, happy to be here. We want to change today for our future, when we are adults,” she said.

Armando Garza, Equal Voice for America’s Families’ regional coordinator for South Texas, told the students that they have a key role to play in the development of their community.

“You are about to turn 18. You are about to have the right to vote. A lot of people have fought and a lot of people have died to get that right. You need to really start thinking about voting because that is one of the ways in which you can affect your community and your society,” Garza told the audience.

Between now and being able to vote, students should try to get their parents to vote, Garza said. They can do this by helping them get registered to vote and helping them get informed on the candidates and their platforms, he said.

Garza then told the audience about his own upbringing, citing it as an example of how civic engagement can help an individual grow.

“I grew up very poor. I was a migrant farm worker and at a very young age I got involved with the United Farm Workers Union. That was the first time, when I was 12 years old, that I realized that I was important,” Garza explained.

“As a farm worker, many times we were held at a very low standard. Many people felt very little of us and I didn’t think I was important. That was until an organizer from the Farm Workers came up to me and said, ‘What do you think? What’s important to you?’”

Garza told the students that putting pen to paper on the issues that matter to them was just the start of an intricate national campaign. In a month or so those issues would be tabulated and given back to the students so they can start sharing them with their friends.

The Edinburg event was the second town hall meeting in the Valley organized under the Equal Voice for America’s Families campaign. The first took place amid freezing temperatures inside a large tent in San Juan in January. More than 300 families participated, making it one of the biggest town hall meetings in the nation. Another Equal Voice town hall meeting that could attract up to 1,000 families is being planned for late spring in Brownsville.

Garza told the Guardian that the enthusiasm being shown in the Valley for the Equal Voice campaign would help spark a national dialogue “about the policies and attitudes that negatively impact working families.”

The local non-profit in charge of the Edinburg event was AVANCE-Rio Grande Valley, a group that believes that strong families produce strong communities.

Hilario Rincones, executive director of AVANCE-RGV, said his group was pleased to partner with the Marguerite Casey Foundation because the foundation supports the premise that a community’ well-being is dependent on the opportunities families have to become self-reliant.

“In the year 2008, it is surprising to see that there are still so many disenfranchised people in our society,” Rincones said.

“The young, the illiterate, the single-parent family and the ‘working poor’ remain virtually invisible on the political landscape. Who speaks for them? The Marguerite Casey Foundation believes no family should live in poverty, and has created the Equal Voice campaign to provide these citizens a forum for speaking out.”

Labels: Region 1

posted by Patricia Lopez at 12:42 PM 0 comments Links to this post

It's frustrating to see how this issue continues to be explained as a "girl" problem. Nowhere in this piece do you see mention of boys/men. Sex education is definitely a must and, so too is the need for both sexes to be included in this discussion. -Patricia

New York Times Editorial
March 17, 2008

Teenage girls and their parents need to read the latest government study of sexually transmitted diseases. The infections are so prevalent they are hard to avoid once a girl becomes sexually active. One in four girls ages 14 to 19 is infected with at least one of four common diseases. Among African-American girls in the study, almost half were infected.

The data, drawn from a sample of 838 girls who participated in a broad national survey in 2003-4, was presented last week by researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By far the most common of the four S.T.D.’s was the human papillomavirus, or HPV, which infected 18 percent of the girls. Chlamydia infected 4 percent, trichomoniasis — a common parasite — 2.5 percent, and genital herpes 2 percent.

The study did not look at such feared diseases as H.I.V./AIDS, syphilis or gonorrhea, but the four it did look at are worrisome enough. Although most HPV infections cause no symptoms and clear the body in less than a year, persistent HPV can cause cervical cancer and genital warts. S.T.D.’s can cause infertility, pelvic inflammatory disease and other painful symptoms.

It will not be easy for sexually active teenagers to avoid any danger. Even among girls who said they had had only a single sexual partner, 20 percent were infected. With more than three million teenage girls infected, it is imperative to find ways to protect others.

The new findings strengthen the case for providing HPV vaccine to young girls and for regular screening of sexually active girls to detect infection. There is also a clear need to strengthen programs in sex education. Exhortations to practice abstinence go only so far.

Teenage girls who are sexually active need access to contraceptives and counseling. They need to understand that the numbers are against them and that a serious infection is but a careless sexual encounter away.

Labels: sex education

posted by Patricia Lopez at 11:32 AM 0 comments Links to this post

by Erica Jacobs, The Examiner
Mar 17, 2008

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - We read in the newspaper about the latest study of No Child Left Behind, or of the effect of larger classes or larger schools on children. Reporters investigate stellar students, award-winning schools and teachers, and the occasional atrocity committed by student or teacher within those cloistered walls.

But where are the voices of the teachers? I have been writing about teaching, students, and education for more than 20 years, but I have very little company. Most of the writing about education is done by reporters and educators who no longer teach—if they ever did in the first place.

This makes absolutely no sense. There is no subject that creates more anxiety in parents than the education of their children. Just go to any school board budget meeting about program cuts, or any boundary change meeting, and look at the pain and fear on the faces of the parents lined up to speak.

Hardly anyone from within the classroom talks to parents. Often you are treated to only one back-to-school-night at the beginning of the year, which typically includes a brief address by the principal — heavy on PR with glowing words about the school’s test scores.

Maybe you will be able to see your child’s teacher for 10-30 minutes, depending on grade level, and there is no time to get a sense of what the classroom is really like. It’s in and out, bell ringing just when you had that really important question you wanted answered.

And then there’s the non-communication of the PTA newsletter that arrives monthly or quarterly, a manicured document with not much evidence of the pulse that makes your child’s school lively or deadly. Ask your child what happened in school on any given day and—you guessed it—the answer is almost always “nothing.”

So no wonder Jay Mathews of The Washington Post gets semihysterical letters when he asks parents to comment on public school programs and policies. There’s no one out there who actually talks to parents in ways that bring to three-dimensional life the experience of their child between the hours of 7 a.m. and 4 p.m.

As I have discovered time and time again, if teachers actually speak to “scary parents,” they are not the least bit scary. I have never had a parent conference in which compassion and commiseration were not welcome; often a teacher’s simple vow to try to help the student succeed with one or two different approaches is enough to make the parent smile and thank the teacher with genuine gratitude.

Because we know that our unconventional interdisciplinary Advanced Placement course is mystifying to parents, Eliot Waxman and I invite them to a two-hour “class” each fall so they can experience a “Senior Seminar” themselves. The e-mails we receive subsequently are testament to their appreciation that, finally, teachers have welcomed them into the world of their child. Their reactions are surprisingly touching.

It’s time for teachers to stop being scared of parents. What factors keep teachers from speaking out, in print and in classrooms? I will look at that question in my next column.

Labels: Parent Involvement, teachers

posted by Patricia Lopez at 11:21 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Check out the Office of English Language Acquisition for the state of Arizona. It also has some useful links on this issue. -Patricia

With 4 hours a day spent on language development, some fear kids will lag in areas such as math, science

Emily Gersema
The Arizona Republic
Mar. 16, 2008

School officials fear that the estimated 131,000 Arizona students learning English will be at a greater risk of dropping out or taking longer than usual to graduate because of new state requirements for language development.

Under the requirements adopted last year by the Arizona English Language Learners Task Force, students who aren't fluent in English will spend four hours a day on language development. Their hours could be reduced as they improve and they'll be sent to the mainstream classroom once they have successfully passed the Arizona's English Language Learner Assessment, a language test.

Most of Arizona high schools operate on a six-hour class day, so the new requirement means the students deemed "English-language learners" will spend all but two periods of their school day focused on learning only English - possibly delaying their completion of required credits in areas such as history, math and science.



"The question is: Are they going to get done in four years?" asked Ken James, executive director of the educational services for Gilbert Public Schools. The district has about 38,500 students - 1,000 of whom are ELLs.

An ELL student can earn an English credit while in the language-development program and perhaps some electives.

But that student will likely lag behind mainstream classmates who can advance through courses and graduate without delay.

Salvador Gabaldon, the language-acquisition coordinator for Tucson Unified School District, said educating a student can cost up to $6,000 a year.

A delay in graduation, he says, "is an expense I don't think the state took into consideration."

The Tucson district has 8,000 ELLs, Gabaldon said.

Smaller districts are worried, too.

Higley Unified School District has about 250 students in its K-12 system who are considered English-language learners, a small portion of the district's 9,100 students.

Denise Birdwell, a Higley associate superintendent, said at a recent school-board meeting that the new language-program standards are worrisome.

"I'm concerned from a funding perspective," she said.

She noted that state science and math credit requirements are increasing at the same time the students learning English will have to spend more time on language.

District officials are raising other concerns about the state language-development model adopted last fall to help English-language learners.

Higley's ELL coordinator, Heidi Larsen, noted that the students learning English are in schools throughout the district, not just one building.

Yet under the state standards, schools are to group the ELL students together, separating them from students who are fluent, when providing them with four hours of language immersion.

By law, districts cannot bus them. Instead, they'll have to put the students in separate classrooms at every school that has ELL students.

Higley and several other districts are crafting alternative strategies that they hope state officials will approve. Some are relying on models from school districts in other states or developing their own strategies to better fit their budgets, classroom and staffing constraints.

Some school districts want to ensure students learning English can simultaneously get some credits for areas such as math. Others want to eliminate what they view as an unnecessary set of hoops to jump through.

The Mesa Unified School District plans to ask the state to make an exception for students who pass the Arizona's Instrument to Measure Standards exam, said Irene Frklich, director of English language acquisition.

If they pass AIMS and fulfill the state and federal standards, those students shouldn't have to keep taking the state English-language-learner assessment to be considered proficient, Frklich says.

State education officials say the goal is to ensure these students learn language through the intensive course so that they can be successful in math, science and other courses where they'll need a highly developed vocabulary.

John Stollar, Arizona's associate superintendent for accountability, said that the better a student knows English, the more likely he or she will feel comfortable in class and stay in school.

Students can take summer school and can get extra help outside of class if their school is among those in Arizona receiving funding for before- and after-school language-tutoring programs.

He said this means that schools serving ELLs also could be better positioned to achieve adequate yearly progress.

While schools can come up with alternative plans, some may not be approved.

Mesa officials want to allow the students who pass the AIMS test back into the mainstream classroom without passing the state language assessment. But Stollar said that succeeding on the AIMS test doesn't mean the student is fluent enough to perform well in the mainstream classroom.

"If I were to teach a bunch of French students mathematics - how much of my mathematics are they really going to understand?" Stollar said. "Wouldn't it be better to put them in an intensive . . . English program?"

Tim Hogan, an attorney for the Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest, said there are certain aspects of the new state standard for language development that are troubling and could be challenged in court, particularly the fact that ELL students are segregated and isolated for language training.

Hogan is an attorney in the Flores case filed years ago against Arizona claiming that the state has failed to fully fund education for students who are learning English.

He said he still is awaiting an opinion from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals before trying to address flaws in the new state standards for learning English.

Labels: English language learners, segregation

posted by Patricia Lopez at 10:52 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Roger Croteau | San Antonio Express-News
March 26, 2008

NEW BRAUNFELS -- A middle school principal threatened to kill a group of science teachers if their students did not improve their standardized test scores, according to a complaint filed with the New Braunfels Police Department.

Anita White, who taught at New Braunfels Middle School for 18 years before being transferred this month to the district's Learning Center, said Principal John Burks made the threat in a Jan. 21 meeting with eighth-grade science teachers.

She said Burks was angry that scores on benchmark tests were not better, and the scores on the upcoming Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills tests must show improvement.

"He said if the TAKS scores were not as expected he would kill the teachers," White said. "He said 'I will kill you all and kill myself.' He finished the meeting that way and we were in shock. Obviously, we talked about it among ourselves. He just threatened our lives. After he threatened to kill us, he said, 'You don't know how ruthless I can be.'

"We walked out of the meeting just totally dumbfounded because it was not a joke," White said.

New Braunfels Police spokesman Mike Penshorn said the incident was filed as a verbal assault, but is being investigated as a terroristic threat.

Burks did not return a call seeking comment. Other teachers White said were at the meeting also did not return calls.

Jacob Gonzales, an eighth-grade science teacher at the school who was not at the meeting, said another teacher, besides White, mentioned it, telling Gonzales "it was not spoken in a joking manner and it kind of alarmed him and gave him an uneasy feeling."

New Braunfels School District spokeswoman Stephanie Ferguson said Burks told her it did not happen. She spoke to him after learning of the allegation from reporters.

"I did not talk to the other teachers. Other than that, it is a personnel matter and I can't talk about it. We have not seen a police report."

White said she decided to file the police report after one of the teachers spoke to a school board member about the incident, without result. She said she also plans to file a grievance with the school board.

Before she filed the complaint on Saturday, White said, Burks told her she was being transferred to the Learning Center, which houses the district's disciplinary school, because of the test scores. She said her classes' standardized test scores were consistently the best in the grade.

Ferguson later released a three-sentence statement that noted White filed the complaint after being reassigned. The statement quoted Burks as saying, "All personnel decisions are made with the best interests of students in mind."

Many teachers complain about the importance placed on TAKS scores, saying a single, standardized test often does not measure how well their students are learning.

"It sounds like a case of TAKS tyranny taken to the extreme," said Joe Bean a spokesman for the Texas State Teachers Association, who said teachers and administrators are often punished for disappointing test performance.

"Once a principal gets a reputation as not able to get the scores that are required, that principal is virtually unemployable," he said.

Bean said the TAKS provides only a snapshot of how students performed on that day and that students of some outstanding teachers and schools sometimes do not score well for a variety of reasons.

Labels: TAKS

posted by Patricia Lopez at 10:49 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Testing Identity

Researcher develops tools to remedy race, gender gaps
in standardized test performance


After finishing a lecture about using euphemisms to
discuss embarrassing or upsetting topics—death, bodily
functions, sex—Dr. Matthew McGlone, assistant
professor of communication studies, was approached by
an African American woman in the audience whose
daughter was about to enter kindergarten.

“Do you have any suggestions on how I can talk to my
daughter about African American stereotypes she might
have to confront in school?” she asked.

A heartbreaking, yet relevant, question considering
that social stereotyping emerges so early in
children’s thinking. Gender typing begins around age
2. By the age of 5, most children endorse the
prevailing gender and ethnic stereotypes in their
environment. By their middle elementary years,
children become aware of intelligence-oriented
stereotypes, such as the belief that white people are
smarter than black people and boys are better at math
than girls.

Matthew McGlone

Dr. Matthew McGlone teaches courses on cognition,
persuasion and prejudice in interpersonal
communication. He is writing a book with Dr. Joshua
Aronson at New York University on stereotype threat,
due out in 2009.

McGlone first became interested in the influence of
stereotypes on academic performance as an
undergraduate statistics instructor in the 1990s. He
was perplexed to observe many talented women and
ethnic minority students stumble on standardized
tests, despite appearing to master concepts in
homework, class discussions and one-on-one
interaction.

According to the College Board, which administers the
Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), women consistently
achieve lower SAT math scores than their male
counterparts, while African Americans achieve lower
scores than whites. Some researchers have attributed
these gaps to hormonal differences between men and
women or genetic differences between different ethnic
groups.

McGlone was intrigued by what he’d seen with his
students and felt strongly that biological factors
were not responsible for the differences. He was
delighted to learn that an acquaintance, Joshua
Aronson, associate professor of applied psychology at
New York University, was investigating the psychology
of stigma. Since then, the two have collaborated in
investigating ways to remediate race and gender gaps
in educational achievement and standardized test
performance.

Cuing Social Identity


Survey researchers have known for years that identity
issues influence the way people answer opinion
questions, especially in the context of political
research. Women respond differently in political
opinion surveys depending on the gender of the survey
administrator, with a tendency to report more liberal
attitudes when asked by a woman.

“What’s surprising is that identity issues can come
into play into what is ostensibly a test of your
knowledge,” said McGlone. “Heightened awareness about
your identity as a man or woman or member of a certain
group could influence your performance on a
standardized math test.”

This phenomenon is called stereotype threat—the fear
that one’s behavior will confirm an existing
stereotype of a group with which that person
identifies, leading to impaired performance. It was
first articulated by Aronson and social psychologist
Claude Steele of Stanford University.

“Stereotype threat can be induced by a variety of
subtle cues in the testing environment,” McGlone said,
“such as the gender composition of a class or being
asked to indicate one’s ethnicity or gender on a test
demographics question. These cues heightened awareness
of people’s ‘ascribed identities’—for example,
identities based on things about themselves that they
can’t easily change.”

McGlone acknowledged that many aspects of personal
identity are achieved—membership in social categories
based on individual achievements—rather than ascribed.
He contended that deficits in test performance caused
by stereotype threat could be mitigated by reminding
test takers of the achieved identities they possess
for which there are positive performance expectations.

“In other words, by putting women in a situation where
they’re not preoccupied with negative gender
stereotypes, you can significantly reduce the gender
gap in standardized testing performance,” he said.

Heightened awareness about your identity as a man or
woman or member of a certain group could influence
your performance on a standardized math test. Dr.
Matthew McGloneMcGlone tested his hypothesis by
priming different social identities among
undergraduates prior to administering the Vandenberg
Mental Rotation Test (VMRT), a standardized spatial
reasoning test linked to math performance. The VMRT
typically produces the largest documented gender
difference in any cognitive ability, a difference some
academics have attributed to genetic differences in
intelligence favoring men.

McGlone and his colleagues asked male and female
students at Lafayette College in Easton, Pa., to take
the VMRT. Prior to the test, the participants
completed one of three short questionnaires composed
of six questions designed to cue a particular social
identity: their residence in the northeastern U.S.,
their gender, or their status as students in a
selective private college.

He found that women who were primed to contemplate
their identity as students at a selective private
college performed at a significantly higher level on
the VMRT than those primed to contemplate their gender
or a test-irrelevant identity. In contrast, priming
selective private college status among the male
participants did not improve their performance.
However, priming their gender status (men are better
at math) did improve their performance.

“These results suggest that priming a positive
achieved identity (selective private college student)
can alleviate women’s anxiety about confirming the
negative stereotype that ‘women can’t do math,’” said
McGlone. “When we primed this positive identity in
men—for whom there is no negative stereotype regarding
their math acumen—their performance was no better than
when their gender was primed.

“We were able to significantly reduce an allegedly
large gender difference with a pretty simple
manipulation,” said McGlone. “Regardless of whether
the documented gender gap is due to biology or
socialization, we can narrow it by psychological
means.”

Applications for these findings might include
eliminating subtle cues from standardized math testing
environments that might make gender identity issues
salient to women and impair their performance.

“We’re pushing for the College Board and other
standardized testing organizations to move demographic
questions to the end of the test,” said McGlone.
“Testers think they’re just collecting data in asking
for gender, ethnic and geographic information, but
there’s a subtle—and consequential—communication going
on here. It says, ‘Your gender matters.”’

“By simply manipulating when questions are asked we
can appreciably improve SAT scores,” he said.
“Ideally, cues that heighten awareness of any negative
stereotypes—ascribed or not—should be eliminated from
testing environments.”

The Vandenberg Mental Rotation Test typically produces
the largest documented gender difference in any
cognitive ability

The Vandenberg Mental Rotation Test typically produces
the largest documented gender difference in any
cognitive ability, a difference some academics have
attributed to genetic differences in intelligence
favoring men. Illustration: Nicholas Bright.

Until that happens, students, especially women and
those in ethnic minority groups, should consider
focusing on attaining additional identities—those
associated with positive academic expectations—as a
means of improving academic performance.

It’s important to note that while stereotype threat
accounts for some of the disparity in standardized
test performance among men, women and ethnic
minorities, there also are accumulated socialization
factors that contribute to these differences.

Stereotyping Among Children

“It’s important to get kids to think about defining
themselves in ways that transcend their gender and
ethnicity early on,” said McGlone. “But talking to a
5-year-old about coping with gender and ethnic
stereotypes is fraught with problems.”

There are many tools for measuring stereotype ideation
in adults, but they typically require sophisticated
reading and reasoning skills that make them
inappropriate for the under-10 set.

In 2002, while working as a fellow at the Center for
Research on Culture Development and Education (CRCDE)
at New York University, McGlone and his colleagues
assessed the social factors that influence elementary
and middle school children’s academic achievement in
New York City public schools. Among the factors being
assessed were children’s access to and use of popular
media and communication technologies, which contribute
to the disruptive influence of self-relevant
stereotypes.

“We conducted in-home visits to assess the parents’
relationships with their children and how these
relationships influenced the children’s cognitive and
social development,” said McGlone. “Familiarity with
gender and ethnic stereotypes was one of the many
aspects of social development we investigated. We were
particularly interested in how the parent-child
relationship influenced the age at which children
exhibited familiarity with stereotypes.

“In conducting these assessments, we needed a tool
that allowed us to measure and quantify the kids’
stereotype beliefs in a subtle manner.”

McGlone created an age-appropriate measurement tool
based on the classic children’s game “concentration”
or “memory.” In the traditional game, players examine
a set of cards placed face down in a grid formation.
Each card has an image on its face that is identical
to one other card in the grid. On each turn, the
player turns over two cards on the grid. If two cards
match, they are removed from the grid. The object of
the game is to remove all cards from the grid by
identifying all of the matches.

The twist to McGlone’s game was the gender and ethnic
composition of the faces and the stereotypes
presented.

During their in-home assessments, researchers gave
children one of three decks of cards with the face of
a boy or girl on one side and pictures of objects
(cooking utensils, trucks, etc.) on the other. The
decks consisted of the stereotype deck, which
re-affirmed stereotypes such as cooking/girl or
doctor/boy, the counter-stereotype deck, which went
against convention with cards such as computer/girl,
doll/boy and the non-stereotype deck, which included a
combination of both stereotype and counter-stereotype
cards.

By putting women in a situation where they're not
preoccupied with negative gender stereotypes, you can
significantly reduce the gender gap in standardized
testing performance. Dr. Matthew McGloneMcGlone and
his team found that children performed the game much
faster with the face-object relationships conformed to
gender stereotypes (for example, two boys who like
trucks or two girls who like cooking) than when they
did not (for example, a boy and a girl who like
trucks).

“We measured the time it took children to finish
stereotype-consistent or inconsistent grids with a
stopwatch to create an index of their endorsement of
gender stereotypes,” he said. “And we found that the
children were quite familiar with gender-based
activity stereotypes (for example, boys like fishing,
girls like cooking) by the age of 5.

“Five- and 6-year-olds love this game and can fly
through the stereotyped cards in two to three
minutes,” said McGlone. “But it takes kids much longer
to go through the counter stereotype deck. Even kids
from highly liberal households performed much better
on the stereotyped deck than the counter- and
non-stereotype deck.”

This demonstrates that children’s intuitions are in
line with stereotypes, which is why the counter- and
non-stereotype decks—where you can’t rely on your
assumptions—were harder for children.

Armed with the findings from his research with the
CRCDE, McGlone and his colleagues created workshops to
teach middle schoolers about stereotype threat and how
to handle it when taking their entrance exams for the
New York City magnet schools.

“To be forewarned is to be forearmed,” said McGlone.
“We talked to the kids about the things they’re good
at and their multiple identities: girl, soccer player,
science enthusiast, etc.”

By instructing the students to think of their
achievements and things in which they excel, McGlone
and his colleagues were able to take the weight off
the stereotype—girl, African American, etc., and
dramatically cut the performance gap on magnet school
entrance exams.

“By telling kids ‘what makes you YOU is what you DO,’
we got them to focus on their achievements,” he said.
“It sounds like a very simple manipulation—and it
is—but it has significant effects on students in a
standardized testing situation.”

Trait Mate

The game proved to be a valuable tool for measuring
stereotypes among children and—equally important—the
children were enthralled with it. It got McGlone
thinking about the mother’s question, “How do you talk
to children about stereotypes?” And “How can you
prevent stereotypes from interfering with children’s
academic success?”

Enter Trait Mate, an online game he is developing for
measuring and modifying children’s social stereotype
beliefs. A Web-based version of the “memory” card
game, Trait Mate serves as both a tool for researchers
to measure children’s knowledge and beliefs about
stereotypes.

In addition to being used as diagnostic tool for
researchers and educators, Trait Mate can be a
stimulus to negate stereotype ideations.

Many people think about intelligence as something that
is fixed. I'm intrigued with the idea of teaching kids
to think of their mind as a muscle, which can get kids
excited about learning. Dr. Matthew McGlone“For
example,” McGlone said, “after completing several
Trait Mate grids in which no stereotyped trait mates
are present, and gender and ethnicity cues have no
value in determining trait mates, kids’ endorsement of
social stereotypes may be reduced by virtue of this
exposure.

“I foresee teachers incorporating Trait Mate into
their social studies curriculum and using the results
as a springboard to discuss prejudice and gender
stereotyping,” McGlone said. “A teacher could have the
kids play the online game and then discuss why one
version of the game was easier than the other.”

Trait Mate is being developed—under McGlone’s
guidance—by the members of Girlstart, a nonprofit
organization that empowers girls in math, science,
engineering and technology. McGlone hopes to make it
available online to researchers and educators in the
coming year.

The Mind as a Muscle

McGlone is interested in further exploring
interventions and is conducting preliminary research
on getting children to think about intelligence as
something that can change.

“Many people think about intelligence as something
that is fixed or something you’re born with,” he said.
“I’m intrigued with the idea of teaching kids to think
of their mind as a muscle, which can get kids excited
about learning.”

McGlone and a colleague are developing a prototype for
an online math game targeting fifth- and sixth-graders
featuring an avatar that gets bigger as players build
their skills, allowing players to do more things, go
further in the game and ultimately score more points.
“If I can get these kids, who often think of
intelligence as something that can’t change, to think
about the fact that how they’re doing in school has
more do to with what they’re doing, not what they’re
born with, that can make them less vulnerable to
stereotype threat,” McGlone said.

By Erin Geisler at erin.geisler@austin.utexas.edu

http://www.utexas.edu/features/2008/stereotype_threat/

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 11:41 PM 0 comments Links to this post

C-3P-Ow
STAR-TELEGRAM
Maybe we should just fire all the teachers. If a faction of the State Board of Education gets its way, we won't need teachers any more. What we'll need is "classroom facilitators," and we should be able to get them to work for even less than we pay teachers.

Come to think of it, robots might do the job. On Day 73 of the school year, they'd just play a recording of exactly what the state board says the students are supposed to be told on Day 73, and that would be it. Automation -- that's the key.

Don't laugh. We're heading in that direction.

Today, a board subcommittee will consider a revision to state curriculum standards for English, language arts and reading instruction in grades K-12. The full board will take a preliminary vote on the standards Thursday, with a final vote set for next month.

A team of Texas teachers named by the board spent almost three years compiling a set of curriculum standards, but that's not what the board will consider. Board Chairman Don McLeroy, who has been in his post for all of four months, says that "nobody" liked what the teachers put together.

Rather, the board will vote on a set of standards developed by a facilitator. Doesn't that just warm your heart?

This is very important stuff. The curriculum standards adopted by the board become enshrined as the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills. The TEKS determine what criteria are used in developing the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills tests. Kids in some grades can't move to the next grade unless they pass the TAKS tests (with some exceptions), and no one can get a high school diploma without passing TAKS.

The teachers have a number of objections to the standards that will be considered by the board. Kylene Beers of Houston, the president-elect of the National Council of Teachers of English, wrote to board members saying that the proposals don't place enough emphasis on teaching reading comprehension, give no attention to media literacy, over-emphasize grammar taught in isolation and lack enough multicultural literature.

But the loudest objection has been to the inclusion in the standards of something that Texas does not currently have: a state-adopted reading list. It's not that the teachers think the books on the list are bad -- in fact, they're all good, and most teachers use them. But once the state starts mandating a list, it becomes a limit on teachers' freedom to pick the best tools to use for teaching the unique students in front of them.

Texas public school students are a diverse group. A book that might grab the interest of a sixth-grade class in a minority neighborhood of Fort Worth might not be the best to use in suburban Southlake or the Rio Grande Valley.

That's where school district administrators, principals and teachers come in. They need the freedom to tailor their work to the needs of their own students, who should be learning the skill of reading more than what was said in any particular book.

Curriculum standards should outline the concepts that are to be taught and give clear, achievable objectives to guide the work of teachers during each school year. But for goodness' sake, teachers are not robots. If they are forced to act like they are, Texas education will be the worse for it.

Labels: TEKS Standards

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

Panel vows no private school vouchers for dropouts

By GARY SCHARRER
Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau


AUSTIN ˜ Texas won't use private school vouchers to
educate high school dropouts, a state education
council insisted Tuesday while adopting a strategic
plan aimed at increasing graduation rates.

But a group critical of school vouchers remains
skeptical.

The High School Completion and Success Initiative
Council advocates multiple approaches to address the
dropout problem, including "alternative delivery
systems," which the Texas Freedom Network believes is
code language for "school vouchers."

Vouchers allow parents to send children to private and
religious schools with public money paying for at
least a portion of the tuition.

"I cannot see this language (in the strategic plan)
as, in any way, opening the door for anything that we
would be putting under the heading of vouchers," said
council member Don McAdams.

McAdams is president of the Houston-based Center for
Reform of School Systems, and a former president of
the Houston Independent School District board of
trustees.

"If we are going to go down this path, I think it will
create so much controversy that it will distract from
the work of our council, which is another good reason
why we should stay away from (vouchers)," McAdams
said.

The strategic plan does allow the Texas Education
Agency to fund nonprofit groups to educate school
dropouts.

And that's "not giving money to a parent to shop
around" such as a traditional voucher program would
allow, noted Education Commissioner Robert Scott,
chairman of the High School Completion and Success
Initiative Council.

gscharrer@express-news.net

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 11:14 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Monday, March 10, 2008

By TERRENCE STUTZ / The Dallas Morning News
tstutz@dallasnews.com

AUSTIN ˆ More than 100 school districts have changed
their minds and dropped out of Texas' new merit pay
plan for teachers ˆ leaving just a third of the
districts in the state to help launch the $148 million
program next year.

The decision by so many districts to bail out of the
plan ˆ mostly because of financial concerns ˆ means
there will be more money for the districts that are
staying in.

For example, the Dallas school district will get
almost $1 million extra for a total of nearly $8.2
million.

Districts decide how to distribute the money, but the
recommended minimum bonus is $3,000.

In all, nine districts in Dallas County will
participate in the District Awards for Teacher
Excellence, approved by the Legislature to financially
reward the state's best teachers.

Other large districts in the Dallas area that have
signed up for the program are Arlington, Fort Worth
and Plano.

One district that first decided to participate and
then pulled out recently was Grapevine-Colleyville,
which will forgo a $650,000 grant from the state.

Karen Moxley, an English teacher at Cross Timbers
Middle School and the president of the
Grapevine-Colleyville Education Association, said the
district was concerned about language in program rules
that suggested school officials should be prepared to
pay the bonuses with local funds in the future.

"When they looked at what it would take to be eligible
for the program and the fact that state funds could
not be guaranteed in future years, they had second
thoughts," Ms. Moxley said of her district's decision
to not participate. "It just wasn't a good fit for our
district."

Megan Overman, a spokeswoman for the district, said
officials "spent a lot of time researching the program
and the impact it could potentially have on our
district."

In the end, she noted, it came down to two questions:
"Whether this program would support the culture of our
district, and what are the financial issues related to
the matching funds requirement and the uncertainty of
continued funding from the state."

Since there were concerns about both, the district
opted out.

Since last fall, superintendents have complained about
a decision by state Education Commissioner Robert
Scott to require that districts put up a 15 percent
match to receive a state grant under the DATE program.

In Dallas' case, that means about $1.1 million in
local funds or in-kind contributions.

Mr. Scott has said the match is a relatively small
amount of the total and gives school districts an
investment in the program.

But many local school officials said their budgets are
too tightly drawn to be able to give up the dollars.

They also note the possibility that state funds may
diminish or disappear if state revenues drop sharply
as they did five years ago when the Legislature
enacted broad cutbacks in state programs to erase a
$10 billion deficit.

"There is a lot of concern about future funding
increases that school districts may not get," said
Cindy Clegg of the Texas Association of School Boards,
referring to the state guidelines cautioning that
districts may eventually have to fund the incentive
payments on their own.

"It takes a lot of time and effort to put a plan like
this together," she said. "Until there is a clear
commitment and some funding stability, you are going
to see districts approach this tentatively."

Debbie Ratcliffe, a spokeswoman for the Texas
Education Agency, said funding is contingent on future
appropriations from the Legislature, and school
districts should approach the merit pay plan with that
in mind.

"We wish we could predict long-term funding for our
programs, but when the Legislature operates on a
two-year budget, we cannot guarantee anything longer
than that," she explained.

Ms. Ratcliffe said the program is voluntary and
districts have the right to not participate.

Still, she added, "This is something that can put
thousands of extra dollars in their teachers'
paychecks. That is one of many reasons they should
consider participating."

She also pointed out that some districts are already
operating their own merit pay plans and said they may
prefer to keep their money in those rather than join
the state's program.

The DATE program and a companion merit pay plan aimed
at rewarding teachers in schools with a high
percentage of low-income children make up the largest
teacher merit pay program in the state.

The twin plans were part of the school reform package
adopted by the Legislature in a special session on
education in the spring of 2006.

Among the 336 districts that will be offering DATE
bonuses next year are the 10 largest districts in the
state ˆ including Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Austin
and Arlington.

Those districts all will receive sizable grants under
the program and would have found it difficult to turn
down such a sum.

"It's hard for the bigger districts to turn down
millions of dollars no matter how they feel about the
program," said Richard Kouri of the Texas State
Teachers Association, which has been critical of both
merit pay plans.

Mr. Kouri said he was not surprised that two-thirds of
the districts in the state have decided not to get
into the DATE program.

"When they looked at the requirements and anticipated
costs, many decided it wasn't how they wanted to spend
their money and their time," he said. "Some districts
decided not to do it because it hinges on a single
standardized test, and many educators are beginning to
question whether high-stakes tests should be the
end-all and be-all of education in this state."

Ms. Moxley said teachers in the Grapevine-Colleyville
district were unenthusiastic about introducing merit
pay there.

"Nobody wanted to turn the money down, but we felt
this would have pitted teacher against teacher," she
said.

After Dallas, the next largest grant in Dallas County
is scheduled to go to Garland at $2.9 million, up
$300,000 from last fall's estimate.

Arlington is in line to receive almost $3.2 million
and Plano nearly $2.8 million.

Legislative leaders, meanwhile, said they remain
committed to the program and believe it will yield
results in the classroom as districts come up with
locally designed merit pay plans that reward the best
teachers for their efforts.

"We're trying to find the best and fairest ways to
reward teacher performance," said Rob Eissler, R-The
Woodlands, who is chairman of the House Public
Education Committee Chairman.
TEXAS' MERIT PAY PLANS FOR TEACHERS

A look at the two plans that make up Texas' teacher
merit pay program, the largest in the nation:

DATE: District Awards for Teacher Excellence program
begins next year and is open to all schools. The
grants require a local match.

Recommends a $3,000 bonus per teacher and is designed
to provide enough money to reward nearly 50,000
teachers, one of every six in Texas, for improved test
scores and other signs of student achievement.

TEEG: Texas Educator Excellence Grant program, it is
in its second year and is for teachers in schools with
a high percentage of low-income children. No local
match is required.

Involved an estimated 52,000 teachers at 1,148
campuses last year and gave average maximum bonuses of
$2,263, far less than the $3,000 to $10,000 range
recommended by the Legislature.
WHERE THE MONEY GOES
Dallas-area school districts participating in Texas'
new merit pay plan for teachers and the amount of
grant money each will receive from the state. (Each
district must provide a 15 percent local match.)
School District Estimated award
Allen $864,933
Arlington $3,175,638
Aubrey $77,983
Birdville $1,145,265
Carrollton-

Farmers Branch
$1,343,982
Cedar Hill $406,564
Dallas $8,149,159
Duncanville $633,027
Fort Worth $4,071,869
Garland $2,921,694
Hurst-Euless-

Bedford
$1,040,692
Irving $1,647,914
Keller $1,413,828
Lancaster $319,515
McKinney $1,099,080
Mesquite $1,869,680
Plano $2,756,152
Prosper $116,726
Richardson $1,736,372
Districts not participating: Carroll, Coppell, Denton,
DeSoto, Ennis, Frisco Grand Prairie,
Grapevine-Colleyville, Highland Park, Lewisville,
Rockwall, Sunnyvale
SOURCE: Texas Education Agency

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

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 11:13 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Results mixed in first year of Texas' teacher merit
pay plan

Exclusive: Study finds bonuses didn't sway most to
alter methods

By TERRENCE STUTZ / The Dallas Morning News
tstutz@dallasnews.com

AUSTIN ˆ The first year of Texas' $100 million
experiment in school reform ˆ involving an estimated
52,000 teachers in the largest merit pay plan in the
nation ˆ produced mixed results and didn't motivate
most teachers to change their classroom techniques.

An independent study funded by the state showed that
the Texas Educator Excellence Grant program drew a
favorable response from teachers in the 1,148 schools
where bonuses were awarded, but the study also said
massive turnover of schools in the plan each year will
make it difficult to achieve success over the long
haul.

In addition, according to researchers, school
districts gave bonuses far less than the $3,000 to
$10,000 range recommended by the Legislature. Trying
to spread the money among more teachers, districts
gave average maximum bonuses of $2,263.

Hundreds of campuses in North Texas are participating
in the program, including 90 in the Dallas school
district this year. The plan was created under the
school finance reform law passed by the Legislature in
2006.

The 161-page study on the merit pay program was
conducted by the National Center on Performance
Incentives under a contract with the Texas Education
Agency. Researchers who worked on the study were from
Vanderbilt University, the University of Missouri and
the RAND Corp., a nonprofit think tank.

State education officials said Thursday they were
pleased with the first year of the grant program and
the findings of the study, though they are
implementing changes to address some of the
shortcomings identified. Teacher leaders, on the other
hand, said the study affirms problems that they
predicted would befall the program.

"We think the program is accomplishing what the
Legislature intended," said Jerel Booker, TEA director
of education initiatives and performance.

"One of the primary goals was to retain good teachers
in our schools, and at least 70 percent of these
teachers said they have a strong desire to participate
in the program."

Mr. Booker said teacher retention is particularly
important for the 1,148 schools that were in the plan
last year because all serve a large percentage of
economically disadvantaged children ˆ one of the
requirements for eligibility.

Richard Kouri of the Texas State Teachers Association
said the study highlights problems that hampered
previous efforts to set up merit pay for public school
teachers. The association and other teacher
organizations have opposed the state's merit pay plan,
contending all teachers should get raises because
salaries in Texas are low compared with other states.

Pointing to one finding that 85 percent of the
teachers in the program said it did not affect their
work in the classroom, Mr. Kouri said: "What did the
$100 million accomplish? These teachers were already
doing a good job."

He also cited a major flaw in the program that was
identified by the study, that 60 percent of the
schools in the program last year were dropped from the
plan this year because they failed to meet performance
and demographic targets.

"The way it is designed now, a majority of teachers
can't count on merit pay being available at their
schools for more than one year," he said.

The high turnover of schools in the program, according
to the study, "can weaken the incentives by lowering
the probability of a teacher's school being eligible
for [the grant program] in multiple years."

In addition, teachers may be discouraged from adopting
new teaching approaches ˆ which require investments of
time and training ˆ if they believe their school's
program will be gone after one year, researchers
noted.

Mr. Booker said one of the reasons for the high
turnover of schools is the limited amount of funding
in the program, which provides only enough money for
about 1,100 schools a year. He said the situation
should be eased somewhat when the state kicks off a
second incentive pay plan ˆ open to all public schools
ˆ next year.

State grants in the Texas Educator Excellence Grant
program are targeted at schools with a high percentage
of low-income students. To qualify, schools also have
to earn a performance rating of "exemplary" or
"recognized" ˆ the top two grades in the state's
accountability system ˆ or rank in the top quarter of
schools in math or reading improvements on the state's
standardized test, the Texas Assessment of Knowledge
and Skills.

Each school must develop a plan for distributing the
bonuses, subject to approval by the Texas Education
Agency. Teachers are supposed to be involved in
formulating the plans, which in most schools last year
were based on student performance, teacher
collaboration and teacher initiative.

In the Dallas school district, 90 campuses were
invited into the program this year ˆ 12 more schools
than last year. In all, those schools will receive
about $9.5 million for incentive pay, including
$300,000 for Skyline High School ˆ the largest grant
of any campus in the district.

On the positive side, a survey of teachers in the
program found fairly broad support for performance
incentives in general and for the Texas Educator
Excellence Grant program specifically.

Researchers also said that "many of the reservations
against performance incentives were not realized" in
the Texas program, including critics' predictions that
merit pay would lead to less teacher collaboration and
diminished instruction.

"Most teachers responded favorably to their school's
[grant] program and also indicated generally positive
relations with colleagues and between teachers and
students," the study said.

Mr. Booker of the TEA said school districts are being
encouraged this year to target the money to their
highest performing teachers rather than spreading it
out with small bonuses for a large number of teachers.

Student test scores at the schools were not evaluated
by researchers but will be next year, according to
state officials.

Among other districts in the Dallas area with a large
number of schools that were tapped to participate this
year are Fort Worth (25 schools), Arlington (19),
Richardson (13) and three districts with seven schools
each ˆ Garland, Grand Prairie and Irving. Mesquite has
four schools on the list, and three other districts
have three each ˆ Carrollton-Farmers Branch,
Duncanville and Lewisville.

Labels: teacher incentive pay

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

Press Release
For Immediate Release Contact: Adrian Rodriguez

March 17, 2008 Phone: 214-478-5921

E-Mail: Adrian.rodriguez17@verizon.net

Texas LULAC Condemns SBOE's Subcommittee for Lack of Hispanic Representation Among the Expert Group Reviewing/ Revising the ELAR Standards

On February 29, 2008, the State Board Of Education (SBOE) subcommittee, appointed by Chairman Don McElroy, recommended and appointed a group of "experts" to review the English Language Arts and Reading (ELAR) standards prepared by an independent contractor. Texas LULAC is highly concerned that a knowledgeable expert in the field of bilingual education and ESL was not appointed.

Texas student demographics show that Hispanics comprise 47% of the total public school enrollment. The SBOE has neglected the needs of a significant portion of the Texas student population by not appointing Hispanic researchers to the expert review panel.

According to Adrian Rodriguez, co-chair of the Texas LULAC Legislative committee, "The actions of the SBOE subcommittee will only serve to widen the achievement gap for Hispanic students. The entire Texas community will suffer if we cannot properly attend to the literacy, language, and learning needs of Hispanics and other minority groups. Proper representation will alleviate these problems."

We strongly recommend the SBOE appoint Hispanic researchers to review the current ELAR document to ensure each standard reflects the needs of English Language Learners. In addition, the Spanish Language Arts and English as a Second Language Standards should not be relegated to second-class status. Rather than waiting to address the Spanish Language arts and English as a Second Language Standards after ELAR, which places bilingual students at a disadvantage, revisions for all standards should be considered simultaneously.

Adrian Rodriguez
LULAC VP for the South West
Cell 214-478-5921

Labels: TEKS Standards

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 10:58 PM 0 comments Links to this post

On the Web, you can Proposed curriculum. I do take this as a hostile, exclusive, and culturally chauvinistic posture by the SBOE to all of our state's children. This comment by McLeroy is revealing:

"What good does it do to put a Chinese story in an English book?" he said. "You learn all these Chinese words, OK. That's not going to help you master ... English. So you really don't want Chinese books with a bunch of crazy Chinese words in them. Why should you take a child's time trying to learn a word that they'll never ever use again"

He added that some words — such as chow mein — might be useful.

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 8:56 PM 0 comments Links to this post

I quote from within: "'There's no malice at all, none, zip, nada. There's just no time to get another expert in,' he [Dan McLeroy] said after the meeting."

For something so important, devising the state's new curriculum, McLeroy's statement sounds reckless. The SBOE needs to put the brakes on this process and they also need to bring expertise on Latino youth and curricula to the table.

All who can should try and make the March 27 meeting.

-Angela

March 20, 2008, 11:02AM
State panel rejects Latino call for input on curriculum
No more time to alter policy for English and reading, state chair insists
By GARY SCHARRER
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau

AUSTIN — There is neither time nor a reason to slow down a plan to update the English language arts and reading curriculum for public schools, State Board of Education Chairman Don McLeroy said Wednesday after a Texas lawmaker pleaded for input from Hispanic experts.

Hispanic children now make up a large plurality of the 4.7 million students attending Texas public schools.

"There is no way that ignoring such a sizable chunk of this population from consideration of education policy will do anything but harm the opportunity of a generation," Rep. Abel Herrero, D-Robstown, told McLeroy and a four-member board subcommittee.

Herrero represented the House Mexican American Legislative Caucus, which has asked McLeroy to include experts in Latino culture before adopting a final document. He and other advocates did not have specific examples of how a lack of such experts may have resulted in omissions in the newly released document.

Preliminary vote coming

The board plans a public hearing Wednesday and will take a preliminary vote March 27 on new curriculum standards that will influence new textbooks for the 2009-10 school year.

Mary Helen Berlanga, the senior member of the State Board of Education, said the refusal of her colleagues to include Latino experts in developing the new curriculum amounted to malice.

"It's ignorance on their part," Berlanga said after the subcommittee signaled its intent to stick to a schedule and not call in Hispanic experts.

"We're trying to teach (minority children) English language arts, and all we want is someone who has researched these children and their learning styles to find out where they are deficient and where we can help them," Berlanga, of Corpus Christi, said. "We can save a whole population of children.

"It makes no sense except that there is malice and individuals who want to see that the Texas public (school) system fails individuals (and) who are not interested in seeing minorities progress,"she said.

McLeroy, of Bryan, said he was shocked by accusations that he and some board members are trying to shortchange Hispanic students.

"There's no malice at all, none, zip, nada. There's just no time to get another expert in," he said after the meeting. "None of us would do anything to hurt any group of children or any (individual) child. What we want is for them to be successful in the English language because it's so important."

No wholesale changes

Of the 4.7 million children attending Texas public schools this year, Hispanics make up 47 percent, Anglos 35 percent and African-Americans 14 percent, according to the Texas Education Agency.

The number of Hispanic children will continue to increase. Among the 1.5 million children enrolled in kindergarten through third grades, Hispanics make up 49.6 percent and whites 33 percent.

Teachers and other English language and reading experts can offer comments on the 78-page proposal at the public hearing next week. There has been plenty of opportunity for various experts to provide input earlier, McLeroy said.

"If there's something that could cause a certain group to stumble, I think we ought to fix it," he said.

But a wholesale substitution or even major changes no longer are possible, McLeroy said, adding, "We should have had this done a long time ago."

Lawrence Allen Jr., of Houston, the only minority member on the subcommittee, supported the call for experts in Latino culture to review the document.

"It's a simple request, one that we need to meet to satisfy such a large population of our state," he said.

Cindy Tyroff, an English language arts and reading expert in San Antonio's Northside Independent School District, said it will take some time to assess the proposal.

But she said it is not an exaggeration "to say it's always prudent to have lots of eyes and people with lots of expertise" involving in writing a new curriculum.

gscharrer@express-news.net

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 11:48 PM 0 comments Links to this post

But many try vocational, 2-year schools instead; report says city high schools should do more to help them apply

Carlos Sadovi | Chicago Tribune
March 13, 2008

A large number of Chicago public high school students "sell themselves short" by attending two-year colleges or vocational schools when they could go on to four-year colleges, a new report says.

The study, "From High School to the Future: Potholes on the Road to College," released Wednesday, found that many students simply gave up trying to go to four-year colleges, discouraged or intimidated by the application and financial-aid processes.

The three-year study by the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago found that Latino students were least likely to apply to four-year schools.

The consortium analyzed data on 5,100 Chicago public high school graduates in 2005, and interviewed 105 students in three high schools.

Among the key findings, researchers found that teachers and school culture had more influence than parents did on whether students went on to four-year colleges.

As a result, the authors concluded, schools must do more to help students work through the often grueling process of getting to college.

District officials say the study coincides with changes already under way in the system. Some programs include teaming up students with "coaches" who focus on getting them through the application process, easing financial-aid application hurdles, and offering visits to four-year colleges in Illinois and across the country.

While the study focused on Chicago students, Melissa Roderick, the study's lead author, said the study could apply to "any school system in the United States."

"Most of our CPS kids are going to colleges well below the colleges they are qualified to attend," Roderick said. "You go with what you know. This sends precisely the wrong message to students. If you are going to tell them they need to work hard to go to college, you have to have that work pay off."

According to the study, about 95 percent of the 2005 grads said they wanted to continue their education. But only 59 percent of those who wanted to go to four-year college ever applied, and just 41 percent enrolled that fall.

Roderick, a co-director at the consortium, said Latino students face a particular set of challenges: They are less likely to have parents who have gone to a four-year college and are less able to navigate through financial-aid forms. Although many parents encourage students to pursue college, the students most often limit themselves, the study found.

Only 46 percent of all Latino students applied to four-year colleges, and only 30 percent of Latino students enrolled in the fall. Immigration status did not seem to matter.

The study found that many students they analyzed tended to sell themselves short. About one-third of CPS students apply to colleges that "match or exceed their qualifications."

About 45 percent of African-American students went on to schools that matched or exceeded their qualifications, but the number dropped to about 28 percent for Latino students.

Carlos Azcoitia, the founding principal of the Spry Community School and still a consultant for the South Lawndale school, said schools have to step in and help applicants. He said that often parents who went no further than high school must be educated so that they don't push their children to get jobs right out of school.

District officials acknowledged the problem. Greg Darnieder, director of post-secondary education and student development, said that in 2004 the district began employing post-secondary coaches, now found in 27 high schools.

He said the district is also sponsoring more trips for students to visit colleges. He noted that more than 450 students will be going on a variety of college trips next week during spring break, ranging from Ivy League schools to traditional black and Latino colleges. The district also next year plans to begin sending 11th graders a list of 10 to 12 schools that match their academic performance, Darnieder said.

Roosevelt High School senior Amanda Perez credits her college coach with helping her navigate through financial-aid forms and apply to four-year schools.

Perez, who plans to attend Illinois State University in the fall, said her coach encouraged Perez to attend retreats dealing with financial-aid issues, sent her to visit colleges and helped her fill out applications.

"I don't know if I would be able to do this on my own, it would have been very difficult," she said.

Labels: higher education

posted by Patricia Lopez at 12:39 PM 0 comments Links to this post

BY CARRIE MELAGO | NY DAILY NEWS

Friday, March 14th 2008

Parents and activists furious over a tougher eighth-grade promotion policy stormed Department of Education headquarters Thursday, demanding a meeting with Schools Chancellor Joel Klein before Monday's vote on the plan.

About 50 members of the Coalition for Educational Justice rushed the front door of education headquarters and chanted "Let us in!" and "We want Klein!"

The protestors wanted Klein to postpone the vote on the proposal, which holds back eighth-graders for failing one of four courses or flunking standardized math or reading tests.

For weeks, the group has demanded that the Panel for Educational Policy reject the proposal unless officials first adopt a plan to improve middle grades.

Thursday, they marched up the steps of Tweed Courthouse and demanded to speak with Klein.

"He's the decision-maker, but when it comes to meeting with the chancellor directly, he won't meet with us," said Lenore Brown of Brooklyn, who has eight grandchildren in public schools.

Security guards kept the crowd at bay while leaders negotiated with Ed Department officials. Four protesters were allowed inside to discuss their concerns but left when they were told Klein wasn't available.

Education officials say they are developing a "middle grade success plan" for the coming school year, and staff members have held regular meetings with the opponents of the policy.

"We have met many times with CEJ and will continue to," said the chancellor's press secretary, David Cantor.

Mayor Bloomberg has said the proposed policy is a way to ensure students are better prepared for the rigors of high school and continues his fight against social promotion.

Only 1,300 out of 77,000 eighth-graders were held back last year, but nearly 18,000 would be in danger of failing under the new proposal.

posted by Patricia Lopez at 12:08 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Melissa McEver | The Monitor
March 12, 2008

McALLEN - Local Latino children tend to live in worse neighborhoods than white children, and so are less likely to grow up healthy, according to a study released this week.

In the March/April issue of medical policy journal Health Affairs, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health conclude the McAllen metropolitan area is one of the country's five worst regions for the proportion of Latino children who live in "low-opportunity" neighborhoods.

Low-opportunity neighborhoods tend to hold fewer grocery stores with fresh produce, poorer schools, fewer parks and playgrounds and higher crime rates than high-opportunity neighborhoods, said lead researcher Dolores Acevedo-Garcia. Those factors contribute to children's overall health as they grow up, she said.

"Neighborhood conditions are really the foundation of healthy development," said Acevedo-Garcia, associate professor at Harvard. "There's research that says living in poor neighborhoods can affect a number of health outcomes."

The researchers used data from the 2000 Census in the study, comparing the distribution of children of different ethnicities to certain neighborhood quality indicators such as poverty rates, rental rates and unemployment.

Rates of smoking, drug use, other risky behaviors and obesity all are higher among people who have grown up in impoverished neighborhoods, Acevedo-Garcia said.

A study that appeared in last month's Pediatrics reinforced the theory that poverty impacts children's health. It suggested children who fall at 200 percent or below the federal poverty level, or who live in "unsafe" neighborhoods, are less likely to be in "very good" health.

The Health Affairs study singles out the McAllen area because the disparity between the neighborhoods in which Latino children live and the neighborhoods in which white children live is great, Acevedo-Garcia said. It does not mention the Brownsville-Harlingen metropolitan area.

Poverty rates in the McAllen area are high for children of all races, but the poorest white children still live in better neighborhoods than Hispanic children, Acevedo-Garcia said.

Some local health officials questioned whether the study's data took into account recent improvements in Hidalgo County and the Rio Grande Valley.

"We have some poor areas ... but I feel there's been some inroads made," said Eduardo Olivarez, CEO of Hidalgo County Health Department. The Children's Health Insurance Program and Medicaid have enrolled more children and improved access to health care, and neighborhoods are making infrastructure improvements, he said.

Dr. Brian Smith - regional director of Texas Department of State Health Services' Region 11, which includes the Valley - said county leaders should work on finding ways to make impoverished communities healthier, and that neighborhoods ought to get involved, too.

For example, he said, neighborhood leaders could organize an old-fashioned paseo for the whole community to take a walk together.

"Everyone needs to get together and drive out the more dangerous elements," he said.

Labels: poverty, Region 1

posted by Patricia Lopez at 1:12 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Some very important points raised here. There definitely needs to be a push to continually think more critically in how we frame issues of language in education. -Patricia

Published: 2/14/2008

They’re “emergent bilinguals,” not “English Language Learners”—and teachers should build on their strengths

What’s in a name? For students branded “English Language Learners (ELLs),” the answer, all too often, is misguided policies that marginalize the assets they bring to a classroom.

So argued TC professor Ofelia Garcia at TC’s inaugural “Equity Matters” forum in late January. Garcia’s presentation, “Equity in the Education of Emergent Bilinguals: The case of English Language Learners,” tackled the focus of U.S. education policy on bi- and multilingualism in the U.S. as well as attitudes toward immigrant children and families.

Clearly, the U.S. needs to harness the talents of these students, Garcia noted, because they represent an ever-growing share of the school population, with a rate of school enrollment increasing at seven times the national average.

Yet it’s just as clear that federal policy isn’t working when it comes to how this country educates its non-native English speakers. According to data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), only 4 percent of English language learners in the eighth grade are proficient in reading and only 6 percent in math. Seventy-one percent of ELLs scored below “basic” on the eighth grade NAEP reading and math tests. ELLs trail English proficient students by 39 points in reading and 36 points in math on a 500-point scale nationally. And a survey in 2003 revealed that 50 percent of ELLS fail their graduation tests, compared with 24 percent of English-proficient students.

To Garcia, those failures stem from a fundamentally close-minded approach to language—and one that is very much at odds with mainstream thinking in other countries.

“Throughout the world, bilingualism is the norm,” she says. “But here, bilingualism in the classroom and society is the elephant in the room. In viewing non-native speakers simply as people who ‘don’t yet speak English’ we’re focusing only on the elephant’s only the tail.”

Garcia said that the very term “English Language Learner” reflects all the failings in the U.S. approach. She argued instead for “emergent bilingual” as a preferable term for students in this population. “Calling them ELL is erasing who they are,” she said. “They already contribute to our society in many different ways. They have divergent thinking, a facility with languages, skills that we can use in the classroom and beyond.”

At the same time, she said, current methods for assessing the abilities and content knowledge of these students are unjust and perpetuate their difficulties in integrating into society.

“Half of their reserves are in another language,” she said. “If you give them tests that are monolingually biased instead of testing content knowledge, you’ll never achieve equity.” Furthermore, recent studies have shown that use of a child’s home language is better for these students’ education than structured English immersion.

Nor is competency in English the only barrier that emergent bilinguals face, Garcia said. “We need to change attitudes about these students’ parents, not branding them as deficient and lazy. Not only do they speak a different language, but many of them can’t even enter their child’s school, since you have to produce an ID.” As a Hispanic woman, she said, “I feel intimidated walking into schools sometimes. Imagine how their parents can feel.”

Inclusion of parents and multilingual assessment are both essential for better serving the needs of emergent bilinguals and capitalizing on their strengths, Garcia said.

“We need a more flexible stance about accepted language. Standard school language is a construct, a way of regulating speech. I’d like to be able to test content without making language the overwhelming barrier.”

Labels: bilingualism

posted by Patricia Lopez at 2:16 PM 0 comments Links to this post

To check out "The Year in Hate" it breaks down the number of hate groups (accounted for) across states. -Patricia


Civil Rights Group Says Anti-Immigrant Rhetoric Driving Increase in Hate Crimes

By SCOTT MICHELS
March 10, 2008

The national immigration debate is driving up the number of hate groups in the country and fueling attacks against Hispanics, according to a report released today by a civil rights group.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate crimes, said that the number of hate groups in the country rose last year to 888, up from 844 in 2006 and 602 in 2000.

The report "The Year in Hate" said the increase was fueled by anti-immigration rhetoric. Among the groups listed by SPLC as an organization based on hate is the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a well-known advocacy group whose leaders have testified before Congress about ending illegal immigration and restricting legal immigration.

"We've seen a remarkable growth in hate groups in the last six or seven years and it seems anecdotally clear that the growth is driven by the immigration debate in this county," said Mark Potok, the director of the center's Intelligence Project. "Virtually all the old line hate groups have turned their attention almost entirely to illegal immigration."

The center said that Hispanics are feeling the brunt of the anti-immigration anger.

According to the FBI, 819 people were victims of anti-Hispanic hate crimes in 2006, the latest year for which statistics are available, up from 763 in 2000 and 595 in 2003.

FAIR, which says it has 250,000 members, rejected the hate label.

"There is no level of hate crime that is acceptable -- period," said Bob Dane, the group's spokesman.

Dane criticized the center's report as biased and misleading, and accused it of attempting to smear FAIR and trying to stop valid discussion on immigration

"It's not about stopping the hate, it's about stopping the debate," he said.

FAIR said that the center's statistics were exaggerated and criticized the center for failing to define what constitutes a hate group.

The center listed FAIR as a hate group based on the purported discriminatory beliefs of one of its founders and some of its donors. Dane called those assertions "wild allegations."

Potok said the largest growth in hate groups was in California, Arizona and Texas, border states where immigration is a contentious political issue. "The majority of anti-Latino hate crimes are in fact directed against people thought to be undocumented immigrants," he said.

Jack Levin, a sociology professor at Northeastern University who specializes in hate groups, said the combination of the downturn in the economy and the surge in immigration has created hostility toward Hispanics.

"Whenever times get bad and unemployment starts to rise, we blame the newcomers," he said.

Labels: immigration, racism

posted by Patricia Lopez at 1:46 PM 0 comments Links to this post

This really brings to light the harsh realities many people face in the U.S. The racism behind policies like Prop 300 is creating more problems than solutions. -Patricia

By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN | NY Times
March 12, 2008

PHOENIX — One morning last August, Yvonne Watterson, the principal of GateWay Early College High School here, sat in her office, grimly scrolling through the database of its 240 students.

At the behest of a new state law she detested, she looked for which ones listed a Social Security number and which did not. Without a number, it was virtually certain that a child was in America illegally.

Ms. Watterson wound up with 38 names, many of them of boys and girls she had personally recruited to the school. Under the statute popularly known as Proposition 300, illegal immigrants could not receive in-state tuition at public colleges and universities in Arizona. Nor could school administrators like Ms. Watterson use state money to pay it.

GateWay’s students, while still in high school, are able to take courses at a community college in the same building, with in-state tuition paid by the high school. Ms. Watterson knew her students could not afford to pay the out-of-state rate, generally $280 a credit. And without the college classes, there would be less reason to stay in school.

So she made the list and sent letters home and began to call in the affected students one by one to tell them that their tuition was no longer subsidized. A girl named Karla crumpled to her knees in the principal’s office, and said, “But I’m a good person.” A few weeks later, Ms. Watterson heard, Karla was riding a bus back to Mexico.

Yvonne Watterson vowed to do something so she would not lose any more of her students. She made the vow because of what happened every July 12 back in Antrim, Northern Ireland, her hometown.

On that night, the local Protestants celebrated their forebears’ victory over a Catholic army three centuries earlier in the Battle of the Boyne. Even in the Arizona desert, Ms. Watterson remembered the sound of Loyalist anthems and the smell of burning tires and the sight of the pope being burned in effigy. Though she was a Protestant, even as a child she had always cringed imagining how July 12 felt to her Roman Catholic playmates up the block.

“I thought, ‘Here we go again, segregating kids, putting kids on a list,’ ” Ms. Watterson, 44, said recently in her office at GateWay. “It’s that hatred. It’s that separation. Not having to look someone in the eye. It’s a horrible, cowardly — I don’t know what to call it. I wouldn’t have believed I was in America.”

In her career as an educator, Ms. Watterson had been nothing if not decisive. When she became principal at GateWay in 2003, she threw out a progressive curriculum and replaced it with a traditional variety. She required all 10 teachers on the staff to reapply for their jobs and hired back just one. After visiting early-college high schools in New York City and Stockton, Calif., and seeing how well they served immigrant teenagers, she brought the model to GateWay.

So she went immediately into advocacy mode, giving an interview to The Arizona Republic, the daily newspaper in Phoenix. In the subsequent article, she was quoted describing the plight of her undocumented students and talking about her own experience as an immigrant after she came to America in the mid-1980s.

She mentioned Jose Razo, heading into his senior year, on track to accumulate more than 50 college credits in courses ranging from macroeconomics to video-game design. At home, he had a cologne box filled with certificates for the honor roll, perfect attendance, good citizenship. But he was not a citizen, and because of Proposition 300, he was already thinking about going to Mexico, a country he had left at age 2.

Ms. Watterson reaped the whirlwind of the blogosphere, as readers responded to The Republic’s article.

From Gilbert19: “These children are dishonest law-breakers; why do we want them going to our schools?”

From gbishop01: “You have totally destroyed your integrity.”

From AWhite: “All I have to say to these criminals is ‘DON’T LET THE DOOR HIT YOU ON THE WAY OUT’!!!!!”

The attacks attested to the vox populi. Proposition 300 had been approved with 71 percent of the vote. It won alongside three other ballot measures denying various rights to illegal immigrants and declaring English the official state language.

“In my heart of hearts,” Ms. Watterson said, “I thought, ‘Honestly, people can’t vote for something that would hurt kids who are taking college classes.’ I thought they just didn’t understand. Honest to God, that’s what I thought. But the overwhelming reply was, ‘That’s exactly what we intended.’ ”

Still, the response was not unanimous. A lawyer who doubled as a television host, José A. Cárdenas, called Ms. Watterson and arranged for Jose Razo to appear on his show.

About a week later, GateWay received an anonymous donation of $25,000 to help undocumented students pay their tuition. Mr. Cárdenas recommended that Ms. Watterson approach the Stardust Foundation in suburban Phoenix, and it gave $50,000.

Ultimately, Ms. Watterson received $83,000 from various donors. In January, she was named one of seven winners of a Phoenix-area award in memory of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. After having her students write autobiographical thank-you notes to donors, she had the letters collected and published as a bilingual book, “Documented Dreams.”

Still, this ending is not quite happy. The donations came in too late for the affected students to take their college classes in fall 2007.

About $27,000 of it went toward their tuition for the spring semester of 2008, and the rest will cover next fall’s needs. Beyond that, there is only uncertainty.

“I don’t wake up every day to steal purses,” said Noemi Ariza, a 17-year-old student at GateWay. “I wake up to try my hardest to succeed. And for people to despise me, to tell me I have no right to be here, to look at me like a murderer — it’s so dehumanizing. All I’m trying to do is make something of myself.”

Labels: immigration and education, Prop 300

posted by Patricia Lopez at 1:13 PM 1 comments Links to this post

An update on the situation of California's schools facing sanctions. It's no surprise that the schools mentioned here are those serving a high number of Latino students. What's more is that schools in this area are serving high numbers of ELL students who in and of themselves are a diverse group. Because of migration this area of Califonia has experienced a slow increase in the number of students who speak one or more of the many Mexican indigenous languages. NCLB assessments and policies don't take this into account regardless of schools' success in showing student growth (as mentioned). At the state level these actions are yet another example of Schwarzenegger's poor decision making on education issues.

A brief bio of the schools mentioned in this article:
Alisal Union: 91.8% Latino and 67.9% ELL
Salinas City 80.4% Latino and 48.6% ELL
Greenfield Union: 95.6% Latino and 63.8% ELL
King City Union: 85.7% Latino and 53.6% ELL

Source: http://www.ed-data.k12.ca.us/

-Patricia

By SUNITA VIJAYAN
The Salinas Californian

SEASIDE - At least three Monterey County school superintendents will head to the state Capitol on Thursday to fight sanctions recommended by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state schools chief Jack O'Connell.

"It's an opportunity for us to tell the real story," said Roger Antón, whose Salinas Union High School District has been listed as requiring "light" corrective action. "What we'd like to get across to the state is: 'Provide us the support we need, but do not impose on us sanctions that are going to distract us, and do not impose sanctions that you're not funding.'"

Antón's SUHSD is one of six county districts that face penalties proposed by Schwarzenegger and O'Connell, the state's superintendent of public instruction. The others are Alisal Union, Salinas City Elementary, Greenfield Union, King City Union, and Monterey Peninsula Unified.

Superintendents from each of those districts, except Greenfield, met Tuesday at Ord Terrace Elementary School in Seaside to discuss their respective progress and prepare for the coming trip to Sacramento, where they'll address their concerns to the State Board of Education. The board will decide whether to approve the governor's Feb. 27 recommendations of imposing light to severe sanctions on the 97 districts listed as program improvement under NCLB. Nearly half of the districts listed require "moderate" or "severe" action, according to the state.

Greenfield neediest

Greenfield's superintendent, Elida Garza, could not be reached for comment Tuesday, and it wasn't immediately clear why she did not attend the meeting.

Greenfield is one of six districts statewide listed as "severe" and has the highest-priority assistance rating of all 97 districts. Four Monterey County districts were recommended for "moderate" action - Monterey Peninsula Unified, Alisal Union, Salinas City Elementary and King City Union.

Marilyn Shepherd, superintendent of Monterey Peninsula Unified, said she'd like to know the financial impact sanctions would have on her district. That's a significant concern, she said, considering potential cuts the district already faces because of the state's budget crisis.

In accordance with federal law, under the light- to moderate categories the governor has suggested, state-approved education experts will evaluate districts and revise their curriculum and teaching techniques. For those facing the harshest sanctions, the state may replace the district's entire administration with state-appointed replacements.

If the State Board of Education approves the recommendations, California would be the first state in the nation to follow the letter of the law.

"The kids in our schools that are being educated are making progress, yet the reward our students and teachers get is: 'You're a failing district.' That's got to change," Antón said.

NCLB 'flawed,' 'unfair'

Esperanza Zendejas, superintendent at Alisal Union, said it's important to note that districts in this region have an added challenge: a high percentage of students who enter schools with little knowledge or no English skills. In her district, nine out of 11 schools are in program-improvement status.

Zendejas said the state should amend the state-required curriculum to meet individual districts' needs and add strategies to help English learners to achieve academic goals.

All five superintendents stressed that their districts have shown progress each year but could not attain federal NCLB growth targets, partially because those targets increase annually.

The state's tool for measuring student proficiency levels, the Academic Performance Index, does take into account student-growth levels.

"None of us are opposed to being held accountable for our students' achievements," Alonzo said. "But (NCLB's) a flawed methodology and an unfair system. It's all or nothing."

Labels: California, English language learners, failing schools

posted by Patricia Lopez at 12:14 PM 0 comments Links to this post

This is interesting in light of the earlier post on increasing teacher quality and salary. My bet is that this will set off renewed debate on the effects of class sizes. -Angela

By Jay Mathews
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 10, 2008; Page B02

For 20 years, a large study of class size in Tennessee, known as Project STAR, has raised hopes that reducing the number of children in inner-city classrooms to 17 or fewer would yield significant increases in achievement. It was by far the most authoritative finding in favor of reducing class size and was generally considered one of the most important educational studies of its time.

But a Northwestern University researcher, looking closely at the same data on thousands of students from kindergarten through third grade in 79 schools, has concluded that high achievers benefited more from the small classes than low achievers. Since low-income students in urban neighborhoods have lower achievement, on average, than students from more affluent families, the finding in the March issue of Elementary School Journal contradicts assumptions that class size reduction might have a significant effect on the gap between rich and poor students.

"While decreasing class size may increase achievement on average for all types of students, it does not appear to reduce the achievement gap within a class," Spyros Konstantopoulos, assistant professor at Northwestern's School of Education and Social Policy, said in a statement released by the university.

The $3 million Project STAR study was launched in 1985. It was unusual for the large size of the sample of students, for the long, four-year period in which their progress was recorded and for the random assignment of students to three kinds of classes -- small (13 to 17 students per teacher), regular (22 to 25 per teacher) and regular with aide (22 to 25 students with teacher and full-time aide). Classroom teachers were also randomly assigned, giving the study a scientific validity rarely found in educational research.

Several researchers concluded that the results left no doubt that small classes had an advantage over larger classes in primary-grade reading and math. "Given that class size reduction is an intervention that benefits all students, it's tempting to expect that it also will reduce the achievement gap," Konstantopoulos said. Previous reviews of the data, however, provided weak or no evidence that lower-achieving students benefited more than others, and his study, he said, buttressed those findings.

Labels: class sizes, student-teacher ratios

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 4:00 PM 1 comments Links to this post

Also check out "We stood up, and it mattered: The Chicano walkout of 1968 was about dignity and fundamental change that we're still striving for." by Luis Torres and "Much more still needs to be done" by Monica Garcia. -Patricia

by Carlos Muñoz

Forty years ago this month, I joined thousands of Mexican-American students who shocked the city of Los Angeles by walking out of the public schools. We marched through the streets of East Los Angeles to peacefully protest the racism and educational inequality we faced in the schools.

The walkouts lasted for a week and a half and captured national attention. More than 10,000 students participated, including students from the predominantly African-American Thomas Jefferson High School in South Central Los Angeles who walked out in solidarity with us.

The walkouts were the first major mass dramatic protest against racism and educational inequality ever staged by Mexican Americans in the United States.

The Los Angeles walkouts ignited the emergence of the Mexican-American civil rights movement - which came to be known as the Chicano Movement - throughout the southwestern United States.

Three months after the high-school walkouts, I was one of 13 organizers who were indicted for conspiracy to "willfully disturb the peace and quiet" of the city of Los Angeles. At the time, I was a first-year graduate student and the president of my campus chapter of the United Mexican American Students. I was arrested in the early morning hours while hard at work on a term paper. The trauma my family and I were forced to endure during my arrest and my subsequent imprisonment was a life-changing experience for me.

We faced 66 years in prison if convicted of the conspiracy charges. It took two years for our conspiracy case to be decided by the California State Appellate Court. The court finally ruled that we were innocent of the conspiracy charges by virtue of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granting freedom of speech. If that amendment did not exist, I could still be in prison today instead of teaching at the University of California, Berkeley.

But the walkouts - and the Chicano Movement they ignited - did not eliminate Latino educational inequality.

There are more Mexican-American teachers and principals in the Los Angeles city school district, but the dropout rate is higher than it was back in 1968. Nationwide, Latino students are the most segregated and have the highest dropout rate. And the majority of Latino students who do graduate from high school are not eligible for college admission because they have been academically ill equipped.

In California, Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has cut the education budget by millions of dollars. His priority has been to build more prisons instead of more and better schools.

At the national level, President Bush remains out of touch with the needs of Latino youth in the public schools in spite of proclaiming himself the "Education President." His "No Child Left Behind" law has not contributed to making the public school system better for Latinos and other youth of color.

Federal funding for public schools is grossly inadequate. Bush has yet to allocate funding for the development of a multicultural curriculum that can make the Latino experience - and that of other people of color - an integral component of public schooling. His priority is war.

The time has come for another round of student strikes against educational inequality. This time, however, students should be joined by all the teachers and administrators who share their concerns and are willing to demand that state and federal governments prioritize the educational needs of our youth instead of feeding the military-prison-industrial complex.

Carlos Munoz Jr. is a longtime activist and Professor Emeritus in the Department of Ethnic Studies, University of California, Berkeley. He can be reached at pmproj@progressive.org.

Labels: Civil Rights

posted by Patricia Lopez at 12:46 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Check out the study "Crime, Corrections, and California: What Does Immigration Have to Do with It?" -Patricia

By Jeff Jacoby | The Boston Globe
Opinon
March 5, 2008

WARMING to one of his favorite themes the other night, CNN's Lou Dobbs repeatedly invoked the phrase "criminal illegal aliens," as he did his best to feed the stereotype that illegal immigrants drive up crime. Dobbs's relentless spleen on this subject, of course, has won him a following. Seal-the-borders nativism won't get anyone elected president - just ask ex-GOP candidates Tom Tancredo, Mitt Romney, and Rudy Giuliani - but there is no denying it's good for TV ratings.
more stories like this null

Fortunately, politicians and television personalities aren't the only people interested in immigration and crime. A new study from the Public Policy Institute of California offers significantly more substance on the topic than anything you're likely to encounter on cable TV or in the presidential campaign.

The paper, by economists Kristin F. Butcher and Anne Morrison Piehl, assesses the impact of immigration on crime by analyzing data from California, which has by far the nation's largest population of prison inmates: One-eighth of all state prisoners in the United States are incarcerated in California, as are 30 percent of all inmates who are not American citizens. What Butcher and Piehl demonstrate is that immigrants, far from being more likely to end up behind bars, are dramatically less likely to do so.

The numbers are striking: While immigrants (legal and illegal) account for 35 percent of California adults, they represent just 17 percent of the state's prisoners. Men born in the United States are incarcerated in California prisons at more than 2½ times the rate of

foreign-born men. Within the age group most often involved in crime (ages 18 to 40), US natives - astonishingly - are 10 times more likely to be in prison or jail than immigrants (4.2 percent of the former are in correctional institutions, and just 0.42 percent of the latter). Even when the focus is narrowed to inmates who were born in Mexico and are not citizens - the demographic group most likely to include illegal immigrants - the rate of incarceration is only one-eighth that of men born in the United States.

Butcher and Piehl also compared crime rates among California cities. They found that the cities with greater numbers of recently arrived immigrants have lower crime rates, while cities with fewer immigrants experience higher levels of crime.

"Altogether, this evidence suggests that immigrants have very low rates of criminal activity in California," the researchers write - a finding "consistent with national studies on immigration and crime, which also find low rates of criminal activity for the foreign-born." Butcher and Piehl address the seemingly irreconcilable statistic that nearly one-fifth of federal prison inmates are illegal immigrants. In truth, they explain, there is no contradiction: Since persons arrested for immigration violations are automatically transferred to federal facilities, noncitizens are disproportionately represented among federal inmates. In any case, the federal prison population comprises only 8 percent of the total number of prisoners nationwide.

But you don't have to pore through think-tank studies to recognize that immigration, illegal or otherwise, doesn't drive the US crime rate.

Over the last dozen or so years, the number of illegal immigrants in the United States has doubled to an estimated 12 million. Those same years saw a dramatic nationwide fall in violent crime and property crime. Similarly, the surge in illegal immigration didn't prevent welfare caseloads from falling or millions of new jobs from being created.

Americans may not have the statistics at their fingertips, but most of them understand that immigrants, even those who enter the country without permission, are not here to make trouble but to make a better life for themselves and their families. Yes, Dobbs has his loyalists; in a nation of 300 million people, you can find an audience to whoop it up for just about any cause. But far more recognize that demonizing illegal immigrants is as bootless as it is mean. In opinion polls, only a minority of respondents say illegals should be forced to leave; the consistent majority preference is that illegal immigrants be given a way to earn American citizenship.

The most distressing spectacle of the 2008 presidential race so far was the attempt by Tancredo, Romney, and Giuliani to win their party's nomination through a Dobbsian attack on illegal immigrants. And the most encouraging development? The Republican Party's rejection of that appeal and its elevation of Senator John McCain, who had refused to take part in the immigrant-bashing.

So chalk one up for American common sense. The anti-immigration rabble-rousers haven't disappeared - but none of them will be the next president of the United States.

Labels: immigration, incarceration rates

posted by Patricia Lopez at 11:59 AM 0 comments Links to this post

This bill sounds beneficial at the individual and societal level. Though McDonough doesn't support the idea I'm sure he'll have no problem reaping the benefits of a bilingual/multilingual work force. But that's the Capitalist way, right? -Patricia

By Laura Schwartzman | Capital News Service
March 6, 2008

ANNAPOLIS — Maryland lawmakers want to fix a "critical shortage" of foreign-language speakers in the United States by urging immigrants and their families to preserve their native tongues.

Sen. James Rosapepe, D-Prince George's, said his bill to establish a task force on encouraging "heritage languages" will benefit the economy and national security.


"[We must] hold on to this tremendous competitive advantage for America," he said at a Senate Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee hearing Thursday.

While learning English is important for immigrants, Rosapepe said the state's population of foreign-language speakers is a vastly underutilized resource.

Nearly 14.5 percent of Marylanders speak a foreign language at home, according to the bill's authors.

Jerry Lampe, deputy director of the National Foreign Language Center at the University of Maryland, said more than 80 federal agencies need employees with proficiency in certain languages.

The rise of China as a global power and continued American interests in the Middle East and South Asia make languages such as Chinese, Arabic and Urdu important for national security reasons.

The United Nations General Assembly declared 2008 the International Year of Languages, a prime motivation for introducing the bill.

"I know so many people like myself who came here as children, who may have known the language of their parents or their grandparents, but in many cases did not keep it," said Rosapepe, who was born in Italy and served as U.S. ambassador to Romania from 1998 to 2001. "We see this all the time across the United States."

But proponents of making English the official language do not agree.

"I'm opposed to any legislation which eventually leads to taxpayer financed programs that encourage multi-language efforts," said Delegate Patrick McDonough, R-Baltimore County, the lead sponsor of a bill to make English Maryland's official language. "We need to promote English. It's been the unifying force in this nation and that is the language that people need to learn how to speak."

Rosapepe's task force would study heritage language preservation and come up with ways to foster it. State government agencies, the University System of Maryland, business organizations and members of ethnic community groups would be represented.

A major focus of the bill is to advise educators teaching the American-born children of immigrants. At least 150 languages are spoken in Maryland's public schools, according to the bill's authors, although children often lose proficiency as families assimilate.

Representatives from Chinese and African ethnic advocacy groups said many parents are sending their children to study abroad or at language-specific schools in an effort to preserve their cultural heritages.

Without initiatives to encourage native languages, "the growing trend of African immigrants sending their children to attend schools back in Africa" will continue, at a loss to Maryland and U.S. educational systems," said Chuks Eleonu, CEO of the African Peoples Action Congress.

Henry Lau, chair of the Greater Washington Chinese-American Alliance, said several Chinese-language schools have sprung up around the state to meet the demand for cultural education. He urged lawmakers to assist the schools and reward students who master their native tongues.

"Heritage language skills will flourish in Maryland only when there is an encouraging environment," he said.

Labels: bilingualism

posted by Patricia Lopez at 11:34 AM 1 comments Links to this post

The valley’s Hispanic residents broaden the definition of ‘American’

Sarah L. Stewart
March 5, 2008

Deimi Bustillos is an American. The long-haired, big-eyed Avon Elementary student was born here eight years ago. She wears an Old Navy sweatshirt, loves “Harry Potter” movies and adores dogs so much she decided to write a school report about them.

Only one noticeable difference separates Deimi from what most would consider the “typical” American third-grader: She barely speaks English.

After spending her toddler years in the United States, Deimi moved to Mexico with her family and attended school there until returning to the valley in August. She now attends a daily native-language class, where she’s learning concepts in Spanish and gradually learning English with about a dozen other young, relative newcomers to this country.

Deimi is one of many Mexican-Americans in the Vail Valley who have just begun to call this nation home.

In the 1990 U.S. Census, 13 percent of Eagle County’s population was of Hispanic or Latino origin; by 2006, that figure had more than doubled to 27 percent. At Avon Elementary alone, 90 percent of the student body is Hispanic and more than 50 percent isn’t proficient in English, a stark contrast from the school’s demographics just a decade ago.

But new immigrants are far from the only Hispanic identity in the valley. Some Hispanic families have been here for centuries, before Colorado was a state and before the United States was a nation.

These two groups, while sharing some cultural characteristics, occupy opposite ends of the spectrum — from learning to establish a life in a new land to having claimed that land for generations. In doing so, they offer a glimpse within our own valley of the continually evolving story of what it means to be American.

Deep American roots

Glen Gallegos remembers watching the smoke from coal-powered trains hover between the mountains as a boy growing up in Red Cliff and Minturn. He remembers when Vail began — he was in seventh grade. He remembers a valley of miners, ranchers and sheepherders, people who led lives much harsher than many current residents are accustomed to.

“There’s not many people that can say they lived here when the whole thing started,” Gallegos says.

Though Gallegos’ parents arrived in Red Cliff in the 1930s, he can trace his American ancestry back much farther than that.

“We have been in Colorado even before it was Colorado,” he says. “We have some pretty deep roots here.”

Colorado became a state in 1870, when Eagle County was still part of a larger Summit County. Even when Eagle County appeared on the census in 1890, people like Gallegos’ ancestors are difficult to identify. They were already here, so they weren’t recorded as “Born in Mexico,” yet “Hispanic” or “Latino” wasn’t a category on the census — making it difficult to determine just how many people of that origin were living here at the time.

Though they might not stand out on an early census, Gallegos’ ancestors had already begun a family tradition of contributing to their community. His maternal grandfather, Manuel Martinez, was born at the turn of the 20th century and became the mine union president and mayor of Red Cliff. Gallegos’ father fought in the Korean War and ranched in southern Colorado after meeting Gallegos’ mother while stationed at Camp Hale.

Glen Gallegos taught at local schools for 26 years before joining Gallegos Corp., the masonry business his brother Gerald started in the 1970s and has since expanded throughout Colorado and beyond.

Floyd Duran, a former Minturn town councilman, can trace his family’s history in this country back many generations, as well. Duran was born in Gilman 50 years ago, the son of a miner and a cook. His great-great-grandmother was a midwife in Arizona, and the family settled in southern Colorado before moving to this area in 1945.

Duran, who owns a trucking business, has spent his entire life here and watched Minturn change from “a booming town” with a movie theater, hardware store and grocery to a town where many of the old-timers have begun to move downvalley, he says.

Like Duran, Gallegos sees his family’s long history in this country as an important difference between him and recent Mexican immigrants, despite any cultural characteristics they may share.

“I think sometimes everyone lumps everyone that looks Hispanic or has that heritage as from the same mold, and that’s not really true,” Gallegos says. “I certainly don’t want to say that one is better than the other. ... It’s just another group of people who’ve found that they can do well in this country.”


Contrasting cultures

Lunchtime at Avon Elementary, and the cafeteria fills with a medley of Spanish and English voices. First-grader Jessica Martin slides into a seat at the lunch table, then calls to her friend in line: “¿Aqui?” (“Here?”)

She tucks her pink Disney princess boots beneath her, pulls homemade enchiladas out of her Disney princess lunch box and promptly starts chatting — in English — with two blond-haired girls across the table.

Jessica’s mother, Rosa Martin, came to the United States “for good job, and better pay than in Mexico,” she says. A cashier at Home Depot, she’s lived in Avon for four years and now wants to buy a house. Her face breaks into a wide smile when she talks about the opportunities Jessica has in the United States.

“I like my daughter to have a good school. She wants to be a doctor,” Martin says proudly, in English.

The story is familiar: Immigrants come here seeking better jobs, better opportunities for themselves and their children. It is, in some ways, an American tradition — the way that nearly all of us arrived here at some point in history.

But the immigrant story also presents the classic struggle between homeland and new home.

Deborah Savino Gregory, who teaches Avon Elementary’s native-language class, discussed national identity with her students at the beginning of the school year. She found most of the younger students to be more accepting of their new home, while the older ones were struggling to find their place here.

One of her 10-year-old students remains determinedly true to his roots, insisting, “I’m just a Mexican living in America,” she says.

Others are still trying to find where their native culture ends and their new society begins.

They wonder, “‘I’m Mexican, but now I live in America. What would you call me?’” Gregory says. “They’re coming to grips with that.”

Assimilation in action

When Jan Attoma began teaching at Colorado Mountain College 12 years ago, she was one of just a handful of teachers who led two English as a Second Language courses. Now, the college offers the classes from Gypsum to Avon, with 19 teachers helping 500 students each semester become more confident speaking and understanding English.

“The English is such a big key,” Attoma says. “The more English that they know, it helps them to assimilate into our community. And that’s so important for the vitality of our community.”

Martha Centeno has been taking classes at CMC since she moved to the valley from Chihuahua, Mexico, just over a decade ago. It wasn’t long after she moved here that she decided speaking English was a necessity.

“If you don’t speak English in United States you are nobody,” Centeno says. “When you learn English you can find better jobs.”

Her first job here was in housekeeping at a hotel in Avon; now, Centeno is a certified nursing assistant.

Once she learned English, Centeno’s transition into her new surroundings was not difficult, she says.

Learning English to obtain a better job is just one way immigrants start to assimilate into American society. Pop culture also plays a powerful role, says Gregory Rodriguez, who’s written extensively on race and national identity as a Los Angeles Times columnist, author and director of the California Fellows Program at the New America Foundation.

“Assimilation happens,” he says. “On some level, it is inevitable.”

Even little Deimi Bustillos, who’s only been here for six months, is already adopting some aspects of American culture.

“I like the movie ‘The Simpsons,’” she says in Spanish. Then, in English: “It’s very funny.”

Immigrant parents should expect such an effect on children raised in a country alluring enough that they themselves decided to move here, Rodriguez says.

“We live in the most powerful nation in the history of mankind,” he says, emphasizing America’s vast cultural influence. “To assume that (immigrant children) somehow are immune to the seduction of U.S. culture is naive.”

An American legacy

Each Christmas Eve, Glen Gallegos and his brothers and sisters gather in Minturn at his 80-year-old mother’s home, the same one where he grew up. On the menu, as always, are posole, green chiles and empanadas.

“My mother still makes the best pork green chiles around,” Gallegos says.

Food is one way Gallegos has passed his family’s Hispanic heritage on to his four children, ages 18 to 28. Maintaining close family ties and religious practices, such as Holy Communion and observing Lent, also help keep their culture alive.

“We’re very proud of where we came from and who we are,” Gallegos says.

The way Attoma sees it, assimilation doesn’t just mean becoming a part of American society; to her, it’s the balance she’s watched many of her students find between adopting this culture and staying true to their own.

“You want to maintain your individual identity,” she says. “You can’t take that away from people.”

“American,” it turns out, isn’t mutually exclusive of other national identities.

“We know that assimilation does not require complete ethnic obliteration,” says Rodriguez, himself American-born of Mexican origin.

Though Gallegos takes pride in his Spanish heritage, in terms of his family’s identity, he has no doubts.

“We absolutely know what we are,” he says, “and we’re Americans.”

Labels: immigration and education

posted by Patricia Lopez at 11:27 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times
Zeke M. Vanderhoek, creator of a charter school opening in 2009.

This is really an amazing experiment--significantly higher teacher pay for 5th-8th grade teachers—$125,000.00 and performance bonuses. I quote: "The school will open with seven teachers and 120 students, most of them from low-income Hispanic families. At full capacity, it will have 28 teachers and 480 students. It will have no assistant principals, and only one or two social workers. Its classes will have 30 students. In an inversion of the traditional school hierarchy that is raising eyebrows among school administrators, the principal will start off earning just $90,000. In place of a menu of electives to round out the core curriculum, all students will take music and Latin. Period."

This sounds exciting.

-Angela

At Charter School, Higher Teacher Pay


By ELISSA GOOTMAN
Published: March 7, 2008

Would six-figure salaries attract better teachers?

A New York City charter school set to open in 2009 in Washington Heights will
test one of the most fundamental questions in education: Whether significantly
higher pay for teachers is the key to improving schools.
The school, which will run from fifth to eighth grades, is promising to pay
teachers $125,000, plus a potential bonus based on schoolwide performance. That
is nearly twice as much as the average New York City public school teacher
earns, roughly two and a half times the national average teacher salary and
higher than the base salary of all but the most senior teachers in the most
generous districts nationwide.
The school’s creator and first principal, Zeke M. Vanderhoek, contends that high
salaries will lure the best teachers. He says he wants to put into practice the
conclusion reached by a growing body of research: that teacher quality — not
star principals, laptop computers or abundant electives — is the crucial
ingredient for success.
“I would much rather put a phenomenal, great teacher in a field with 30 kids and
nothing else than take the mediocre teacher and give them half the number of
students and give them all the technology in the world,” said Mr. Vanderhoek,
31, a Yale graduate and former middle school teacher who built a test
preparation company that pays its tutors far more than the competition.
In exchange for their high salaries, teachers at the new school, the Equity
Project, will work a longer day and year and assume responsibilities that
usually fall to other staff members, like attendance coordinators and
discipline deans. To make ends meet, the school, which will use only public
money and charter school grants for all but its building, will scrimp
elsewhere.
The school will open with seven teachers and 120 students, most of them from
low-income Hispanic families. At full capacity, it will have 28 teachers and
480 students. It will have no assistant principals, and only one or two social
workers. Its classes will have 30 students. In an inversion of the traditional
school hierarchy that is raising eyebrows among school administrators, the
principal will start off earning just $90,000. In place of a menu of electives
to round out the core curriculum, all students will take music and Latin.
Period.
While the notion of raising teacher pay to attract better candidates may seem
simple, the issue is at the crux of policy debates rippling through school
systems nationwide, over how teachers should be selected, compensated and
judged, and whether teacher quality matters more than, say, class size.
Mr. Vanderhoek’s school, which was approved by the city’s Education Department
and the State Board of Regents, is poised to be one of the country’s most
closely watched educational experiments, one that could pressure the city and
its teachers’ union to rethink the pay for teachers in traditional schools.
“This is an approach that has not been tried in this way in American education,
and it opens up a slew of fascinating opportunities,” said Frederick M. Hess,
director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
“That $125,000 figure could have a catalytic effect.”
Yet the model is raising questions. Will two social workers be enough? Will even
the most skillful teachers be able to handle classes of 30, several students
more than the city average?
“I think they’ll have their hands full,” said Alan B. Krueger, a Princeton
professor who studies the economics of education. “Paying teachers above market
rate for hard-to-staff schools makes sense, don’t get me wrong. The question is,
‘How much do you want to tilt in that direction?’ ”
Michael Thomas Duffy, the city’s executive director for charter schools, said
that even some Education Department staff members were skeptical, wondering,
“If you’re putting all of your resources into teachers in the classroom, are
you shorting some of the other aspects of what a good school requires?”
Mr. Vanderhoek won approval for the school after presenting city and state
officials with a detailed proposal and budget. Mr. Duffy said the school could
have a “tremendous impact” throughout the country. “If the department and the
chancellor didn’t feel that this had a likelihood of success, we wouldn’t have
approved it.”
The school’s students will be selected through a lottery weighted toward
underperforming children and those who live nearby. It has generated so much
buzz with its e-mail blasts and postings on education and employment Web sites
that its voicemail message now implores prospective hires to please, make
inquiries by e-mail.
“People are sort of stunned,” Mr. Vanderhoek said.
Ernest A. Logan, president of the city principals’ union, called the notion of
paying the principal less than the teachers “the craziest thing I’ve ever
heard.”
“It’s nice to have a first violinist, a first tuba, but you’ve got to have
someone who brings them all together,” Mr. Logan said. “If you cheapen the role
of the school leader, you’re going to have anarchy and chaos.”
Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers, called the
hefty salaries “a good experiment.” But she said that when teachers were not
unionized, and most charter school teachers are not, their performance can be
hampered by a lack of power in dealing with the principal. “What happens the
first time a teacher says something like, ‘I don’t agree with you?’ ”
Mr. Vanderhoek spent three years teaching at Intermediate School 90 in
Washington Heights through Teach for America, which places recent college
graduates in challenging schools. He started tutoring to supplement his salary
and created a test preparation company called Manhattan GMAT in 2000.
The secret to the company’s success, he said, was to pay tutors $100 an hour as
well as bonuses, compensation that was several times more than other companies
paid.
Mr. Vanderhoek is trying to raise money to lease space in the neighborhood and
build a permanent building. But he has made a strategic decision to cover other
expenses with city, state and federal money, plus a few grants. “We’re saying,
‘Look, we can do it on public funding, and we want to inspire other people to
do it on public funding.’ ”
The school’s teachers will be selected through a rigorous application process
outlined on its Web site, www.tepcharter.org, and run by Mr. Vanderhoek. There
will be telephone and in-person interviews, and applicants will have to submit
multiple forms of evidence attesting to their students’ achievement and their
own prowess; only those scoring at the 90th percentile in the verbal section of
the GRE, GMAT or similar tests need apply. The process will culminate in three
live teaching auditions.
Among those who have applied are a candidate who began teaching in the 1960s,
founded a residential school for troubled adolescents, has a Ph.D in Latin and
is working on a scholarly translation; and a would-be science teacher who has
taught for more than a dozen years at some of the country’s top private
schools.
Claudia Taylor, 29, applied to the Equity Project even though, she said, the
thought of leaving the Harlem Village Academy, the charter school where she
teaches reading, “breaks my heart.”
“I’m tired of making decisions about whether or not I can afford to go to a
movie on a Friday night when I work literally 55 hours a week,” Ms. Taylor
said. “It’s very frustrating. I’m feeling like I either have to leave New York
City or leave teaching, because I don’t want to have a roommate at 30 years
old.”
Ms. Taylor hesitated before applying, because the salary “almost doesn’t seem
real.” Then she thought back on her three years teaching in the traditional
public schools and determined that it could be, saying, “There is definitely a
lot of money that you saw being wasted.”
Mr. Vanderhoek said he planned to be principal for at least four years. After
that, who knows? He could be promoted to teacher.

Labels: teacher incentive pay, teacher quality

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 11:18 AM 1 comments Links to this post

Lucha program helps immigrant students beat challenges of new land and language

Ryan Holeywell | The Monitor
February 25, 2008

Donna High School senior Sergio Barrientos knew almost no English when he moved here from Reynosa two years ago.

But this spring, he’ll graduate from high school and join the U.S. Navy.

District officials point to Barrientos as an example of the power of Lucha, a new online program that caters to recent immigrant students and is making waves across the state.
“With the help of Lucha, I’m a senior,” Barrientos said.

The program allows recent students who have emigrated from Mexico to take online courses in their native language and earn high school credit in Texas.

Proponents of Lucha, which means fight, hope the program will help address the struggle immigrant students face when they are forced to try to understand classes taught in a language they barely understand.

“The challenge of these students was a double whammy,” said Felipe Alanis, a former Texas Education Agency chief who pioneered the program two years ago. “You not only have to learn the language, you have to learn the content.”

Generally, bilingual education is not required in Texas secondary schools. Students are instead placed in English as a Second Language programs in which the classes are taught in English.

Lucha is a supplement to ESL, not a replacement, and students using the software continue to receive classroom instruction in English, Alanis said.

Barrientos, who took a Spanish Lucha class in economics last year, said that back then there is no way he could have understood the course if it had been taught in English.

“What was happening is these children did not speak English and they were being placed in content area courses — science and math — in English,” said Ofelia Gaona, bilingual director at Donna school district, which implemented Lucha last year.

“They were not successful.”

Underserved population

The program was initially developed by the Mexican government under President Vicente Fox as a way to help that country’s adult population earn high school degrees online.

But Alanis, associate dean of the K-16 Education Center at University of Texas at Austin, said he realized the program could be useful in Texas, where districts struggle to find ways to better serve the growing immigrant population.

There are about 732,000 Texas students with limited English proficiency in Texas, Alanis said. About 90 percent of those students, known as LEPs, are primarily Spanish speakers. Nationwide, there are about 5 million students with limited English skills, said Stanford University education professor Claude Goldenberg.

LEP students are not performing nearly as well as their peers. According to the TEA, 84 percent of the state’s students in the class of 2007 passed their exit-level standardized TAKS tests. LEPs passed at less than half that rate.

The graduation rate is also low for LEPs. Statewide, more than 80 percent of students in the class of 2006 graduated. Less than 50 percent of LEP students did.

Frustration

Experts partially attribute those figures to a long-standing policy that places most high school-aged immigrants in ninth grade, regardless of how much schooling they’ve had in Mexico.

“They feel even though (they) still have had high school in Mexico, it’s going to take (them) another four years to get through high school here,” said Marcia Niemann, an ESL teacher at Adamson High School in Dallas, where Lucha was implemented a few weeks ago. “They find it frustrating and leave.”

Now, as part of Lucha, Alanis’ staff locates and analyzes students’ transcripts from their original Mexican high schools to determine whether they can get Texas credit for courses they’ve taken back home.

“We didn’t know their system,” said Alanis, a native of the Rio Grande Valley. “We generally didn’t give them much credit for whatever they brought with them.”

Donna implemented the program midway through last school year. It was initially funded with grant money, which also paid for laptops with Sprint wireless cards so students could even do Lucha work online from home.

This year, the district enrolls about 150 students in Lucha at a cost of $100,000. More than half the district’s students have limited English skills.

The program is already used in 17 Texas school districts, including Edcouch-Elsa and PSJA. Brownsville schools got the program last month, the San Benito district a few weeks ago and Roma administrators are considering adding it.

Alanis said there have been different attempts at programs similar to Lucha in Oregon and Washington, but those have been at a smaller scale.

Debate

Critics of bilingual education argue that by continuing to teach immigrants in their native tongue, schools foster a cycle of dependency on Spanish that ultimately inhibits progress at English proficiency.

Peter Duignan, a fellow at the Hoover Institution, a public policy research center, maintains that bilingual education programs have proven to fail and slow assimilation into American society.

Other researchers disagree.

“There’s a lot of reason to believe using the primary language (Spanish) is not only beneficial for maintaining the primary language — but beyond that — promoting academic skills in the second language,” Goldenberg said.

Alanis said Lucha does not replace English education but helps ease the transition.
Most students don’t take more than two Lucha courses and few stay on Lucha for more than a year. Like their peers, Lucha students must pass the state’s TAKS tests, which are administered in English, to graduate.

Boston University professor Christine Rossell, who studies bilingual education, said she doesn’t think Lucha will work, especially since the students will take tests in English.
“They’re going to have to eventually teach them English… why not do it from the get-go?” Rossell said. “Even though it’s initially harder in English, it’s worth it.”

She said Lucha students may be inclined to “tune out” English instruction if they know they can rely on Lucha Spanish courses. She also disagreed with the theory that content learned in one language can easily be translated into another.

“This is one of the most confused thoughts that the supporters of bilingual education have,” Rossell said.

Alanis said he is aware the program may have its critics.

But, he said, even though the students are learning in Spanish, the goal is to teach them English as quickly as possible.

“On the surface level, (Lucha) sounds counterintuitive. If I’m taking a class in Spanish, how will I ever learn English?” he said. “But the stronger the vocabulary in the Spanish language, the faster they’re able to transition to a second language.”

Cost

Alanis said despite the program’s costs — about $400 to $500 per student — it saves districts money in the long run by not forcing them to use school resources on courses already taken in Mexico. Alanis said that totals $1,100 in savings to districts for each Mexican school credit Lucha administrators approve.

As for concerns about Texas students using resources developed in concert with Mexico, Alanis said the courses have been aligned to meet Texas standards.

Alanis said he doesn’t have the data yet to determine the extent of the program’s success, but a Houston firm is in the process of analyzing Lucha to determine exactly that. Gaona said in Donna, 55 of 61 high school students on Lucha passed their end-of-course tests last semester. Before Lucha, that would have been unheard.

“What we’re finding is a lot of the children have more interest in school and better self-esteem because they are successful,” Gaona said.

Alanis said that, in his mind, Lucha is a no-brainer.

“For all intents and purposes, I’d rather have a student that is bi-literate than a dropout.”

Labels: English language learners, Region 1

posted by Patricia Lopez at 11:06 AM 1 comments Links to this post

Also, check out this related piece: "Virginia Schools Criticize No Child Left Behind Rule for English Learners The operative question is--"More costly for whom?"-Angela

Virginia Left Behind
Opting out of No Child Left Behind would be a costly mistake

Thursday, March 6, 2008; A20

LEGISLATION is progressing in the Virginia General Assembly that would
pull the state out of the No Child Left Behind law's oversight. No
matter that the law has helped boost student learning and narrow the
achievement gap, that schools are more accountable, and that students
who go to failing schools now have options. Not even the threatened
loss of millions of dollars in federal education aid seems to worry
lawmakers more intent on making political points than good public
policy.

Both the House and Senate passed bills that would drop Virginia from
the federal education program unless the U.S. Education Department
waives some requirements. The legislation directs the state Board of
Education to come up with a plan for withdrawal, with one version even
setting a deadline of June 30, 2009. Del. R. Steven Landes
(R-Augusta), a sponsor of the House bill, said that he hopes to
clarify it so that the legislature would have to act again to sign off
on any withdrawal. The bills are in conference, where one hopes that
they will die as the legislature rushes to adjourn. Gov. Timothy M.
Kaine (D) has said he won't support the measure, and the state board,
while wanting more flexibility, doesn't favor a state withdrawal. They
undoubtedly are mindful that Virginia would stand to lose an estimated
$300 million a year, a hole in the state budget that couldn't be
tolerated. Nonetheless, the bills passed by overwhelming margins, a
product of Republicans averse to federal involvement and Democrats
mindful of teachers unions' opposition to No Child Left Behind. The
result could produce the dubious distinction of Virginia becoming the
first state to try to opt out of the landmark bill.

The initiative isn't all that surprising, given Virginia's past
complaints about the law and the state's efforts to seek exemptions.
Most notable was its ill-advised rebellion over the testing of
children with limited proficiency in English. The state eventually
backed down in the face of a loss of federal funds, but the reluctance
to hold all students to the same standards says much about why No
Child Left Behind is needed. The federal law surely has flaws, but
Virginia lawmakers are kidding themselves in claiming that state
practices are sufficient. Until No Child Left Behind came along,
school districts were able to mask the low achievement of poor and
minority students, there was no recourse for parents and children in
failing schools, and no one was held accountable. In passing the
measures, lawmakers talked about sending a message to Washington. Too
bad it's one that ignores the interests of children.

Labels: NCLB

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 6:29 PM 0 comments Links to this post

This is the tip of the iceberg, I sense. -Angela


February 27, 2007 - By Martin Carnoy, SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS

California faces a major economic crisis: a shortage of four-year college graduates…

The state stands to produce too few graduates to fuel its cutting-edge service economy, mainly because not enough Latinos attend and complete college.

In 2005-2006, one-half the students in California's public schools were Latinos, but Latinos earned only about 15 percent of the 150,000 bachelor's degrees awarded by all California colleges that year. As the student population of California becomes increasingly Latino, these numbers bode badly for the state's economy.

The problem will not be easy to resolve. Many Latino students start out behind in kindergarten and never catch up. By the time they reach middle and high school, many bright Latino students are counseled by poorly trained school officials into low-level courses which are not in the academic track. Without family members who are savvy in navigating middle and high school choices, most Latino students never fulfill minimum course requirements for college. Many also attend high schools that don't offer the honors and advanced placement courses now needed to attend the University of California.

Many dedicated teachers and administrators have motivated Latino and other disadvantaged students academically and have led them through this complex maze to a college education. But they can't do it all. To achieve the massive increase in Latino graduates needed by the economy, state and federal action is needed.

State Schools Superintendent Jack O'Connell's P-16 Council has recommended steps that could help Latinos (and African-Americans) do better in school. But almost all will take a long time to produce results. For example, expanding free, high-quality early childhood education could jump-start Latino students in elementary school and, in 15 years, produce more college students. Similarly, pushing primary and secondary schools to do better could continue to raise student achievement, and eventually should produce better prepared Latino students to enter college. This, too, will take quite a while.

Much more emphasis has to be put on policies that would increase Latinos' college attendance and graduation over the next five to 10 years. For example, California middle and high schools should have financial incentives to identify potential college-bound Latino and African-American students and help them along.

College counseling in California high schools has to be strengthened, so that counseling staffs can encourage minority students to choose college prep courses and pursue funding opportunities for college. As many private schools have known for years, good counseling and college placement courses produce much greater results per dollar spent than just trying to raise test scores.

Next year, a new administration in Washington must pass tax credits for college tuition, increase the Pell Grant program aimed at low-income students and make the Pell Grant application process much simpler. This could help Latino families offset some of the rising costs of higher education. The state can do more, too. State universities should be rewarded for identifying potential lower-income minority applicants in high school. Colleges should also get financial help for providing remedial courses. If colleges can do this for athletes, they should be able to do the same for students with academic potential.

There are private, non-profit models for achieving success with young, minority, first-generation college students. One of these, First Graduate, is a San Francisco program that identifies students in middle school and mentors them through high school into college, helping them also find financing. Another is San Jose's National Hispanic University, which has its own pre-university program to help guide young Latinos into college. Yet, such programs are small. They are good models but cannot do the job on a large scale. The bottom line is that if government does not step up to the plate, California won't have the educated labor force it needs in the decades to come.

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 6:14 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Jeorge Zarazua | San Antonio Express-News
February 29, 2008

The number of Latinos dropping out of high school has been cut in half during the past 25 years, but great disparity remains when it comes to their college graduation rates, according to a study from the Pew Hispanic Center.

Richard Fry, the center's senior research associate, said Anglo students continue to be twice as likely to graduate from college as Hispanics.

"I'm not the first person to identify this issue," Fry said after a presentation Thursday at the University of the Incarnate Word. "Finishing high school is not as pressing an issue as it was 25 years ago," but the main challenge facing educators now is improving college graduation rates for Latinos.

"Increasingly in America, the real prize ... is not just going to college, it's who gets a bachelor's degree. That is the real fruit — the real plum — in American college education," Fry said.

San Antonio's Paul Ruiz, a senior adviser with the Washington D.C.-based advocacy group the Education Trust, agreed.

Ruiz said in his era, the 1960s, "you had to search really hard to find Latinos on any campus.

"That's not as true today," he said. "People are providing access, and young Hispanics are getting into the system. The short end is that too many of them are going into remedial courses, and they're never coming out of that. And we need to fix that."

Andria Macias-Castillo, executive director of the Adelante U.S. Education Leadership Fund, which hosted Fry's presentation, said she wasn't surprised to hear the dismal college graduation rates for Hispanics.

"We find that they do struggle, whether it's academically or financially," Macias-Castillo said. "They do struggle in the sense of trying to build more self-confidence."

In his study titled "Emerging Successes and Challenges in Hispanic Education,"Fry documented why Latinos are more likely to fail in college.

He said one major reason is Hispanic students are not getting the academic preparation needed to successfully complete college courses.

"You have to be able to do the work," he said.

Although Fry said there are many indicators to show how students fare in high school, he based part of his study on an analysis of high school transcripts to determine if Hispanics were taking the rigorous courses needed to ensure their success.

He said the most recent statistics from the National Center for Education show fewer Hispanics are enrolled in advanced mathematics courses compared with Anglos, African Americans and Asians. The same is true for upper-level science courses.

Fry also said the percentage of Hispanics scoring 3.0 or better on Advance Placement tests has been on a downward trend, from 61 percent passing in 1997 to 47 percent in 2005.

The study also highlighted that more and more Hispanics are attending predominantly minority schools. High schools with a greater minority enrollment tend to offer less dual-credit courses, which better prepare students for college.

"We've known for many years that the quality of the curriculum matters hugely," Ruiz said.

On the positive side, Fry said there is a growing movement — just like for high schools with the federal No Child Left Behind Act — to make colleges and universities more accountable in ensuring that all students succeed.

"This is going to be a growing issue, particularly in public universities, because state lawmakers hold the purse strings," he said.

Labels: higher education

posted by Patricia Lopez at 1:02 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Great interview. You can check out the article "Holes in the Wall: Homeland Security Won’t Say Why the Border Wall is Bypassing the Wealthy and Politically Connected" from an earlier post. -Patricia

Democracy NOW
February 7, 2008

With the Texas Democratic primary and caucus less than a week away, the Bush administration’s plan to build a wall along part of the southern border has suddenly become a campaign issue. After many landowners refused to give over their land for the eighteen-foot-high wall, the Department of Homeland Security began filing lawsuits against some homeowners. At the same time, the government is leaving large gaps to avoid building the wall on the property of wealthy residents, including those with ties to President Bush.

Guests:

Melissa Del Bosque, Reporter in Austin, Texas. She has been covering the story of the border wall for the Texas Observer.

Jay Johnson-Castro, Border activist and coordinator of the group Border Ambassadors. He is currently leading a 63-mile weeklong march in opposition to the wall. The walk is scheduled to end on March 4, the day of the Texas primary and caucus. He joins us on the phone from Brownsville on the Texas-Mexican border.

AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to the border. With the Texas Democratic primary and caucus less than a week away, the Bush administration’s plan to build a wall along part of the southern border has suddenly become a campaign issue. In 2006, both Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton joined Republicans in passing the Secure Fence Act, but now the candidates are raising questions over whether the fence should be built in South Texas.

After many landowners refused to give over their land for the eighteen-foot-high wall, the Department of Homeland Security began filing lawsuits against some homeowners. At the same time, the government is leaving large gaps to avoid building the wall on the property of wealthy residents, including those with ties to President Bush. Even the University of Texas is in the middle of the dispute, because the proposed wall passes through the school’s Brownsville campus.

Part of the controversy also centers on the role being played by the arms manufacturer Boeing. Boeing leads a consortium of private contractors known as SBInet, which was hired by the government to carry out the project.

Two guests join me now from Texas. Melissa del Bosque is a reporter in Austin. She has been covering the story of the border wall for the Texas Observer. Jay Johnson-Castro is a border activist and coordinator of the group Border Ambassadors. He is currently leading a sixty-three-mile weeklong march in opposition to the wall. The walk is scheduled to end on March 4th, the day of the Texas primary and caucus. He joins us on the phone from Brownsville on the Texas-Mexico border.

Melissa del Bosque, let’s begin with you. Lay out where the wall is planned for construction, whose homes are expected to be destroyed, whose property will be saved.

MELISSA DEL BOSQUE: Sure. We’re going to have about twenty-one different segments of fence built along the Texas-Mexico border, and some of those segments are under a mile long, some are as long as thirteen miles. And what I did was I started traveling up and down the border and speaking to various landowners and mayors and county judges about the fence. And they started putting my attention towards, you know, well, the wall is going to go through here—it’s a mile-long segment—but it’s not going to go through this resort and golf course, you know, a mile down the road. And then the fence starts up on the other side of the golf course and resort. So I started seeing these patterns. Another landowner would tell me, “The fence is going to go through my home and my son’s home, but it’s going to stop right at the edge of my property, and on the other side is 6,000 acres that belongs to a wealthy billionaire from Dallas.” So I started asking the question of, you know, what sort of methodology is Homeland Security using to determine where they’re going to place these segments of fence?

AMY GOODMAN: And what did you find?

MELISSA DEL BOSQUE: Well, they didn’t answer me. I called them several times, emails. At one point, I did get a gentleman on the phone who’s in charge of building the fence, but he told me that the information was classified, because they didn’t want the methodology getting out to the people who are going to be crossing illegally, is what he told me.

AMY GOODMAN: You begin your piece, “Holes in the Wall: Homeland Security Won’t Say Why the Border Wall is Bypassing the Wealthy and Politically Connected” by telling the story of Eloisa Tamez. I want to turn to an interview with her. She lives in Brownsville. She’s suing the Department of Homeland Security over the Department’s plan to build the wall on part of her property. The interview was conducted by your paper, the Texas Observer.

ELOISA TAMEZ: The reason that I speak out about hanging on to our land is because the people here, we’re all humble people, we respect the government, and we are facing quite a challenge. And it is important for my people here to know that it is alright to stand up for our rights.

This three acres that I have here is the remnant of the San Pedro de Carricitos Land Grant that was awarded to my family back in 1767. And I remember my father and my grandfather used to farm this part of this area, plus what’s over on the other side of the levee, as well as lands that my grandmother had that went all the way up to the river’s edge. So there is no dollar value for this land in comparison to those memories of how hard it was for my father and my grandfather to carve a life for us.

I think that it was a hasty decision to pass that bill. It was a political move. And no thought was given to who would be harmed by this. They have had many, many years to think about what to do about illegal immigration. However, this bill, supposedly, was enacted for the purpose of keeping America safe from terrorists. To my knowledge, no terrorists have come through the southern border.


AMY GOODMAN: Brownsville resident, Eloisa Tamez, interviewed by our guest today, joining us from Austin, Melissa del Bosque. Can you tell us more about her, one of the last of the Spanish land grant heirs in the county? And then tell us about other residents you talked to.

MELISSA DEL BOSQUE: Sure. We have a pretty unique culture here in Texas, because many of the landowners—well, I won’t say “many,” but some of the landowners, such as Dr. Tamez, has had that property in her family for since the eighteenth century. Her family was given that land by the King of Spain. So for them to give up their remaining acreage to build a mile-long fence that’s going to stop at the edge of a golf course and resort is a pretty hard thing for them to take.

Another family that I spoke to in Granjeno, a little town near McAllen in Hidalgo County, which is just west of where Dr. Tamez lives, there are also Spanish land grant families, and they’ve had that land for, you know, 265 years. So they feel like they’re especially being targeted, because they had already given up so much of their land to build the levee system down there. There’s a large flood plain in that area, and the federal government had asked for that land and didn’t compensate them, so they feel again that they’re being asked to give up what land remains to them to build the border fence.

And I think what a lot of people don’t realize is that the fence is actually being built about a mile to two miles in from the river. It’s not being built along the bank of the Rio Grande, which is, I think, how—

AMY GOODMAN: Why is that?

MELISSA DEL BOSQUE: Because of the levee system. It takes up about a mile north of the river, and it is a bi-national levee system. Mexico and the United States operate it. So if they were to build in that area, they would need the permission of Mexico, and then they would also probably lose the fence if they had a large flood event. It would just wash it away. So they need to build it north, above that.

AMY GOODMAN: Is the resident you’re talking about in Granjeno Daniel Garza, who’s seventy-six years old, who you write about facing this similar situation?

MELISSA DEL BOSQUE: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: And you describe his situation, pointing to a field across the street where a segment of the proposed eighteen-foot-high border wall would abruptly end. Talk about his neighbor.

MELISSA DEL BOSQUE: Well, his neighbor is Ray L. Hunt. He’s a Dallas billionaire. He comes from a very well-known oil family here in Texas. And Mr. Hunt is a good friend of President George W. Bush’s. He recently donated $35 million to build the President Bush’s library at Southern Methodist University. And so, he’s a fairly wealthy and powerful person here in Texas.

AMY GOODMAN: In 2001, you point out that Bush made him a member of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, where he received a security clearance—Ray L. Hunt did—and access to classified intelligence.

MELISSA DEL BOSQUE: Right, yeah. He has been on that Foreign Advisory Committee, yeah, for several years. He recently just brokered a deal with the Kurds, a large oil deal, which has caught some attention. So he has 6,000 acres just north and east of Mr. Garza. And, you know, it’s literally across the street from Mr. Garza’s property, and the wall, you know, stops right there at the edge of Mr. Garza’s property. It doesn’t go through—

AMY GOODMAN: So he’s turned this plantation that he had from acres of onions and vegetables, you write, into an exclusive gated community, where the homes sell, well, for around $1 million each.

MELISSA DEL BOSQUE: Yeah, the northern portion of the property has been turned into a high-end gated community. And then, the southern end is going to be a business corridor. They have an international bridge that’s being built there on land that he donated that crosses into Mexico, so they’re going to have—and then he’s also partnered with businessmen on the Mexican side, and they’re also building over there on the Mexican side, as well. So it’s—when it’s finished, it will be about the size of Manhattan. It’s going to be a large business corridor, international business corridor.

AMY GOODMAN: And the wall stops there. The wall doesn’t go through there.

MELISSA DEL BOSQUE: Right, correct.

AMY GOODMAN: Where do the weapons manufacturers come into this story? Where does Boeing fit in, Melissa del Bosque?

MELISSA DEL BOSQUE: Well, Boeing secured a contract in 2006, and it’s called SBInet. And it’s under the SBI, Secure Border Initiative, office under Customs and Border Protection, and it’s a consortium of private contractors. And they won an indefinite contract with—it has no maximum value on how much they can spend. There’s not a limit on how much they can spend. And it’s a three-year contract with three-year optional advance. And their task is to do whatever it takes to secure the northern and the southern borders. And, you know, in terms of whether we know exactly what that’s going to take or entail, I’m not sure that it’s really ever been completely laid out. So, I mean, they’re—you know, they’re building fences, they’re doing video surveillance, all kinds of things.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, you talk about this, what seems like a limitless amount of money that’s going into the border wall. And who is overseeing this in Washington? Who is overseeing how much Boeing gets?

MELISSA DEL BOSQUE: Well, I mean, Secretary Chertoff and Homeland Security have to go to Congress to ask for the appropriation and explain, you know, what it is that they’re doing. But several congressional leaders have sent letters and mentioned in hearings, you know, we’d like to know more about exactly what’s going on, and I’m not sure that they’ve really received the kind of answers that, you know, that they’d like to hear in detail: exactly how much we’re spending, are we getting what we’re paying for, and is this really going to secure our borders?

AMY GOODMAN: You write that Congressman Henry Waxman, the California Democrat in charge of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, had scathing remarks for the SBInet project. “As of December, the Department of Homeland Security had hired a staff of ninety-eight to oversee the new SBInet contract,” he said. “This may seem like progress until you ask who these overseers are.” He says, “More than half are private contractors. Some of these private contractors even work for companies that are business partners of Boeing, the company they are supposed to be overseeing. And from what we are now learning from the Department, this may be just the tip of the iceberg,” says Congressman Waxman.

MELISSA DEL BOSQUE: Yes. I mean, what I’ve been hearing in transcripts from hearings such as that one, which Congressman Waxman heard, is that there’s a real concern that the office that’s overseeing the Boeing contract has a majority of private contractors actually staffing the office. So it’s unclear as to who exactly is overseeing the contract and whether there is any conflict of interest. I think they’re trying to recruit more federal employees, but as of last year, I think they were still—they still had, I think, a 60 percent of the employees were private contractors.

AMY GOODMAN: Melissa del Bosque is with us from Austin. She’s a reporter with the Texas Observer. We’re also joined by Jay Johnson-Castro, who is a border activist and coordinator of the Border Ambassadors, on a long march until the Texas primary. Jay Johnson-Castro, where are you?

JAY JOHNSON-CASTRO: Well, I happen to be—and good morning, by the way. I happen to be on Eloisa Tamez’s land, staying in a little house here with a distant nephew of hers.

AMY GOODMAN: Brownsville area.

JAY JOHNSON-CASTRO: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: So, what about this march? What are you trying to accomplish?

JAY JOHNSON-CASTRO: Well, we had two objectives, and we feel we accomplished the first one. The first objective was to impact the Texas debate that they had and get on the agenda the fact that Homeland Security had sued University of Texas, Brownsville to get access to take 166 acres of their land, which would cut right through the campus in Brownsville; illuminate the fact that they’re taking land by eminent domain; illuminate the fact that they were—that they are suing like, for instance, the city of Eagle Pass to take a couple hundred acres of their land, which would include some public park land and golf course, so they could build this wall and cut—basically cut the public off from being able to enjoy the river.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to play for you—

JAY JOHNSON-CASTRO: That was objective number one. We got that on—we got that on the debate. And the objective number two is to impact the March 4 primaries. We’re calling this the March for March 4. We end on March 2nd, which is Sunday.

AMY GOODMAN: Jay Johnson-Castro, I wanted to play for you part of the debate, last week’s Democratic debate in Austin. CNN’s John King asked both Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama about the border wall.

JOHN KING: Senator, back in 2006 you voted for the construction of that fence. As you know, progress has been slow. As president of the United States, would you commit tonight that you will finish the fence and speed up the construction? Or, do you think it’s time for a president of the United States to raise his or her hand and say, “You know what? Wait a minute, let’s think about this again. Do we really want to do this?”

SEN. HILLARY CLINTON: I think when both of us voted for this, we were voting for the possibility that where it was appropriate and made sense it would be considered, but as with so much, the Bush administration has gone off the deep end, and they are unfortunately coming up with a plan that I think is counterproductive.

JOHN KING: But does that mean that you think your vote was wrong or the implementation of it was wrong?

SEN. HILLARY CLINTON: I think that the way that the Bush administration is going about this, filing eminent domain actions against landowners and municipalities, makes no sense. So what I have said is, yes, there are places when, after a careful review—again, listening to the people who live along the border—there may be limited places where it would work. But let’s deploy more technology and personnel instead of the physical barrier.

CAMPBELL BROWN: Senator Obama, go ahead, please.

SEN. BARACK OBAMA: Well, this is an area where Senator Clinton and I almost entirely agree. I think that the key is to consult with local communities, whether it’s on the commercial interests or the environmental stakes of creating any kind of barrier. And the Bush administration is not real good at listening. That’s not what they do well. And so, I will reverse that policy. As Senator Clinton indicated, there may be areas where it makes sense to have some fencing. But for the most part, having Border Patrol, surveillance, deploying effective technology, that’s going to be the better approach.


AMY GOODMAN: That was both Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton debating in Austin. Jay Johnson-Castro, your quick response?

JAY JOHNSON-CASTRO: Well, we appreciate the fact that they are reversing their position. We would have appreciated it much more had they been more informed before they voted for something as sinister as an iron curtain on the Texas side of the Rio Grande.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we are going to leave it there. I want to thank you both for being with us, Jay Johnson-Castro, border activist, coordinator of Border Ambassadors, and Melissa del Bosque, who is a reporter with the Texas Observer, author of the new article, “Holes in the Wall.” We’ll link to it at democracynow.org, and you can also see the images of the wall at our website at democracynow.org.

Labels: border

posted by Patricia Lopez at 12:37 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Congratulations to Austin's own Luissana Santibañez! Check out the U.S. Justice Fund Site for a more detailed description. -Patricia

Advocates Take on Failures of U.S. Criminal Justice System
March 3, 2008

NEW YORK—The Open Society Institute today named 18 outstanding scholars, lawyers, advocates, and journalists to be 2008's Soros Justice Fellows. In total they will receive more than $1,125,000 to support their creative and groundbreaking work to reform the American justice system.

The new fellows include a community organizer who fights to protect the rights of noncitizen detainees after seeing her own family torn apart by federal immigration policies; a lawyer who compares his own treatment in the criminal justice system with that of his clients on death row to spark debate about capital punishment; and a man and woman on the opposite sides of a wrongful rape conviction who now work together to raise awareness about the problems with eyewitness testimony.

"America's criminal justice system is broken, and too often perpetuates inequality rather than ensuring justice," said Ann Beeson, director of the Open Society Institute's U.S. Programs. "The Soros Justice Fellows are developing innovative solutions to expose the deep flaws in the current system and to restore justice for all."

The fellows, who are based in Arizona, California, Illinois, Louisiana, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, Washington, DC, and Northern Ireland, will receive a 12 to 18 month stipend ranging from $45,000 to $79,500. With this support, they will work on the local, state, and national level to address critical issues such as death penalty reform, racism in the criminal justice system, prison growth and privatization, and the reintegration of formerly incarcerated individuals into society.

Since 1997, the Open Society Institute has offered over $13 million in grants to more than 250 Soros Justice Fellows as part of a wider campaign to strengthen justice in the United States and around the world. OSI and the Soros foundations network have given away over $6 billion to build open democratic societies, including more than $796 million in the U.S. For more information on the Soros Justice Fellows, please visit www.soros.org.
2008 Soros Justice Fellows

Juvenile Justice

Sujatha Baliga; lawyer and advocate; Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth; Oakland, CA
California has one of the country's highest rates of juvenile incarceration and recidivism. Baliga will work to reduce Oakland's over-reliance on mass incarceration by advocating community-based alternatives for youth, which address the underlying causes of youth crime and recidivism.

Patricia Soung; lawyer and advocate; Children and Family Justice Center; Chicago, IL
The U.S. is one of a handful of countries that allow youth under 18 to receive sentences of life without parole—a sentence handed out to over 2,000 juvenile offenders. Soung will use legal advocacy, community organizing, and research to work to abolish life without parole sentences for juveniles.

Shantel Vachani; lawyer and advocate; Learning Rights Law Center; Los Angeles, CA
An estimated 70 percent of the nearly 4,500 youths in Los Angeles County juvenile detention struggle with a learning disability. Vachani will create an innovative advocacy model to counteract the trends that "push" special-needs youth out of the public education system and into the juvenile corrections system.

Racial Disparities and Sentencing Reform

Caroline Cincotta; lawyer; American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants' Rights Project; San Francisco, CA
Federal prisons bar noncitizens from participating in rehabilitative programs, subjecting them to longer sentences and harsher conditions. Cincotta will research, analyze, and develop legal challenges to these discriminatory policies.

Paul Hofer; scholar; Washington, DC
Over the last three decades the federal prison population has quintupled. Hofer will research and write a series of articles and reports that assess the dramatic widening of racial disparities in sentencing and the reduction of judicial discretion under federal sentencing guidelines.

Harry Levine; scholar and advocate; New York, NY
In cities across the nation, African-Americans are arrested for marijuana possession at a rate three to ten times higher than whites, despite the fact that there is no similar gap in marijuana use. Levine will research the alarming trend toward race, gender, and age bias in marijuana possession arrests.

Death Penalty and Wrongful Conviction

William Sothern; author, journalist, and lawyer; New Orleans, LA
Sothern will complete two books, Put Away Childish Things and Until You Are Dead, that seek to inform the public debate surrounding capital punishment and juxtapose Sothern's own experience in the criminal justice system with those of his death row clients.

Jennifer Thompson-Cannino; advocate and author; Winston-Salem, NC
Ronald Cotton; advocate and author; Mebane, NC
Erin Torneo; author; Los Angeles, CA
More than 200 people in the U.S. have had their convictions overturned by DNA evidence, and three-quarters of these cases involved mistaken eyewitness testimony. Cotton and Thompson-Cannino (with Torneo) are the authors of Picking Cotton: A True Story, which illuminates this problem through their story: Cotton spent 11 years in prison after Thompson-Cannino mistakenly identified him as the man who had raped her.

Immigrant Detention and Deportation

Luissana Santibañez; community organizer; Grassroots Leadership; Austin, TX
The massive expansion of federal detention centers for noncitizens has wrought havoc on family and community relationships. Santibañez, whose own family has been torn apart by recent crackdowns, will build a Texas-based network of former detainees to elevate community awareness and build support for policies that protect the rights of detainees.

Indigent Defense

Janet Moore; lawyer; Ohio Justice & Policy Center; Cincinnati, OH
Ohio's ineffective and inefficient public defender system contributes to a class disparity in incarceration rates. Moore will work to reform Ohio's current system for providing counsel to low-income residents.

Joshua Perry; lawyer; Orleans Public Defenders; New Orleans, LA
In New Orleans, indigent defendants often face months of pretrial detention and endure harsh over-sentencing. Perry will coordinate special litigation efforts at the Orleans Public Defenders to alleviate these problems.

Federal Drug and Gang Policy

Susan Phillips; scholar; Los Angeles, CA
Phillips will complete Operation Fly Trap: Gangs, Drugs and the Law, a book examining how federal policies directed at combating drugs and gangs actually generate and sustain the conditions that perpetuate poverty, crime, and violence in communities of color.

Solitary Confinement

Alexandra Smith; community organizer; Urban Justice Center–Mental Health Project; New York, NY
New York State allows prisoners with serious psychiatric disabilities to be placed in solitary confinement, despite evidence that it often causes severe psychiatric deterioration. Smith will monitor New York State prisons' compliance with new legislation diverting these prisoners from solitary confinement.

Brackette Williams; scholar and advocate; American Friends Service Committee; Tucson, AZ
For three decades, states across the country have expanded their use of solitary confinement and supermax security units. Williams will study individuals in Arizona who spent one or more years in these conditions and identify how such confinement affects their re-entry into society, family, and community.

Mass Incarceration

Craig Gilmore; community organizer and author; Los Angeles, CA
The movement to reform U.S. prisons is growing rapidly, but the intricacies of the prison system remain little-understood. Gilmore will create multimedia primers on the U.S. prison system to assist activists and organizations working to challenge mass incarceration.

Rethinking Crime and Punishment

Shadd Maruna; scholar; Belfast, Northern Ireland
The American public has increasingly rejected redemptive criminal justice policies in recent years. Maruna will complete Redemption RIP?, a book exploring the future of self-improvement and rehabilitation as ideals in the U.S. criminal justice system and American society.


The Open Society Institute, a private operating and grantmaking foundation, works to build vibrant and tolerant democracies whose governments are accountable to their citizens. To achieve its mission, OSI seeks to shape public policies that assure greater fairness in political, legal, and economic systems and safeguard fundamental rights. OSI works in over 60 countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East, as well as the United States.

You can access this page at the following URL:
http://www.soros.org/initiatives/justice/news/advocates_20080303

©2008 Open Society Institute. All rights reserved. 400 West 59th Street | New York, NY 10019, U.S.A. | Tel 212 548-0600

Labels: Hutto Detention Center, immigration

posted by Patricia Lopez at 11:52 PM 3 comments Links to this post

A recommendation worth considering. I will always remember Ms. Barrios, a community paraprofessional in my elementary classroom, and her contributions. -Patricia

Mark Ryan | Special to the Arizona Republic
February 13, 2008

How are English speaking teachers supposed to instruct children who speak a language other than English? Teaching science, math, social studies and language arts is hard enough, but what can a teacher do when he or she only speaks English and the classroom has students who speak of other languages?

It is good to remember that children do not select the language of their home or of the school.

What happens is that a youngster walks through the classroom door and realizes that the teacher is speaking a different language than the one spoken at home.

What to do?

When a child who does not speak English enters a school where English is the primary means of instruction, we need the help of the principal, teachers, parents and community to serve the non-English speaking youngsters who come to class each day.

The reason for community help is obvious, because even if the teacher speaks another language besides English, it still might not be enough.

In fact, there are many languages to contend with in our culturally and linguistically diverse schools.

Let's get back to what our team of principals, teachers, parents and community leaders can do to help English language learners.

By actively recruiting bilingual paraprofessionals made up of parents and community volunteers, we can place another adult in the classroom to serve the needs of children.

Where can you find such people? In my experience you ask various community-oriented groups. Churches, synagogues and temples are great places to start - they have many people who understand the need to reach out and help others.

Community groups of recently arrived immigrants are another source for these volunteers, as well as retired people who want to make a difference in the lives of young people.

We know that children need to have meaningful interaction (listening, speaking, reading and writing) daily in both their home language and in English in order to fully develop their language skills.

Having another person to nurture the student in both languages with verbal interaction and engagement is both necessary and doable.

Bilingual paraprofessionals carry an inherent dual message: that one's home culture and language is valued as is the learning of English.

In other words, one does not and should not have to lose his or her native language when acquiring English.

The bilingual paraprofessional provides a nurturing classroom environment where both languages are studied and honored, and positive relationships among the school, the community and the student can grow and flourish.

Research tells us that successful schools feed off of meaningful community involvement.

Recruiting bilingual paraprofessionals from an involved community to assist bilingual children is an imperative for quality education.

Labels: English language learners

posted by Patricia Lopez at 11:14 PM 0 comments Links to this post

By Howard Blume | Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
February 13, 2008

More Los Angeles campuses will have to make room for charter schools, even if some teachers are forced to give up their classrooms and become roving instructors, under a litigation settlement approved by the Los Angeles Board of Education on Tuesday.

The agreement requires the school district to inventory all properties and work directly with charter schools to find space on or off campus. Charter advocates say finding and paying for facilities is their No. 1 challenge.

The settlement signals "new cooperation" toward serving all students -- whether they attend a charter or a traditional school, supporters said.

"We share the pain of overcrowding equally," said Caprice Young, president of the California Charter Schools Assn., a party to both suits. "We in the charter school movement recognize that the Los Angeles Unified School District has a space crunch, and we all have to work together to create great facilities for all kids."

Agreeing to the possibility of roving instructors, called "traveling teachers," was perhaps the major -- and most controversial -- concession by the school district. Because of classroom shortages, these teachers move from room to room with cartloads of materials throughout the day, an intensely unpopular assignment.

The school district could provide no figures on how many teachers travel, but their numbers have declined dramatically in recent years with the construction of new schools and declining enrollment.

Two lawsuits were filed in May under a state law that calls for public school campuses to be "shared fairly." Charters are independently run public schools freed from many provisions that govern other schools, including adherence to union contracts and district curriculum.

The school board approved the settlement by a 4-3 vote after a closed session.

Board member Richard Vladovic dissented, recalling the time he "traveled" as a middle school teacher early in his career. "I couldn't spend the time I wanted to focus on my lessons and on meeting with students and counseling them," Vladovic said. "I felt my students got cheated." He also worried that traditional schools would lack needed space and flexibility to improve their schools.

Before the litigation, the two sides had been split on facilities, especially with L.A. Unified dealing with its own classroom seat crunch. Currently, 143 district schools operate on a year-round schedule, and 42 have a shortened school year. Even after the district completes a $12.6-billion school construction program, adding about 165,000 seats, officials say some schools will remain overcrowded.

At newly constructed district schools, officials have rarely considered charter school needs, except in rare cases when seats are left over. And no existing school was to be significantly hindered by a charter. Moreover, the review of available space was partly an honors system, with principals disclosing whether or not they could house a charter school.

Over the last decade, charter schools have operated out of churches, high-rises, warehouses and portables slapped down in parking lots. They are supposed to model academic innovation, but officials also saw another benefit.

"Charters could go into storefronts," said board member Julie Korenstein, who voted against the settlement. "They were increasing space so our [traditional] schools would become less overcrowded. Putting them back on our campuses does just the reverse."

L.A. Unified now oversees 125 charter schools with 47,000 students, more charters than any school system in the nation. About a dozen are in district-owned facilities. These include three of the 10 small high schools operated by Green Dot Public Schools, which filed the lawsuits along with PUC Schools, six charter parents and the charter association.

"In other cities, people offer facilities if we come," said Green Dot founder Steve Barr. "We should be looking at this strategically -- together."

The settlement aims at that goal, substituting a five-year plan for a cumbersome, almost ad hoc process that gives charter schools little advance notice on availability, and then guarantees space for only one year. The agreement, which leaves many details to the future, relies much on good faith.

Negotiators for the charter schools said they made numerous concessions and that the terms of the agreement do not represent their view of state law. Board member Yolie Flores Aguilar said the settlement protects "our schools from staying on or going back to [year-round schedules], making sure we don't bus kids out of their neighborhood or put students back in portables."

Charter advocates said they expected the agreement to open up many more new and existing campuses to charter schools, which is precisely what critics worry about.

"This is the kind of thing that makes everyone in the school business crazy," said Scott Plotkin, executive director of the California School Boards Assn. Charter schools are "the interlopers here. They land from outer space, get kids to sign up and now they say, 'We want special accommodations made for us.' "

The agreement still needs the formal approval of other parties to the suit, including parents and the boards of the charter schools.

Labels: California, charter schools

posted by Patricia Lopez at 11:02 PM 0 comments Links to this post

ISAT | Threaten to keep kids home rather than take new state exam

BY ROSALIND ROSSI | Chicago Sun Times
February 13, 2008

Angry Chicago Latino parents threatened Tuesday to keep their kids home on test day next month if state education officials insist on giving students who are still learning English an achievement test in English.

Facing threats of federal sanctions, state officials were ordered last October to give the same state tests native English speakers take to some 60,000 Illinois public school kids who haven’t yet mastered English.

During a news conference Tuesday at the Logan Square Neighborhood Association, about two dozen Latino parents charged that the test mandate is “unfair,’’ “anti-immigrant’’ and “anti-bilingual education.’’

They were joined by State Sen. Iris Martinez (D-Chicago), who said the federal government was “trying to take this program [bilingual education] away from us’’ by forcing children to take a test in English before they are fluent.

“This is a way of attacking children who don’t understand the language,’’ said Martinez, who is pushing a resolution to delay the test for a year.

Previously, Illinois kids in bilingual education programs for less than three years took an alternative state test in English.

But last October federal education officials ruled that test did not meet federal No Child Left Behind standards. They ordered Illinois bilingual education students who have been in public schools for more than a year to take the same tests native English speakers take, starting March 3.

Speaking through a Spanish-English translator, parent Erika Soto said her third-grade daughter is “very smart, but because of this test, she is going to be labeled a failure. So how is she going to feel?’’

Parents raised their hands in agreement Tuesday when asked if they would keep their children home rather than have them take the new test.

“We have to push them to pay attention and if this is the way to get them to pay attention, I will do it,’’ said Leticia Barrera, parent of a Monroe Elementary third grader.

Barrera’s daughter, Arely, said she did poorly on practice tests, and is worried she’ll tank the real thing.

“I’m scared,’’ said Arely, age 9. “I think I’m going to fail. I’m not prepared to do the test.’’

State education officials have crafted a long list of test accommodations, including more time, having proctors read directions aloud in students’ native language, and allowing proctors to transcribe student answers in English to questions that require written responses.

Schools choose the accommodations they want to use, but they must provide the proctors and get them trained first.

Barbara Radner, director of DePaul University’s Center for Urban Education, questioned how proctors could transcribe student answers to math questions that often require kids to draw or graph an answer. How can they read aloud to a class a bunch of test questions that not every student may answer at the same pace, she wondered.

“How many hours is this going to take?’’ asked Radner. “We have here Exhibit A of what’s wrong with No Child Left Behind.’’

Officials from Chicago Public Schools, Cicero District 99 and Schaumburg District 54 sent an angry letter to state education officials late Monday, demanding, at a minimum, that kids who are still learning English be allowed to answer written questions in their native language.

The new test mandate, according to the letter, is “patently unfair and damaging to students, teachers and schools. It puts administrative interests ahead of the needs of children and that is bureaucracy at its worst."

A HELPING HAND
Some test accommodations offered to kids who are still learning English* but will be taking state tests in English next month:

* Extra time; more breaks.

* For third- through eighth-graders, small group or individual testing.

* Scripted test directions read in native language. Upon request, proctors of third- through eighth-grade tests can repeat those directions or provide non-scripted directions in "simplified'' English.

* Scripted test questions read in English by proctors or English audio recordings of third- through eighth-grade math and science tests, and all 11th-grade tests.

* Third- through eighth-graders can get "glossaries" that translate non-key English words into native languages in math and science.

* For questions requiring written responses, students can dictate answers in English to proctors, who will transcribe them in English onto answer sheets.

* Officials are trying to provide directions and glossaries in Spanish, Polish, Arabic, Urdu, Korean, Pilipino/Tagalog, Cantonese, Gujarati, Vietnamese and Russian.
Source: Illinois State Board of Education

Labels: English language learners, Parent Involvement

posted by Patricia Lopez at 10:56 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Feb. 29, 2008, 6:31AM

AUSTIN — Texas school districts are paying teachers smaller bonuses than what was recommended by lawmakers, one factor that has led to mixed results in the first year of the nation's largest merit pay plan, according to an independent study funded by the state.

The $100 million Texas Educator Excellence Grant program received a favorable response from teachers in the 1,148 schools where bonuses were awarded, according to the study.

But researchers said they are unsure if the program will prove to be a long-term success, in part because of massive turnover among schools participating in the merit pay program and smaller-than-expected bonuses. Although the Legislature recommended awarding teacher bonuses between $3,000 and $10,000, the average bonus awarded across the state was $2,263.

The study has also produced mixed reactions from supporters and opponents of the merit pay program.

"We think the program is accomplishing what the Legislature intended," said Jerel Booker, the state's director of education initiatives and performance. "One of the primary goals was to retain good teachers in our schools, and at least 70 percent of these teachers said they have a strong desire to participate in the program."

But the merit pay program's detractors, including many teacher associations, said the study proves the program had little effect on teachers. One element of the study indicated that 85 percent of teachers in the program said the bonuses did not change their approach to classroom work.

"What did the $100 million accomplish?" said Richard Kouri of the Texas State Teachers Association. "These teachers were already doing a good job."

Although teacher associations generally support pay raises for all teachers in Texas as opposed to merit raises for some, the study indicated that teachers in the program generally supported performance incentives.

"Most teachers responded favorably to their school's program ... ," the study said.

The National Center on Performance Incentives produced the 161-page study under contract from the Texas Education Agency. Researchers were from Vanderbilt University, the University of Missouri and the RAND Corp., a nonprofit think tank.

___

Information from: The Dallas Morning News, http://www.dallasnews.com



© 2008 The Associated Press

Labels: teacher incentive pay

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 9:10 PM 0 comments Links to this post

RICHMOND

The General Assembly is flirting with abandoning a landmark federal law that governs schools in the United States.

The decision could make Virginia the first state to set a deadline – summer 2009 – for planning a pullout from the No Child Left Behind Act, which ties billions of dollars to federally mandated testing standards in public schools.

State politicians have balked at some of those standards in the past few years. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has signed bills asking the U.S. Department of Education to waive parts of the federal law.

Most of those exemptions were granted, but the notable ones that have not been approved frustrate educators and annoy legislators.

This year, some politicians want to up the ante.

Both the Senate and the House of Delegates are working with bills that say that if the state’s waiver requests aren’t granted, Virginia’s Board of Education would develop a plan to withdraw from NCLB by July 2009. Delegates have approved the bills, even adding language to one seeking to recoup federal tax money if the state withdraws.

Senators keep deleting the deadline, leaving the bills – SB490 and HB1425 – more open-ended. Legislators from both chambers will have to negotiate a compromise for a bill with a deadline to make it to the governor’s desk.

Kaine hasn’t said what he would do with the measure, which could cost Virginia more than $350 million a year in federal aid.

Del. Steve Landes, R-Weyers Cave, the bill ’s sponsor in the House, said that now is an opportune time to take a stand, with the NCLB law up for renewal and a new president taking office in January 2009 .

“We’ve done everything we can think to do,” said Landes, who has pushed the issue along with Sen. Emmett Hanger Jr., R-Augusta. “We’re at the point … this is it, we’ll move forward on a plan to get out unless you provide the relief.”

The brinkmanship in Virginia is typical of the friction NCLB has caused nationally, said David Shreve, federal affairs counsel for education for the National Conference of State Legislatures. Shreve said he thinks Virginia would be the first state to set a formal deadline to pull out of the law.



States from Utah to New York have asked for “flexibility” from the law to avoid failing certain standards. Exemptions, sometimes technical in nature and hidden from public discussion, often are granted, Shreve said. But the need for waivers highlights fundamental flaws in the law, Shreve added.

“To save the beast, they’ve allowed everybody to take chunks out of it,” he said. “Sort of like putting a turbocharger on a Yugo. You’ve solved a problem of getting faster, but you haven’t solved the problem of the Yugo being a car that sometimes spontaneously disassembles.”

A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Education could not be reached for comment.

Some of Virginia’s issues with NCLB are tied to testing of subgroups, educational jargon for small populations of students.

NCLB holds the small groups to the same benchmarks as the total population so deficiencies in smaller samples aren’t masked by a school’s overall success.

In South Hampton Roads, for example, schools may meet standards as a whole but have lower scores for special education students.

In 2007, 30 out of 215 schools in the region’s five cities didn’t meet federal benchmarks for NCLB. Twenty-four schools missed a mark for special education students.

Charles Pyle, spokesman for the Virginia Department of Education, said the attention NCLB gave to subgroups was important to ensure all students receive the best education.

Still, Virginia was rebuffed last year in its attempt to exempt for two years the test scores of some limited-English proficiency students. The results for a student in the country for less than a year can be exempted, Pyle said.

The state fared slightly better in asking for the right to

reverse the sanctions imposed in the first two years a school fails to meet the testing standard.

The penalties apply to schools that receive federal money set aside for low-income students. Parents in those schools must be given the choice to move their child to another school if their home school is marked for two years as not making “adequate yearly progress.”

If scores don’t improve enough the following year, the school must provide tutoring or other added services.

Virginia asked to reverse the order, saying it made more sense to tutor students and test them again before giving parents the option to change schools. The U.S. Department of Education let the state do it in seven districts, including in Hampton and Newport News.

Pyle said state Board of Education members have “felt fairly strongly about policy decisions” but would not develop any plans to withdraw from NCLB without the prodding of politicians.

“The legislature is expressing the same kind of frustration the Board of Education has expressed,” Pyle said. “Not an objection to accountability, but a desire to have more flexibility.”

That flexibility, however, comes at a price .

In fiscal 2007, the state received nearly $352 million in NCLB money . In fiscal 2008, the state expects just shy of $364 million.

“If we could pull out and have the money … to do the thing we need to in Virginia, fine,” said Princess Moss, president of the Virginia Education Association. “But show me the money.”

Del. Phil Hamilton, R-Newport News, said it is implausible to expect the federal government to let the state keep any NCLB money without adhering to its strict benchmarks.

Hamilton, a state budget negotiator, was one of five House members who vote d against SB490, the measure that would set the state’s ultimatum for withdrawal from NCLB.

Del. Robert Tata, R-Virginia Beach, said the withdrawal from NCLB might lessen the need for funding, making the budget loss “a wash, I guess.”

Landes said the mere discussion of pulling out gives state education leaders leverage in negotiations with their federal peers.

The delayed date to plan a withdrawal – summer 2009 – also gives officials a chance to gauge the law’s future.

Congress could reauthorize a more state-friendly NCLB measure. Federal education officials could grant Virginia’s waivers and make the argument moot. Or next year’s General Assembly could repeal any action taken by this year’s.

“This one is definitely different,” said Gordon Hickey, the governor’s spokesman. “We’ll see what happens.”



Richard Quinn, (757) 222-5119, richard.quinn@pilotonline.com

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 9:09 PM 0 comments Links to this post

The data on high-stakes testing internationally are converging....

-Angela

· Spending on early years 20% behind secondaries
· Teacher-pupil relationship eroded by national tests

Polly Curtis, education editor
Friday February 29, 2008
The Guardian

The government should increase primary school budgets to match those in secondary schools to pay for specialist teachers to tackle illiteracy, experts say. The multibillion pound investment in education since 1997 has been undermined by a failure to teach pupils the basics by the time they are 11, according to the biggest review of primary education in 40 years.
The Cambridge University-led Primary Review today publishes a series of papers which report that higher test results have been at the expense of the quality of primary education, with a 20% funding gap between primary and secondary schools. Teacher-pupil relationships have been eroded by a focus on whole-class teaching and preparation for "high stakes" national tests, it claims.

The funding gap between secondary and primary schools has grown since 2002, the researchers found. Anne West of the London School of Economics, co-author of the funding report, said: "There is no sound justification for children aged 11 to be getting more than children aged 10 when it's crucially important that children at the end of primary school are functionally literate and numerate. Later attainment is clearly reliant on early attainment. If you get children literate at an early age it allows them to access the rest of the curriculum at secondary school."

The findings come after the government this week published data on test results for 14-year-olds which suggested a quarter are not reaching expected levels in English, maths and science, falling substantially short of government targets.

Although more money has been spent on education since 1997 than at any other period in history, primary schools receive only 80% of the funding given to secondaries. In comparison, some Scandinavian countries, which have far better literacy rates, allocate more than 100%. Spending varies wildly across the country: in Northumberland primary school budgets are 94% of the secondary school budget a pupil, while in Middlesbrough it is 66%.

Prof West said: "There does seem to be less public concern about primary schools than secondary schools. There haven't been as many initiatives for primary schools since 1997 compared with secondaries." She cited the government's flagship academy programme and plans to rebuild every secondary in the country.

A second report, by academics at Cambridge and Manchester Metropolitan Universities, said: "The evidence on the impact of the various initiatives on standards of pupil attainment is at best equivocal and at worst negative. While test scores have risen since the mid-1990s, this has been achieved at the expense of children's entitlement to a broad and balanced curriculum and by the diversion of considerable teaching time to test preparation."

It surveyed data on national testing and concluded that the "high stakes" testing has led to a "narrowing of the curriculum". It added: "There is also evidence that the quality of the teacher-pupil interaction has been negatively influenced."

Mick Brookes, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said: "The funding gap is not acceptable, but it has to be plugged with new money, not taking money from secondary schools ... We are in danger of sending children into secondary schools already switched off. Some have already lost the joy of learning."

A spokeswoman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families, said: "The government has hugely increased funding for pupils of all ages - from early years into sixth form ... We don't specify centrally a ratio of primary to secondary pupil funding in each local area. This is decided locally by local authorities in consultation with local schools and heads.

"Seeing that all children leave primary school able to read, write and calculate confidently is our highest priority. That is why we are prioritising funding over the next three years for primary school children who need extra help on the basics, through the national rollout of Every Child a Reader and Every Child Counts."

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 9:05 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Lawyer who blasted Johnson High's lengthy use of subs also finds fault with its solution.

By Kim Minugh | Sacramento Bee
March 1, 2008

Sacramento City Unified officials overhauled Hiram Johnson High School's master schedule in November to get rid of classes that had been taught by substitute teachers for nearly three months.

In the shuffle, at least two dozen students designated as "English-language learners" were removed from an intensive language tutoring class and placed mostly in elective classes including piano, art, French and Spanish-for-Spanish-speakers, according to the students and their records.

About half of them were moved into a landscaping class filled with developmentally disabled students.

Some of the students' English grades fell after the move, records show. Others earned lackluster or even failing grades in their new classes – except for most of the landscaping students, who said the "easy" work helped them get A's and B's.

"This school, they don't think about our education," said freshman Manuel Andrade, who was placed in an art class. "They just move us like nothing."

Associate Superintendent Mary Hardin Young said the administration worked hard to place students appropriately.

"There was never any intent – there never is an intent at any of our schools – to take kids that need some extra support and cast them aside," she said.

In November, a San Francisco attorney warned that Sacramento City Unified was violating students' rights by not giving them full-time teachers.

On Friday, John Affeldt, the lawyer with Public Advocates, said the district's solution seems to do the same thing.

"Unfortunately, the district's taken steps that seem to be satisfying what's convenient for the district instead of what is most important for kids' educational success," he said.

Affeldt was a lead attorney on the landmark Williams lawsuit, which established that California students must have access to quality materials, facilities and teachers. He said the district now appears to be violating the spirit of the law by moving kids rather than just hiring the teachers they needed.

The two dozen students who were transferred originally were in two periods of English, one a core academic class and the other a follow-up tutoring class. Such scheduling is common for students considered English-language learners.

Cyndi Swindle, interim principal at Johnson High, said she felt confident that the impacted students had other options if they needed extra support, such as tutoring after school and on Saturdays.

"It's not like we took these students and moved them somewhere else and that was it," Swindle said. "They may have gotten a class that was different, but it also applies to their diploma."

Swindle also said that campus officials are reviewing schedules of all English learners to make sure their placements are appropriate, given recent test scores.

In interviews with The Bee, several students said they showed up for school one day in November and were given new schedules. Some said they tried to have their schedule corrected – a few brought older siblings or parents in – but to no avail.

"They said it was too late for me," Cathy Truong, 14, said of her trip to the counseling office.

Others, such as Andrade, said they were afraid to ask.

"I thought I would get suspended or in trouble," he said.

Swindle said she was surprised to hear that.

"That just boggles my mind," she said. "The counseling office is always open to them."

Hardin Young said she is confident that campus administrators will begin reaching out Monday morning to any students who feel alienated by the changes.

"They take a lot of pride in supporting students and families," the associate superintendent said. "That'd be the last thing they'd want to feel is happening."

In November, several concerned teachers brought to light a teacher shortage at Johnson High that had left nearly 400 students in classes with substitute teachers. District officials attributed the situation to the last-minute departure of three teachers before the school year began and an unexpected increase in enrollment.

Officials said at the time that they had fixed the problem mostly by moving students from substitutes' classes into under-enrolled classes with permanent teachers.

For 11 students, that meant moving from a second period of English into landscaping.

Records obtained by The Bee show that the landscaping class is designated as a Regional Occupational Program – or vocational education – class. Records also show that many of the other students enrolled are developmentally disabled.

Some of the students who were transferred into the landscaping class said they did not understand the placement and that the class has been a waste of time.

"We just plant. I already know how to do that," said Jose Hernandez, 15.

"It's not really what I want to learn," said Truong. "I want to improve more on my English. I think that English is more important than landscaping."

Avnick Chand was moved out of his English tutoring class and placed into French. The semester was so far along, he said, that he felt completely lost, and ended the semester with an F. He said he is failing this semester, too.

"I don't understand what they talk about," Chand said.

Even though the new elective classes count toward graduation, Affeldt said that without a solid grasp of English, he and the other students are likely to struggle with other academic classes. And they need a solid English foundation to pass the exit exam, required for graduation, he said.

Labels: English language learners

posted by Patricia Lopez at 4:08 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Josh Green, SF Chronicle Staff Writer
February 29, 2008

Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds
Mexican Immigration and the Future of Race in America
By Gregory Rodriguez
Pantheon; 317 pages; $26.95

Learning a New Land
Immigrant Students in American Society
By Carola Suárez-Orozco, Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco and Irina Todorova
Belknap/Harvard University Press; 426 pages; $29.95

Lurking just beneath the surface of the immigration debate are several irksome questions about another topic that we may be afraid to ask.

Beyond long fences, paths to amnesty, guest-worker programs and the nuts and bolts of legislative proposals and politics, we want to know: Who are these new people, and will they adopt English and the American culture? What will our nation look like 50 years from now, once they have become U.S. citizens? How responsible are we for integrating them into mainstream society and seeing them become part of the middle class?

These questions of assimilation no longer reside on the horizon of a hazy future. The sheer numbers of immigrants who have entered the United States in the past three decades, combined with the political spotlight shining on 12 million illegal immigrants in the country, make it imperative that we answer these questions now.

Dozens of books have been written about the immigration debate, but few rise above the oversimplified polemic of deportation versus amnesty. Much of the recent argument is a counterbalance to Sam Huntington's thesis, set forth in his 2004 book, "Who Are We: The Challenges to America's National Identity," in which he argues that this recent wave of immigration - mostly from Mexico - is different from past waves because Mexican Americans are particularly resistant to assimilation into Anglo American culture. This movement away from the Anglo Protestant culture and work ethic, he argues, undermines a commitment to the American democratic ideal.

This thesis set off fiery criticism from those who saw the move to place Latin American immigration into a new category as a cover for a racist agenda bent on keeping America as white as possible.

Two new books diverge from the political approach to the simmering assimilation debate, one looking backward, another looking forward. Los Angeles Times columnist Gregory Rodriguez's provocatively titled "Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds: Mexican Immigration and the Future of Race in America" examines Mexican Americans' self-identity through history, from the Aztec conquest to 21st century immigration into the United States. Rodriguez makes a strong argument that the very idea of treating Mexican Americans or Latinos as a single racial category, as the U.S. Census attempts to do with the "Hispanic" label, misses the fact that, for the past 500 years, the Mexican people have been an "in between" group, with each individual deciding where he or she belonged based on economic and cultural advantage.

A second book, "Learning a New Land: Immigrant Students in American Society," examines how the children of immigrants are doing in American schools. It's a discouraging picture, and should be a wake-up call to anyone who cares about education.

The Latin American concept of mestizaje - or racial and cultural synthesis - runs through Mexican American history and eventually was successful in smashing the Spanish colonials' racial hierarchy. "As it has for centuries, Hispanicity continues to absorb rather than exclude the cultures it encounters and thus redefines itself as it moves northward," Rodriguez writes. Indeed, Rodriguez boldly argues that "Mexican Americans, who have always confounded the Anglo American racial system, will ultimately destroy it, too."

The primary tool for both the creation and maintenance of mestizaje is intermarriage, which started the day Hernan Cortés stepped onto the shores of New Spain (now Mexico) in 1519. Indian chieftains that the conquistadores encountered bestowed daughters and other women upon soldiers as consorts and slaves, and the first mestizos were born from these unions. An influx of hundreds of thousands of African slaves stirred the racial waters further, and it became increasingly difficult to determine who belonged to what categories. Some mestizos were marginalized and became an underclass. Others managed to blend into noble classes or marry Spaniards.

Mestizos' coping strategies under colonial rule inform Rodriguez's view of recent history. Mexican Americans alternated their racial categorization depending on context - they preferred to be considered white when more rights were conferred on that category, but during the 1960s and '70s, the Chicano movement sought to establish Latinos as a separate minority that deserved the same affirmative action policies as African Americans.

Rodriguez says the Chicano movement quickly fell apart because it was forcing a racial identity on people who felt more comfortable existing outside of racial boundaries.

While his book is meticulously researched and ambitious in scope, Rodriguez never delivers on the subtitle's promise: We do not understand "the future of race in America" simply by understanding the Mexican American concept of race through history. But we might get a glimpse of it.

An equally ambitious research study from Harvard University researchers Carola and Marcelo Suárez-Orozco looks to the future rather than the past - and it's a bleak future, in which today's immigrant children grow up to be an uneducated workforce that cannot meet the challenges of the nation's economy. Bilingual research assistants interviewed children born in another country who then moved to the San Francisco and Boston areas. The sample was further divided into five areas of origin (China, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Central America and Mexico).

This is not a small part of the total educational puzzle. About 20 percent of students are children of immigrants, and by 2040 that number is expected to rise to 33 percent.

While the study's academic thoroughness may make it too dense for the lay reader, its findings are pretty clear: Immigrant students do worse, not better, the longer they stay in American schools. Over the five-year length of the study, students' grade-point averages dropped nearly a half point.

The reasons for this failure are myriad and include all of the expected causes: underfunded schools, overcrowded classrooms, a failing and non-standardized English training program and lack of mentoring. Other causes are not so obvious - for example, more than half of the students surveyed were separated from their fathers for five or more years.

The Suárez-Orozcos argue that poor student achievement is more than a moral failing, it's an economic blunder of epic proportions. "Are we prepared to leverage this human potential by nurturing the children of these immigrants? Or would we rather pay the significant price of letting this human resource go to waste?" they ask.

Both authors realize that the real price of ignoring the assimilation question will be a divided and weakened America. If we are destined to become a nation that embraces mestizaje, as Rodriguez envisions, then we'd better start to act like one. {sbox}

Josh Green is a doctoral candidate in political science at UC Berkeley.

Labels: immigrant children

posted by Patricia Lopez at 3:57 PM 0 comments Links to this post

This is terrifying: One in 36 adult Hispanic men and one in 15 adult black men is behind bars. This should be a major campaign issue. -
Angela

By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: February 29, 2008 /NYTIMES

For the first time in the nation’s history, more than one in 100
American adults are behind bars, according to a new report.

Nationwide, the prison population grew by 25,000 last year, bringing
it to almost 1.6 million, after three decades of growth that has seen
the prison population nearly triple. Another 723,000 people are in
local jails.

The number of American adults is about 230 million, meaning that one
in every 99.1 adults is behind bars.

Incarceration rates are even higher for some groups. One in 36 adult
Hispanic men is behind bars, based on Justice Department figures for
2006. One in 15 adult black men is, too, as is one in nine black men
ages 20 to 34.

The report, from the Pew Center on the States, also found that one in
355 white women ages 35 to 39 is behind bars, compared with one in 100
black women.

The report’s methodology differed from that used by the Justice
Department, which calculates the incarceration rate by using the total
population rather than the adult population as the denominator. Using
the department’s methodology, about one in 130 Americans is behind bars.

The increase in the number of prisoners over the last 18 months, the
Pew report says, pushed the national adult incarceration rate to just
over one in 100.

“We aren’t really getting the return in public safety from this level
of incarceration,” said Susan Urahn, the center’s managing director.

But Paul Cassell, a law professor at the University of Utah and a
former federal judge, said the Pew report considered only half of the
cost-benefit equation and overlooked the “very tangible benefits:
lower crime rates.”

In the past 20 years, according the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
rates of violent crimes fell by 25 percent, to 464 per 100,000 people
in 2007 from 612.5 in 1987.

“While we certainly want to be smart about who we put into prisons,”
Professor Cassell said, “it would be a mistake to think that we can
release any significant number of prisoners without increasing crime
rates. One out of every 100 adults is behind bars because one out of
every 100 adults has committed a serious criminal offense.”

The United States imprisons more people than any other nation in the
world. China is second, with 1.5 million people behind bars. The gap
is even wider in percentage terms.

Germany imprisons 93 out of every 100,000 people, according to the
International Center for Prison Studies at King’s College in London.
The comparable number for the United States is roughly eight times
that, or 750 out of 100,000.

Ms. Urahn said the nation could not afford the incarceration rate
documented in the report.

“We tend to be a country in which incarceration is an easy response to
crime,” she said. “Being tough on crime is an easy position to take,
particularly if you have the money. And we did have the money in the
’80s and ’90s.”

Now, with fewer resources available, the report said, “prison costs
are blowing a hole in state budgets.”

On average, states spend almost 7 percent of their budgets on
corrections, trailing only health care, education and transportation.

In 2007, according to the National Association of State Budget
Officers, states spent $44 billion in tax dollars on corrections. That
is up from $10.6 billion in 1987, a 127 percent increase when adjusted
for inflation. With money from bonds and the federal government
included, total state spending on corrections last year was $49
billion. By 2011, the Pew report said, states are on track to spend an
additional $25 billion.

It cost an average of $23,876 dollars to imprison someone in 2005, the
most recent year for which data were available. But state spending
varies widely, from $45,000 a year in Rhode Island to $13,000 in Louisiana.

“Getting tough on crime has gotten tough on taxpayers,” said Adam
Gelb, the director of the public safety performance project at the Pew
center. “They don’t want to spend $23,000 on a prison cell for a minor
violation any more than they want a bridge to nowhere.”

The cost of medical care is growing by 10 percent annually, the report
said, and will accelerate as the prison population ages.

About one in nine state government employees works in corrections, and
some states are finding it hard to fill those jobs. California spent
more than $500 million on overtime alone in 2006.

The number of prisoners in California dropped by 4,000 last year,
making Texas’ prison system the nation’s largest, at about 172,000.
But the Texas Legislature last year approved broad changes to the
state’s corrections system, including expansions of drug treatment
programs and drug courts and revisions to parole practices.

“Our violent offenders, we lock them up for a very long time ­
rapists, murderers, child molesters,” said State Senator John
Whitmire, Democrat of Houston and the chairman of the Senate’s
Criminal Justice Committee. “The problem was that we weren’t smart
about nonviolent offenders. The Legislature finally caught up with the public.”

Mr. Whitmire gave an example.

“We have 5,500 D.W.I offenders in prison,” he said, including people
caught driving under the influence who had not been in an accident.
“They’re in the general population. As serious as drinking and driving
is, we should segregate them and give them treatment.”

The Pew report recommended diverting nonviolent offenders away from
prison and using punishments short of reincarceration for minor or
technical violations of probation or parole. It also urged states to
consider earlier release of some prisoners.

Before the recent changes in Texas, Mr. Whitmire said, “we were
recycling nonviolent offenders.”

Labels: prison

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 11:20 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Principal flight on the rise in the age of accountability
Central Texas school districts losing principals to students' peril.
By Raven L. Hill , Bob Banta
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Monday, February 11, 2008

Geneva Oliva estimates conservatively that she saw seven principals come and go while her children attended Johnston High School in East Austin from 1994 to 2003. The faces changed with such regularity that she says she didn't recognize the principal from year to year.

"Every time a new principal came in, they'd come up with a new program," she says, "but the new program was never completed because the principals left. What good is it to have good ideas if they aren't there to finish it off?"

School districts nationwide are finding it harder to hold on to principals as standards get tougher and the list of demands from the state and federal governments gets longer.

Statewide, high turnover is particularly apparent in high schools. About 61 percent of high school principals leave their schools or the field within three years; by the fifth year, that figure increases to 76 percent. Austin's turnover rates are slightly higher: 64 percent after three years and 82 percent after five years.

The district's annual high school principal turnover rate is just over 25 percent, a figure that is on par with other urban districts, where yearly turnover tends to average 18 percent to 25 percent.

When the principalship is a revolving door at a school, experts say, it trickles down to teacher retention efforts and school reform initiatives, which have vast implications for a district like Austin, where the 11 traditional high schools are in various stages of reform, with middle schools soon to follow. Local changes have included redesigning high schools to resemble colleges.

"We know that school reform takes time — much more than one year's time," said Ed Fuller, associate director of the University Council for Educational Administration at the University of Texas. "If a principal leaves within three to five years, the principal's vision for reform is left incomplete. Over time, teachers become jaded and simply ignore the reform effort. ... Teachers believe the principal will leave and all of their efforts will be wasted."

Principal flight at some campuses has been extreme: Johnston High went through 11 principals in 12 years before Celina Estrada-Thomas arrived in 2005, the same year that Reagan High in Northeast Austin had four principals in one year.

Education experts, principals and parents say the challenges of urban schools, combined with high-stakes testing demands, are driving the trend.

Nelson Coulter, principal of Hendrickson High School in Pflugerville, remembers when principals only had to be successful politicians to keep their jobs.

Now, Coulter says, they have to be like coaches. "You have to win," said Coulter, a 30-year veteran educator.

More pressure

The accountability system has changed expectations.

"While principals put stress on teachers to improve outcomes, teachers often do not lose their jobs over low accountability ratings," said Fuller, who has analyzed cumulative state turnover rates. "Principals do."

It's not always clear when principals leave whether they chose to walk out or were forced out, but what is certain is that in high-pressure situations at low-performing schools, they often don't last.

Consider the five Austin campuses that have appeared on the state's list of low-performing schools multiple times since the accountability system was enacted four years ago: Johnston and Reagan high schools, Pearce and Webb middle schools, and Pecan Springs Elementary School. Pecan Springs and Webb are no longer on the list.

There have been nine principal changes among them since 2003-04.

"I'm not saying we want to hold on to someone who is doing a bad job for the sake of stability, but I am really concerned about the pressure that is on principals," said Louis Malfaro, president of Education Austin, which represents 4,000 teachers and staff members. "I think it's crowding a lot of people out of school leadership."

Even high-achieving suburban districts, where turnover is generally expected to be lower, have not been shielded from the tumult.

Round Rock lost five of eight middle school principals in 2006 and four last year.

Rosena Malone was among the five who changed positions in 2006, receiving a promotion to assistant superintendent for secondary schools after serving less than eight months as Hopewell Middle School's principal. "We had an unusually high turnover that year in middle school positions due to promotions," Malone said.

Schools that traditionally do well on the state achievement test present their own challenges for a principal.

"The difficulty with running a campus noted for its top test scores is that the bar has been raised very high. You have to get your teachers behind you in order to maintain those expectations," said Linda Watkins, former principal at Westwood High School in the Round Rock district. "You also have a group of parents who ... expect their kids to be ready for college, and many of them are aiming for Ivy League universities. The rigor of the curriculum expected in a school like that is very stressful."

Michael Houser, Austin's human resources director, said the turnover rates reflect increased accountability in the education system. "The job is extremely demanding and even more so with redesign, high-stakes testing and ranking of schools," he said.

Michael Garrison, principal of McCallum High School in the Austin district, said principals aren't alone in feeling pressured to produce.

"It's a challenging job anywhere in the system," he said. "But the benefits are huge."

Experts: Support a must

To improve retention, school districts must provide leaders with adequate support, researchers say, in the form of well-qualified teachers, autonomy, solid mentoring and protection from community and political pressures.

When Brenda Burrell took over Austin's LBJ High School in 2000, some expected her toughest task to be getting the school off the state's low-performing list, which she did in her first year. More difficult to manage were what she called the three P's: "politics, pollutants and parasites."

The former principal recalled the arduous task of balancing the concerns of magnet parents and neighborhood parents and dealing with "sacred cows ... people and programs that are dead but keep hanging on."

Burrell was removed as principal in 2004 in the wake of a school restructuring plan.

"I was trying to move the academic achievement of all students forward, together and in an equitable manner," said Burrell, who left the district in 2005 and now works for the state education department in Utah. "I was not given enough time or resources to do that.

Experts say superintendents must be more protective of their principals if they want them to stay. "Just like good principals buffer their teachers from outside pressures, good superintendents buffer their principals from outside influences," Fuller said.

Others say aspiring principals must become more knowledgeable about the realities of the position.

LBJ High Principal Patrick Patterson works six, sometimes seven days a week. That's the only way he can stay ahead of the 75-hour-per-week job that requires him to be building manager, teacher mentor, parent liaison, community builder, cheerleader, disciplinarian and fundraiser.

"If the individual is not willing to work the long hours, if they don't have a family to support them, if the individual is not willing to be at the top — and at the top, you're alone — then this is not the job for them," Patterson said.

The Austin district has for several years partnered with the University of Texas' Principalship Program, a master's degree program that provides training in campus leadership. The district has also raised salaries 15 percent to 20 percent over the past three years. Pay for high school principals ranges from $100,000 to $110,000, middle school principals make $90,000 to $100,000 and elementary school principals earn $70,000 to $80,000.

When principals stay, the difference is obvious, said Oliva, the Johnston parent.

Johnston's teacher turnover has been considerably lower since Estrada-Thomas' stint began, district figures show.

"I tell her, 'At least we know that you are here and that you care about our students.' Even the parents are finally coming out after 13 years," Oliva said.

Copyright 2008 The Austin American-Statesman. All rights reserved.

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 12:56 PM 0 comments Links to this post

To check out the "Call to Action Report" from the Equity and Social Justice Initiative. Good stuff! -Patricia

By Ron Sims | Opinion Page
Special to The Seattle Times
February 10, 2008

"I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits."

— Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1964)

More than four decades have passed since the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. set forth this vision. Yet, today we remain a society burdened by vast disparities in wealth, health and opportunities. Not just in this country, but also in our county, named after Dr. King.

At this moment, here in communities as forward-thinking as Seattle and King County, the color of your skin or your home address are good predictors of whether you will have a low-birth-weight baby, die from diabetes, or your children will graduate from high school or end up in jail:

• A child in South King County is more than twice as likely to drop out of high school as one in East King County;

• A worker making between $15,000 and $25,000 a year is 10 times less likely to have health insurance than one making more than $50,000 per year;

• A youth of color is six times more likely than a white youth to spend time in a state or county correctional facility;

• A Southeast Seattle resident is four times more likely to die from diabetes than a resident of Mercer Island;

• A Native American baby is four times more likely to die before her first birthday than a white baby.

These statistics are both endless and maddening. The reality they represent for so many residents of King County is the reason we are today launching the King County Equity and Social Justice Initiative. Unfortunately, race, class, gender and immigration status are not just simple measures of the ways we differ, but rather insidious surrogates for the things that matter most — health, a living wage, opportunity, education, access to housing and safe neighborhoods.

And, in some instances, the problem is getting worse, not better. Despite the unprecedented growth and prosperity our region has experienced as a whole, some of us are losing ground. From 1970 to 2000, the gap between the median incomes for African-American families and the total population widened in King County. The rate of homeownership during this period declined for African-American families while it remained steady for white families.

The gulf between the rich and the poor is widening, a fact that can be seen in the great disparity in our neighborhoods around the county. While many of our communities are thriving, some neighborhoods increasingly foster the conditions that lead to poor health, underemployment, poor education, incarceration, loss of opportunity and unsafe living.

We also know that the stressors of racism and discrimination may be contributing to poor health. A highly educated, professional African-American woman is more than twice as likely to have a child with very low birth weight, compared with a white woman with a high-school diploma or less.

Achieving the most basic elements of the American dream has become a nearly insurmountable uphill climb for many of our neighbors. Far too many will find it an impossible dream.

I am especially worried about our children, too many of whom are born into poverty, in neighborhoods with high crime, poor education and little economic opportunity. All should have an equal opportunity for a living wage and a healthy, successful future. But, they do not. More than 40 years after Dr. King's vision, the flame of hope for the future is growing dimmer for too many.

A lucky one

I was one of the lucky ones. At 6 years old, in Spokane, I watched the demolition of my family home after a mere 30-days notice. I spent my first years of school falling behind in my reading skills because that is what my teachers expected. But, I also had a fifth-grade teacher who believed in me and made an enormous difference in my life by helping me see opportunities, not obstacles.

It is true that some of us do get through. Some of us may be lucky enough not to feel the direct, daily pain of these inequities. But, we all suffer. We all share in the lost productivity and the economic expense associated with criminal-justice and other crisis services. We all experience the economic results when our work force is not as productive as it might be in our increasingly competitive global environment. We all absorb the costs of high rates of disease and lack of access to health insurance by others.

When a majority of us are comfortable in a nice neighborhood, with a good job and access to good schools, it's easy to ignore the hopelessness and despair felt by children of color with the odds of getting an education and a good job stacked against them.

We all need to own the reality of inequity by tearing down the curtain that hides it, by naming it, by measuring it, by talking about it, and by tracking our progress and solving it. We need empowered community voices to partner with government and others in shaping policies and decisions. We need to look across traditional boundaries for solutions. We need to attack inequities at their sources.

I believe fervently that we can reverse this course. Not overnight, but over time. This is our commitment in launching the Equity and Social Justice Initiative.

Inequity, by its very nature, is a solvable problem. The reason inequity exists is that we have discovered solutions that work for some of us. We have just not applied these solutions to all of us.

We can see that thriving communities have the kind of conditions that make them a good place to be healthy, raise children, work, and pursue activities that uplift our spirit and mind. These conditions are not surprising: affordable housing, quality education, livable-wage jobs, safe neighborhoods, accessible support services and efficient transportation. Research is showing that these underlying community conditions, or social determinants, are powerful predictors of individual health and well-being, and changing them for the better can yield huge dividends.

Collective solutions

So, let's be clear: Our jarring statistics of inequity are neither natural nor inevitable. Human forces, both historical and current, have allowed some to prosper and thrive, but have failed many others, in particular, the poor and communities of color. We, collectively, have created this problem, and therefore we, collectively, must take on developing and implementing the solutions.

Within the public sector, federal, state and local governments have not made good progress in eliminating disparity. Instead, and in truth, decades of misguided policies have contributed to the problem — policies that have isolated the poorest neighborhoods from economic opportunities, provided inadequate schools and support services, and disenfranchised communities trying to do better.

But what we have created, we can change.

We just need to keep asking ourselves one question: "What if all people of King County had the same opportunities — regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, immigration status, sexual orientation or disability — for quality education, basic health care, jobs that pay a living wage, affordable housing, safe neighborhoods, and the same opportunity to enjoy the natural environment?"

The answer is clear and simple: A new, better and very different King County would emerge. If everyone had access to jobs paying a living wage, nearly 400,000 people currently struggling with very low incomes would enjoy healthier lives. If all of us had the same access to quality health care as the most-privileged, this would be one of the healthiest places in the world to live. If all of us had the same opportunity for education as our most-affluent citizens, the competitiveness of our work force would frighten every one of our competitors.

All residents of King County would reap the benefits — through greater economic vitality, a better-educated populace, a less-expensive health-care system, a lower-cost criminal-justice system, and better government through a more engaged and representative citizenry. Most of all, instead of lamenting young lives wasted, we would enjoy the contributions of healthy, educated and engaged young people, whether they are machinists at Boeing, software engineers at Microsoft or another Jacob Lawrence, whose art speaks to people of the world.

I believe this region is poised to make great strides toward achieving equity. But, I'm also realistic. Correcting societal inequities is a complex and multilayered undertaking. No one single approach will solve it. However, we can identify and implement the elements that will bring about positive change. And, we can trust that early small success will lead to later, longer-term, larger success.

King County government must be part of the solution that helps sow the long-term seeds of nurturing equity and social justice.

A call to action

This initiative begins with a call to action. As outlined in our report, each of the county's executive departments will take concrete steps to address inequities in 2008.

We will also work across departments and with partners to identify opportunities to correct inequities closer to their source. For example, we will implement a tool for systematically asking hard questions when making policy and funding decisions, leading to opportunities to improve conditions in marginalized communities. Similarly, through an innovative cross-departmental approach, we will work side-by-side with neighborhoods and local partners to be catalysts for healthier and more vibrant communities.

We will broadly engage our communities. We are looking forward to having real conversations with our local residents to raise awareness about these inequities, discuss root causes and mobilize around solutions.

And, we will work on particular regional priorities. I believe closing the education gap is where we should start, working with partners on identifying strategies to create school communities that improve literacy, reduce dropout rates and improve graduation rates.

This is only a beginning. Some might be reminded of the proverb that talks about the longest journey beginning with a single step. But we are more fortunate than that. We are not taking the first step and many have come before us. Nonetheless, I'm under no illusion that we are on anything but a long journey along a difficult, rocky path. But, there are few, if any, other paths with as important a destination.

"Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable ... It comes only through the tireless efforts and passionate concern of dedicated individuals ... This is no time for apathy nor complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action."

— Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1958)

Labels: achievement, editorial

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

These are the moments when Californians wish we weren't saying "We Were the First." Maybe the state (Gov.) should consider that the goals have failed to consider the varying needs of some schools, rather than labeling schools as failing to meet the goal. -Patricia

By Juliet Williams
AP
February 27, 2008

SACRAMENTO – Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday recommended severe or moderate sanctions for nearly half the 97 California school districts that have persistently failed to make progress under the No Child Left Behind Act.

Those districts, responsible for educating nearly one-third of California's public school students, face sanctions for the first time under the federal law because they have failed to meet achievement goals for four years.

Schwarzenegger has vowed to make California the first state in the nation to embrace the penalty aspect of the law.

“Students who have persistently lagged behind have suffered too long, and they need our help right now,” Schwarzenegger said in a statement issued before a scheduled news conference at a Sacramento school.

By intervening, the state can receive up to $45 million in federal money to help turn the districts around, the governor's office said.

The proposal Schwarzenegger reached with Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell calls for teams of experts to intervene and devise ways to boost student achievement.

Seven school districts face the harshest sanctions, which eventually could include replacing administrators or a takeover by the state.

They are: Greenfield Union Elementary in Monterey County; Arvin Union Elementary and Fairfax Elementary in Kern County; West Fresno Elementary in Fresno County; Ravenswood City Elementary in San Mateo County; Keppel Union Elementary in Los Angeles County; and Coachella Valley Unified in Riverside County.

Coachella, a district in far southeastern California with a high migrant population, faces the harshest sanctions. O'Connell wants the Riverside County Office of Education to become trustee of the district and will recommend that action to the state Board of Education.

Schwarzenegger favors using the same approach for each of the seven school districts, which begins with a performance assessment.

Coachella Valley Unified Superintendent Foch “Tut” Pensis said he was disappointed in the possibility that his district would be appointed a trustee.

He said his students, who are nearly all poor, have made some progress in recent years, even if they haven't met the benchmarks of the federal law.

“I understood that we needed harsh sanctions, but putting a trustee here in a district that's continued to make progress – I don't think it's needed,” he said.

Coachella opened itself to harsher sanctions by accepting a $2 million grant in 2005 to improve instruction for English-learner students.

On the list are 96 failing school districts and the Orange County Office of Education, which has responsibility for running some schools.

The failing districts have been split into four groups under the plan – those facing severe, moderate, light and other action. For many, that will mean teams of education experts that will assess the districts' curriculum, testing, teacher quality and other issues.

They will then recommend action to the state Board of Education, which must approve Schwarzenegger's plan before it can take effect.

Those deemed to need only light assistance will get technical help with problem areas, such as English-learner students or students with disabilities.

Schwarzenegger's embrace of No Child Left Behind marks a departure from the state's opposition to the six-year-old law, said Russlyn Ali, director of Education Trust-West, an Oakland-based policy and research group and a member of the Governor's Committee on Education Excellence.

But she is worried about how the state will pay for and implement the interventions. That concern is magnified by a state budget deficit of $16 billion and Schwarzenegger's own proposal to cut $4 billion in education spending in the budget year that begins July 1.

“On the one hand, I think it is magnanimous that the state is saying to these districts, 'You do not have to shoulder this burden alone.' On the other, don't make false promises,” Ali said. “If you're telling them you're going to shoulder the burden of this, then bring it.”

Some other states have begun to take action against consistently underperforming school districts, but none has approached the task in such a comprehensive way or faced challenges on such a daunting scale.

The districts facing sanctions are collectively responsible for educating about a third of California's 6.3 million students, nearly half of whom are considered poor. About a quarter do not speak English fluently.

The federal law sets broad benchmarks but leaves it up to states to implement the law, and some are further ahead than others.

Unlike initiatives in other states, California would implement a sliding scale of intervention actions depending on how poorly the districts have performed.

The affected California districts have schools that have failed to meet their goals under the law for each of the past four years.

Many have been quick to note that they have made progress, particularly in educating subgroups of students such as English-learners or minorities. But that is not enough under No Child Left Behind, which sets ever-higher expectations each year.

“You could do tremendous work every single year, but it doesn't count for a single thing under this law. What message does that send?” said Sherry Griffith, a legislative advocate for the Association of California School Administrators.

The group has met with state leaders as they negotiated the intervention plan, but Griffith said she is worried the state will establish an accountability system around a federal law that could change when it is reauthorized by Congress.

The top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Education Committee have said they would put off rewriting the law until later this year.

In his State of the State address in January, Schwarzenegger said he would make California the first in the nation to embrace the authority it was given under the federal law “to turn these districts around.”

“No more waiting,” he said. “We must act on behalf of the children.”

n a visit last month to California, U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings praised the governor's intervention plan for the 97 districts.

Schwarzenegger has focused on the plan as the state struggles with a budget deficit that largely derailed his proposed “year of education reform” and forced him to propose major cuts to education.

He also has recommended suspending Proposition 98, the landmark education funding law voters approved in 1988. That has prompted a statewide opposition campaign by the powerful California Teachers Association and its allies.

Local schools affected

Schools in San Diego County that have not met federal compliance under No Child Left Behind for the past five years and the proposed interventions are below:

Escondido Union Elementary (light)
Fallbrook Union High (Other)
Grossmont Union High (Light)
San Ysidro Elementary (Light)
South Bay Union Elementary (Moderate).

The proposed actions in each category include:

Moderate: The school district will choose its state approved education assistance provider in consultation with the local county superintendent of schools. In these districts, as above, the assistance provider will create a plan of action for the district's improvement that the district will be required to implement.

Light: The school district will choose a state-approved technical assistance provider. This provider will help develop a tailored plan to assist the school district in meeting federal accountability targets.

Other: Districts that narrowly missed federal accountability targets will be directed to revise their Local Education Agency (LEA) plans, which outline how they will implement NCLB. Additionally in this category, there are LEA plans that require special attention based on extenuating circumstances, such as voter approved consolidation/elimination of school districts.

Labels: California, failing schools

posted by Patricia Lopez at 10:26 AM 0 comments Links to this post

“We are sending the message loudly,” says Luissiana Santibanez, a community organizer in Austin whose mother was deported, “that come March 4th, they will not be reelected if they allow this to happen."

Something for Texas voters to think about as Tuesday nears. Gracias Luissana. -Patricia


By Seth Wessler | Color Lines
Jan/Feb 2008

The sheriff of Travis County, Texas, which includes the city of Austin, made a unilateral decision in January to give Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) a permanent office space in the county’s jails. The move would facilitate the deportation of undocumented immigrants who are arrested by local cops. Organizers and community members responded to Sheriff Greg Hamilton’s mandate by warning that they will go to the ballot box. The sheriff and other local officials are up for reelection on March 4.

“We are sending the message loudly,” says Luissiana Santibanez, a community organizer in Austin whose mother was deported, “that come March 4th, they will not be reelected if they allow this to happen. ICE doesn’t have a desk in the jails yet and seeing as there is no mandate requiring they be allowed in, we see no reason why they should be given that much power and access.”

Although ICE has for years had a presence in the Travis County jails, the policy shift will intensify their involvement since ICE personnel will now have a constant presence in the jail. ICE will be allowed to place federal immigration detainers on undocumented inmates or any documented non-citizens who commit any of an expansive set of deportable crimes.

While ICE has not yet set up a permanent office in the facility, the new cooperation between the sheriff and ICE officials has already had a major impact. There were usually about four or five people detained each month, according to Austin City Council member Mike Martinez, who opposes the sheriff’s decision. In December, however, about 111 people were detained and in the first two weeks of February. 110 had already been detained, Martinez said.

Jim Sylvester, Chief Deputy of the Travis Country Sheriff’s office initially denied that Travis County, had a financial incentive to cooperate with ICE. He admitted that the county receives $1.2 million in federal funds to incarcerate “criminal aliens” but suggested that they would receive the funds even if the county did not give ICE space in the jail. When pushed, however, Sylvester acknowledged that the county receives money for each person they hold with an ICE detainer. When asked if a permanent ICE presence in the jail would mean more federal immigration detainers on more prisoners, he responded in the affirmative, saying, “Once ICE is set up 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, they will be able to identify more individuals who are in this country illegally and therefore be able to place more detainees.”

This financial benefit, of course, calls into question the sheriff’s office claim that public safety is the primary impetus for cooperation with ICE.

Many states, counties and cities have faced pressure from the federal government to give ICE officials access to local jails. Some counties have bowed by permitting ICE offices in the jails. Others have signed up for the so-called 287G program that permits local officers to enforce federal immigration law. In Danbury, Connecticut, activists and community members protested at city hall against this move, arguing that the policy causes racial profiling and alienates immigrants who already fear government officials. Travis County officials have not yet signed up for the 287G program.

Martinez noted that the Travis County sheriff’s policy contradicts the city of Austin’s “years-long practice of not questioning suspects or victims about their immigration status.” That policy will continue to be in place in Austin, according to an Austin Police Department spokesperson. However, people arrested by Austin cops are transferred to Travis County jails where they will then become subject to ICE questioning.

Sylvester denied that the decision to give ICE access to the jails had a political motivation and insisted that it was good for public safety. “We know for a fact,” said Sylvester, “that we are only getting the bottom of the barrel, so to speak. These guys are really the undesirables. Most people wouldn’t want them getting out of jail and being their neighbor. They’d like to see them deported out of the country.”

But “undesirables” is quite a large category for Sylvester.

He suggested that the large numbers of foreign students at Austin universities posed a potential public safety problem as “colleges and universities have always had a tendency to become controversial with political activism and so that’s another thing where you have a lot of college students who come here on a student visa and they expire or get lost.” Sylvester did not clarify the implied connection between student activism and international students’ visas, but it can be assumed that he was suggesting a triple threat of undocumented immigration, terrorism and progressive student activism that need to be combated.

Santibanez contested this. “We’re talking about people being deported for going through a red light,” she said, adding that people “can be arrested for misdemeanors as small as not being able to pay a surcharge fee. These are crimes of poverty and people are being deported as a result.”

Carmen Llanes of the organization People Organizing in the Defense of Earth and Resources, noted, “There are serious due process issues that come up when immigrants are arrested and deported without any knowledge of their rights. These are people with no legal council present who have not even been convicted of any crime and may face deportation.”

Sylvester confirmed that people could be deemed innocent of any crime and still be detained by ICE and deported. He described a hypothetical situation in which an individual is “arrested for bank robbery and has an INS detainer placed on them. He goes through the normal process and the judge says he is not guilty of bank robbery, charges dismissed. Then the INS has 48 hours to pick that individual up and they take him to San Antonio to determine if they’re going to deport the guy.”

Efforts to overturn the sheriff’s decision continue as organizers and community members strategize. Llanes, Santibanez and others present at the public hearing and a meeting held afterwards made clear that the sheriff and other elected officials would face serious political consequences if they did not listen to the public response.

“As a Texan,” added Llanes, “I am disturbed that we are allowing federal officials with records of racial profiling and violations of constitutional rights into our jails.” Council Member Martinez agreed, adding that the jails are “paid for by local taxpayers. These funds are derived from property taxes, fines, fees and sales taxes (all of which are paid by everyone– including undocumented residents).”

Labels: immigration

posted by Patricia Lopez at 10:00 AM 0 comments Links to this post