This is very interesting. Check out Dr. Casye's article "What the TAKS Test Can Teach Us About Our Students"

-Patricia

By RICK CASEY
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Aug. 23, 2008

Kevin Jefferies may live in The Heights, but he's not a latte-sipping, arugula-munching elitist.

If he were, he wouldn't get so much pleasure out of commuting to Brazoria County for his job as head of the Economics and Government Department at Alvin Community College.

The 47-year-old University of Houston Ph.D. enjoys his students and works hard to figure out the best way to teach them.

"Since only a small fraction of my students will pursue political science, my objective is to train citizens," he wrote in a paper he presented last February at an American Political Science Association conference in San Jose, Calif.

No voter registration cards
That paper, "What the TAKS Test can Teach Us about Our Students," should be required reading for the Legislature's blue-ribbon panel that is studying whether Texas should revise its school accountability system with its heavy reliance on the controversial Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills.

About 90 percent of Jefferies' students are eligible to be first-time voters in a presidential election this year. The paper explains why that fact makes him nervous.

Too nervous, for example, to make it too easy for the students to vote.

"I don't have voter registration cards in my classroom," he said Friday. "I say if you can figure out how to register, then you can vote."

Although Jefferies' paper is a critique of the TAKS test, his research didn't start out as an attempt to assess the test. It began when he decided to use questions from the previous year's test (made available by the Texas Education Agency) at the beginning of a semester to see how much his students knew.

He was pleased to see they scored percentages in the mid-70s. It's not bad to start a course with the equivalent of a "C" on a test.

On some questions, the students did especially well. About 98 percent correctly answered multiple-choice questions about Miranda warnings.

More than 90 percent correctly said a section of the Declaration of Independence referring to King George's misuse of the military led to the Constitution's putting the military under the president.

But Jefferies soon discovered that the student's performance on TAKS questions didn't mean they understood the basic concepts that should provide the starting point for a college government course.

So the next semester he gave students an open-ended test on the same subject matter before giving them the TAKS questions.

Only seven in 10 knew what the Miranda warning was. Only 35 percent could say why freedom of speech was important, and 30 percent understood that King George's abusive use of the military led to the constitutional provision making the president commander in chief.

An aha! moment
As he looked closer at the TAKS questions, Jefferies saw that they were structured in such a way that the question suggested the answer.

The Miranda question, for example, presents the warning and asks the purpose. Only one of the choices mentioned protections for the accused. The other "answers" suggest that the warning is to promote job security for lawyers or limits the rights of judges.

The question on King George's use of the military gives a similarly obvious choice of answers. One suggests that it led to Congress's ability to legislate taxes, and another that it caused a provision that the vice president may be impeached. It's not to hard to figure that the president's role as commander in chief is the right answer.

"The answer to the question can easily be inferred from a close reading of the question itself," Jefferies wrote.

So not only does the constant drilling on facts for the TAKS test limit the time students can spend learning higher thinking skills and the ability to write, but the test may not even be measuring knowledge so much as an ability to glean clues from questions to get the right answers.

That the TAKS test wasn't measuring knowledge about government is further suggested by some of the definitions Jefferies' students offered.

Legislature? "Group within the government that is responsible for determining specified issues."

Unalienable rights? "Rights given to Americans," or, "Rights of non-citizens."

Jefferies concludes that one reason so many young people are alienated from politics is they don't even understand the language necessary to engage in it.

Still, he presses on.

"I'm not completely discouraged," he says. "But there's a lot of work to be done."

You can write to Rick Casey at P.O. Box 4260, Houston, TX 77210, or e-mail him at rick.casey@chron.com

Labels: editorial, TAKS

posted by Patricia Lopez at 10:06 AM 0 comments Links to this post

This is ridiculous. I wonder if he's ever thought to check the files and qualifications of incoming white students who are children of alumni.

-Patricia

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: August 30, 2008

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, resigned from an admissions committee Thursday, saying he suspected officials were cheating to illegally admit more black students but have blocked access to data that would prove it.

The professor, Tim Groseclose, who teaches political science classes, said he was concerned because “applicants often reveal their own race in the essay portion of the application,” according to an article in The Orange County Register. California’s public universities are banned from using race as an admissions criterion.

University officials said that admissions evaluators do not see the names, race or ethnicity of applicants and that they are following the law. Of the freshmen that will start classes next month, 235 students are black, or about 5 percent of the class. Two years ago, just 96 African-American freshman enrolled.

Professor Groseclose said he wanted to use statistical analysis to examine whether students were being admitted by race. He asked for 1,000 student files, including essays, with the names removed, which officials refused because of privacy issues.

Professor Groseclose said he supports offering preferences to recruit and admit more black students.

Labels: affirmative action

posted by Patricia Lopez at 9:52 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Check out the Full Report
-Patricia

by Rick Fry and Felisa Gonzales, Pew Hispanic Center
8.26.2008

The number of Hispanic students in the nation's public schools nearly doubled from 1990 to 2006, accounting for 60% of the total growth in public school enrollments over that period. There are now approximately 10 million Hispanic students in the nation's public kindergartens and its elementary and high schools; they make up about one-in-five public school students in the United States. In 1990, just one-in-eight public school students were Hispanic.

Strong growth in Hispanic enrollment is expected to continue for decades, according to a recently released U.S. Census Bureau population projection. The bureau projects that the Hispanic school-age population will increase by 166% by 2050 (to 28 million from 11 million in 2006), while the non-Hispanic school-age population will grow by just 4% (to 45 million from 43 million) over this same period.1 In 2050, there will be more school-age Hispanic children than school-age non-Hispanic white children.

Using data from the 2006 American Community Survey (ACS), this report presents information on the demographic characteristics of Hispanic students in public schools. It compares Hispanic public school students with their non-Hispanic counterparts. The large sample sizes available in the ACS also enable detailed comparison of Hispanic students across generational groups.


Key findings from the report:

* The vast majority of Hispanic public school students (84%) were born in the United States.
* Seven-in-ten (70%) Hispanic students speak a language other than English at home.
* Nearly one-in-five (18%) of all Hispanic students speak English with difficulty.
* Nearly three-in-five Hispanic students (57%) live in households with both of their parents compared with 69% of non-Hispanic white students and 30% of non-Hispanic black students.
* More than seven-in-ten U.S. born Hispanic students of immigrant parents (71%) live with both parents. Smaller shares of foreign-born students (58%) and U.S.-born students of native parentage (48%) reside with both parents.
* More than a quarter of Hispanic students (28%) live in poverty, compared with 16% of non-Hispanic students. In comparison, more than a third of non-Hispanic black students (35%) reside in poverty and about one-in-ten non-Hispanic white students live in a poor household.
* Foreign-born Hispanic students (35%) are more likely than their native-born counterparts (27%) to live in poverty.

1The U.S. Census Bureau projects the size of the population age 5 to 17. The growth of public school enrollment will not exactly match the growth of the school-age population because some children are not enrolled in school, some children attend private schools and some adults are enrolled in public schools.

Labels: demographics

posted by Patricia Lopez at 9:24 AM 0 comments Links to this post

This should concern everyone!

-Patricia

Melissa del Bosque | Texas Observer
August 15th, 2008 at 2:45 pm

A new study finds that unaccompanied children are being abandoned on the Mexican side of the border at an alarming pace.

In the last seven months, U.S. authorities have deported at least 90,000 children to Mexico, according to a study by the Mexican Government’s Commission on Population, Border and Immigration Affairs.

At least 13,500 of these children ages 17 and under were deported to Mexican border states but never reconnected with their parents or legal guardians. Many of these children have resorted to begging with the hopes of crossing into the United States again to be reunited with family members, according to the study. Other abandoned children are being cared for by churches and non-governmental organizations.

Many of these children were caught while being smuggled into the United States. U.S. authorities typically funnel the children through an “expedited” deportation process — sending them back to Mexico in a matter of hours.

The study cites another disturbing statistic: for every three adults deported to Mexico, one child is left abandoned in the United States.

Mexican border governors met with Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff about the deportations in February in Washington, D.C.

One of the biggest problems is lack of coordination between the U.S. and Mexican authorities. Jose Guadalupe Osuna Millan, governor of Baja California, told Chertoff that many children end up homeless because Mexican authorities are not advised when the children will arrive and don’t have time to find appropriate housing for them.

Eugenio Javier Hernandez Flores, the governor of Tamaulipas, said that his state receives 35,000 deported immigrants a year, many of them children. “Our governments need to work on a procedure for these undocumented children,” he said.

The Mexican governors said that among the children there were also South American and Central American children being deported to Mexico.

Edmundo Ramirez Martinez, Secretary of the Commission on Population, Borders and Migrant Affairs, told Mexican legislators that the International Convention on the Rights of Children requires that children be “repatriated” to their home countries rather than “deported.”

Repatriation means that the United States would return the child back to his or her specific home rather than abandon the child at the border.

Repatriating children, however, would cost the U.S. more time and money.

Money and effort the Bush administration thus far isn’t willing to invest.

Labels: immigrant children, Region 1

posted by Patricia Lopez at 8:57 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Helping international refugees become part of the community

BY TARA MORGAN
August 27, 2008

In a basement in downtown Boise, a bustling room filled with the hum of various languages. Refugees from Bhutan, Burundi and Burma shuffled in their chairs as interpreters explained how to fill out American job applications. Kids in glittery T-shirts tugged at their mothers' traditional, brightly colored sarongs. After the International Rescue Committee's weekly job-training class was over, Ganga Ram Gautam, a Nepali-speaking torture victim from Bhutan, asked an interpreter to explain how excited he is to finally be in America. Gautam—who was an interesting blend of east and west dressed in a black polo shirt with a South Asian red streak on his forehead—said that he used to be a farmer, but after being scarred by hot irons on his back, he is no longer able to do the heavy lifting required for the job. He's thankful to be learning English and hopes to get a job at a place like Wal-Mart.

"He is very happy to be here and wants to thank the IRC," explained interpreter Raj Shrestha. "Now he can sign his name and knows some of the alphabet so he can try to get a job."

With refugee families arriving year round, there are always new faces—and new languages—that need help assimilating into Boise's increasingly complex cultural tapestry. Though this can seem like an insurmountable task at times, the handful of dedicated community leaders and volunteers who work to educate incoming refugee families are completely committed to the cause. As the first people refugees meet when they get off the plane and the first people they turn to for help acclimating to their new homes, this group of agency directors, case workers, volunteers and community members work closely to ensure refugees are equipped with the necessary skills to pursue the American dream.

Right now in Boise, 93 languages are spoken from 101 different countries, with the majority of this dizzying diversity coming from the refugee community. Unlike migrants, who choose to come to America seeking a better life, refugees are people with no other choice.

According to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, a refugee is defined as someone who, "owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country."

In most cases, refugees are either returned home from the camps where they seek asylum, or resettled permanently in the country hosting the camp. Only 1 percent of all refugees are approved for resettlement in a third country like the United States. But before any of these people can set foot on American soil, they must maneuver through a complex system of verification. Asylum seekers who meet U.S. criteria for resettlement are first interviewed in their country of refuge by an Immigration and Naturalization Services officer. If they are approved, they are then matched with one of 10 resettlement organizations in the United States and assigned to a city. Boise is home to three non-profit resettlement organization offices: International Rescue Committee, World Relief and Agency for New Americans. Though all refugees receive some sort of formal American cultural orientation before they depart for the United States, the majority of cultural education—everything from reading clocks to navigating the health-care system—is provided at the local resettlement agency level.

Handling the Influx

"There's a natural cap in the town with the three agencies [handling] resettling here. There's only so many apartments, doctors' offices; the infrastructure can only handle so much flow," said Larry M. Jones, affiliate director of World Relief in Boise. "It's like putting water through a pipe. You can only get so much through."

Refugee populations in Boise fluctuate depending on international crises as well as local availability of trained interpreters, jobs, housing and medical facilities. Presently, Boise agencies are settling large numbers of Burundians, Burmese, Iraqis and Bhutanese, and late summer is their busiest time of year.

As the federal government scrambles to spend the money earmarked for refugee resettlement before the end of the fiscal year, local agencies are struggling to handle the surge of refugees who emerge wide-eyed and exhausted from the Boise Airport terminal. Though Boise has been distinguished as a city that can provide for the needs of these specific populations—with a low cost of living, available interpreters and ample religious institutions—resettlement staff and volunteers are still working around the clock to keep up with the weekly arrivals.

"Each agency has its very own unique personality and philosophy about how refugees are resettled. But in the end, we all receive the same federal funding and we all have to adhere to the same standards and requirements for resettlement," said Leslye Boban, director of IRC in Boise.

Federal funding for refugee resettlement flows into the Idaho Office of Refugees, a private contractor that is a part of the larger Mountain States Group. In addition to the money dispersed to the agencies, each refugee is granted a one-time amount of $425, a small sum referred to as "welcome money."

Ten years ago, refugee resettlement funds in Idaho were controlled by the State Department of Health and Welfare, but moving to a private contractor has helped shed the myriad layers of bureaucracy that can often clog state systems.

"Because of the smallness [of IOR], it gives us the ability to be a little more progressive and creative in providing services," said Steve Rainey, director of the IOR's English Language Center. "Frequently, Idaho is on the cutting edge of refugee services in the whole country."

Another thing that local agencies have in their favor is their incredibly close working relationship. Each of the agencies' directors meet once a month with Rainey to discuss successful resettlement strategies and to bounce around new ideas for combating problems. Whether it's finding solutions to apartment shortages for large refugee families or discussing employment opportunities for largely illiterate populations, the agencies rely heavily on one another.

"Generally, we have a very collaborative relationship," said Christina Bruce-Bennion, local director of ANA.

Home Away From Home

When refugee families first arrive, an agency staff member and an interpreter greet them at the airport and take them directly to their new, furnished apartments to sign a lease. Though there aren't any complexes in town that are designated solely for refugees, there are a few that have established close partnerships with the agencies to provide affordable housing.

"We are, I'm sure, one of the mainstays of their income because the three agencies are placing 400 to 500 apartments a year, Jones said. "[The refugees] walk in the door tired and confused, and there's sheets on the bed, there might even be flowers on the table, there's food in the refrigerator ... Their education starts the moment they get off the plane."

Some refugee populations, like the Burundians and the Bhutanese, have lived in refugee camps for the majority of their lives and have little or no experience with running water, modern appliances or even carpet.

Kary Burin, a volunteer with IRC, has spent the past few months assisting the Piyos family from Burundi. For a few hours every week, Burin teaches them English, takes them grocery shopping and helps answer general questions they have about American life.

"[IRC] likes the volunteers to go over to the house and look around and see if there are any problems," Burin explained. "Check the refrigerator, make sure that they're properly preserving their food, that they don't have any food sitting in cupboards. Because they're refugees, they don't waste any food, so they're never going to throw it away."

Before they get established and have a steady source of income, refugee families like the Piyos receive a food card from their resettlement agency with a monthly limit for groceries. Burin has taken the Piyos to WinCo a number of times and helped the family fill their cart with bulk basics like beans, rice, potatoes, bananas and meat.

"A real challenge is comparison shopping because the refugee camp always handed them stuff," Burin said. "They have no more concept that two similar things could sit side by side on the shelf and that, for some reason, you'd be paying twice as much for one as the other. So trying to explain that and to see if they understand it is very difficult."

But not all refugee families in Boise are entirely unfamiliar with modern living and a capitalist economy. Laura Corollo, an IRC volunteer who works with an Iraqi refugee family, explains that her family is adjusting rather quickly to their new way of life.

"Once I taught them the bus schedule, they were on the bus all the time. When I would come over for my weekly visits, they weren't saying, 'OK, can you drive us to the grocery store? Can you drive us here?' They had already done it," Corollo said.

The Iraqi family was forced to flee Baghdad after the father, a mechanical engineer, was persecuted for working for a U.S. company. Though Corollo describes the family as having updated cell phones and clothing, she notes that they still sometimes need help navigating cultural intricacies and adjusting to their new country's social norms.

"I was over [at their apartment] and somebody came by to sell them a cable plan. It was funny because they opened the door and they welcomed him in ... they thought that he was just a friend or neighbor," Corollo said.

One important cultural assimilation mechanism for refugees is television. By watching TV, refugees are able to observe American culture and pick up on English colloquialisms without the pressure of direct, face-to-face communication. Though some refugee families, like the Piyos, were unfamiliar with TV before resettling here, they have quickly taken to the entrancing technology.

"Television is a really great way to learn English, except—and I've heard this about other refugees, too—they like the Spanish language channel," Burin said with a laugh. "I speculated it had something to do with the over-the-top soap operas. Someone else said that they think it's because it's the soccer channel. The other day, one of the refugees said to me as I was leaving, 'manana.'"

Learning the Language

One of the main federal requirements for refugees is attending mandatory English language classes. Refugees from all three agencies attend class daily at the English Language Center near Jefferson and 16th streets until they find full-time employment. Since every refugee varies in his or her educational background and previous English experience, the ELC provides seven different levels of English classes ranging from a class for refugees who are illiterate in their native language to an advanced class that accommodates refugees with highly developed English skills.

But teaching English to refugees is more of a lesson in the nuances of American culture than it is a flash-card-filled romp through sentence structure and split infinitives.

"Most people, when they think of a language class, think grammar and vocabulary. For us, language is being able to navigate your environment. Whether it's riding the bus, whether it's finding out about a concert, all of that really is language," Rainey said. "A person can't become culturally integrated or culturally adept without language and they can't get the language without the culture."

To reinforce the language skills the refugees have learned in class, ELC teachers often take trips to neighboring North End stores and banks. From distinguishing between shampoo and conditioner at Rite Aid to making deposits at U.S. Bank, all of the vocabulary the students learn has practical and immediate applications in their everyday lives. The ELC hopes that, by structuring their learning environment less traditionally, the refugees will feel more comfortable appropriating and utilizing their newly acquired language skills.

"Our classes are very informal, in that, as much as possible, we'd like for them to reflect a social gathering and not a formal classroom. The type of language we use every day isn't academic. It's more like composing music than it is doing mathematics," Rainey said.

One of the major barriers affecting all aspects of refugee assimilation and education is the often unspeakable trauma that drove refugees from their homes in the first place.

"If you're just looking at language acquisition, nothing else, because of the trauma refugees have been through, and because they didn't choose to come here, it creates a different set of needs than any other language learner has," Rainey said. "A lot of times people will seem disinterested, not motivated to learn the language, and that's a very common symptom of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder."

Though all of the resettlement agencies in town provide resources for refugees to cope with their mental anguish and trauma, IRC has developed a unique pilot program for smaller children that they hope can be expanded and used with their parents also.

"There's a technique called EMDR—Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing. It's a simple technique that activates both sides of the brain," Boban explained. The technique has patients focus on their trauma while an external stimulus, like tapping, is applied to the head. "We're combining it with art therapy to help them release traumas without actually having to talk about the trauma. We're working with a counseling group to also do the same technique with the parents, because you can't work with the kids and open them up like that and go home to a chaotic, unstable environment."

Another community member working closely with refugee children is Ann Farris, director of Boise School District's English Language Learners school. The school, which opened in its new location this year in the old Jackson Elementary, specializes in education for refugee and immigrant students who don't speak English as a first language.

"We're right at 200 [students] already. We found last year that we were at about 66 percent refugees, so it's probably close or might have crept up even higher to 70 percent this year," Farris said.

Students in seventh through 12th grades are eligible to attend the English Language Learners school for four semesters. The students then transition into their neighborhood schools, where interpreters assist them in integrating into the required curriculum. Elementary-aged students, on the other hand, transition into the regular classrooms soon after they arrive.

"The kids become what we call 'cultural brokers' and they become the helpers of their families in so many ways, helping them navigate how things work and, of course, they're acquiring the English language, typically at such a rapid pace," Farris said. "Some of the parents, they're taking English classes, too, and certainly trying, but [the children] really are the information sharers."

Rights and Responsibilities

In addition to daily language classes at the English Language Center, refugees also attend a weekly job-training class offered by their agency. Because of the limited amount of funding and staff support at the agencies, economic self-sufficiency is their most pressing goal. Each agency spends a considerable amount of time instructing refugees in the expectations and skills required to succeed in the American workplace.

At a recent job-training session held by World Relief at Crossroads Church on Cole Road, the conference room bustled with an assortment of refugee populations. Each time job developer Lindsay Keban explained things like how to look for jobs in classified ads or proper phone habits when speaking to potential employers, the room blossomed with a litany of languages.

With seven interpreters at this session, translating for populations ranging from Arabic-speaking Somalis to Karen-speaking Burmese, the church sounded like a break room at the United Nations. Just like the English language classes, job-training classes tend to have a wider scope than just employment.

"At some point in the last few years, we had had refugee groups that were so far removed from American culture that we realized we just needed to spend that much more time with them. So the classes have become 12 weeks," Keban said.

Other agencies in town have also noticed an educational divide with recent incoming refugee populations. IRC developed a job training program specifically for Burundian women, many of whom are pre-literate, pre-numerate and have never been employed.

The program works with local hotels like Shiloh Inn and Hotel 43 to train these women in the skills they would need to be housekeepers—everything from working the hotel's elevators to identifying various cleaning chemicals.

"Eighty percent of refugees are women and children. A lot of the women that are coming are single moms. These women have to work, there's no choice and there's no support network for them. So the faster we can get them employed, the less vulnerable they are, the less vulnerable their children are," Boban said.

Though ANA has a similar program for Burmese women, it also focuses on helping more highly educated refugees get new credentials. People who were history teachers or doctors before they were forced to flee their country often have a much harder time adjusting to the more menial jobs they're required to initially accept as refugees.

"We have a lot of Iraqis coming, some of them are very highly educated, speak English very well and have very high expectations of employment," Bruce-Bennion noted.

Each of the job training classes offered by the agencies covers a specific topic, from riding public transportation to filling out job applications to the importance of punctuality. Though these lessons are covered at the English Language Center's cultural orientations, which happen every eight weeks, repetition is regarded as the most important way for refugees to solidify new information.

"Everybody agrees that the more times the information is given, in different ways, at different junctures of someone's experience when they first come in, the better it is going to be for them. They're going to be better prepared," explained Jamie Delavan, a volunteer who has partnered with Idaho Women's Network to put together a new, agency-spanning Refugee Education Training Program.

Delavan has worked closely with Ronna Parish, Pam Twilegar and Erika Molchan to develop a cultural training manual for refugees and the volunteers who work with them. Though they initially began working on the program with IRC, the group hopes their five-part "Know Your Rights" program will soon be integrated into the cultural orientations of all three agencies.

The program places a strong emphasis on culture-specific education, dividing classes into single-language groups so that the usual cacophony of interpreters isn't so distracting. The group's program also focuses heavily on human rights, stressing that all people are guaranteed certain rights regardless of their sex, race, religion or nationality.

"We wanted to set it up so we could focus on, 'Here are the rights that you have living in the United States,' and then, 'Here are the responsibilities that go along with those rights. So, you have the right to religious freedom, but you have to obey the laws. You have the right to an education, but here's the system that you have to work within in order to get that education,'" Parish said.

Another part of the group's program is an orientation to Idaho law. For this session, Boise Police officer and refugee liaison Shelli Sonnenberg explains everything from what to do when a police officer pulls them over, to how much it costs to call 911. Since many refugees are accustomed to dealing with corrupt cops who operate on a system of bribes and kickbacks, it can be hard for them to accept police officers in a non-threatening role.

"When the new Americans get here, I teach them about the laws of this country and focus on the ones that are really different from where they're from. The big ones are probably domestic battery, child abuse, statutory rape. Depending on the countries that they come from, those are completely different laws that don't even exist," Sonnenberg explained.

She has been instrumental in creating understanding between the police department and refugees. Sonnenberg developed a refugee orientation class for new police hires and instructs them in cultural sensitivity for the various refugee populations living in Boise.

Though a lot of the police calls Sonnenberg receives from refugees don't fall under her traditional jurisdiction, she's happy to respond to all the calls that she can, if only to show refugees that the police department is there when they are in need.

"Maybe they didn't have running water, or maybe they didn't have electricity, which may not be a police problem, but when they think that their landlord has turned off their power, not realizing that maybe a light bulb has burned out, then they call me. I had one little boy call 911 because his mom wouldn't make him pizza. To him, that actually was an emergency," Sonnenberg said.

A Permanent Home

Though each agency aims to have refugees settled and self-sufficient within six to eight months of arrival—when food stamps and Medicaid start to run out—they are now working with community organizations to develop educational programs with a more long-term reach. Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center received a $500,000 grant to open a center to provide reproductive health and infant care for non-English speaking women. The center is called Care Maternal and Child Health Clinic and will open in St. Al's next year.

"Our desire is to get health advisers from every cultural group so they can give us input on how we can improve services within their culture. We're working with different community agencies to solidify and make sure that we are doing what we can and not reinventing the wheel," said Judy Hobbs, manager of the St. Al's Family Center.

Also, the Boise Police Department is developing an interpreter program in which refugees who speak English and are familiar with American culture will be trained to accompany police officers on some of their more serious calls. The interpreters will be able to act as liaisons between non-English speakers and the police in times of crisis.

"They'll go through law enforcement training so that they have an idea what's expected of them. Using those individuals as our interpreters, then maybe we'll get to have some insight into the way their culture works and how—in those high stress situations—how we can handle it better," Sonnenberg said.

By becoming interpreters, refugees are given the opportunity to help those in need. Most of the interpreters who work with the three agencies in town have gone through one of the resettlement programs. As more refugees acclimate to American life, become proficient in English and train to be interpreters, they open doors for other refugees to resettle in Boise.

"Many times, former refugees become interpreters. Maybe they've gone through the resettlement process or they might have [spoken] good English to begin with. Each of the agencies really engages bilingual people and provides training opportunities for them to become effective interpreters," said Jan Reeves, director of the Idaho Office of Refugees.

Raj Shrestha, a Nepali interpreter from Bhutan, is one of those who has successfully made the transition into American society. At IRC's job-training session, Shrestha was the interpreter for a long table of Bhutanese refugees. Dressed in casual western clothing, Shrestha explained the nuances he's learned since he's been here—like shaking his head from side to side is a sign of disagreement, not approval like in his culture. He's also mastered the art of looking into people's eyes while they're speaking, an action that is seen as highly disrespectful in Bhutan.

When Gautam approached to tell his story of torture due to mistaken identity and to show the painful scars that run down his back, Shrestha interpreted his words. As Gautam spoke, Shrestha waited patiently for him to finish, then said:

"Everything the IRC is doing is really helping [the Bhutanese refugee community] get where they need to be. He wants to thank them for all they do."

Labels: refugee families

posted by Patricia Lopez at 8:36 AM 0 comments Links to this post

By Kristen Mack
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 28, 2008; Page PW01

Prince William County may have one of the nation's toughest enforcement laws against illegal immigration, but a recent examination of largely less stringent measures across the country found that their impact on communities is often the same.

Five years ago, immigration enforcement wasn't on the radar of most local law enforcement agencies, according to James Pendergraph, director of state and local coordination for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The 287(g) program, which is named for the section of the law authorizing it and allows local law enforcement officials to assist ICE in processing illegal immigrants, was first authorized in 1996. Yet the law sat unused for most of a decade. In 2003 Alabama became the first state to implement an agreement.

Only six more agreements were made from 2004 to 2006. The number has jumped since, with 55 state and local law enforcement agencies entering into agreements. An additional 80 are in the pipeline.

Prince William signed on last summer. Part of what distinguishes it from other jurisdictions is that it works with ICE in its jails and through a special task force of police officers on the street. But as in other communities, its law has divided the community and raised fears among immigrants.

"Prince William has been the catalyst for the expansion of the 287(g) program across the U.S.," said Board of County Supervisors Chairman Corey A. Stewart (R-At Large).

"There were just a handful doing it before us. The pioneering jurisdictions, Prince William principally among them, have been the impetus for this proliferation."

Randy Capps, a senior research associate with the Urban Institute, studied the evolution of the program and its potential effects on communities.

"It coincides with the concerted effort, by a well-coordinated group of like-minded people, to put pressure on authorities to get involved in immigration enforcement," he said of the agreements.

Most of the participating 287(g) jurisdictions are in the Southeast; Virginia had the most, with nine, followed by North Carolina, with eight.

More than 60,000 suspected illegal immigrants have been identified through the program in the past two years, Capps found. Statistics ICE provided to the Virginia State Crime Commission show that in fiscal 2007, law enforcement agencies in the state made 12,073 reports to the federal agency, which resulted in 694 detentions.

The Urban Institute also conducted a case study on how the program was implemented in four jurisdictions in northwestern Arkansas. It found a steady but moderate number of arrests, about 15 per week. Yet the fear level increased among immigrants. Many were scared to drive or leave their homes.

All of that should sound familiar to Prince William residents.

"If you are an illegal immigrant, you should be anxious and concerned about driving," Stewart said. "To the extent that we have caused anxiety among the illegal community, I think that's a good thing, because we don't want them here in the first place."

Among the potential effects of arrests on communities, Capps cited increasing distrust between the community and police and a decrease in the number of immigrants reporting crime. Capps made his presentation last week to several hundred police and local officials at a conference on immigration policing and civil liberties in the District. The conference was sponsored by the Police Foundation, a private national group.

At its Sept. 9 meeting, the first after a month-long recess, the county board is expected to get an update on illegal immigration enforcement.

Labels: immigration

posted by Patricia Lopez at 8:33 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Violation of dress code can be a matter of not tucking in your shirt according to students I've talked to in a high school that practices paddling. Crazy!

-Patricia

Abusive, Discriminatory Punishment Undermines Education

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: hrwpress@hrw.org or media@aclu.org

DALLAS – More than 200,000 US public school students were punished by beatings during the 2006-2007 school year, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union said in a joint report released today. In the 13 states that corporally punished more than 1,000 students per year, African-American girls were twice as likely to be beaten as their white counterparts.

In the 125-page report, "A Violent Education: Corporal Punishment of Children in U.S. Public Schools," the ACLU and Human Rights Watch found that in Texas and Mississippi children ranging in age from 3 to 19 years old are routinely physically punished for minor infractions such as chewing gum, talking back to a teacher, or violating the dress code, as well as for more serious transgressions such as fighting. Corporal punishment, legal in 21 states, typically takes the form of "paddling," during which an administrator or teacher hits a child repeatedly on the buttocks with a long wooden board. The report shows that, as a result of paddling, many children are left injured, degraded, and disengaged from school.

"Every public school needs effective methods of discipline, but beating kids teaches violence and it doesn't stop bad behavior," said Alice Farmer, Aryeh Neier Fellow at Human Rights Watch and the ACLU, and author of the report. "Corporal punishment discourages learning, fails to deter future misbehavior and at times even provokes it."

The report found that in the 13 southern states where corporal punishment is most prevalent, African-American students are punished at 1.4 times the rate that would be expected given their numbers in the student population, and African-American girls are 2.1 times more likely to be paddled than might be expected. There is no evidence that these students commit disciplinary infractions at disproportionate rates.

"Minority students in public schools already face barriers to success," said Farmer. "By exposing these children to disproportionate rates of corporal punishment, schools create a hostile environment in which these students may struggle even more."

Students with mental and physical disabilities are also punished at disproportionate rates, with potentially serious consequences for their development. In Texas, for instance, 18.4 percent of the total number of students who were physically punished were special education students, even though they make up only 10.7 percent of the student population.

"A Violent Education" is based on four weeks of on-the-ground research in Mississippi and Texas in late 2007 and early 2008, including more than 175 interviews with children, teachers, parents, administrators, superintendents, and school board members.

The report documents several cases in which children were beaten to the point of serious injury. Since educators who beat children have immunity under law from assault proceedings, parents who try to pursue justice for injured children encounter resistance from police, district attorneys, and courts. Parents also face enormous, sometimes insurmountable, obstacles in trying to prevent physical punishment of their children. While some school districts permit parents to sign forms opting out of corporal punishment for their children, the forms are often ignored.

In the report, the ACLU and Human Rights Watch cite experts on best practices in school discipline, who emphasize traditional approaches such as detention, and modern approaches such as positive behavior support systems. Positive behavior support systems, which are school-wide discipline systems that stress a clear structure of rewards and consequences for student behavior, have been effectively implemented in major U.S. school systems. States and school boards that fail to implement best practices allow the status quo, or school beatings, to remain in place.

Human Rights Watch and the ACLU call upon the U.S. government to prohibit corporal punishment in all public schools and urge state governments, school boards, superintendents, and administrators to eliminate physical punishment in their schools.

Selected Witness Accounts:

"He took me into the office and gave me three licks. … He made me hold onto the wall and he paddled me. … It hurt for about two hours, it felt like fire under my butt."
– Matthew S., who was paddled in second grade for throwing food in a school cafeteria in the Mississippi Delta.

"The other kids were watching and laughing. It made me want to fight them… When you get a paddling and you see everyone laugh at you, it make you mad and you want to do something about it."
– Peter S., a middle school student in the Mississippi Delta.

"What made me so angry: he's three years old, he was petrified. He didn't want to go back to school, and he didn't want to start his new school. I was so worried that this was going to constantly be with him, equating going to school with being paddled."
– Rose T., mother of a 3-year-old boy in Texas who was bruised from physical punishment after he refused to stop playing with his shoes in class.

"I went into the principal's office. … He gave me a chair and said hold onto the chair. The paddle had holes in it. Then he just did three swats. … I was hit on my buttocks. … There were holes in the paddle to make it go faster. … It hurt very much. There were definitely red marks and then swelling… almost welt-like markings. It didn't last for more than a couple days. … It left me feeling very humiliated. I think there were several levels of emotion. Physical pain, mental humiliation. … And being a female at that age, it was like there was this older man hitting me on the butt. That's weird… even at that age I knew it was inappropriate."
– Allison G., a recent graduate punished as a teenager in Texas for being late to class multiple times.

"I've heard this said at my school and at other schools: ‘This child should get less whips, it'll leave marks.' Students that are dark-skinned, it takes more to let their skin be bruised. Even with all black students, there is an imbalance: darker-skinned students get worse punishment."
– Account of Abrea T., former teacher in rural Mississippi.

"I see corporal punishment as a form of slavery. Beating on the slaves was how the headman got them to do something… we're focused so much on making kids do what we want. Think about the mental capacity that this kind of treatment leaves our children with. We are telling them we don't respect them. They leave that principal's office and they think, ‘they don't consider me a human being.' That young person loses self-respect."
– Account from Doreen W., school board member in a Mississippi Delta town.

To read the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch report, "A Violent Education: Corporal Punishment of Children in U.S. Public Schools," please visit: www.aclu.org/intlhumanrights/gen/36476res20080819.htm

Labels: discipline, Region 1

posted by Patricia Lopez at 8:17 AM 0 comments Links to this post

A notable line from this article: And because the government cannot deport millions of people, what they do is to make people’s lives miserable so they will leave on their own,” Sharry said. “The New York Times calls it a ‘strategic misery.’ We call it non-violent cleansing.

-Patricia

New America Media, News Report, Anthony D. Advincula
Aug 26, 2008

Editor’s Note: Immigration is a hot button issue at the DNC in Denver and many participants are clamoring for comprehensive reform, reports NAM New York-based editor, Anthony D. Advincula.


DENVER, Co—Before the opening gavel hit the sounding block at the convention’s opening ceremony, Democratic leaders and supporters here did not waste time and took the immigration issues to stage yesterday afternoon.

The Democrats described the current immigration system as dysfunctional, affecting the economy and moral fiber of American society, and reiterated that the Democratic Party strongly recommends a comprehensive immigration reform law to fix the problem.

“Everything with our current immigration enforcement is a failure, starting with ICE,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) said in an almost three-hour immigration panel discussion at downton Hilton Inn. “Roughly 30,000 ICE workers lack qualifications.”

Lofgren lashed out at the government for appointing ICE Assistant Secretary Julie Myers, who had no previous experience relating to immigration. “At 46, after working for the Department of Commerce and at the Office of Independent Counsel under Kenneth Starr, the government asked her to do this job. We need to have qualified individuals to handle immigration issues.”

With a rising number of skilled immigrants, U.S. military service personnel being denied legal status, as well as immigrant families who have been entangled in complicated legal bouts and continue to be separated, Lofgren added that the administrative and legal aspects of immigration are clearly discombobulated.

“What kind of system is this when we want a sailor who served for our country to just remain in Iraq because he has a conditional immigration status and is facing a 3- or 10-year ban?” she said. “Detainees have been denied proper healthcare and we declined due process.”

She illustrated the massive ICE arrest of Latino workers in Postville, Iowa, where they were not only denied legal representation, but also charged with robbery. Lofgren alleged that even the judge there scripted the workers’ pleas. She also claimed that about 70 percent of undocumented immigrants in the country are highly skilled and could certainly bolster the U.S. economy.

Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, admitted that immigration is the biggest challenge for Democrats.

“Republicans always say that we have good laws with bad people violating these good laws. And because the government cannot deport millions of people, what they do is to make people’s lives miserable so they will leave on their own,” Sharry said. “The New York Times calls it a ‘strategic misery.’ We call it non-violent cleansing. This is what they (Republicans) do to try to take control of the system.”

Immigration is indicative to this year’s presidential election, he added. “It’s the defining issue. This is the reason that Senator John McCain had to change his position on comprehensive immigration reform to get the people around him and put him as the party’s candidate.”

For people who say that undocumented immigrants should wait in line, Sharry’s response is: “Where’s the line that they can get into?” He pointed out that there is no effective system that allows immigrants to wait, because they are waiting for nothing. “Believe me, anyone would want to take the airplane to come to this country, rather than crossing the river.”

Democratic leaders also assured that their party would continue to endorse elements of comprehensive immigration reform – and that it will be the position of the national party no matter what the Congress does.

“I’m confident that during the first term of Barack Obama, we will have comprehensive immigration reform,” Lofgren said. “What we need to do is to make it public.”

Marco Lopez, Jr., director of the Arizona State Department of Commerce, concurred. “Immigration reform is the only way to end the violence at the border. It will solve crimes relating to human smuggling.”

Lopez, who was the former mayor of Nogales, Arizona, said that 50 percent of immigration-related arrests in his state happen in a 20-mile stretch between Nogales and Tucson, where organized smuggling rings operate.

“We should stand up to bullies. We should stand up to people hijacking the immigration debates. We should stand up to those who exclude people based on their race and where they come from,” Sharry said. “It’s ridiculous to hear people rejoicing when there are few people who speak Spanish in their schools. I hope this all ends soon.”

Labels: immigration

posted by Patricia Lopez at 8:13 AM 0 comments Links to this post

By Roberto Lovato, New America Media.
August 27, 2008.

America's brutal immigration detention network is getting little attention from Democratic reformers and their institutional allies in Denver.

DENVER, Colo. -- On the eve of the official nomination of presidential candidate Barack Obama, the son of an immigrant, some of the leading voices shaping the Democratic Party's immigration reform platform reveal a mix of reserved optimism and pragmatism.

While the Blue Dog Democrats -- a group of 47 moderate and conservative Democratic Party members of the United States House of Representatives -- support a position on immigration that bears more than a passing resemblance to the "enforcement only" approach of many Republicans, other Democrats support a combination of legalization and major reforms as alternatives to the raids and detentions that defined the Bush era of immigration.

In between these two positions are a significant number of Democrats and their supporters, who want to focus primarily on legalization without including any significant changes to the policies that enable raids and massive detention like this week's raid in Mississippi.

Outside of the Pepsi Convention Center are hundreds of immigrant rights groups planning a major mobilization this Thursday -- the day of Obama's acceptance speech. They will protest what they believe is the unwillingness of Democrats and their Washington-based immigrant rights allies to seriously support what the press release of the March 25th Coalition calls "human legalization and a moratorium on raids and deportations."

As she anxiously awaits the end of Bush era, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., Chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law, says she sees real change on the immigration horizon. "I'm confident that with an Obama presidency we will have comprehensive immigration reform in the first term -- but it's not going to be easy."

Lofgren, a former immigration attorney, and other panelists speaking at one of the few events on immigration among the hundreds at the convention, were cautiously optimistic. But they also expressed a number of different interpretations of what the types of policies define "comprehensive immigration reform."

For her part, Lofgren, who did not support the McCain-Kennedy bill -- which combined policies legalizing the more than 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States with policies increasing the number of ways to persecute, prosecute, jail and deport future undocumented immigrants -- believes that "an important part of the answer is not to have so many people who do not have legal status." But at the same time, she believes that something must be done to bring an end to a "whole (detention) system that is wrong and causing lots of suffering." Lofgren and a number of other Democrats in Congress cite the recent case of the Chinese immigrant Hui Lui Ng, who died in immigration detention just two weeks before the DNC.

Though he, too, decries the raids, detention and deportation cited by Lofgren and others as the "least humane part of the broken immigration system," Simon Rosenberg, President and Founder of the New Democrat Network (NDN), which sponsored the panel, is not optimistic that these issues will be included in whatever reform package gets introduced next.

"Although desirable, I think it would be difficult to include fixing the detention and (immigration) judicial system in comprehensive immigration reform, because it really wasn't a critical part of what came about last time," said Rosenberg. "It doesn't mean that it shouldn't get done. I'm just not sure if that's the best vehicle for it. If the goal is to include these issues in comprehensive immigration reform, then we have lots of work to do to make them front and center in this debate."

Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice, a Washington-based immigration reform group, admitted that he and other supporters of the McCain-Kennedy legislation failed because they "made concessions" on detention, enforcement and other issues in order to woo Republicans, who, Sharry said, "failed to bring any votes."

"We knew the Senate bill was deeply flawed, but we believed the legalization component for the 12 million immigrants was decent, and the family reunification provisions could be fixed before the final passage," Sharry said.

Sharry also stated that he and others were "hopeful" they could change some of the more than 700 pages of enforcement language in the McCain-Kennedy legislation.

For his part, Congressman Raul M. Grijalva, whose district in McCain's home state of Arizona was referred to during hallway talk at the DNC as "ground zero" for the immigration reform debate, said he has been pushing for his colleagues to place a priority not just on legalization, but on detention and raids as well. "We can't wait any more when it comes to demilitarizing and improving enforcement and detention," Grijalva said, as he received word of the ICE raid in Mississippi. "It's what I hear in my district all the time; all the time. And things have gotten better for us (Democrats) in the past five years. Our side has to get tougher. We can't afford to be as muted this time."

Labels: immigration

posted by Patricia Lopez at 7:56 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Other Southern California counties also show slight declines. The effects of the sharp economic downturn and rising unemployment since last year are unclear.

By Rich Connell and David Pierson | LA Times
August 27, 2008

Poverty across Southern California declined significantly during the first seven years of the decade, a period marked by a booming economy, gentrifying neighborhoods and soaring housing prices, according to census data released Tuesday.

Bucking a national trend, Los Angeles County's poverty rate dropped notably between 2000 and 2007, the data showed, with the percentage of residents living below the federal poverty level falling from 17.9% in 2000 to 14.7% last year. Similar declines occurred in Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties. By contrast, the national poverty rate rose slightly during the same period.



The new figures from the Census Bureau's annual American Community Survey reflect broad economic and demographic changes occurring in Southern California, analysts say.

"The population is getting older, and older people have higher incomes," said Dowell Myers, a USC professor of policy, planning and development. Also, immigration rates are continuing to decline, and it is the most recent newcomers who tend to have the highest poverty rates, he said.

"We have an immigrant population that is settling in, and that is raising their incomes," he added.

The figures do not reflect the effect of the sharp economic downturn that took hold this year, and researchers said it is unclear whether declines in poverty will continue in 2008.

For Brigitte Erickson, the first half of this decade was marked by comfortable personal finances that allowed her a nice apartment, dinners at restaurants and other entertainment. But two years ago, the 58-year-old Azusa woman's circumstances began to change. A big rent increase forced her to move out of her Arcadia apartment, and the rising cost of gas and other consumer goods prompted her to go out less often. "My only luxury now is having cable TV," said Erickson, who works in the women's clothing business. "I never go anywhere."

And some advocates for the poor argue that the declining poverty numbers don't tell the whole story.

For example, according to an analysis by the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, the census survey shows that despite the drop in the poverty level, the number of workers in Los Angeles County who earn less than $25,000, 30% of the full-time workforce, has dropped only slightly from 2006. "We have a lot of low-wage jobs," said Jessica Goodheart, research director for the alliance. "It impacts every aspect of our civic life."

Falling poverty rates also have not necessarily meant rising household incomes, the census found.

Median household incomes have risen in Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. But in the region's two more affluent counties, Ventura and Orange, median incomes declined when adjusted for inflation. The median income in Ventura and Orange counties -- the point at which half of households earn more and half earn less -- is about $73,000, while in the other counties the figure is about a third lower.

Uneven trends are also affecting families at the middle and bottom of the economic ladder, where median incomes fell from 2006 to 2007, according to a study by the California Budget Project, a nonpartisan research group.

"It took six years for low- and middle-income Californians to regain ground lost from the 2001 recession. But those gains were too little, too late," said Jean Ross, the research group's executive director.

Marianne Haver Hill, executive director of MEND, the largest charitable group in the San Fernando Valley, said the decrease in poverty rates also may be a product of federal efforts to encourage welfare recipients to find jobs. But whatever gains have been made are rapidly being reversed for many families now that the economy is slipping, she said.

"We have families renting and living in unfinished garages for $500 to $600 a month, and even that's a huge chunk of their income, let alone the increased cost of food and" transportation, she said.

Andres Cruz used to put in 50 hours per week at $12 per hour building granite and marble countertops for new and remodeled homes. For added income, he would peddle Popsicles for a few hours on weekends at MacArthur Park. But in January, the 48-year-old Westlake resident was laid off.

Now, he competes against more than a dozen other Popsicle vendors at the park, making $40 on a good afternoon. A second job at $8 per hour maintaining a coin laundry helps, but overall he takes in about half his previous pay. "I'm working a lot more and making a lot less," Cruz said.

The census data also show that child poverty remains a major problem in Los Angeles County. More than 1 in 5 residents younger than 18 were living below the poverty line in 2007, which is about $21,000 for a family of four. The county rate did not change significantly from the year before, according to Tuesday's report.

Now, job losses, housing problems and the rising cost of goods and services are weighing heavily on the economic tier above the poverty line, social service agencies said.

The census report offers "a bright moment that has a dark lining to it," said Alicia Lara, vice president of community investment for United Way of Southern California. "We're concerned because the middle class is being squeezed."

Labels: California, demographics, poverty

posted by Patricia Lopez at 7:53 AM 0 comments Links to this post

By Mark Coddington
The Grand Island Independent
Posted Aug 23, 2008 @ 10:29 PM
GRAND ISLAND —

When Superintendent Amy Malander advertised for an art teacher at Cedar Rapids public school in 2006, she didn't exactly get overrun with applications.

Actually, she didn't get any.

Not that it was much of a surprise -- it had happened a few years before with a family and consumer science opening. She advertised for a science teacher the same year as the art job and got a single applicant. This year, she got two applications for a math position.

So Malander improvised. She persuaded an elementary teacher certified to teach K-8 art to tack on high school art, too.

The lack of a certification certainly wasn't desirable to Malander or the state, but in a district with about 135 K-12 students and no other options, it would have to do.

Superintendents of small schools across Central Nebraska can rattle off survival stories like Malander's. It has always been difficult to recruit teachers for specialized positions such as music and industrial arts, they said, but never more difficult than it is today.

And the shortage of qualified applicants is hitting small districts, with their rural settings and lower salaries, the hardest.

"You used to have a job open in social studies, and you'd get 15, 16, 17 applicants," said Mike McCabe, superintendent of Ansley and Arcadia school districts, with 195 and 118 students, respectively. "Now you'd be lucky to get four or five."

At Hampton public schools, Superintendent Holly Herzberg considers herself largely insulated from a teacher shortage. Her 147-student district is close to Grand Island, Aurora and York, giving teachers several options of places to live and employers for their spouses.

She was excited about the number of applications she got recently for a vocational ag position: four.

To a man, the superintendents said they were still able to find high-quality teachers despite the shallow pool of applicants.

But they also described themselves as lucky for just that reason.

"We got some darn good people. We kind of came out of this (year) in excellent shape," said Bob Brown, superintendent of Sargent and Arnold districts in Custer County. "That's not always going to happen."

Social lives and salaries

One explanation for the shortage is simple: a generation of young people who have embraced higher salaries and big-city life in Lincoln, Omaha or outside the state.

It's essentially Nebraska's long-lamented "Brain Drain," played out in teaching.

McCabe said he has seen that older applicants with a spouse and family tend to find small towns appealing as a place to raise children. But recent college graduates tend to dismiss small schools out of hand, because as singles in their early 20s, they see rural areas as a social dead-end.

"I don't think they're looking at the school so much as they're looking at the town's environment and atmosphere," McCabe said.

John Poppert, superintendent of Giltner public schools, said he can understand that concern.

"They're 23, 24 years old," Poppert said. "There's not much to do in Giltner compared to Grand Island or Hastings."

The state's teacher's union, the Nebraska State Education Association, agrees that teachers are leaving the state for what seem to be greener pastures.

NSEA officials cite statistics from the state Department of Education that revealed that only about half of the people of who received teaching certificates from the state in 2005 were teaching here two years later.

But their explanation is different: Teachers are leaving the state not necessarily for more populated areas, but for higher pay, said Jess Wolf, NSEA's president and a former teacher and principal in Arlington.

Wolf noted that the state ranks 45th in the country in teacher pay and cited several examples of colleagues who left for higher pay in Iowa, Kansas or Wyoming.

Several superintendents acknowledged that their districts couldn't pay as much as larger districts -- let alone other fields.

"If you're graduating in math and the sciences, you're going into engineering and not into education because of the low salary," Malander said. "The business world is just outpaying us."

Wolf acknowledged, too, that fluctuation in small schools' state aid limits the amount districts, particularly small ones, could spend on their teachers' salaries.

Still, he said raising salaries significantly could be feasible.

"It takes some gut decisions on the part of school districts to decide where they're going to spend their money," Wolf said.

A proactive approach

This staffing shortage doesn't mean, though, that superintendents are relegated to advertising a position, then praying for applicants.

Many are diligent in building relationships with education departments in the state's colleges, then relentless in pursuing the graduating students in those departments.

Dan Bird, superintendent of Burwell public schools, said it's not unusual for him and his colleagues to call coveted students directly with a sales pitch for their district.

That's a significant change from years past, when the onus was more on candidates to make themselves stand out to districts.

"Instead of waiting for them to come to you, you're making the call, asking them to come," Bird said.

He said he also tries to determine early in the school year which of his teachers aren't planning on returning, so he can advertise earlier and get a better crop of candidates.

"Early" used to mean April, Bird said. Now, it usually means before Jan. 1.

Bird also partners with Burwell Economic Development to give out a recruiting CD highlighting the community's assets to potential candidates.

Others try to include incentives outside their salary limitations.

The Giltner district owns five homes in town that it rents out to young teachers for a low cost.

McCabe said he has reached an agreement with the local teachers' union to allow him to count years of experience that a new teacher doesn't have toward the state's pay scale.

Wolf noted that such arrangements are only legal if the local union representatives sign off on them. He said the NSEA generally disapproves of them, as they leave less funds for other teachers in future negotiations.

Other districts try a more homegrown approach. Malander said she's working to help a Cedar Rapids woman get a foreign language teacher's certificate through a University of Nebraska at Kearney program, and the brightest Cedar Rapids students are told about the opportunities to come back and teach in their hometown.

"You have to start doing your own recruiting," Malander said.

Labels: Rural schools

posted by Patricia Lopez at 9:43 AM 0 comments Links to this post

This is outrageous! I really do hope that this issue comes up during tonight's closing of the Democratic Convention. -Patricia

By ADAM NOSSITER | NY Times
August 25, 2008

LAUREL, Miss. — In another large-scale workplace immigration crackdown, federal officials raided a factory here on Monday, detaining at least 350 workers they said were in the country illegally Numerous agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement descended on a factory belonging to Howard Industries Inc., which manufactures electrical transformers, among other products.

As of late Monday afternoon, no criminal charges had been filed, said Barbara Gonzalez, an agency spokeswoman, but she said that dozens of workers had been “identified, fingerprinted, interviewed, photographed and processed for removal from the U.S.”

The raid follows a similar large-scale immigration operation at a meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa, in May when nearly 400 workers were detained. That raid was a significant escalation of the Bush administration’s enforcement practices because those detained were not simply deported, as in previous raids, but were imprisoned for months on criminal charges of using false documents.

The mass rapid-fire hearings after the Postville raid took place in a temporary court facility on the grounds of the National Cattle Congress in Waterloo, Iowa. An interpreter was later sharply critical of the proceedings, saying the immigrants did not understand the charges against them.

An immigrant rights group in Jackson, Miss., the state capital, was critical of Monday’s raid, saying families with children were involved.

“It’s horrific what ICE is doing to these families and these communities,” said Shuya Ohno, a spokesman for the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance. “It’s just hard to imagine that this is the United States of America.”

In Laurel on Monday afternoon, several dozen family members of immigrants waited for news of their relatives at the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church. There were several small children. A priest at the church who identified himself only as Father Sergio refused to allow interviews with the families or answer any questions, saying only: “People are afraid. We need to calm them. There are mothers and children involved.”

Entrances to the sprawling plant, in an industrial section south of town, had been blocked off by ICE. A nearby fast-food restaurant was full of the blue-shirted agents, one of whom would say only that a “little inspection” was under way at the facility.

A woman entering the church grounds with four small children said several of the youngsters’ parents had been detained. The woman, Mary Troyer, said she was a translator for many of the families.

“I don’t like this at all,” Ms. Troyer said. “I don’t understand it. They have come here to work. It’s very sad.”

The ICE spokeswoman, Ms. Gonzalez, said the workers would be taken to an ICE detention center to “await the outcome of their cases.” She said 50 would be “released into the community” instead of being sent to the center, for “humanitarian reasons,” including medical difficulties or the need to take care of children.

She said no lawyers were present while the workers were being interrogated. “Everyone will have due process under law,” Ms. Gonzalez said.

Late Monday afternoon, the grim-faced workers, some of them handcuffed, were lined up near white and silver buses as the rain poured down.

In a statement issued after the raid, Howard Industries, one of the largest employers in the region, acknowledged that it was “visited” by immigration agents trying to determine if its employees were citizens or otherwise legally authorized to work in the country.

“Howard Industries runs every check allowed to ascertain the immigration status of all applicants for jobs,” the statement said. “It is company policy that it hires only U.S. citizens and legal immigrants.”

Bill Chandler, executive director of the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance, called the Laurel raid a violation of human rights.

“We’re very disturbed at what’s happened,” Mr. Chandler said. “It’s a real contradiction between our proclaimed values of hard work and family in Mississippi and the actions of local law enforcement, and ICE. I think it’s a real affront to our values. They’re creating their own terrorism by going after workers.”

After the Iowa raid, the federal interpreter said many of the immigrants did not understand the charges to which they pleaded guilty. But federal officials said the judges in the cases believed that the guilty pleas had been made freely and voluntarily.

Labels: immigration

posted by Patricia Lopez at 9:27 AM 0 comments Links to this post

This is worth taking the time to read...
-Patricia

Immigration issue sparks American racism
by: Editors Report / Indian Country Today
August 15, 2008.

Perhaps the flare-up of the immigration issue started out more legitimately. Certainly there are serious problems with waves of hundreds of thousands of people entering any country illegally. But like the head of a monstrous snake coming out of a thorny bush, the issue has grown its own nasty viper. Immigration has become the new magnet of American racism.

It's time to recognize this evil trend, and confront it.

From the oh-so-patriotic ''Minutemen,'' with their potential overlap to vigilante violence, to the actual rise in incidents of race crime against dark-skinned Mexican and other Hispanics, the evidence is that a climate of disdain and potential race and/or ethnic hatred is being generated in North America. This is very evident in the type of language and self-definition put up by not-so-unconsciously race-based pundits and politicians.

The issues generated by the inevitable trend to northern migration among people from Mesoamerica and South America are complicated. As usual, the North American mass media is loath to dig too deeply into its roots. Images of Mexican Indians jumping fences and crouch-running across open desert fields permeate the senses while the public is bombarded with way too many ill-informed and ill-conceived reports of major ''threats,'' all designed to keep viewers and readers titillated. Ignorant ire seems to dominate as a result. In this age of super-vigilance, the issue of Mexican Indians coming north in waves of humanity whose bottom line or social safety net has been ripped out is ripe for alarmist warnings by pundits and politicians alike, too many of whom like to charge Mexican and other Latin American migrants with causing all kinds of malignancy to America's economy, culture and social character.

Legitimate debate points include the inherent right of countries to secure their borders; reading the actual impacts of a million new Latin American immigrants per year for the next 20 years on various job sectors, on costs of additional social services, on crime rates and criminal justice systems, very specifically on border communities; and considering what would constitute a humane, fair and sound long-term solution to the situation of the many undocumented migrants already in-country. When these types of questions are thought about rationally and fairly, progress can be made toward resolutions.

Tragically, this is not the trend of the national discourse. Instead, the knives are flying. In the national discourse, the migration north is equated with the threat of terrorist violence, with crime, with all manner of potential diseases and, worst of all, with the threatened disintegration of the national culture. Thus, the proponents of the English-only movement, who perceive the English language to be under assault by, primarily, Spanish, but by extension, all other languages - Native and non-Native - spoken by families in neighborhoods across the United States. In an era when most of the world has already accepted English as the lingua franca of business and science, and at a time when all immigrants to the United States clearly understand the importance of speaking English even though it is difficult for many adults, the rising wave of anti-Spanish language hysteria is indeed troubling.

Racism within the immigration issue is primarily directed at Latin American migrants coming north in search of economic opportunity. The shorthand language used has to do with the sense by Anglo-Americans that the country is changing as so-called Hispanics or Latinos make up an ever-larger proportion of the minority population which, combined with blacks and Asian-Americans, now threatens to become established as the ''new majority'' and make the Euro-American population essentially the minority. Thus one can hear the likes of pundit and erstwhile presidential contender Pat Buchanan bemoan the fact that ''we are losing our country,'' shorthand in this case being that crucial ''we'' and all that such possessiveness implies.

Xenophobia directed at Mexicans has a long history in America. Anglo-America, after all, warred first with Spain and, later, Mexico for a century over more than a third of present-day U.S. territory. Stereotype and racial hatred, ethnic insults (Mexicans as a ''mongrel race,'' etc.) - apparent requirements of war - layered into the social consciousness of Anglo-Americans.

Salient points of this history not told by the conqueror were articulated in a recent New York Times essay by Tony Horwitz. To be faulted for too brazenly bypassing the indigenous perspective, Horwitz recounts accurately that North America's first European explorers and settlers were not English-speaking, but were from Spain. Horwitz: ''Four of the sample questions on our naturalization test ask about Pilgrims. Nothing in the sample exam suggests that prospective citizens need know anything that occurred on this continent before the Mayflower landed in 1620.''

So who led the first confirmed European landing on North America? Horwitz: ''A Spaniard, Juan Ponce de Leon, who landed in 1513,'' more than a century before the Pilgrims, ''at a lush shore he christened La Florida.'' Horwitz reminds us that ''the Spanish became the first Europeans to reach the Appalachians, the Mississippi, the Grand Canyon and the Great Plains. Spanish ships sailed along the East Coast, penetrating to present-day Bangor, Me., and up the Pacific Coast as far as Oregon.''

There is much history - centuries old and some quite recent - that does not enter the national discourse. Fast-forward to 2006, 12 years after NAFTA. It was the North American Free Trade Agreement, memory recalls, which ushered in the Zapatista Army of Indian peoples in 1994. The Zapatistas challenged even the federal army of Mexico militarily, while pointing out that loss of lands was displacing Indian peasants, who were migrating north in droves.

What's the connection? Since the advent of the lopsided, so-called free trade agreement, where U.S. corn and bean producers get to keep their government subsidies while poor and modest Mexican Indian farmers lose theirs, the bottom has fallen out of the regional and local farming villages. While these Indian villages have always experienced poverty, most have been self-sufficient, at least in producing and providing and sustaining from the basic Indian foods of corn, beans and other produce, chicken and pigs, the occasional cattle. That's the traditional Indian homestead for most of southern Mexico, Guatemala and elsewhere among agricultural communities in Mesoamerica and South America. This is the stalwart bastion of the mostly self-sufficient safety net upon which the people have depended for millennia. Indian people, real Mexican Indians - Maya, Zapoteca and other indigenous peoples, with distinct languages and varieties of ethnicity and oral tradition - have been severely displaced and dislocated over the past decade. U.S. trade policy has a whole lot to do with it.

These are the bulk of the millions of new migrants inexorably making their way north. These are the Indian refugees displaced from their lands by the destruction of the old ejido systems, the privatization of water and lands, and the demolishment of a national economy that, up to 10 years ago, could make sense of the ancient Indian agricultural and gastronomic complex of the corn tortilla and the bean, grown and consumed locally and regionally. This is the dislocation of replacing this kind of agriculture - as foundation and safety net of rural peoples - with export-oriented agri-business, such as is more possible in the north of Mexico where, generally, the mestizo and Spanish identity have rolled over most of the Indian consciousness of land self-sufficiency.

The climate of fear and loathing in the United States against this mass of dislocated humanity - a direct result of one-sided trade deals that dismiss the needs of whole regions - is presently fueled nightly most prominently by CNN's Lou Dobbs. Dobbs' program is regularly preoccupied with the troublesome illegality of the northward migration and its growing demographic. Dobbs' reporting is mostly accurate, but his tone and point of view heighten the potential for virulence. With violence against Mexicans and other Hispanics on the rise in the United States, it behooves commentators of Dobbs' caliber to provide the fullest possible understanding of the forces at work that drive so many Mexican Indian people to migrate at this time in history.

Dobbs reports on opinion and impacts in the United States but has yet to wonder on the causes of this constant northbound stream of people, how it originates in the indigenous southern region of Mexico and into Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. And, most importantly, why? Why are these American indigenous people - traditionally attached to their places of origin - so driven these days to pick up and trek north in larger and larger numbers, consistently facing violence, starvation, dehydration and death? What are the conditions they are leaving behind? Who caused those conditions that callously condemn whole peoples to severe economic misery?

We say a better understanding of this complex issue is required before we allow racists to pit good people against good people, as if different mother tongues must necessarily be a source of insult and injury.

This editorial, by Jose Barreiro, originally appeared in Indian Country Today on July 19, 2006 [Vol. 26, Iss. 6]. It received a 2007 Unity Award in Media in the Editorial Writing in the Minority Audience division. The awards are given annually by Lincoln University. The former senior editor of ICT, Barreiro is now director of the Office of Latin America at the National Museum of the American Indian.

Labels: editorial, immigration

posted by Patricia Lopez at 9:13 AM 0 comments Links to this post

A small but significant excerpt from this article: "In Texas in the 2005-06 school year, 16.5 percent of ninth-graders — the highest rate of any grade — didn't complete requirements to advance, according to a Texas Education Agency report."

That percentage is of ALL students, and is much higher for some schools than others. Not really sure though if ninth-grade-only schools are the solutions, and if they're really addressing ALL of the factors that contribute to ninth grade student progress.

-Patricia

By ELIZABETH WHITE | AP
August 24, 2008

SAN ANTONIO (AP) — Ninth grade, often the first year of high school, is a critical time when many students sink or swim while coping with new academic responsibilities and learning the oh-so-important social hierarchy.

Some educators are turning to ninth-grade-only schools to separate 14- and 15-year-olds from older kids and make the transition easier.

"People just really value having our ninth-graders have a chance to develop intellectually, emotionally and socially outside of the context of a large comprehensive high school setting," said Kenneth Graham, superintendent of Rush-Henrietta Central School District near Rochester, N.Y. "They don't have upperclassmen in the halls picking on them and teasing them."

There were 127 ninth-grade-only public schools in the 1999-2000 school year. By the 2005-06 school year, that number had jumped to 185, according to the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics.

In San Antonio, the Southside Independent School District is opening a ninth-grade school this month. Another district plans to open one next year.

"I think that most of us in the state have always been looking for ways of addressing the dropout issue and ... keeping our students engaged," said Juan Antonio Jasso, superintendent of Southside. "It didn't take a great deal of convincing that this was a most positive approach to take with the student population."

The ninth-grade year is crucial to success in high school. If students don't get the credits needed to move on to 10th grade, they can fall insurmountably behind. In Texas in the 2005-06 school year, 16.5 percent of ninth-graders — the highest rate of any grade — didn't complete requirements to advance, according to a Texas Education Agency report.

Ninth grade is also when most problems start to appear, said James Kemple of MDRC, a New York-based social policy research organization.

"It's the point where you can very clearly predict who's eventually going to drop out," said Kemple, director of the group's K-12 education policy area.

There are more ninth-graders in U.S. high schools than any other class. That's because many students either aren't promoted to 10th grade or drop out before they get there.

In 2003-04, there were nearly 4.2 million ninth-graders nationwide. But by the next year, just 3.75 million were in the 10th grade, according to the Washington, D.C.-based National High School Center.

Ninth-grade-only schools make some sense, said Joseph Harris, director of the center. But simply moving students to another campus, building or wing isn't enough.

"It isn't replicating the practices of a large comprehensive high school in a stand-alone ninth grade," Harris said. "The key there is making sure that you're facilitating the communication between teachers and administrators in ninth grade who are preparing students for eventual promotion."

Some districts, like Madison County Schools in Huntsville, Ala., and West Fargo Public Schools in North Dakota, opened ninth-grade centers to relieve overcrowding in high schools. Rush-Henrietta started its ninth-grade school, with an enrollment of 500, for the same reason in 2000 and has kept it ever since.

"From all quarters it was a resounding success," Graham said. "We're delighted with it, it's worked out really well."

Aldine Independent School District in the Houston area has four ninth-grade centers with enrollments of about 900 each.

"The whole philosophy behind it was to separate the younger kids from the older kids. To give an opportunity to work with them one more year ... as opposed to cutting them loose in high school," said superintendent Wanda Bamberg.

Tasnim Mohamed graduated from Aldine's Eisenhower Ninth Grade School in the spring. She said it provided her the personal attention she wanted. At the same time, extracurricular activities helped her become familiar with Eisenhower Senior High School, where she'll start 10th grade this month.

"You get a sense of knowing everybody that you're going to school with" in the ninth-grade school, she said. "But it's not like you're secluded from everybody else. You still get to interact and see how it will be next year (in high school) when you go there."

Educators acknowledge there are some drawbacks.

For many students, it means attending three schools in as many years as they progress from the eighth grade to high school.

"This is now another step in there in terms of kids transitioning from one school to the next and all that that implies," said Sandra Spivey, director of secondary education for Madison County Schools in Alabama.

West Fargo superintendent Dana Diesel Wallace wonders if exposure to older students is a part of the maturation process that ninth-graders don't get. "They can be a little more silly without that older peer influence," she said.

Still, she noticed significant GPA improvements among students attending her district's Sheyenne Ninth Grade Center.

Kemple, the K-12 education policy researcher, said it's important to not lose focus on older students.

"Giving special attention to ninth grade is the first order of business," Kemple said. "But then apply the same general principles to grades 10 through 12 so students aren't faced with the same problems, but just a year later."

Labels: Dropouts, ninth-grade-only schools

posted by Patricia Lopez at 8:57 AM 0 comments Links to this post

This is crazy! -Patricia

By ELISSA GOOTMAN | NY Times
August 26, 2008

The Bloomberg administration, which has made accountability the watchword of its overhaul of public education, is asking elementary school principals across the city to give standardized tests in English and math to children as young as kindergartners.

In an e-mail message sent on Monday evening, the Education Department’s chief accountability officer, James S. Liebman, urged principals to join a yearlong pilot program with five testing options for kindergarten through second grade, including timed paper-and-pencil assessments in which students record answers in booklets for up to 90 minutes, as well as ones in which teachers record observations of individual students on Palm Pilots.

Mr. Liebman, the architect of the city’s much-debated program of assigning schools letter grades of A through F, said in his message that because New York — like most of the country — now begins formal testing in third grade, the system does “not give schools credit for this foundational work or provide you with the means to evaluate the effectiveness of your K-2 programs.”

The pilot program, which will cost $400,000 and was not publicly announced, is already inciting outrage among some educators and advocates who worry that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s efforts to overhaul the school system have been overly focused on standardized testing.

While the federal No Child Left Behind law has required schools nationwide to administer tests starting in the third grade since 2002, Mr. Bloomberg has gone further, using test scores to determine school grades as well as bonuses for teachers and principals. The administration has also expressed interest in using test scores to determine teacher tenure, an idea that is being blocked by legislators in Albany.

Throughout the city and across the nation, teachers and parents have protested the increasing time spent on testing — and test preparation — particularly in elementary grades, where critics say that development of children’s creativity has suffered. Some experts question the effectiveness of such assessments for very young children, where lessons about sharing and socialization are sometimes considered as important as facts and figures.

“It sounds like a downward extension of whatever’s good, but also what’s bad about standardized testing in the higher grades, with more risk because we know that standardized testing isn’t appropriate at those ages,” said Lorrie Shepard, dean of the School of Education at the University of Colorado at Boulder. “Now they’re venturing into territory where many more people say that the negative will far outweigh any positive.”

In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Liebman stressed that the pilot program was voluntary — he said 50 of the city’s 700-some elementary principals had already expressed interest — and that the tests were not high-stakes. They would not, for example, determine whether students moved to the next grade, as is the case with older children.

Mr. Liebman also pointed out that kindergartners and first and second graders are already evaluated by their teachers. Most schools use a system called the Early Childhood Literacy Assessment System, which takes teachers a long time to administer because they must meet with every child individually.

The new testing methods combine results in English and math for a single cumulative score for each child, he said, making comparisons across classrooms and over time easier.

“This is a substitute for something that is already taking place and has been for years, and which schools have found to be very powerful but want to be more powerful because they want to be able to measure progress,” he said. “If you told a doctor, ‘I want you to treat me but I do not want you to take my temperature, I don’t want you to take any blood samples, I don’t want you to do any diagnosis, just treat me,’ the doctor would be at a loss to know what to do.”

He said this year’s experiment could include up to 12,720 of the city’s 200,000 or so kindergarten through second graders, and that depending on the results, the city could mandate a single test to be used next year, allow principals to choose which tests they prefer or go back to doing things the way they were done before. His e-mail message to principals promised that their feedback “will provide an important basis, among others, for deciding whether it would be appropriate in coming years to measure progress in grades K-2 and, if so, how best to do so.”

Mr. Liebman said that in future years, elementary school principals might be able to request that their kindergarten through second-grade scores be incorporated into their overall report card grades. Asked whether all school report card grades might someday include the youngest children’s scores, he said: “We just haven’t been thinking about that. We’ve talked about the option possibility.”

In fact, Mr. Liebman said the new pilot program was developed after principals complained that the A through F grades, which judge schools largely on the basis of yearly progress on standardized tests, did not reflect the progress they had made with their youngest children.

But Jane Hirschmann, the founder of Time Out From Testing, a New York City anti-testing group, called the pilot program “criminal behavior,” saying of the Bloomberg administration, “They’re committed to turning curriculum into a testing regime.”

“They knew they were going to be up against a very big movement saying, now you’ve gone way too far, so what do they do?” said Ms. Hirschmann. “They wait until the summer, and they sneak it in the back door.”

Tovah P. Klein, director of the Barnard Center for Toddler Development, said that even if the tests were not intended to have real consequences, they would.

“Once you have a number behind a kid, it becomes high stakes because teachers make judgments on kids — ‘Oh, this kid needs remedial help, this kid’s not learning as well.’ It ranks kids,” she said. “What these tests do is say to the teachers, ‘This is what matters, that kids know this single decontextualized piece of information.’ ”

Among the options that principals may choose from are two written exams — designed by the well-known testing companies CTB/McGraw-Hill and Pearson — one of which will be given twice a year in English (55 to 70 minutes per test) and math (40 to 65 minutes), the other three times a year in both subjects (60 to 90 minutes each). Two other options involve 10-minute assessments, given three times a year, in which teachers record student observations based on a scripted dialogue. The fifth has students complete a test online, for 20 to 35 minutes, three times over the course of the year.

Virginia Pepe, the principal of Public School 163, Alfred E. Smith, on the Upper West Side, said she would send someone to learn more about the testing at a coming information session.

“We’ll be going in as critical consumers and we will be making, I think, thoughtful decisions about what’s going to be best for the children in our school,” Dr. Pepe said. “Working in a very targeted way with children based upon assessment information can really have very positive results, if it’s not used to shackle instruction but it’s used to enrich the learning opportunities.”

But she noted that parents might balk at some of the options, saying: “If you’re selling a 60-minute test in kindergarten, I’d be hard-pressed to make that sale.”

Labels: high-stakes testing

posted by Patricia Lopez at 9:47 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Jill Tucker | Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, August 15, 2008

San Francisco schools earned bragging rights on state standardized tests again this year - performing better than the state as a whole across every grade in both math and English - but any celebration was clouded by the subpar proficiency of the district's African American students, who continued to fall further behind their peers.

Nearly all other categories of San Francisco students, regardless of ethnicity, income or English language ability, outscored the city's black students in California Standards Test results posted Thursday.

On the plus side, the scores of black students did go up about 1 percentage point in math proficiency and nearly 1 percentage point in English.

But that wasn't as much as everyone else, meaning the achievement gap in San Francisco got worse.

"The achievement gap is the greatest civil rights issue facing our country today," school Superintendent Carlos Garcia said in a statement.

The number of white students who were proficient or better in both math and English was about 50 percentage points higher than the city's black students. In second-grade English, for example, 23 percent of blacks were proficient, compared to 74 percent of whites.

Special education students had slightly higher proficiency rates than black students in second-, third- and fourth-grade math as well as fourth-grade English.

The district tested 41,000 students, including 4,800 African Americans, in grades two through 11 in the spring.

San Francisco schools face a steep uphill battle in boosting the test results of black students, educators noted.

The test results are not surprising, said Omar Khalif, ombudsman for the city's Juvenile Probation Department and an advocate for education and children's issues. Khalif, who is running for a seat on the school board in November's election, said black students often face obstacles tied to neighborhood poverty, crime and broken families.

But some schools are succeeding in the black communities - schools that hold high standards, said Khalif, a Bayview resident.

San Francisco's shrinking middle class, especially in the black community, also has an impact on schools, said school board member Hydra Mendoza, who is also the education adviser to Mayor Gavin Newsom.

"When you have a healthy middle class, it really does change the dynamic of schools and housing," Mendoza said.

The median household income for the city's black population was $31,080, about $10,000 less than blacks statewide, according to 2006 U.S. Census estimates.

The median income for the city overall, however, was an estimated $65,500, about $9,000 more than the rest of the state.

In addition, 25 percent of blacks in San Francisco in 2000 lived in poverty and comprised nearly half of those living in public housing, according to the city's African American Out-migration Task Force and Advisory Committee.

Such statistics are not an excuse but at least offer some explanation, Mendoza said.

"I recognize there is still a huge achievement gap, but I don't want to lose the idea that our kids are gaining," Mendoza said. "Some are gaining at a faster rate. That is what is widening our gap."

But district officials said they believe black students can and will catch their peers.

"It gives me hope when we find out there are some places, in spite of difficult situations, that are doing well," Garcia said.

District officials cited E.R. Taylor Elementary School, Roosevelt Middle School and Balboa High School as examples.

The San Francisco school board adopted a plan this year to identify schools where the achievement gap is widening. Those closing the gap will also be recognized and modeled.

Also, city voters in June approved a school parcel tax to raise an estimated $29 million annually, boosting teacher salaries, training staff on the needs of disadvantaged students, and providing incentives to teach in hard-to-staff schools - where students are more often than not black, Hispanic and poor.

"All of this work is going to be around the achievement gap," said Phil Halperin, president of the Silver Giving Foundation and co-chairman of the parcel tax campaign. "They are focused like a laser beam on making sure all kids get a quality education, all kids get what they need out of schools."

Labels: achievement gap, California, poverty

posted by Patricia Lopez at 7:44 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Out-of-state tuition cutting college short

by Mariana Alvarado Avalos - Aug. 24, 2008 12:00 AM
Arizona Daily Star

TUCSON - Changing laws have made life tougher for illegal immigrants in Arizona, including young people giving up dreams of college and better lives because they are unable to pay out-of-state tuition as required by voters.

With privately funded grants and scholarships lagging far behind the demand, some would-be students have dropped out, and others are considering a return to homelands they hardly remember in search of opportunity.

At 22, Jesus Pineda has lived half his life in Tucson. After arriving here at age 11, Pineda learned English in three months, eventually graduated from Catalina High Magnet School and started working with his dad at their family business.

He was planning to become a mechanic and studied the craft for two years at a community college until he dropped out of school in the fall of 2007 because he could not prove his legal status as required under Proposition 300, approved by voters in 2006.

Proposition 300 requires students to prove they are citizens or legal residents in the United States to qualify for in-state tuition at Arizona community colleges and universities. If they cannot, they must pay the higher out-of-state tuition fees. An in-state, part-time student can expect to pay $297 for six units while an out-of-state student will pay $504 for the same number of course units in college.

Voters approved the proposition after backers said the state should not be taking taxpayer resources and giving them to people who broke the law. The estimated 200,000 to 250,000 illegal immigrants living in Arizona at the time were costing the state a great deal of money, backers said.

Other states, including Colorado, Georgia and Oklahoma, also have laws denying in-state tuition benefits to students who entered the country illegally with parents but grew up and were schooled in the state.

"I could no longer study because I don't have a Social Security number, so I started working full time," Pineda said.

Unable to continue his education here, Pineda, like other Mexican students who grew up in this country, is considering returning to Mexico.

When Proposition 300 became law, efforts were made to raise funds to offset its effects, said Francisco Marmolejo of Consortium for North American Higher Education Collaboration at the University of Arizona. However, little money was collected.

"There have been some scholarships from private funding that students have gotten thanks to the generosity of some donors," Marmolejo said. "That solved the problem for a year, but not in the long run."

And at the University of Arizona, there is also no funding available to help these particular students, said Rebecca Ruiz-McGill, a UA spokeswoman.

Oscar Lujan of the UA Hispanic Alumni Association said it is frustrating not to be able to assist them. The organization has about $455,000 in funding for 2008-2009, but to be eligible, students must prove they are in the U.S. legally.

Only one local organization, Fundacion Mexico, is offering help, but it has only about $10,000 available, said its president, Florencio Zaragoza.

Pima Community College reported 951 students had been unable to qualify for in-state tuition as of June.

However, activists and immigrant advocates estimate about 5,000 students were unable to return to or attend colleges and universities in 2007 because of Proposition 300, based on anecdotal accounts.

"We have had a lot of phone calls from parents and students who now are seeing their chances are becoming more limited," Marmolejo said.

Educamexus, an information center in Tucson that offers assistance to Spanish speakers looking for online study options, says parents of affected foreign-born students are worried that their children are not able to continue attending college or the university.

"It seems they feel bad that by coming to the U.S. and trying to give their children a better life, they now face this obstacle," said Gilberto Olivas of Educamexus.

Rafael Barrera, 20, has already left. He dropped out of school and returned to Sinaloa to reunite with his parents after he could no longer pay the out-of-state tuition at college.

At Pima Community College, he was working toward a career in management, but he has no idea what he'll do in Mexico. He speaks Spanish, but all his formal schooling has been in Tucson and in English.

"I need to see if there's a place for me here, and I'm afraid I won't get used to being here," he said in a telephone interview from Mexico. "Besides, I was afraid at college because I saw the 'migra' (immigration law enforcers) there twice."

Going back to Mexico is not a good option, said activists who see congressional approval of the proposed "Dream Act" as the only solution.

Stalled in Congress, it would give the children of illegal immigrants a path toward citizenship if they attend college.

U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, a Tucson Democrat who is co-sponsor of the act, said the loss of opportunity is a loss for the students and for the nation.

"This is not only about being humanitarian or doing a charity, it is about investing in something healthy for our community future," he said.

But it is unlikely that any action will be taken in an election year, Grijalva said.

Ricardo Castro, vice president of Fundacion Mexico, says unless all these students are deported, most of them are going to stay in this country without the option of continuing their education.

"They will be second-class citizens, and that is contradictory," he said. "They are people who grew up here; they are an important part of their communities."

For now, Pineda plans to wait for an immigration reform, but in the long run, he knows he may have to leave.

"I have no idea what I would do in Mexico," Pineda said. "I'm from there because I was born there, but I believe I'm from here, too, because I grew up here. But here, I'm nobody."

Labels: higher education, immigration and education

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

To listen to the complete discussion click here

Also check out the excerpt from the book "Ineriting the City

-Patricia

by Margot Adler | NPR
August 25, 2008

In much of the debate over immigration, there is an underlying question: Are today's immigrants assimilating into the mainstream as easily as past generations?

The answer, at least in New York City, is an unqualified "yes," according to the results of a 10-year study involving more than 3,000 young men and women, most of them in their 20s.

John Mollenkopf, a professor at City University of New York and an author of the study, says that if you look at the children of immigrants, "the kids are doing well compared to their parents and also doing well compared to the native-born comparison groups."

The "second generation" project looked at five groups — Russians, Dominicans, South Americans, Chinese and West Indians — and compared them with U.S.-born whites, Puerto Ricans and African-Americans. Researchers found that most in the second generation were fluent in English and working in the mainstream economy. When they looked at economic and educational achievement, they found that West Indians were doing better, in general, than African-Americans; Dominicans were doing better than Puerto Ricans; and the Chinese and the Russians were doing as well as or better than native-born whites.

Because this is New York City and most study participants are the children of people who came to the United States 20 to 30 years ago, their parents either entered legally or found it relatively easy to obtain legal status even if they came illegally.

Legal immigration is more difficult today, and researchers note that this may well change the rate of assimilation. But for these five groups, "what we really find is a very rapid assimilation and becoming American," says Mary Waters of Harvard University, another author of the study, titled Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age, and recently published as a book.

Inheriting the City also uncovered cultural differences that may give the children of some immigrant groups certain advantages. Many members of this second generation interviewed for this story said their parents had pushed them to succeed academically. This is a common theme in immigrant families, even a stereotype.

Enia Titova, who came from Russia when she was 12, attended Stuyvesant, an elite New York public high school. "In a lot of Russian families, if you don't have a graduate degree, it is frowned upon," she says. "When you get a 96, parents want to know where the other four points went — that's the question, I think, in a lot of immigrant households."

But the researchers also found something unexpected: Some groups, such as Chinese immigrants, knew how to work the system more effectively than others.

"We interviewed one young woman whose mother worked in a garment factory and had very little education," Waters says. "She said her mother didn't even know what Stuyvesant was, but she knew from the other moms in the garment factory — I need to get my kid into this school."

Ling Wu Kong, who came from China when he was 2 and now attends law school, says Waters is correct. "Every time there is a student who maxes out on the SAT, their picture is prominently placed on the front page in the Chinese newspapers," he says. "They give you a pretty good idea of what to expect, so even for people whose parents don't speak English, they are able to navigate the system."

It's a little different for other groups.

Waters says researchers also met Dominican kids who had gotten into Stuyvesant, but whose parents didn't let them go to the school because they would have to take a subway and go across bad neighborhoods to get there.

Cristina Carpio's parents came from Ecuador. Now a medical student, Carpio says she went to Stuyvesant only after persuading her mother to let her go. "During the orientation week, my sister took me to Stuyvesant to ease my mother's fears," she says, adding that her sister told her mother, "Look, she knows how to take the subway, she knows how to do it on her own, she has to go to that school. There is no other way."

The study, funded by the Russell Sage Foundation, found that the children of immigrants in New York City had another big advantage: Many of them continue to live at home with their parents.

Carpio says that when she becomes an intern next year, "I will be moving back home because I can save money on the rent and pay for my loans." And Ling feels it wouldn't be right if he didn't go home. "There is this ideal in the Chinese community, when everyone lives together. I'm living at home now," he says, laughing.

That cultural difference can have huge economic consequences, says Philip Kasinitz, a professor of sociology at City University who also helped write the study. "Black Americans, white Americans and Puerto Ricans seem to share the idea that you must leave home in your teens or early 20s, and that there is something wrong with you if you are still living with your parents in your mid-20s," he says.

In New York, he notes, given real estate values, this can help the children of immigrants get their careers established and finish their education.

Although Inheriting the City paints an optimistic portrait of this second generation, it has some warnings about the situation facing native-born minorities. The researchers also say the children of undocumented immigrants tend to do worse and have a tougher time assimilating. Because legal immigration is tougher to come by today, researchers say they wonder whether the path for the next "second generation" will be as smooth.

Labels: immigration and education

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

Associated Press
Aug. 23, 2008

GARLAND — Garland school district officials are taking steps to ensure their students are not left without a legal guardian should their parents be deported in an immigration raid during school hours.

The Garland school district will ask all parents to provide the names and phone numbers of six emergency contacts. The district is also instructing school officials to not allow a student board a bus if a parent is detained or deported and no one else is available to take the child home, The Dallas Morning News reported Saturday.

The plan also forbids anyone not on the emergency contact list from withdrawing the student from school in the event of a raid, the paper reported.

"We don't anticipate large-scale raids here in our district because we don't really have the industry (known for hiring illegal immigrants) that suggests this sort of thing will happen here," said Shelly Hopkins, who oversees district programs for English learners. "But we do want to support principals (in cases) where the legal guardian has been detained and deported."

Carl Rusnok, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Dallas, said his agency repeatedly asks parents taken into custody whether or not they are the sole caregivers for children.

"If they are sole caregivers, a decision is made whether these people can be released or (are) going to have to be held," Rusnok said. "We go through extraordinary means to ensure children are not left home alone or left alone at school."

South Gate Elementary School Principal Clyde Schilling said parents of his students have been detained two times before.

"This is relatively new to a lot of school districts," Schilling said. "I don't think it's a topic of discussion at the lunch table, but as you imagine, it is very upsetting when it happens to any of your students."

The Urban Institute and National Council of La Raza issued a report last fall urging school districts to make sure students had a safe place to go in the event of a raid. The National Immigration Law Center also advised people last year to prepare a form or document authorizing another adult to care for their minor children in the event of a raid.

Labels: immigration and education

posted by Patricia Lopez at 9:30 AM 0 comments Links to this post

This is terrible. -Patricia

Aaron Nelsen | The Monitor
August 24, 2008

Juan Larin-Ulloa has been fighting his entire life.

As a government soldier in his native El Salvador, he fought against the advance of the Communist Farabundo Marti National Liberation front.

As a refugee of the same bloody war that ravaged his country and uprooted his family, he fought for asylum in the United States.

But his toughest battle of all was surviving four-and-half years locked up in a South Texas immigration detention facility for a crime that he had already served probation years before.

"It felt like the sky was closing with the earth," Larin said of the experience. "I had never been separated from my wife and kids before."

Larin moved his wife and three children from Los Angeles to Wichita, Kansas in 1997 to open Templo de Poder Sinai church for the city's burgeoning Spanish-speaking population. Two years later, the pastor was charged with battery for his involvement in a fight that erupted outside his home. Larin maintains the fight involved local gang members.

Larin paid the fine and served probation, but, in 2002, on a routine visit to renew his green card, federal officials resurrected his battery conviction - the only blemish on his record after 20 years in the country.

As far as Immigration and Customs Enforcement was concerned, Larin's misdemeanor was justification enough to have him deported. Larin is among thousands of legal permanent residents who are detained and put into removal proceedings for past crimes, often-minor offenses.

The 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibilty Act penned by President Bill Clinton took effect in 1997 and made entire classes of crimes deportable offenses, including some misdemeanors.

In addition, it was applied retroactively, making decades old offenses relevant again.

Even more damaging in Larin's case was a provision added later that established mandatory detention for certain violent crimes.

Of the more than 285,000 people deported last year, 97,279 were for criminal convictions, and 74,826 have been deported for crimes this year, according to ICE. The government does not specify how many of those deported were permanent residents.

The removal of longtime permanent residents has been largely overlooked, but their plight underscores the government's commitment to expel immigrants no matter the cost. The day Larin was taken into custody, his wife and children, all U.S. citizens, had no idea that he'd been arrested.

They were unaware that he would be stripped naked, doused in cold liquid, called filthy and sprayed with a hose shoulder-to-shoulder with other detainees. When the family got home that evening, they would receive a scared phone call from Larin.

He'd been arrested, he told them, and he didn't know exactly where he was or where he would be going. They needed to act fast to find him a lawyer, as the government would provide him none.

On any given day, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security holds more than 31,000 people in hundreds of publicly and privately operated facilities across the country. South Texas has the distinction of housing one quarter of them, or just shy of 7,900.

Critics of the government's efforts to detain immigrants say the crush of so many detainees has not been met with commensurate growth in the legal infrastructure of the Rio Grande Valley. Even if a detainee has the resources and good fortunate to secure legal counsel, incarceration can drag on for years, as was the case for Larin.

"It's all part of the government's end plan for immigration," said Jodi Goodwin, a Harlingen-based immigration lawyer.

With fewer than 30 immigration attorneys in the region, thousands will go through proceedings without legal assistance of any sort.

Larin's case was the ill-fated confluence of bad luck, a colossal paperwork error and the federal government's stepped-up efforts to detain and deport immigrants who fall under more stringent measures in the era of fighting terrorism after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on U.S. soil.

Larin got caught up in these circumstances, and for years battled his way back to freedom.

All the while, his family back in Wichita struggled to keep afloat as he sat in an immigration detention facility.

Without his income, the Larin family lost their home. The family business, a Christian bookstore, went bankrupt. And his two school-age children, one in high school and the other in junior high, dropped out to work and raise money to hire another attorney.

Meanwhile, inside the Port Isabel facility, Larin felt his life slipping away.

To keep his mind occupied, he gave the other detainees haircuts, cleaned offices and every evening he offered lessons from the Bible, frequently citing passages from Romans, Chapter 8.

"It's a dangerous thing," Larin said of being incarcerated for so long. "You can go crazy with nothing to do other than stare at the four walls and think of your problems, of all you've lost."

Plotting Legal Measures

In addition to creating a backlog and slowing down the legal process, the detention build-up could also be partially responsible for the high number of writ of habeas corpus filings in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas - a legal action seeking relief from an unlawful detention.

Compared to zero habeas cases in 2006 and 2007, there were already eight habeas petitions through July of this year. What had been a legal maneuver reserved for desperate circumstances is quickly becoming a common procedure.

A trial can drag on for years, but once the immigration court has issued a final order for removal the clock starts ticking and the government has 90 days to remove that individual. A number of arrangements must fall into place, including cooperation from the home country and lining up travel documents.

However, if after six months removal still does not appear imminent, the government is expected to grant a release.

The reality is more complicated.

Scores of immigrants await deportation that may never come and yet they remain behind bars.

As long as the government can effectively argue that removal is likely in the foreseeable future, it claims detention is within the boundaries of the law, according to Judy Rabinovitz, senior staff counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union's Immigrant's Rights Project.

There are several ongoing lawsuits in the U.S. 9th Circuit that are fighting the prolonged detention of people disputing their removal on meritorious claims.

Alone and largely without legal representation, many immigrant detainees are helpless to stop their removal. Under pressure, some will choose to speed up the process by agreeing to self-deport to avoid a protracted legal battle, said Lisa Brodyaga, a longtime Harlingen-based immigration attorney.

The prevailing logic for an immigrant, Brodyaga said, is to avoid spending years in prison, and instead leaving and taking another chance to re-enter the country illegally.

Trying To Hold On

Deportation wasn't an option Larin allowed himself to consider. He would gain nothing by going back to El Salvador. Besides, he had nothing in El Salvador to go back to.

His life and his family were waiting for him in Wichita.

So, he fought and he waited.

During the court proceedings for the Kansas fight, Larin managed to plead the charge down to a lesser conviction, but the change was written sloppily over the original, making the document nearly illegible. Standing in front of an immigration judge years later, Larin's lawyer, who was unfamiliar with the prior case, mistakenly admitted his client had indeed been convicted on the more severe charge.

Larin was deported and he suddenly found himself without an attorney.

In detention, Larin was allowed 20 minutes every Saturday to speak with his family. During one of those conversations, he learned of his mother's death. In another conversation, he was told of the death of his brother.

Once a year his family visited him in Los Fresnos. Separated by glass, for a half-hour they exchanged teary stories over the phone.

Larin finally caught a lucky break.

Another detainee helped him get Brodyaga's telephone number. He scribbled the number on a scrap of paper.

She agreed to take his case, and even after losing his petition for habeas, she assured him that she would fight all the way to the 5th Circuit if necessary, a prophetic promise as it turned out. The U.S. 5th Circuit ordered that Larin be given bond. Still, his case dragged on for another year as the government sought to unearth additional evidence to deport him.

Without Brodyaga stepping in to pay his $1,500 bond, he may have been subjected to another year in detention. After living a nightmare for so long, when he got the call that he'd finally won his release, he said, it felt like the beginning of a dream from which he has yet to wake. Despite the outcome, Brodyaga said, in a sense the government won too.

Behind bars, Larin's life had been put on hold. On the outside, life marched on. In his absence, his wife of 30 years had begun to lose sight in one of her eyes, the result of her untreated diabetes aggravated by stress.

His children had become parents and he a grandfather of five.

"He's back to being a permanent legal resident," Brodyaga said of Larin, "as if nothing had ever happened."

But it did happen.

Back home, he has slowly begun to pick up the pieces of his life, one day at a time. He now spends most days with his family and at church. There are moments he can't believe he is home, rapt in familial warmth. And there are days he struggles to regain what he lost.

"There are people out there that commit terrible crimes every day," Larin said. "Our biggest crime is to have not been born in the United States."

Labels: immigration

posted by Patricia Lopez at 9:10 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Good comment made by Jean Ross in reminding researchers that undocumented parents are unable to receive cash-assistance in California. This is a major human rights issue since access to this assistance may help to ensure that children are being nourished.

What should also be added is that those families who do receive aid generally inform the state poverty numbers highlighting how flawed those are likely to be. There are many more families (many composed of US-born children) living in poverty throughout California. Again, a human rights issue...

-Patricia

DOESN'T MEAN THE MOTHERS ARE POOR, CENSUS STUDY SAYS
By Mike Swift
Mercury News
Article Launched: 08/19/2008 01:30:21 AM PDT

A new and more nuanced national report about fertility shows a significantly higher share of babies are born to immigrants in California than in any other state, even as a lower-than-average share of the state's births are to poor women and women on welfare.

Nationally, the U.S. Census report shows that more American women are skipping motherhood or are waiting longer to have children, a trend already evident in California, where birthrates to women in their 40s have tripled the past two decades.

"Women are delaying their childbearing until they complete their educations," said Jane Lawler Dye, a family demographer with the Bureau and author of the report, which is based on population data collected in 2006.

By drawing from a broader population sample than in the past, the new fertility study looks at the differences in birth rates between Hispanic women of succeeding generations. It also examines the wide variation in fertility among the states.

While women who had given birth in the previous year in California were the most likely to be immigrants, new mothers in Mississippi were most likely to be poor. New mothers in Iowa were the most likely to be working, while those in Texas were the most likely to lack a high school diploma.

"This is the first time we've looked at a lot of these characteristics," Dye said. "We've never shown this much detail."

About 41 percent of births in California in 2005 and 2006 were to immigrant mothers, according to the new report, a significant number considering that immigrants account for more than one-third of births in only one other state - Nevada, where 34 percent of births were to immigrants. In part, California's high share of immigrant births reflects the fact that immigrants make up a larger slice of California's total population than in any other state, demographers said.

While California had higher than average rates of new mothers without a high school education and who were immigrants, the Golden State had lower-than-average rates of mothers who were poor, or who were on public assistance.

"That to me is counter-intuitive because a large share of our poor population is Latino and they tend to have higher birth rates," said Jean Ross, executive director of the California Budget Project, a Sacramento organization that advocates for the poor and middle class.

One explanation, she said, might be that many Latino immigrant families "tend to be two-parent families, and overwhelmingly working, and because if you're undocumented you're not eligible for cash-assistance programs," she said.

Caroline Danielson, a research fellow with the Public Policy Institute of California, said California has restrictions that prevent families from receiving additional benefits if they have another child while receiving welfare benefits. But she noted that about half of the state's welfare caseload are children whose parents or caregivers are not eligible for aid, in some cases because they are illegal immigrants.

Many Californians may be worried about the environmental and congestion costs of immigration-fueled population growth. But University of Southern California demographer Dowell Myers argues that they should consider the alternative.

"Everywhere I look, people miss the point that the [Baby] Boomers are going to retire, and who's going to fill their shoes? And who's going to buy your house? Nobody has figured that out," Myers said. "Thank God somebody is having babies."

Labels: California, demographics, poverty

posted by Patricia Lopez at 12:40 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Very good point made by Dr. Noguera in this article: Many students have trouble learning because they "are just not going to good schools, and no incentive is going to fix that,"

I agree that this solution further places the result of "failure" on the student and takes the focus off the the institutional barriers that many students face. As for proposing to give elementary school students money for doing well on standardized tests, that's insane!

-Patricia

More Districts Use Incentives To Reward Top Test Scores; So Far, Results Are Mixed

By JEREMY SINGER-VINE | Wall Street Journal
August 21, 2008; Page D1

More and more school districts are banking on improving student performance using cash incentives -- a $1,000 payout for high test scores, for example. But whether they work is hard to say.

In the latest study of student-incentive programs, researchers examining a 12-year-old program in Texas found that rewarding pupils for achieving high scores on tough tests can work. A handful of earlier studies of programs in Ohio, Israel and Canada have had mixed conclusions; results of a New York City initiative are expected in October. Comparing results is further complicated by the fact that districts across the country have implemented the programs differently.

Still, school administrators and philanthropists have pushed to launch pay-for-performance programs at hundreds of schools in the past two years. Advocates say incentives are an effective way to motivate learning -- especially among poor and minority students -- and reward teaching skills. Critics argue that the programs don't fix underlying problems, such as crowded classrooms or subpar schools.

In Texas, high-school students enrolled in Advanced Placement classes who got top scores on math, science and English tests were paid up to $500. (AP classes are considered more difficult than traditional high school curricula, and some colleges award credit for AP coursework.) The research, by C. Kirabo Jackson, an economics professor at Cornell University, found that over time, more students took Advanced Placement courses and tests, and that more graduating seniors attended college. Most of the gains came from minority students in the 40 high schools studied, accounting for about 70,000 students in all. The study, set for release on Thursday, will appear in the fall issue of Education Next, a journal published by Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

"There's a lot of buzz about pay-for-performance, but we still only have a small amount of studies on these programs, and a lot of them don't come from the U.S.," says Jonah Rockoff, a professor of finance and economics at Columbia University who is familiar with Mr. Jackson's research. "I think he's done a very careful job of doing the evaluation," he adds, noting that the study was not a true randomized experiment.

Previous data collected by the nonprofit Advanced Placement Strategies Inc., which runs the Texas program, found that in the 10 schools where it was initially launched, passing AP test scores doubled in the first year, quadrupled in the second year and have continued to increase. The program is now used in 61 schools statewide.

But exactly how much the cash incentives contributed to the improvements remains unclear. Teachers in these districts received additional training and bonuses of up to $10,000 when their students scored well. So it's inconclusive whether paying the students, rewarding the teachers or a combination of these led to the improved test scores.

In New York City, 31 high schools with large populations of poor and minority students last school year offered rewards of up to $1,000 for passing AP tests. In some subjects, such as chemistry, the number of passing scores leapt by as much as 82%. But overall, the number of students who passed AP tests slightly decreased from year ago. On Wednesday, nearly $1 million in private funds was awarded to 1,161 students. Starting this fall, additional teacher training will be offered.

"If we are going to invest, why don't we invest in something that we know does work, like reducing class size or extended learning time?" asks Pedro Noguera, a New York University sociology professor, who is critical of cash-incentive programs. Many students have trouble learning because they "are just not going to good schools, and no incentive is going to fix that," he says.

This school year, six states -- Arkansas, Alabama, Connecticut, Kentucky, Massachusetts and Virginia -- will begin replicating the Texas program, each with five-year grants of $13 million from the National Math and Science Initiative, a nonprofit organization launched last year with funding from Exxon Mobil Corp. and other private sources. About a dozen schools in each state are participating this school year, with plans to add more in following years.

The cash helped persuade Christopher Means, a senior at Marion County High School in Lebanon, Ky., to take his first AP classes. "It's definitely piqued more interest [in AP classes] than it has in the past," he says.

Overall, 60% more students will take AP courses at the participating schools in the six states this year over last year, says Tom Luce, chief executive of the initiative and a former official with the Department of Education. The organization plans to expand to 20 states within five years.

The initiative hopes eventually to expand nationwide. "I'm not Pollyannish -- it is not going to happen overnight, but it's certainly our goal," Mr. Luce says.

Previous studies of cash-incentive student programs have shown mixed results.

"It's harder than we thought it was going to be," says Joshua Angrist, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economics professor who has co-authored two studies on cash-incentive programs, one at Israeli high schools and another at a Canadian university. He found that females respond better to cash incentives than do males. Researchers in Texas and Ohio found no significant gender difference in scores.

Stanford professor Eric Bettinger, one of Dr. Angrist's former students, is studying elementary schools at Coshocton, Ohio, where students are offered up to $20 for high test scores. Students there did significantly better on standardized math tests, but there was no effect on science, reading or social-science tests.

Many researchers and policymakers are looking to Roland G. Fryer, an economics professor at Harvard and "chief equality officer" of the New York City public schools. He oversees a privately funded program in New York City separate from the AP rewards program. In the Fryer initiative, about 10,000 elementary and middle school students earn cash and prepaid cell phones for high state test scores and good grades. He recently launched a study of the program and expects the initial results to be complete by October.

One question is whether gains attributed to cash incentives will continue if students no longer are offered rewards.

"You pay a price in motivation," says Barry Schwartz, a cognitive psychology professor at Swarthmore College. Cash incentives could ultimately diminish students' desire to learn for non-financial reasons, he says.

Dr. Fryer says he's just looking for anything that will improve student achievement, particularly for low-income and minority students: "If [incentives] don't work, I'm going to be the first person to call a press conference and tell everyone to stop."

Labels: Performance-based Pay

posted by Patricia Lopez at 12:27 PM 0 comments Links to this post

A notable statement made in this article: "Hispanic parents' silence should not be read as apathy."

I would add to Mr. Gallegos' elaboration on this subject the fact that many of these parents, especially immigrant, are not welcomed and attended to in some schools on equal grounds as their white, or middle-class counterparts. Considering how some of the teachers appear to be responding to students according to this article, I think this unwelcoming treatment may be happening in these schools.

-Patricia

They are 30% of district's students but aren't part of board, administration

By ERICKA MELLON | Houston Chronicle
Aug. 10, 2008

During more than a decade of attending school in North Forest, Christian Perez, a first-generation American, had one teacher who looked like him.

"I just remember the Spanish teacher. The Spanish teacher was Hispanic," he said.

In June, the 18-year-old graduated from Smiley High School, where the student population mirrors the district — predominantly black but with a growing percentage of Hispanics.

Last year, Hispanic students made up nearly 30 percent of the district overall.

As politicians, parents and alumni rally to save the northeast Houston district from state takeover, they often tout its importance as a historically black school district.

A few of the district's trustees have decried the Texas education commissioner's move to replace the elected board with an appointed one as racist.

With North Forest facing possible closure, advocates worry that the Hispanic parents — many of whom are immigrants with limited English skills — do not have a voice, though some hope the serious situation inspires political activism.

State Sen. Mario Gallegos, the first Hispanic senator elected to represent Harris County, said the North Forest school board should have at least a couple of Hispanics to reflect the makeup of the schools.

"Once this North Forest issue is on the table and at the state level, some of those parents out there will be looking at it," said Gallegos, a Democrat who represents part of North Forest. "I would hope one or two — or as many as want to — get involved."

All seven of the elected North Forest trustees are black, and longtime observers say that no Hispanic has served on or even run for the board in recent memory.

None of the district's top administrators is Hispanic, and the board voted last spring, as part of a cost-cutting plan, to lay off the coordinator of bilingual and English as a second language programs. Most, if not all, the students in those programs are Hispanic.

Gallegos said the Hispanic parents' silence should not be read as apathy.

"They're low-income to moderate-income workers," he said. "They raise their families. They pay their bills — a lot of them are paycheck to paycheck — but they want their kids to have a good education. That's what the American dream is all about.

A look at test scores

"They might not be political right now," Gallegos added, "but when 30 percent (of the student population) comes to 50 percent, they will be. That's not too far in the future."

In the last decade, the percentage of Hispanic students in the district has nearly doubled. Enrollment is declining across the board, but last year the district had 5,890 black students, 2,418 Hispanics, 54 Anglos and seven Asians, according to state data.

Hispanic activist groups have been quiet when news has surfaced in the past couple of years about the serious academic and financial problems in North Forest.

But the Hispanic students, based on 2008 test scores, are ahead of their peers, performing significantly better in math and science and about the same in other subjects.

At a school district meeting last week, Houston City Councilman Jarvis Johnson, who is black, told those in attendance that they need to rally to help "our little black boys and girls" and "our Hispanic boys and girls."

Later, he asked, "How do we save this school district? How do we save this black school district?"

Jose and Ana Alanis, Mexican immigrants who have two children in North Forest schools, said some teachers and administrators seem to show preferential treatment to the black students.

Racial divide

"There is favoritism," Ana Alanis said in Spanish after a shopping trip for groceries at Fiesta.

Her oldest son, Kevin, a seventh-grader at B.C. Elmore Middle School last year, said his cousin has complained to him about a teacher's unfair treatment.

"She would pick on the Hispanic kids and not the black kids," he said.

Kevin Alanis said he doesn't think his own teachers are necessarily discriminating against him, but when he has asked for help in math, he said, "They just told me, 'I already taught you.' "

Linda Maze, the district's former bilingual and English as a second language coordinator, has filed a federal lawsuit against the school board and interim Superintendent William Jones.

She claims she was discriminated against because she is Anglo and was laid off as revenge for raising concerns about the programs for non-English speakers.

'Everything was wrong'
Maze has said that the district may have broken the law, accepting federal funding for teachers who were not certified and for students who were no longer enrolled in the special language classes.

"Students who were in the program should have never been in the program ," she said, according to a transcript of a May hearing.

"Just everything was wrong about the program."

Jones denied discriminating against Maze and said she and two other coordinators were laid off for financial reasons, according to the transcript.

Of the 586 teachers in North Forest last year, about 83 percent were black, while less than 4 percent were Hispanic, state records show.

Jones declined an interview request for this article, but North Forest spokeswoman Nakisha Myles said the district offers stipends for ESL and bilingual teachers and recruits at local job fairs and in Mexico.

Role models

In any district, educators say, students can benefit from having teachers of their own race or ethnicity.

"When I was in elementary school, I didn't have one single Hispanic teacher, and that bothered me," said Luis Cano, the principal of Juan B. Galaviz Charter School, a high school that caters to Hispanic immigrants in Houston. "Role models are important. That does affect a kid's self-esteem."

Perez, who graduated sixth in his class at Smiley, said he did not feel different as a minority in the district.

"I've been in that community all my life. I got accustomed to it," he said. "It wasn't that difficult for me to make friends with whomever. It was a nice experience."

Asked if he had thought about running for the school board someday, he said, "After college, maybe I will."

Labels: Parent Involvement

posted by Patricia Lopez at 12:09 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Latest results show L.A. schools improving at a faster rate than the state average but still lagging behind overall.

By Howard Blume and Sandra Poindexter | LA Times
August 15, 2008

Scores on state standardized tests took a step upward in annual results released Thursday, but that rise won't prevent more schools from failing federal targets that have become more difficult this year.

In Los Angeles, schools improved at a faster rate than in the state overall -- a familiar and hopeful pattern. But they also continued to lag behind the state average. And here, too, increasing federal standards will inevitably lead to more schools being categorized as unsuccessful.

Statewide, about 24.5% of elementary schools would have reached last year's federal standards but will probably fall short this year. That works out to almost 1,400 schools. More than 37% of middle schools -- or about 480 campuses -- face the same fate, according to a Times analysis. (A similar calculation could not be made for high schools, which have a different proficiency scale, because the state has not released the necessary data.)

The reason for the seeming decline is a rising bar for success. This year, to meet federal targets, the required percentage of students who must be proficient rose from 24.4% to 35.2% in English and from 26.5% to 37% in math. That means a school that met last year's standard would have one year to increase nearly by half the number of students proficient in English to stay on the plus side of accelerating federal expectations.

"We have to look at proficiency for all," said Ramon C. Cortines, senior deputy superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, who defended the rising expectations but criticized the scale's steepness and inflexibility.

Key Elementary School in Anaheim met the federal targets last year and its scores rose in math and English this year, yet the school is at serious risk of falling below the new standard. Principal Charles Lewis wants to escape being labeled a failing school: "We feel confident we're doing excellent work, and we'd like to not have that hanging over our head."

In Gardena, 135th Street Elementary also met its federal targets last year and improved this year. Principal Antonio Jose Camacho talks proudly of his teachers and the coaches who assist them. They not only work in teams to improve lesson strategies, he said, but discuss how to help individual students in a high-poverty school that operates year-round because of overcrowding.

"We may just miss the cut," Camacho said. "But we just need to keep focused on what our task is. Even though we've improved, it's still not acceptable that only 35% of fifth-graders are reading proficiently."

Schools that don't keep pace ultimately face sanctions that could include replacing faculty and administration, measures the state has been reluctant to impose. But unless there is relief at the federal level, more schools every year are almost certain to become "substandard" as federal targets rise sharply until 2014, when nearly every student is expected to be academically proficient under the No Child Left Behind law.

Pasadena Supt. Edwin Diaz said the federal system could do harm by damaging morale at schools: "It's a huge issue."

The state won't issue federal accountability reports for about two weeks. The Times was able to preview the trend by analyzing Thursday's release of the California Standards Tests, on which the federal rating will be based.

Steady progress

State officials chose to accentuate the positive in the STAR tests. In English, the percentage of California students who scored proficient or better rose from 43% to 46%. Math proficiency scores increased from 41% to 43%.

In L.A. Unified, scores rose three percentage points in English, to 34%, and four percentage points in math, to 35%.

"For the sixth year in a row, California students are continuing to make solid, steady progress," said state Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell during a news conference at a Pasadena school. "We still have a lot of work to do to reach our goal of universal proficiency, but this year's gains are particularly encouraging."

Over those six years -- which is when the state's tests were fully based on California curriculum -- the percentage of students scoring proficient or advanced increased by 11 percentage points in English, from 35% to 46%. In math, scores rose eight percentage points, from 35% to 43%.

During that same period, L.A. Unified has gained 10 percentage points in reading and nine in math.

But only 28% of seventh-graders tested as proficient in math this year and 29% of 10th-graders were proficient in English.

Scores went up at Maclay Middle School in Pacoima, but still only 16% of students tested as proficient in English. At Jefferson High in South Los Angeles, English scores rose 85% in one year. But that still left 88% of students below proficiency in English.

Maclay and Jefferson didn't meet federal standards last year and were never realistically in the running this year.

At the state level, California met its federal target last year for every group of students except those with disabilities. And even that group nearly met the former standard. This year, the state is likely to fall short for African Americans, Latinos, English learners and students from low-income families -- even though each of these groups scored better than last year.

Troubling gap persists

By any standard, a yawning achievement gap persists between test scores of white and Asian students and their Latino and African American peers. As he has before, O'Connell said that closing the gap is a social, economic and moral imperative.

In that regard, the state should have made more progress, said Russlynn Ali, executive director of the Education Trust-West, an Oakland-based research and advocacy organization.

"Indeed, with time, the narrowing of achievement gaps between groups slows in the elementary grades, stops in middle school, and then begins to widen again in high school," Ali said in a statement.

The California Assn. for Bilingual Education castigated O'Connell's department for the widening achievement gap facing English learners. Among other measures, the association demanded thousands of more qualified instructors.

Support for O'Connell's efforts came from Debra Watkins, who heads the California Alliance of African American Educators. She added that self-help had to be part of the solution. "We have been almost passive in our allowing of other people to educate our children," Watkins said. "The community of African Americans themselves are beginning to very much mobilize behind this issue."

Labels: accountability, California

posted by Patricia Lopez at 11:48 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Some really great work being done by Dr. Olivos. -Patricia


August 22, 2008
By Rebecca Marcus and Alison Ecker
University of Oregon


(Editor’s Note: A University of Oregon class of 15 students, headed by Edward Olivos of San Diego, spent a week at the Tijuana/San Diego border for a week of hands-on training and understanding on the issue of immigration. During the week, students spent time on both sides of the border, helping with relief efforts and interacting with immigrants.

We invited the students to share with our readers their experience and their perspective on the immigration issue.)

When most people think of Tijuana and college students, what comes is mind is tequila, parties, and wild abandon. Who would believe it then that a university professor would lead a class to this infamous party town with actual educational intent?

We are two seniors from the University of Oregon, both coming from families that are generations removed from the immigration experience. Between the two of us our fields of study include geography, environmental studies, ethnic studies and Italian. So what drew us to a class on immigration and diaspora?

When we found out an education studies class was going to be offered as a week-long intensive field studies course in San Diego and Tijuana, we jumped at the opportunity to learn first-hand a piece of the immigrant story.
The 11 Uuniversity of Oregon students at Chicano Park with muralist Salvador Barajas.

My (Rebecca) interest in immigration comes from researching Russian and Ukrainian immigrants and refugees in Oregon through the Department of Geography. I chose to take this class because I wanted to learn about a different immigrant story, one I could not relate to, that of Latinos coming to the U.S. I wanted to humanize the immigrants I too often look at only as statistics and to meet the people and organizations that support these immigrants in their journey.

As an ethnic studies major (Alison), I found out about this class almost right away through a department email, and was one of the first students to sign up. I love my field of studies, which allows me to study diversity issues and gain a new understanding and cultural awareness of minority groups. I had not studied immigration issues in depth, especially relating to Latinos, but it was a topic that I was extremely interested in, and a group of people that I have had the most contact with in my own community. But probably the most important and appealing aspect of this class was the fact that it was a hands-on experience to take place in San Diego and Tijuana. I felt like this was a unique opportunity to make the immigrant experience real, one that I just couldn’t miss.

Our home state of Oregon, especially the Western part, is often thought of as white, liberal and less touched by immigration than the Mexican border-states of California, Arizona, and Texas. However, immigration is becoming more real to many Oregonians, drawing strong voices from all sides of the issue due to the increasing immigrant population in the state.

The strong emotions surrounding this topic are present even among students, surfacing in one incident when an article was published in the student newspaper highlighting the immigration research by a university professor. The article drew heavy criticism and racist comments simply because of its headline, which called the city of Woodburn (north of the capital of Salem), a “Little Mexico,” for its large Latino population.

During our week of field studies we participated in a wide range of activities from refilling water stations in the desert of Imperial County to exploring the reclamation of space through murals in Chicano Park.

We met migrant workers living in North County, waiting for work, and were enormously struck by their patience, sense of humor and faith. We followed the immigrant trail to Tijuana where we were moved by the first-hand stories of deported women who were working to build new lives in Tijuana.

We felt the uneasiness and intimidation of crossing the border into the United States and tried to imagine the feelings of those who had crossed through the desert instead. Following the immigrant trail back to Oregon, we met groups who work with immigrants in our own community.

After a short eight days of class we found ourselves struggling to process all of our experiences.

We faced an array of emotions from guilt, to sadness, anger, admiration and gratitude, which surfaced in our daily seminars. Hearing the thoughts and opinions of our classmates coming from diverse personal backgrounds and fields as varied as architecture, family and human services, psychology and education was as valuable a learning experience as our daily field work. We traveled all the way to the border of Mexico and came back to our home state with an enriched perspective on the immigrant experience that is increasingly becoming part of our lives.

We were struck by the sensitivity and enormity of this issue. Many people seem to avoid discussing and examining immigration because it can be such a politically charged issue. Even those who are fairly like-minded may discover a continuum of thought and emotions on the subject, as we found to be the case among our classmates. But in doing our fieldwork, we unearthed the compelling stories of human beings that lie beneath the tension of the political debate.

Throughout this class, we were able to put faces on a few of the footprints we saw in the desert, and watch their stories unfold from Tijuana to Oregon. However, our short but intense journey covered only a fraction of the greater story; there are voices on all sides of this complex immigration issue that should be heard. After all, as we learned from this class, every human being deserves the same dignity and respect regardless of our diverse beliefs.

Labels: immigration and education

posted by Patricia Lopez at 11:43 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Last year, the Texas House voted overwhelmingly to bar public funding for any private school voucher scheme. Apparently, Texas Education Agency Commissioner Robert Scott didn’t get the memo.

Recently, TEA adopted a dropout prevention plan that would allow the agency “to fund nonprofit groups as an alternative [to public schools] to educate dropouts.”

Since Commissioner Scott missed, forgot or ignored the Legislature’s will, the Texas State Teachers Association is working to remind him via a court order.

“They couldn’t push vouchers through the Legislature in an aboveboard way,” said TSTA President Rita Haecker. “So they went through the back door to divert public dollars to private school programs, even though lawmakers warned them not to do so.”

It’s really no surprise that Scott is pushing vouchers — his former boss, Governor Rick Perry, has received a boatload of money from voucher sugardaddy James Leininger.

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 11:06 AM 0 comments Links to this post

TEA Dropout Recovery Voucher Scheme Is Political Payback for James Leininger

Tax Dollars to Fund Private School Supported by Leininger Dollars, But Nearly Two Dozen Public School Districts Are Rejected

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 11, 2008

Giving public funding to a San Antonio private school for a dropout recovery program is political payback to a financial major backer of Gov. Rick Perry and private school voucher schemes, the president of the Texas Freedom Network said today.

"It’s hard to believe that a private school established just 10 years ago in a former roadside bar offers a more credible dropout recovery program than 22 public school districts whose applications for a grant were rejected," TFN President Kathy Miller said. "Just as interesting is that this private school would get public tax dollars just as James Leininger turns off his money spigot for a privately funded voucher scheme that allowed the school to open in the first place."

In addition, the application from Christian Fellowship of San Antonio indicates that three people who appear to be related John Rhodes, who founded and runs the private school, and Kerri Ann Rhodes and Kelli G. Rhodes will be paid partly through the grant.

A state district judge today refused to grant a temporary injunction to prevent TEA from providing public funding to Christian Fellowship of San Antonio and two other private organizations. The Texas State Teachers Association sought the injunction and has filed a lawsuit over the issue.

Christian Fellowship of San Antonio, an evangelical church, established Family Faith Academy in 1998 in a building that formerly housed a series of bars. The school accepted students who were awarded vouchers through the privately funded CEO Horizon voucher program in the Edgewood Independent School District in San Antonio. James Leininger pledged $50 million to the CEO Horizon program over 10 years or until the state instituted a publicly funded voucher scheme beginning in 1998. Leininger said in 2007 that he would stop funding the program after the 2007-08 school year.

Leininger has been a major financial backer of Gov. Rick Perry's political campaigns. Gov. Perry appointed Robert Scott as the state’s education commissioner in 2007. Scott has insisted that the Dropout Recovery Program grants be open to private schools like Family Faith Academy of San Antonio.

Such grants are a backdoor voucher scheme that the Legislature never intended to permit when it passed legislation to help school dropouts, Miller said. In fact, the Texas House voted 129-8 in 2007 to forbid public funding for private school vouchers.

"James Leininger has failed repeatedly to get a private school voucher scheme through the Legislature," Miller said. "Now the governor’s handpicked education commissioner has twisted the Legislature’s intent by creating a backdoor voucher scheme that puts public funding for private schools ahead of our neighborhood public schools."

###

The Texas Freedom Network is a nonpartisan, grassroots organization of religious and community leaders who advance a mainstream agenda supporting public education, religious freedom and individual liberties.

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 10:57 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Check out the report findings. Good to see that the monitoring as a result of the Williams case is helping to expose these inequalities.

-Patricia

Friday, August 08, 2008
By Nannette Miranda

It's an eye-popping report that could partly explain why certain students don't do well in school.

The Commission on Teacher Credentialing found nearly six-and-a-half percent of all California teachers were assigned to a class they were not qualified to teach.

The civil rights law firm, Public Advocates, had to sue the state to force it to gather the numbers.

"The report found that over 22,000 teachers were mis-assigned, meaning they weren't credentialed to teach their subject or trained to teach English learners," stated Liz Guillen of Public Advocates.

The majority of the mis-assignments were in classrooms where English was a second language, affecting Latino students the most.

There were 1.6 million English language learner students in California last year.

"English learners are not getting the teachers they need to succeed in California schools or our state. That's a big problem!" said Liz Guillen.

The problem is evident in state standardized tests.

The High School Exit Exam, for example, shows of all California seniors who took the test in March, more than 93% passed it.

But when looking at just the English learners, only 77% passed.

"It's upsetting," said English learner student Gretel Quintero.

Gretel Quintero began school in California before she could speak English.

She feels many of her teachers didn't have the skills to deal with her.

Quintero stated, "They were nice and everything. But if they were more prepared, maybe my English would be better. My education would be better too. I believe in equal opportunity, and that's not given to us, you know?"

Labels: California, English language learners, Williams Case

posted by Patricia Lopez at 1:44 AM 0 comments Links to this post

In addition to the mention of students already being overwhelmed with too many exams I would add that this approach narrowly identifies [selects] those students who are "college ready". Seems problematic to me. It would be nice to see the state providing schools with the capacity to place ALL students on track for college, not just those who test well.

-Patricia

The test, expected to be released in 2010, aims to identify talented students and get them into college-prep classes early. But many critics say students already face too many tests and too much stress

By Gale Holland, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 8, 2008
High school students already face a battery of standardized tests on their way to college. Now, the college testing frenzy is reaching into middle school.

The College Board, which owns the SAT, PSAT and other tests, plans to introduce an eighth-grade college assessment exam in 2010, a top College Board official said this week.

The new test would be voluntary, said Wayne Camara, the vice president for research and analysis at the New York-based nonprofit, who spoke at a college enrollment conference at USC early this week. But critics noted that the PSAT, which also is voluntary, was taken last year by 3.4 million students, and said the new test would just boost the pressures for students considering college.

High school students now can take the PSAT in 10th or 11th grade to practice for the SAT college entrance exam and to qualify for educational aid programs including the National Merit Scholarship. But younger students have been signing up for the PSAT in growing numbers, perhaps to establish eligibility for gifted or enrichment programs, or to measure college readiness.

The new test would be tailored to eighth-graders. And it would put students on notice to start lining up the rigorous courses required by selective colleges, Camara said.

"By the time they're taking the PSAT, it's much too late to determine whether they should be taking algebra in the eighth grade, biology, and other important gatekeeper classes needed for college," he said. "This test will help schools identify students who have some talent and could likely succeed if they take honors or AP courses, but have not been recognized."

Some Southern California educators said they welcome the opportunity to get students, particularly African Americans and Latinos who are underrepresented in higher education, into the college game early.

Los Angeles Unified School District Senior Deputy Supt. Ramon C. Cortines said he has proposed that the district offer all eighth-graders the chance to take the PSAT beginning next year, as many top private schools do. "Polytechnic, Westridge, Harvard-Westlake all do," Cortines said. "Just because you go to a public school you should still have the same opportunities."

Honey Koletty, a college counselor at Carson High School, agreed: "If you want your kid to go to a highly selective institution, you really do have to know in the eighth grade."

But critics questioned whether the College Board, whose SAT test is coming under increasing scrutiny from universities, is pushing the admissions frenzy into middle school simply to boost its revenue. The exam will compete with testing rival ACT's Explore, an eighth-grade assessment test used in Long Beach Unified School District and schools across Southern California, an ACT spokesman said.

Nearly 1 million students took the Explore test in the 2005-06 school year, the spokesman said.

"It's a brilliant marketing ploy, but it's pure Pablum," Paul Kanarek, head of the Princeton Review test prep service in Southern California, said of the College Board's pitch for the eighth-grade exam. "They're locked in a death match with ACT over who takes the ACT or the SAT. Once you buy into a certain product line, you're likely to stick with it."

Camara said the exam, which has not been named, is now undergoing field development tests. It will be multiple-choice and will cover critical reading, math and writing. A spokeswoman for the College Board said it was too early to provide other details about its content.

Colleges would not use the exam's results, Camara said. "The test is given in the eighth grade," he said. "By the time they apply to school, [the results] would not be relevant."

Russlyn Ali, executive director of Education Trust-West, the Oakland arm of a Washington-based nonprofit dedicated to improving education, said many California public school students are first-generation college aspirants who lack the background and information to map out their own routes to higher education.

"That plays out in kids' real lives; most of them are taking a hodgepodge of classes . . . and by the end of 11th grade it's too late," Ali said.

Princeton Review's Kanarek, however, said eighth grade is too late to begin pulling together a college prep portfolio.

"Eighth grade is not the key year for college assessment. That's sixth grade," he said.

"Now we're going to have a preadmission test to get ready for the preadmission test? Get ready to get ready to get ready?" said Robert Schaeffer, public education director of Cambridge, Mass.-based FairTest, which is critical of standardized testing. "To believe you need an eighth-grade test on top of the PSAT and SAT is just insane."

Cortines said he welcomes the new test, as it will focus families and teachers on what students need to succeed. The deputy superintendent said he has asked the board to budget $125,000 for eighth-grade PSAT tests in the coming school year.

At the same time, Cortines said he believes Los Angeles Unified students are overtested. For example, many California high school students now take the state standards tests, the state exit exam, the SAT and SAT subject tests, the ACT and several Advanced Placement tests, all in the junior year.

"We have people in Sacramento and in political offices that think that accountability is testing. And accountability is not testing," Cortines said. "The eighth-grade California standards test . . . should tell us how children are prepared for high school. I'm not sure we need it again in the ninth grade . . . in the 10th grade, and then the 11th grade. Teachers are so loaded down with tests they have very little time to teach anymore."

Deborah Sigman, deputy superintendent of assessment and accountability for the state Department of Education, defended the state-mandated tests.

"Our primary purpose is to check on how effectively are schools preparing students, and we see them as very important," she said.

Several educators said they would wait to see the College Board's new test before judging whether it will be useful.

"California has a very shabby test setup. A lot of these testing outfits are entrepreneurial, they're trying to make a buck," said W. James Popham, a professor emeritus of education at UCLA who has written extensively about testing. "If there is a market to be served, to add another test, they're more than willing to do that. But if the test is well-conceived, it will have an instructional yield.

"But testing takes time, testing costs money. You really have to demonstrate that the addition of another test is worth it. The jury is still out on that."

Labels: California, college readiness

posted by Patricia Lopez at 1:35 AM 0 comments Links to this post

The Associated Press
Tucson, Arizona
08.04.2008

MESA. — Some education experts are expressing doubts about a new strategy being used this school year for students who aren’t proficient in the English language.
The policy, created by the state Legislature in response to a lawsuit, will have non-English-speakers going into specialized classrooms for four hours a day. While there, the so-called English Language Learners will receive intensive English training and they will stay there until they can pass the state’s language exam.

It’s all part of the state’s new plan to get students who don’t speak English to learn the language more quickly. State education officials say it can be done in a year.
Yet the plan is raising eyebrows among some education experts across the country. One school district, Sahuarita Unified, near Tucson, even rejected the plan for most of its elementary school students, saying it worried the Office of Civil Rights would find it discriminatory.

Patricia Gandara, an education professor and co-director of The Civil Rights Project at UCLA said, “There is a lot of discussion around the country that this is ripe for a lawsuit ....”

Arizona State University Professor Jeff McSwan has also voiced concerns about the program, specifically that the models were based on flawed interpretations of research.

He also said much of the focus is on overt language instruction, such as drilling verb tenses, instead of learning the language in a more natural setting.
“Our state is enacting educational policy not based on consideration for what is the best, most effective way of teaching kids,” McSwan said. “Our state is enacting educational policy based on ideological commitments to notions that are entirely unrelated to education. They’re related to immigration, and anxiety about the predominance of other languages in our society.”

State schools Superintendent Tom Horne disagrees. “I think within two years, you’ll see a dramatically higher rate of students being classified as knowing English, this will be a tremendous benefit for them,” he said.

Horne brushed aside concerns over possible civil rights violations.
“There’s a court case that says it is not segregation for a school to temporarily, for educational purposes, put them in a different classroom. That’s the only way to make them successful. You don’t make them successful by putting them in a class where they have no idea what’s going on because they can’t speak English,” Horne said.
The Arizona Legislature created the new education policy in a response to a class-action lawsuit that challenged the adequacy of funds being spent to help students who are learning the English language.

Labels: English language learners, segregation

posted by Patricia Lopez at 1:23 AM 1 comments Links to this post

To check out the full report Click Here -Patricia

Legislative Analyst's Office
June 10, 2008

California currently operates two systems designed to turn around low–performing schools—one for state purposes and one for federal purposes. The two systems are uncoordinated and often duplicative, in addition to being poorly structured. We recommend replacing the two systems with an integrated system that serves both state and federal purposes. Under the new system, the state would support district reform efforts. Districts would receive different levels of support depending on the severity of their underlying performance problem and be given short–term funding linked to specific short–term district reform activities. By virtue of being integrated and district–centered, the new system would cost substantially less than the existing system and could be supported entirely with federal funding.

Labels: California, failing schools

posted by Patricia Lopez at 1:16 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Notable quote from this article: "students may be more inclined to learn life-changing behaviors from someone they know and trust."

-Patricia

ScienceDaily (Aug. 5, 2008) — When it comes to learning life-changing behaviors in high school health classes, the identity of the person teaching may be even more important than the curriculum, a new study suggests.

For years, many high schools around the country have been relying on outside experts to teach sensitive subjects such as the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection and pregnancy prevention. But a recent study by researchers at Ohio State University and the University of Kentucky found that students learn more about such issues when taught by their regular classroom teacher.

The reason: students may be more inclined to learn life-changing behaviors from someone they know and trust.

“The actual person teaching makes a difference in how students learn. When there is a good relationship, that really facilitates learning and motivation. And we found that in almost every area, the regular classroom teachers were more effective, they were better,” said Eric Anderman, co-author of the study and professor of educational psychology at Ohio State.

The study is available online and will appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Health Promotion Practice.

Strong student-teacher relationships have been linked to many positive outcomes, including better behavior in classrooms and improvement in learning. Because of the established relationship regular classroom teachers have with their students, it may be easier for adolescents to talk with and learn from someone who already knows them as individuals.

“The relationship between the teacher and the student, particularly during adolescence, is very important. It was easier for the kids to talk about personal stuff with someone they knew. It was easier for them to absorb the material and become more interested in what they were talking about with their regular teacher in the classroom,” Anderman said.

Nearly 700 high school students in central and northern Kentucky participated in the study. Students from seven similarly sized high schools were given the same curriculum and were taught by either their regular classroom teacher or a temporary educator.

Students were surveyed prior to beginning the course and three to four weeks after completion about their experience. Students were asked about attitudes toward having sex and condom use, their goals and expectations toward the class, if they valued class material, and if they felt their health teachers were credible and likeable.

In almost every category, the regular classroom teachers had the more positive results. Students often expect to be tested more often by their regular teacher than by a temporary educator. As a result, they may be more motivated to learn the material, to achieve high grades on tests, and to appear knowledgeable during classroom discussions.

More importantly, students in classrooms led by their regular teachers valued the course material more than did others. Instead of simply hearing a lecture on sex education, students were motivated to pay attention because they felt the class offered important information.

“When you have kids who simply memorize material for the test and two weeks later don’t remember any of it, you’re not getting anywhere. But if you can get the kids to care and learn because they think it’s important, that’s something that will last a lifetime,” Anderman said.

Students who had a sexual partner also participated in more classroom discussions with the regular teacher. These students valued the discussions, reporting that the discussions were higher in quality and more frequent overall.

“Students who had a sexual partner were more likely to say that there was class discussion going on with the regular teacher than those taught by the outside person. These kids were more likely to feel like there was discussion of these issues, rather than just the teacher lecturing to them,” he said.

Regular classroom teachers were also perceived as more credible than their temporary counterparts. Students felt their regular teachers were more knowledgeable, but also liked their regular teacher more. Students felt comfortable with these teachers and were able to joke around and laugh with the teachers, but also took them more seriously, he said.

Despite the positive results, Anderman cautions that not all teachers will have the same impacts as those in the study. Every teacher in this study, both temporary and permanent, received professional training prior to entering the classroom. In reality, not all teachers will have the same training and know-how, and decisions should be made based on who is the best fit for each class.

“School is the absolute best way to get information out to adolescents, no matter who is teaching. The important thing is getting the teacher to make a connection. If the teacher can make the right connection with one kid, you’ve saved one person from getting HIV, you’ve saved one person’s life,” he said.

Research was conducted at the University of Kentucky and continues at Ohio State. Co-authors of the study include Derek Lane and Pamela Cupp of the University of Kentucky’s Department of Communication, Valerie Phebus of the Department of Pediatrics-Neonatology at the University of Kentucky, and Rick Zimmerman, center director for the Pacific Institute for Research & Evaluation’s Louisville, KY location.

The study was funded by the National Institute of Nursing Research.
Citation:
Ohio State University (2008, August 5). Teacher-student Relationships Key To Learning Health And Sex Education. ScienceDaily.

Labels: sex education, teachers

posted by Patricia Lopez at 1:05 AM 0 comments Links to this post

While an overwhelming majority of the parents surveyed were white, English speaking parents there were was one interesting finding I thought I would highlight:

Parental satisfaction levels on teachers,academic standards, discipline, and the ways that schools interact with parents decreased as school size and grade level (HS) increased.

Check out the full report

-Patricia

National Center for Education Statistics
August, 2008

The National Center for Education Statistics within the Institute of Education Sciences has released the report "Parent and Family Involvement in Education, 2006-07 School Year, from the National Household Education Surveys Program of 2007."

This report presents initial findings from the Parent and Family Involvement in Education Survey of the National Household Education Surveys Program (NHES). The NHES data were collected from January to May of 2007 through interviews with parents of students in kindergarten through grade 12. Selected findings include: approximately 54 percent of students in grades K through 12 had parents who reported receiving notes or e-mail from the school specifically about their child; some 83 percent of students had parents who received information about how to help with homework; 89 percent of students in grades K through 12 had parents who reported an adult member of the household had attended a general school meeting or a meeting of a parent-teacher organization or association (PTO/PTA) since the beginning of the school year; and 59 percent of students in grades K through 12 had parents who were "very satisfied" with their child's school, and 64 percent of students had parents who were "very satisfied" with their child's teachers that year.

Labels: Parent Involvement

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

by Michelle J. Nealy
Aug 19, 2008

Last month, a Texas court ordered the Texas Education Agency to overhaul the state�s bilingual education system, citing low test scores and high dropout rates. In Seattle, an outside review of that public school district�s program for immigrant students was deemed weak and in need of restructuring. The program, the evaluators said, �is ad hoc, incoherent and directionless,� the Seattle Times reported.

As two different systems struggle to overcome the burden of low achievement among their English-language learner populations, one scholar recommends providing children with more language support before pushing them into English-only classrooms, among a few strategies that may help both systems.

In Texas, Judge William Justice of the U.S. District Court ruled that the state failed to properly educate ELL students, reversing a 2007 ruling affirming the state bilingual education programs. �The failure of secondary (limited English proficient) students under every metric clearly and convincingly demonstrates student failure, and accordingly, the failure of the (English as a Second Language) secondary program in Texas,� Justice wrote in his decision.

TEA has until Jan. 31 to develop a new plan for the estimated 140,000 junior high and high school English-language learners, although the state is expected to appeal the court�s ruling.

Texas is home to one of the nation�s largest English-language learner populations. An estimated 680,000 students are enrolled in bilingual education programs, according to the TEA. Data for the class of 2006 show that the graduation rate for students in bilingual or English as a Second Language programs was 41 percent, notably below the state rate of 80.4 percent.

While the elementary students enrolled in Texas� ELL programs are performing well, the appalling graduation rates among secondary students prompted officials from the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), a civil rights organization, to pursue the case.

According to LULAC officials, the TEA�s system of monitoring the performance of students created �gaps and masks� that distort the problem of low performance among this cohort of students.

The TEA aggregated test scores and dropout rates of all students and failed to disclose how specific groups were faring. �The students in elementary schools were doing very well, but the students in high school were doing poorly,� says Roger Rice, an attorney from Multicultural Education Training and Advocacy, Inc.

Why is Texas� system failing? That answer is for the state to determine and remedy, LULAC lawyers argue. Still, some of the system�s shortcomings emerged in court testimony.

�Many of these students were submerged into English and placed into sink or swim situations,� says David Hinojosa, an attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, who along with Rice brought the case on behalf of LULAC and the American GI Forum. Parents of prospective English-language learners have been suspicious of Texas bilingual education and ESL programs for some time, Hinojosa notes.

Additional reports disclosed teachers lacking command of the language in which they were instructing, usually Spanish. �In some cases you had students being taught by teachers they didn�t understand,� Rice says.

Dr. Elena Izquierdo, associate professor of bilingual/ESL education at the University of Texas at El Paso, says the problems English-language learners face begin in elementary schools.

�They say that the elementary schools are doing well, but they don�t see the long-term effects,� she says. �The kids are learning English but not content. It�s not about learning English. It�s about learning in English. By the time they hit middle school, the content is behind and the focus [of the curriculum] is content literacy. These students get behind and there is a big drop.�

Before joining the faculty at UTEP, Izquierdo served as the principal of the nationally recognized Two Way Dual Language elementary school in Washington, D.C. Currently she sits on the executive board of the Texas Association for Bilingual Education.

According to Izquierdo, there are varied approaches to bilingual education. The programs that are most effective offer several layers of language support in and outside formal classroom settings.

�The programs that do terribly are programs that exit students after three years or four years of support. Students can decode language, but they don�t comprehend it,� says Izquierdo, noting that many students also lack analytical skills. �They are learning English at the expense of their education.�

According to MALDEF officials, the bilingual community in Texas, most of which is Hispanic, has been aware of the problem for sometime. In Texas, bilingual education courses for limited English proficient students are optional.

�When parents deny entry, normally, it is a result of two possible things. One [reason] is that the programs are seen in the community as remedial and deficient. Two, the principal, teachers or administrators are discouraging entry so they do not have to provide those additional services,� Hinojosa says. �In some districts, there were denial rates of 29, 30 and 35 percent.�

Entry denials should hover around 5 percent, Hinojosa adds.

In Seattle, much of the failure stemmed from early ejection of English-language Learners and the lack of qualified teachers, according to the evaluation report. The Council of Great City Schools, a coalition of 66 of the nation�s largest urban public school systems which evaluated the Seattle system, concluded that Seattle immerses nearly 25 percent of its English-Language Learners students in regular classrooms without much support before they are ready. Izquierdo insists that students must have language support for a minimum of three or four years.

In Texas and nationally, she says, �We have to ensure that we have strong bilingual programs that allow students to develop cognitively in a language they know, so they can handle grade-level material in their language while, at the same time, having rich English-language program so they don�t get behind.�

Labels: English language learners

posted by Patricia Lopez at 1:38 AM 2 comments Links to this post

Wow! This is amazing. I'm glad that this person is bringing attention to a situation that literally affects thousands of Immigrant youth throughout the U.S. The government and the American people should really honor merit. -Angela

Tuition paid for valedictorian in legal limbo
John Koopman, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 6, 2008

The future looked bleak for 17-year-old Arthur Mkoyan a couple of weeks ago.

A 4.0 student and the valedictorian at his high school in Fresno, Arthur had lost his chance to study chemistry at UC Davis this year because of immigration problems involving his father, who had come to the United States more than 16 years ago. He wasn't sure if he would stay in the States, get deported or ever finish his education.

Until Sherry Heacox stepped in.

The Danville resident saw a story about Arthur's plight in The Chronicle in July and decided to help him out. She's going to pay for him to go to UC Davis for four years.

"I didn't believe it at first," Arthur said. "I thought it was a joke."

No joke. Heacox said she stewed over the article for several days, frustrated and angry over a situation that seemed so hopeless for the young man. She wondered why no one would step forward and help this young man who had so much to offer his adopted land.

And then, a thought came to her.

"Sometimes you have to put your money where your mouth is," she said.

Education isn't cheap. The university estimates the annual cost for an undergraduate student, with in-state tuition, to be about $25,000.

It's not as if this will be easy for the Heacox family. Heacox runs a food-importing business and her husband, Hank, is an engineer. The couple just got done paying for their daughter's education at UC Santa Barbara. Heacox didn't want to say how much she intended to pay for Arthur's education, other than to say she will pick up the tab for everything: tuition, fees, books, room and board.

"This isn't Bill Gates we're talking about," she said. "It's not as if the money won't be missed."

Arthur's parents fled Armenia in 1991 after his father, Ruben Mkoian (father and son spell their surname differently), exposed corruption at the government office where he worked; the family's house was burned down and a shop they owned was ransacked.

Mkoian and his family settled in Fresno and Mkoian applied for asylum. Seven years later, his claim was denied, and he appealed all the way to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The court turned him down this year, saying he had failed to establish a "well-founded fear of persecution" if he returned to Armenia.

In April, federal immigration authorities detained Arthur's father and prepared to deport him. His mother was allowed to remain free to care for Arthur and his 12-year-old, U.S.-born brother until the date of their departure.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., heard about the family's case and, on the very day of Arthur's commencement, and just days before the family's scheduled deportation, introduced a private bill in the U.S. Senate that led to Mkoian's release after two months in detention and could grant the family lawful permanent residence.

Such bills rarely pass - an estimated 3 percent are approved - but as long as the legislation is pending, the removal order remains suspended, which gives Arthur and his family a temporary reprieve that could last a couple of years.

While the issue of deportation remains alive, the family is hopeful - and amazed that someone would make such a generous offer of help.

"She is a wonderful, wonderful lady," said Arthur's mother, Asmik Karapetian. "When she called us to say she wanted to pay, we couldn't believe it. Arthur was jumping for joy. This is like a dream come true."

Heacox said she decided to help Arthur because she doesn't like how his family was treated. "We're all immigrants," she said. "Some of us just got here earlier than others."

She also supports education, she said, and Arthur's plight struck her deeply.

"Anyone who is willing to study hard and get an education - especially in the sciences - ought to have the chance to do so," she said.

And then, too, there was a desire to do something special, something worthwhile. To make a difference in the life of another human being.

"I don't want to be one of the people in life where the best thing I did on this earth was die off," she said.

New-student orientation is on Sunday. Arthur and his parents will be there.

And so will Sherry Heacox.

CORRECTION: This story incorrectly stated that the family of a high school student trying to go to UC Davis had come to the United States illegally. The Mkoian family entered the country on a tourist visa and applied for asylum, which was denied. A deportation order then was issued.

E-mail John Koopman at jkoopman@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/06/BA62125LDF.DTL

This article appeared on page B - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

© 2008 Hearst Communications Inc.

Labels: immigration and education

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 7:36 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Thousands Of Children Dumped Into Squalor By Bush’s Deportation Policies
By: David Neiwert Thursday August 14, 2008 6:01 pm

Photo by Marco Pelaez, La Jornada

We’ve already seen, here in the States, the travesties created by the Republican push to deport illegal immigrants: police-state tactics, the bastardization of justice, the destruction of families, the inhuman treatment of cancer victims. But that’s just the beginning of the ugliness.

Then there’s what happens afterwards — particularly to the children. A La Jornada report (translated; see original here) gives the basic outline:

During the first seven months of the year, at least 90,000 Mexican children were deported by the U.S. government, in the context of its anti-immigration policy, reported a study of the working group for migration issues of the PRI in the Chamber of Deputies. It also has deported around 300,000 adults.

He reported that about 15 percent of children, some 13,500, are living along the Mexican border, without any government protection. Those best off are attended by religious institutions or NGOs.

The group’s coordinator and secretary of the Commission on Population, Borders and Migration Affairs, the PRI deputy Edmundo Ramirez Martinez, pointed out that children are entrusted to polleros, or traffickers, to be brought to the United States with their parents and if the would-be migrants are deported, the children are virtually stranded on the Mexican border.

In addition, the report states that for every three adults deported from the United States, a child of Mexican origin is left in that nation. He said that many children accompanied their parents in the adventure of reaching the country from north to find work, but were deported by the authorities of that country.

A more localized La Jornada Michoacan report (translated version — original here) describes the outcome for these children:

The unit also estimated that 6,000 minors between 14 and 17 years old originating in Michoacan remain in the border city of Tijuana after being abandoned by the authorities of the United States. And, for those who survive, those minors are devoted largely to illicit activities. Deportation of such children has a greater impact on the states with high migration flow such as Michoacan, Jalisco, Guanajuato and Zacatecas, and involves a systematic violation of children’s rights by the U.S. authorities.

Most of these children are forced to survive by begging, stealing, and squatting, lending themselves out as prostitutes and drug runners:

One of the effects of lack of child protection in transit between Mexico and the United States, is that these fall into prostitution or drug trafficking networks when they are alone.

The Registry of Migrante described the situation of 6,000 children who are abandoned in Tijuana, having failed in an attempt to cross the border, and so have opted to find work doing anything with to survive without their parents. They have become, often, victims of abuse by coyotes and criminals.

All this is in violation of international conventions on children’s rights, which clearly state that children are not to be deported, but repatriated.

Of course, to this administration, such conventions are just so much paper to be wadded up and discarded — just like the human beings they sweep up in their inhuman raids.

[H/t to Henry Fernandez.]

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 11:39 PM 0 comments Links to this post

For the full report Reenrollment of high school dropouts in a large, urban school district

-Patricia

August 11, 2006
Institute of Education Sciences
Department of Ed

There is urgency in all four western states to keep students on track to graduate and to get them back on track when they lose their way. Yet "recovering" dropouts by re-enrolling them in schools can also be problematic for districts. Existing data and interviews with students and school and district administrators will inform this case study of the San Bernardino (CA) Unified School District, which explores current efforts to recover students who have dropped out, as well as the policy incentives and disincentives to do so. Legislators, foundations, and the California Department of Education have requested such an analysis to inform upcoming policy reforms.

Abstract: This study follows a cohort of first-time 9th graders in one large urban school district from 2001/02 to 2005/06 and documents their dropout, reenrollment, and graduation rates. For the one-third of dropouts who reenrolled in the district over that period, it reports course credit accrual and graduation outcomes as well as students' reasons for dropping out and the challenges districts face with their reenrollment.

Labels: Dropouts

posted by Patricia Lopez at 6:41 AM 0 comments Links to this post

States that rushed to tie high school graduation to passing a high-stakes test now face pressure to come up with alternatives, even as critics warn against a dilution of standards.

By Michele McNeil | Ed Week
August 11, 2008

A decade-long push by states to make high school students pass an exit exam before getting their diplomas has stalled as politically sensitive student-failure rates contribute to a growing public backlash against high-stakes testing.

Though 26 states have adopted such mandates—most of them since 2000—that number has remained static since last year, according to a report scheduled for release this week by the Center on Education Policy, a Washington-based research and advocacy organization that has tracked the trend for the past seven years.


States With Mandatory Exit Exams

By 2012, a slim majority of states will require high school students to pass an exit exam in order to graduate, although the number of states adding that mandate has slowed in recent years.
SOURCE: Center on Education Policy

Types of Exit Exams States Are Using or Plan to Use


Read On...

Labels: high-stakes testing

posted by Patricia Lopez at 6:06 PM 0 comments Links to this post

School district's 'A-G' program promises to make university prep classes standard by 2012. In three years, it has made little headway.

By Jason Song, Los Angeles Times
August 13, 2008

Three years ago, Roosevelt High School student Jose Orea went to Los Angeles Unified School District headquarters and handed out pamphlets imploring officials to provide more college preparatory courses. It was the first time he'd gotten involved in politics, and he was filled with enthusiasm.

When the L.A. Board of Education agreed to ensure that all students would have access to the classes by 2006 and to require them for the class of 2012, Orea, then a sophomore, thought he'd made a difference.

"There's a stereotype that students from East L.A. don't want to finish high school, and it was a chance to show everyone that we do want to go to college," he said in a recent interview.

Fast forward to this spring: Orea, now 18, was at district headquarters again, his optimism gone.

"No progress has been made," he told the board. "We need more to be done. We cannot let this lack of effective implementation continue."

The ambitious "A-G" program, named for 15 classes in seven categories students need in order to be admitted to California's public universities, was touted as a way to increase student participation and prepare students for college.

But district officials, who began surveying campuses this summer to find out how many students are taking the courses, say the program has made fitful progress.

The percentage of college prep classes has increased districtwide, from 62% of all course offerings in 2004 to nearly 66% last year.

Although the percentage of students, 47.6%, who fulfilled their public university requirements remained unchanged during that time, about 10,000 fewer students completed those classes, according to state statistics.

L.A. Unified officials point out that the district's enrollment dropped by nearly 30,000 students during that time.

But the percentage of such courses has dropped in some areas, notably on the Eastside, advocates say. In 2006, 53% of classes at Roosevelt High School met the requirements, according to a 2007 UCLA study. Last year, half the courses did.

And at nearby Jefferson High School, 59% of classes qualified as college prep last year, a three-point drop from the year before.

Orea's experience also shows what happens when youthful idealism runs headfirst into the bureaucracy of the nation's second-largest school district. Orea had hoped his actions would give his younger brother, Steven, who will be a freshman at Roosevelt this fall, a better academic experience than Orea had.

"Instead of things moving forward, they seemed to have moved back. He's probably going to have to do the same things I did," Orea said.

Three years ago, thousands of people crowded into district headquarters for the board's vote on the issue. Jose Huizar, the board president at the time, recalls students lining the sidewalks and filling a parking lot across the street.

"The students were saying, 'Set higher expectations for us and I'll meet them,' " Huizar, now a city councilman, said in a recent interview. "It was a huge deal, probably one of the most important policy shifts in the district."

Supporters urged passage of the resolution, saying the program would increase students' readiness for college and help more of them become eligible to attend University of California and California State University schools.

They noted the stark difference between the course offerings at high schools in more affluent neighborhoods and those in poorer areas.

At Cleveland High School in the San Fernando Valley, for example, 72% of classes were considered A-G courses, according to the 2007 UCLA study.

Orea said he became involved with the issue because he thought there weren't enough academic opportunities at Roosevelt.

He recalls "going crazy" with excitement when the resolution passed, but said he saw little improvement on campus. In his 11th grade Advanced Placement English course, there weren't enough seats for the 55 students, he said.

"There's a stereotype that students in East L.A. don't want to finish high school and go to college, but we do. We just don't have the resources," Orea said.

Huizar agreed that little progress had been made.

"The district has failed the test," he said.

School board members said that campus scheduling quirks may have contributed to a drop in the percentage of college prep classes at such campuses as Roosevelt and Jefferson but also acknowledged that implementation had not gone smoothly.

"What we're concerned about is we could have done so much more to be strategic and comprehensive," school board President Monica Garcia said.

Ramon Cortines, the district's new senior deputy superintendent, has promised principals and other administrators more resources for the program.

"I have shared with you from Day One that the goal is not to have 9th grade students programmed in college prep courses. Success is the goal for students," Cortines wrote in a July 7 memo to other administrators and board members. "I, along with staff, will do whatever we can to help you with the issues of capacity, etc."

Cortines has also ordered a comprehensive survey of the number of freshmen enrolled in the college prep classes throughout the district. The courses include algebra, geometry, history, and lab sciences.

"Students who are less successful will receive extra reinforcement through focused interventions at the school sites," Cortines wrote in a memo last week.

Even though the program is scheduled to be fully implemented by 2012, Cortines said he wants it done before then.

"I think timelines are artificial," he said.

Orea is preparing to attend Cal State Northridge this fall and plans to major in political science and journalism. He says he's learned an important lesson.

"In order to get something accomplished, you have to push and push to get what you want," Orea said. "Especially with the school district."

Labels: California, college readiness

posted by Patricia Lopez at 6:04 PM 0 comments Links to this post

By N.C. Aizenman | Washington Post
Thursday, August 7, 2008; B01

A surge in Hispanic immigration over the past decade has dramatically altered the racial and ethnic composition of the region's youngest residents, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures released today.

As with minorities in general, immigrants tend to be younger than non-Hispanic whites and still in their childbearing years. As a result, in five suburban Washington counties, more than half of children age 4 and younger were minorities when the annual Census Bureau survey was taken a year ago.

In three of the counties -- Prince William, Montgomery and Charles -- the share reached about 60 percent. And in Prince George's, where Hispanic immigration has supplemented an even larger African American population, more than 90 percent of these children are minorities.


In five of Washington's suburban counties, the majority of children younger than 5 as of last summer were members of minority groups. The number grew over the past decade, largely because of Hispanic immigration.

SOURCE: U.S. Census Bureau | By Dita Smith - The Washington Post - August 7, 2008

The implications for governments and communities are wide-ranging, demographers said. As the current crop of youngsters reaches kindergarten age, school systems that would otherwise be losing students will continue to grow or remain stable. They will also need to accommodate an ever-larger number of students who were raised in immigrant households where English was not spoken.

In addition, although most Hispanic children younger than 5 are native-born U.S. citizens and therefore eligible for government health care and other benefits, research indicates that if their parents are not U.S. citizens, they will be less likely to claim assistance, said Michael Fix, director of studies at the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute.

"All of this really reinforces the importance for counties to increase their investment in early childhood development now," Fix said ."If you don't make that investment, one of the penalties you pay down the line is that you have kids in school who don't speak English well and whose overall performance lags behind."

Fix pointed to studies indicating that as many as 75 percent of elementary school children learning English as a second language were born in the United States.

"Even more worrisome is that over half of the English-as-a-second-language learners in high school were native born," Fix added.

As these minority children mature, counties that until fairly recently were dominated by non-Hispanic whites are likely to shift to majority-minority status, said William Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution.

"The bubbling up [of minorities] that we're now seeing at the younger ages will continue to move up through the age range, through the teenage years, the working-age years and then the housing-buying years," he said. "The child population is really a microcosm of the future."

Minorities had already grown to 47 percent of the population in Charles and 48 percent in Prince William in July 2007, up from about one-third in 2000. Montgomery, at 46 percent minority, is also getting close.

Demographers cautioned, however, that the extreme ethnic and socioeconomic diversity of area minorities makes it difficult to make broad predictions about the impact of the region's impending shift to majority-minority status.

In Prince George's, for instance, 62 percent of children younger than 5 are non-Hispanic blacks, and they include a substantial share born to affluent families.

Similarly, in Fairfax County, Asian children account for 17 percent of those younger than 5. Often born to upwardly mobile immigrant professionals who encourage them to supplement regular schoolwork with additional classes, Asian students are disproportionately represented among the county's top-performing students. And last month it was announced that for the first time Asian Americans will outnumber whites at the county's most prestigious public magnet school, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology.

Nor can Hispanic immigrants, who hail from a wide range of nations, be easily categorized.

"You cannot necessarily predict that just because they'll become majority-minority, all these schools will become low-income," Fix said. "The Washington area has one of the most diverse foreign populations in the nation."

Adding to the complexity of the picture is that the Census Bureau collected its data through July 2007, before the current economic downturn and before Prince William and other counties adopted initiatives against illegal immigration.

In Prince William, the percentage of students enrolled in classes for English as a second language dropped nearly 5 percent from a record of 13,404 in September to 12,775 by the end of the school year. The impact of the downturn and immigration restrictions will be reflected in Census Bureau data to be released next year.

Labels: demographics, English language learners, youth population

posted by Patricia Lopez at 5:51 PM 1 comments Links to this post

Attack the dropout crisis

Darrell Steinberg
Monday, July 21, 2008

Once upon a time, an American president challenged our country to put a man on the moon in a decade and we achieved it. With enough public pressure and strategic resources, California can solve a simpler challenge, though one that threatens our well being far more than any space race ever did: the dropout crisis. Let us resolve to cut it in half, or better, in 10 years.

We now know just how bad it is. Using a new and far more accurate system to track student enrollment, the Department of Education reports that one in four teenagers who start high school in California don't finish. Last year alone, more than 140,000 students abandoned middle and high school.

More than a wake-up call, these numbers mark a beginning - a baseline from which we can measure progress. The rationale for increasing accountability for graduation rates was always that we didn't have reliable dropout counts on which to base demands for improvement. Those days are gone. We can no longer hide behind uncertainty, and starting now, we need a campaign to end this blight.

That campaign needs two components in order to succeed: high expectations and greater support. We have only begun to ask our schools to attend to the crisis. My Senate Bill 219, signed into law last year, requires that 8th and 9th grade dropout rates be factored into the Academic Performance Index, the state's barometer of school success. The law takes effect in 2011, and now we've got the data to make it work.

But schools can't do it alone. That's why my top priority as Senate leader will be a comprehensive, bipartisan legislative strategy to transform our secondary schools into places where more students want to be. That means:

-- Scaling up what works. Data provides capacity to identify successful districts and schools and use those lessons to help those that are struggling.

-- More adults on campus providing support and guidance. Time and again the at-risk students who testified before my committee said it was a caring relationship with a band leader, a basketball coach, counselor, teacher or grandmotherly attendance clerk who kept them coming back.

-- Real alternative schools - not dumping grounds - for teens for whom the big comprehensive high school simply does not work. And let's agree that 3,000 student high schools with 50 percent dropout rates should be extinct.

-- Hands-on, rigorous career technical education that allows students to not only envision a professional future for themselves but puts them on a path toward college, apprenticeship or career and arms them to thrive in the new economy.

This is about more than just requiring all 8th graders to take algebra (which could be a recipe for more dropouts unless we commit to getting them the well-trained math teachers they need). Real change costs something - as every respected reform study has told us over the past few years. It's also about deploying resources differently. But what better rallying cry than a campaign to end the dropout plight?

This is a trifecta: an economic development strategy that can draw on high public concern about education and the environment. We're entering a brave new phase of our economy, and the renewable energy revolution could be California's next Silicon Valley, if we play our cards right. We must feed that revolution with skilled workers, from linemen and plumbers to product marketers and engineers. An educated and nimble workforce will strengthen existing businesses and attract entrepreneurial energy to ignite our future prosperity. We won't get there by losing 140,000 kids a year.

The costs of dropouts are well documented, the numbers increasingly accurate. Now that we know what we know, let's commit to graduating 90 percent of our kids, ready for college or career, by 2020. We can afford to do no less.

Darrell Steinberg is the president pro tempore-elect of the California State Senate. He represents District 6 and chairs the Senate Select Committee on High School Graduation.

This article appeared on page B - 5 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Labels: California, Dropouts

posted by Patricia Lopez at 5:48 PM 0 comments Links to this post

African American students represent nearly a quarter of students who have fallen through the cracks.



By Molly Bloom
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Tuesday, August 12, 2008

The annual dropout rates for African American students in Texas, already higher than dropout rates for white and Hispanic students, might be even higher than previously reported, according to a Texas Education Agency report released last week.

As part of the state's effort to reduce the dropout rate, districts must account for each student in seventh through 12th grade who does not return to school in the district the next fall — whether the student has graduated, moved to a different district, enrolled in private school, left the district for other reasons or dropped out.

Districts can be sanctioned under the state's accountability system if more than 5 percent of their students, or more than 200, are unaccounted for.

The report includes what is essentially an audit of whether districts have actually tracked students, correctly entered their names and other identifying information, and indicated a reason for their departure in reports to the state.

The report shows that school districts, particularly charter schools, are more likely to lose track of African American students, relative to the proportion of African American students statewide, than students of any other racial group. State officials say they can't explain the trend.

African American students make up about 15 percent of Texas students but are a quarter of all unaccounted-for students. Overall, less than 1 percent of the state's more than 2 million seventh- through 12th-graders are unaccounted for in dropout reporting, down slightly from last year.

If the unaccounted-for African American students were counted as dropouts, the African American dropout rate would rise from about 4.1 percent to 5 percent.

Two-thirds of Texas' 49 districts with unacceptably high numbers of unaccounted-for students under state standards are charter school operators.

For example, the state says that KIPP Austin College Prep, a charter school that had about 300 students in grades five through eight in the 2006-07 school year, didn't report the status of 20 of its 171 seventh- and eighth-graders in 2007-08, a rate of almost 12 percent.

KIPP Austin College Prep Director Jill Kolasinski said the school will find out the names and ethnicities of unaccounted-for students later this year. About 86 percent of KIPP Austin's students are Hispanic; about 13 percent are African American, and about 1 percent are white.

Last year, the school also had a relatively high number of unaccounted-for students: 15. Of those students, two went to public schools, and data entry errors — such as would be caused by students using a different first name — caused them to be listed as unaccounted-for, Kolasinski said. The other 13 students enrolled in private schools in the fall but didn't tell KIPP which ones before the school had to submit data to the state in the summer.

Kolasinski said KIPP Austin plans to ensure that students are identified and tracked correctly this year.

"We know where these kids are; just somewhere along the way, the data got inputted incorrectly on somebody's end," she said.

The Austin school district in the 2006-07 school year failed to report the status of 74 of its approximately 34,500 students in seventh to 12th grades, a rate of less than 1 percent, which is on par with other large urban districts including those in Dallas, Fort Worth and Houston.

Several urban districts had unacceptably high numbers of unaccounted-for students, according to the state education agency, including Irving, near Dallas; North Forest in Houston; Ysleta in El Paso; and El Paso, none of which could tell the state what happened to more than 200 students who were no longer enrolled.

The 2006-07 statewide dropout rate for African American students — the percentage of students who should be enrolled but aren't, not including those who were unaccounted-for — was 4.1 percent, slightly higher than that of Hispanic students, 3.7 percent, and more than three times as high as that of white students, 1.3 percent.

The statewide gap between tracking African American students and students of other races has existed since the state began reporting the data by race and ethnicity 10 years ago.

Linda Roska, director of the Texas Education Agency's division of accountability research and a co-author of the report, said she couldn't say why the gap exists.

"At the state level, all we see are the numbers," she said.

Nancy Smith, deputy director of the Data Quality Campaign, a national effort to improve education data collection and use, said it was not surprising that some charter schools didn't meet state data quality standards. But the gap in Texas between the percentage of unaccounted-for African American students and the percentage of other unaccounted-for students is surprising, she said.

"Theoretically, if there was a problem with tracking students, it should hit all students the same," Smith said. "It should be a systemic issue, not a racial or ethnic issue."

Southern Regional Education Board spokesman Alan Richard said Texas' methods of tracking students and dropout rates are among the best in the region. Texas is one of a handful of states that track unaccounted-for students by district. But, Richard said, "It's difficult to get a handle on the problem without knowing the extent of it."

"And no matter how you count them, graduation rates are way too low," he said.

Labels: Dropouts

posted by Patricia Lopez at 3:35 PM 0 comments Links to this post

This is a really interesting piece that speaks to the invisible processes that count in the attainment of an advanced degree. I'm glad to read that Rick Cherwitz' IE program is yielding substantial benefits like these.

Angela

Nurture Texas' new crop of citizen-scholars
Mentoring those from upwardly mobile backgrounds makes all the difference
By RUBY MORÚA OLMANSON Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Aug. 9, 2008, 9:26AM
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I am a first-generation college student who attended the University of Houston. Thinking that I could handle anything that came my way, I jumped into 16 hours of course work my first semester. After all, I reasoned, I was already a seasoned student and language broker: I had translated for my parents and the Latino community from an early age, worked since age 12 and excelled in school from kindergarten through high school.
But I soon learned that undergraduate work was completely different and I began to sink into painful states of despair: classes were large; readings indecipherable; my academic analysis and writing never good enough.
I'm the 10th and youngest child of parents from northern Mexico who made Houston their home. My mother cared for my every need, all the while managing a rental property, selling Avon and manning a booth at the barrio pulga (flea market). My father worked 90-hour weeks in the oppressive Houston heat and humidity, unloading 100-pound sacks of dry goods from freight train box cars and containers on cargo ships.
My parents valued education. They worked tirelessly so that I wouldn't have to — so that one day I would have the tools to think and write, making a living in a more comfortable environment. They gave me the gift of being bilingual, biliterate, and bicultural. Their work ethic — love for learning and grace under fire — remains with me in everything that I've undertaken.
Despite all this, as a student I still felt lost — that I was an outsider in a community of scholars. I graduated with a bachelor's degree, but only after struggling to figure out my place among so many others who seemed to be privy to the unspoken rules of the Academy long before stepping foot onto campus.
In my five years at UH I simply went through the motions, avoiding contact with advisers or professors who (inadvertently) would make me feel like a failure for not performing as well as my more successful peers.
Not surprisingly, upon graduation I ran away from all that academe embodied, hoping to escape my feelings of inadequacy — never believing that graduate school would be a path for someone like me.
Yet, after eight years of observing my partner pursue his dreams in three different graduate programs, I found my way to graduate school. I've plodded through this endeavor with his help as well as that of other mentors who never stopped believing in me, always offering unconditional and unwavering support.
My experience as a student, combined with recognition of the enormous role mentors played in my life, led me to break my silence and feelings of embarrassment. In fact, I felt guided to become a mentor for others.
As director of the Intellectual Entrepreneurship (IE) Pre-Graduate School Internship, I am now committed to improving how The University of Texas at Austin mentors students.
The IE Pre-Graduate School Internship, which is part of UT's Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, affords undergraduates a unique mentoring experience, attracting a large number of underrepresented minority and first-generation college students; it encourages them not only to explore graduate study but to own their education, using it to make a difference in their communities.
IE enables students to become "citizen-scholars." By providing a safe space for academic and personal exploration, the internship is an opportunity for undergraduates to fully engage in the world of research, academic writing and networking with the guidance of mentors who listen to and understand them so that they can discover their own passions and strengths, embarking on a journey that makes most sense to them.
As a successful Chicana graduate student, I know first-hand that mentoring is an essential tool in improving and diversifying higher education. Whether at the undergraduate or graduate level, getting in is hard enough; but, without the help of mentors and a trusting environment, the road to graduation can be difficult if not impossible.
I urge students as well as recent college graduates to participate in university mentorship programs. I'm proud to help administer the IE Internship at UT, a distinctive mentoring program offering students a way to continue their journey of intellectual entrepreneurship in a safe space and among others who have been there.
Olmanson is a master's candidate in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction and director of the Intellectual Entrepreneurship (IE) Pre-Graduate School Internship Program (https://webspace.utexas.edu/cherwitz/www/ie/index.html

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 4:18 PM 0 comments Links to this post

This is an important report. We really need now to factor in how the teacher shortage is just that more critical for English language learners, many of them immigrant youth--together with the fact that their representation is increasing significantly within our state as well. -Angela

Teacher quality in Texas inequitable, study says
Disproportionate number of poorly certified educators in poor schools

By GARY SCHARRER Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau
Aug. 5, 2008, 9:37AM

AUSTIN — Texas is headed for big problems if state lawmakers don't fix serious inequities in teacher quality and experience between rich and poor schools, a noted education researcher warned Monday.
Wealthy, high-performing schools attract and keep experienced, higher-quality teachers, while schools with large numbers of low-income and minority students are left with less-experienced teachers, according to a new study.
Schools with high populations of low-income students have twice as many teachers not properly certified to teach math and science as schools in more affluent neighborhoods, according to the report.
In high poverty schools, nearly 20 percent of math teachers and 40 percent of science teachers were assigned to teach courses for which they were not properly certified.
Unless state legislators act, the gap is expected to grow, as incoming high school students are now required to take four years of math and science.
"We could be in a world of trouble in five years when this plays out," said Edward Fuller, a professor in the Educational Policy and Planning program at The University of Texas at Austin.
Fuller conducted his study for the Association of Texas Professional Educators.
Meaningful incentive pay
"Unfortunately, poor, minority and low-achieving students are far more likely to be taught by an under-qualified teacher than their more affluent, white and high-achieving peers," said Jerry Bonham, president of the 112,000-member association and a middle school English teacher in Mesquite.
"The students most in need of the most qualified teachers are the least likely to be taught by them."
Some school districts offer incentive pay in efforts to entice experienced and high-quality teachers to low-income, low-performing schools, but the typical $1,000 to $3,000 bonus is insufficient for teachers to deal with the extra stress and pressures, Fuller said.
It's going to take extra mentoring, more professional staff development and meaningful incentive pay to improve the teacher quality at low-income, low-performing schools, he said.
"Otherwise, we will continue to have the inequity. It's not going to go away," Fuller said.
Matching funds required
Lawmakers set aside extra money last year for teacher incentive pay, but many districts did not apply because matching funds were required.
House Education Chairman Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands, expects lawmakers to consider legislation next year involving high-quality teachers and teacher retention at hard-to-staff schools. Eissler said he would like to see bonuses in the $10,000 range for hard-to-fill positions.
"It's been shown that the most important factor in closing the achievement gaps is the work of an effective teacher. We need to get as many as we can in the right places," he said.
Texas' example
If someone wrote a primer on "how to make your teachers quit, they would look at what the state of Texas does," said Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, a member of the Senate Education Committee. "We place brand new teachers in very hard-to-teach schools. We don't have strong mentoring programs, and they get very frustrated."
It's an easier career choice for experienced teachers to stay in higher-performing schools, she said, "where they have a fighting chance that at least three-quarters of the student body will pass the test."
It typically takes court litigation to force legislators into action on public education issues, she acknowledged.
About 56 percent of the 4.6 million students attending Texas public schools come from low-income families, and the percentage of white children continues to drop — down to 35 percent last school year.
gscharrer@express-news.net

Labels: teacher incentive pay, teacher quality, teacher shortage

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 11:54 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Please check out full report "Women's Health in California: Health Status, Health Behaviors. Health Insurance Coverage and Use of Services Among California Women Ages 18-64" it has a lot of useful information in variance in health care across different characteristics.

-Patricia

By Barbara Anderson / The Fresno Bee
08/07/08

Poor and minority women are more likely to be in poor health, be obese and lack insurance, and the health disparities are glaring in the poverty-stricken San Joaquin Valley, according to a new report issued Thursday.

Low-income women between 18 and 64 are three times more likely than higher-income women to say they are in fair to poor health, according to the women's health report by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.

Poor women are four times more likely to lack health insurance to pay for medical care than women with higher incomes, the study found. The San Joaquin Valley, where 26.5% of low-income women are without insurance, has the highest percentage of uninsured women of any region in the state.

Among low-income women statewide, Hispanics are three times more likely to be uninsured than Caucasians. In the Valley, 34.4% of Hispanic women are uninsured.

Across the board, low-income women are most affected by health disparities, followed by minority women, said Erin Peckham, a researcher at the health policy center at the University of California at Los Angeles and one of the authors of the "Women's Health in California" report.

Health disparities confronting low-income and minorities in the Valley are real, said Edie Jessup, the hunger and nutrition manager at Fresno Metro Ministry. "It's not something we're making up or whining about. It's truly a fact here," Jessup said.

"People might want to do better with their health, but the lack of money, the lack of medical care and the lack of access in low-income neighborhoods to healthy foods and safe physical activity are the things that low-income people in Fresno and the Valley areas face," she said.

The report said low-income women are more likely to be overweight or obese, which can increase the risk for health conditions, such as arthritis and diabetes. And poor women in the San Joaquin Valley are fatter than their counterparts statewide.

More than 20% of low-income women statewide are obese and an additional 25.5% are overweight. In the Valley, 32.5% of low-income women are obese and 25.1% are overweight, according to the report. The results were based on more than 50,000 telephone interviews during surveys in 2001 and 2005.

Low-income women also are more likely to experience health problems such as arthritis, high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes than higher-income women, and the health problems affect their quality of life. Almost 19% said a health condition limits walking or climbing stairs, reaching, lifting or carrying something, compared with 11.8% of higher-income women.

"Bottom line, if you're poor or a minority you are potentially in trouble health-wise," Peckham said. The report did not list solutions, but Peckham said there's an obvious answer: "California needs to renew its efforts at seeking a solution to our lack of health insurance overall," she said.

Labels: California, health care, poverty

posted by Patricia Lopez at 10:56 AM 0 comments Links to this post

By TERRENCE STUTZ / The Dallas Morning News
July 28, 2008

AUSTIN – Fixing the worst schools in Texas is about to get harder.

A 2006 law meant to spur improvements at low-rated schools gave the state two options for campuses that rack up five consecutive years of "unacceptable" ratings – closure or the use of outside managers to run them.

In practice, though, there's just one choice. The state did not attract a single bid – from either a private company or a nonprofit entity – after soliciting proposals for several months for an outside manager.

"At this point, we have no one to call on," said state Education Commissioner Robert Scott. "Because there are no takers, we are left with just one option – closure" for chronic underachievers.

Two high schools, in Austin and Houston, were ordered closed this summer by Mr. Scott after failing to meet minimum academic standards for at least five years. Both will reopen in the fall as specialized campuses with new students and teachers.

A third high school, Spruce in Dallas, saw the writing on the wall after four years of failing marks and was also recast recently as a new type of school serving mostly ninth graders. Most students and teachers have been transferred elsewhere.

As many as a dozen more schools in Texas could be headed toward the same fate next year.

Outside managers are used in several other states. Mr. Scott said he couldn't explain the lack of interest in Texas. A Texas Education Agency spokeswoman said it might be because of the relatively small number of campuses available for an outside manager to take over.

Senate Education Committee Chairwoman Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, said dramatic action is necessary when a school consistently fails to meet minimum achievement standards.

"Schools that repeatedly fall short should face consequences," said Ms. Shapiro, who authored the legislation to deal aggressively with poor-performing schools. "After five years, surely something needs to change if youngsters at those schools continue to receive an inferior education. They deserve better."

Her counterpart in the House, Rep. Rob Eissler, agreed, noting that low-rated schools get assistance under state law each year they make the unacceptable list.

But he also said the lack of potential outside managers is a concern.

"Everybody wants a fighting chance to succeed. But the perception about many of these schools is you won't get a fighting chance," said Mr. Eissler, R-The Woodlands.

Ms. Shapiro and Mr. Eissler lead a special legislative committee that is looking at revisions in the state's accountability and school rating system – one that may rely more on incentives and less on penalties.

Taking action

In the meantime, Mr. Scott is considering his limited options for dealing with bad schools.

He said he takes some encouragement from the way the Dallas school district took the initiative at Spruce High School.

"I'm pleased they decided not to wait for the state before they took action," he said. "Dallas is the only school district to get an early jump like this, but hopefully this will be a model for other schools in a similar situation."

Two experts in remaking poor-performing schools told lawmakers from Texas and other states on Friday that the job is not hopeless. But they said it takes a willingness to make unpopular decisions and undertake radical solutions, such as an 11-month school calendar and a longer school day. Both also said weak school leadership must be tossed out for improvement to occur.

'Remove the obstacles'

Paul Vallas, superintendent of the Recovery School District of New Orleans – created to manage 63 low-performing schools in New Orleans and 10 troubled schools in other parts of Louisiana – said all state restrictions must be set aside to turn such schools around.

"There's a reason U.S. schools get their butts kicked in international comparisons," Dr. Vallas said at the National Conference of State Legislatures meeting in New Orleans, pointing to the greater length of time students spend in school in other countries. "You've got to remove the obstacles that limit instructional time."

He instituted an 11-month school year and a longer school day, increasing the total amount of instruction for students by a third. Other restrictions, such as those on class size and seniority rules that protect less effective teachers, must also be challenged, he said.

Dr. Vallas also was superintendent of the Chicago and Philadelphia school systems, where he was credited with boosting achievement in low-performing schools. He noted that in Philadelphia, a third of the schools were run by private managers or charter schools.

Mel Riddile of the National Association of Secondary School Principals, who was credited with turning around one of the nation's worst high schools in Fairfax County, Va., assured lawmakers that bad schools can be turned around with the right combination of actions – including a state legislature that stands firm on high standards for its schools.

It took him four years to bring J.E.B. Stuart High School in Virginia from the bottom – with three-fourths of students reading three or more years below grade level – to the top of the state's academic standings. For his efforts, he was honored as the national high school principal of the year in 2005.

Based on his experience, Dr. Riddile is convinced that the principal is the key to turning around a bad school.

"You can put them in a new building, you can hire all new teachers, but if you don't have a principal who can effect change, nothing's going to happen. You have to have a principal who can lead the change," he said.

FIXING THE SCHOOLS
What academically unacceptable schools must do:

Year 1

•Appoint a campus intervention team

•Assess needs and complete evaluation

•Write school improvement plan

Year 2

•Work with campus intervention team

•Plan to replace staff

•Update school improvement plan

Year 3

•Continue with campus intervention team

•Begin staff replacement

•Hold public hearing on remedies

Year 4

•Continue with campus intervention team

•Hold additional public hearing on remedies

•Appoint conservator or implement other sanctions

Year 5

•Use alternative management or school is closed by commissioner

SOURCE: Texas Education Agency

Labels: failing schools

posted by Patricia Lopez at 10:24 AM 0 comments Links to this post

By TERRENCE STUTZ and KATHERINE LEAL UNMUTH / The Dallas Morning News

AUSTIN — Texas will probably appeal a court ruling mandating a new language program for an estimated 140,000 junior high and high school students who don't have command of the English language, state officials said Monday.

Legislative leaders said curriculum improvements for that group of mostly Hispanic students are probably on the way regardless of the appeal.

The chairmen of the House and Senate education committees said lawmakers were already zeroing in on the problems of limited-English students – including low test scores and high dropout rates – before U.S. District Judge William Wayne Justice ruled Friday that the state has failed to properly educate those students.

In issuing the surprise decision, the longtime federal judge reversed his own July 2007 ruling that affirmed the state's bilingual education programs. His new order gives the state until Jan. 31 to come up with a different plan.

Senate Education Committee Chairwoman Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, said her panel is exploring legislation that would upgrade instruction and beef up dropout prevention programs for limited-English students.

"While our elementary school students are doing very well, we recognize there are problems in our high schools that we want to address," she said.

House Public Education Committee Chairman Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands, touted legislation to provide state funding for dual-language immersion programs to replace traditional bilingual and English-as-a-second-language – ESL – classes.

Dual language

Under a dual-language program, students learn some subjects in their native language for a half-day and other subjects in English for the rest of the day.

"I thought this was a good solution last session," said Mr. Eissler, who passed a bill that set up a pilot program of dual-language immersion only to see it fail to get funding at the end of the 2007 session.

"We had some resistance from members who thought it was another giveaway to illegal immigrants," he said. "The truth is this is a great opportunity for kids to learn another language at an age-appropriate time. I hope this [court order] gives us some impetus to try out new approaches like this."

The attorney general's office is still deciding how to respond to Judge Justice's order, but the Texas Education Agency is expected to ask the attorney general to lodge an appeal.

"We are disappointed that the judge reversed his original order of a year ago," said Debbie Ratcliffe of the TEA. "We are continuing to study this latest ruling, but we do anticipate asking the attorney general to appeal."

Ms. Ratcliffe said the state "absolutely stands" by its programs for limited-English students and noted that even Judge Justice had positive views about the state's bilingual education programs for elementary school students in his original order.

"We know that these programs have been effective for thousands of students," she said. Even so, the TEA will do contingency planning for program changes that must be submitted to the judge by the end of January, she added.

State officials had no estimates on how much compliance with the federal court order would cost, but some observers said remediation for the 140,000 secondary students could cost $500 or more per student – or a minimum $70 million a year. Improved state monitoring of local bilingual and ESL programs – also ordered by Judge Justice – could push the cost over $100 million.

Irving Superintendent Jack Singley said much work must be done to improve programs for students learning English. Irving had the highest percentage of limited English students in the North Texas region last year – about 39 percent of students enrolled. About 4,704 of their roughly 12,851 limited English proficient – LEP –students were in ESL programs.

Most Irving students have been in U.S. schools for a number of years. Just five percent last year had been attending U.S. schools less than three years.

"I don't feel very comfortable about our ESL programs statewide, absolutely not," Mr. Singley said. "That's not as good a program as the bilingual program. It leads me to believe there's a lot of work to be done to deliver a different program. I have no idea what that's going to look like."

Many LEP students can speak conversational English without having mastered the vocabulary necessary to understand textbooks or to pass the graduation TAKS exams.

Dropout rate

Recently retired University of North Texas education professor Rudy Rodriguez, an expert on the issue, said the high dropout rate of Latino students in Texas is tied directly to inadequate programs.

"The decision reinforces the need and urgency for us to do something as a state," he said. "We need to develop new programs and new approaches in meeting the needs of these children. My hope is that the state will see this as an opportunity to improve the quality of the programs and not see it as a threat."

David Hinojosa of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, who represented the plaintiffs in the case, said TEA must come up with a plan that fixes the system.

"I don't know how on earth the state can say the ESL program is successful in any manner," he said, noting, "They're not being told to develop a whole new program. It just needs to be a program with some teeth in it."

Mr. Hinojosa said improvements "will require a commitment not only from the state, but also from school districts and principals. Many of our schools have been neglecting the needs of these students by holding low expectations for them and providing poor resources for their education."

Passing rates on the TAKS exam for limited English proficient (LEP) students lag way behind students who speak English proficiently. The passing rates below reflect the percentage of Texas public school students who passed 2008 10th Grade TAKS and 11th grade exit-level TAKS exam.

Labels: bilingual education, English language learners

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

Federal court case should force changes in Texas's bilingual education system
Wednesday, July 30, 2008

A federal court ruling has intensified the debate over how best to educate this state's growing number of students with limited English language skills.

In a ruling issued last Friday, U.S. Senior District Judge William Wayne Justice said Texas is failing those students and gave the state six months to find a remedy. About 140,000 junior high and high school students in Texas fall into the limited English proficiency category. Austin's school district has 7,493 students, or about 9 percent, in its English as a Second Language classes.

The Texas Education Agency intends to appeal the ruling, but that won't change reality in the classrooms. Texas' system, in which students with limited English skills are thrown into regular English-language classes after the sixth grade, isn't working.

A majority of those students fail the state's standardized tests in high school, and many drop out. No one has a firm grip on dropout rates in Texas because they have been kept artificially low. The dropout rate has been estimated at around 33 percent statewide, but at some schools it is shockingly high.

In the August edition of Texas Monthly magazine, senior executive editor Paul Burka wrote about his daughter's tenure at Austin's Johnston High School, a school with a high percentage of students lacking English skills. It has been shuttered by the state for repeated failures on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills test. While the Austin school district showed a 2 percent dropout rate for Johnston, Burka wrote, the actual rate was more than 75 percent.

Burka's daughter, who was in the liberal arts magnet program then at Johnston, began as one of 750 freshmen. She ended her senior year as one of 223 who walked across the stage with a diploma. Even if a number of those freshmen had moved or changed schools, hundreds still dropped out or failed to graduate.

Going through life without a high school diploma limits opportunities, wages and advancement. Education is the surest key to success in life, and Texas is seeing far too many students fall away from that opportunity because of their limited English.

Implementing the court's order will be expensive. A reasonable estimate is $100 million a year to establish effective bilingual education in Texas' public schools. State officials can rail against the judge's ruling and appeal as far as they can, but that won't alter the facts. To reduce scandalously high dropout rates, Texas needs to change the way it educates students who haven't mastered English. It does neither the students nor the state any good to ignore that reality.

Some state legislators recognize the problem and have proposed changes to improve bilingual education. So far, they haven't gained much traction, but the court ruling should be a wake-up call for lawmakers who still don't grasp the urgency of the state's high dropout rate.

And here, again, is the conundrum created by the law that forces closure of schools, like Johnston High, whose students repeatedly fail the standardized tests. Many of those students failed because their English is limited and the immersion program didn't work for them.

So how is closing the school, but maintaining the same English immersion system, going to help them complete their education?

The judge's ruling brings the situation into sharp focus: Texas is failing its limited English proficiency students, and closing the schools they attend does nothing at all to help them.

Labels: bilingual education, editorial, English language learners

posted by Patricia Lopez at 10:05 AM 0 comments Links to this post

by Megan Gordon - Aug. 6, 2008 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

Just two decades ago, many schools had only a few computers and taught lessons about typing. But Monday marked a drastic change for Arizona schools as one of the first K-5 technology academies opened its doors to students.

Scales Technology Academy in Tempe boasts a 1-1 ratio of students to laptop computers. The school's principal, David Diokno, said it is the first Arizona elementary school to do so. The Arizona Department of Education does not track such information.

"We saw that there was a need that was expressed by parents in our district," Diokno said. "We did a lot of research, and now we're opening a brand-new school with close to 600 students."

The academy is part of a growing trend within state districts to incorporate technology into classrooms. Almost every school district has some ban on tech toys that many say interfere with classroom discipline, such as cellphones and iPods. Recently, many of these districts are using some of the banned technology as a way to educate students in the classroom.

"A lot of our classrooms use Smart Boards," said Kristen Landry, Madison Elementary School District marketing and communication director. "The computer image is projected onto a screen. The students can go up to the screen and touch it. It's almost like the iPhone."

Smart Board is a product many districts around the Valley have integrated into classrooms. This interactive white board combines the uses of overheads, scanners, projectors and the Internet into one system. It can cost upwards of $5,000 to install one Smart Board.

"I truly believe Smart Boards can be used in every single classroom subject," said Diokno, whose school has the board in every class. "Almost any subject you can think of can be enhanced through the power of the interactive white board."

Other tech toys that districts use are Nintendo Wii for fitness and education games, podcasts and Internet resources such as YouTube and Google Earth. VoiceThread is a Web site that allows teachers to upload classroom videos for students to comment on.

"I can put a picture or a video of something that is going on in our class on (the site) and after, kids can plug a microphone into the computer and add comments or thoughts verbally," said John Enright, a second-grade teacher at Madison Rose Lane Elementary School in Phoenix. "It's kind of like graffiti or message board. It's one way that I can assess kids who have trouble learning in the written form."

With all the new technology, some parents are worried that it has become a "convenient curriculum."

"It's made things way too easy for assignments. It's too cosmetic and too easy," said Chandler resident David Harbster, a parent of two grown children. "To me, the computer is just a very big fancy filing cabinet. I think we need to slow this baby down. It's a two-dimensional space on a computer, but we live in a three-dimensional world."

Harbster said he agrees that technology is a good learning tool but believes that many schools are overusing it.

"It's almost become a video drug," he said. "I think it's becoming, "How much we can do?' rather than asking what the real benefits of this technology are. It's very seductive, and it's designed to be that way. And schools are trying to stay ahead as best they can, but it's too much."

Diokno said Scales Technology Academy stresses Tempe Elementary School District's curriculum standards but uses technology to enhance the learning process.

"We're not going to be only about technology. We're going to infuse it into the curriculum," he said. "Our kids are in the digital age. So now we are enhancing our curriculum through the infusion of technology. It's an added resource."

Many teachers and districts are at different stages of the implementation of technology in the classroom. Although it may be challenging and time-consuming to keep up with new technology uses, Madison teacher Enright said it is how children learn.

"I think the imagery we use with technology is really a more effective way to teach kids than simply telling them something," he said. "The bonus is a lot of those materials are interactive, which is a better model of teaching."

Labels: curriculum, technology

posted by Patricia Lopez at 10:00 AM 0 comments Links to this post

By SAM ROBERTS | NY Times
August 6, 2008

Foreshadowing the nation’s changing makeup, one in four American counties have passed or are approaching the tipping point where black, Hispanic and Asian children constitute a majority of the under-20 population, according to analyses of census figures released Thursday.

Racial and ethnic minorities now account for 43 percent of Americans under 20. Among people of all ages, minorities make up at least 40 percent of the population in more than one in six of the nation’s 3,141 counties.

The latest population changes by race, ethnicity and age, as of July 1, 2007, were generally marginal compared with the year before. But they confirm the breadth of the nation’s diversity, and suggest that minorities — now about a third of the population — might constitute a majority of all Americans even sooner than projected by census demographers, in 2050.

In 2000, black, Hispanic and Asian children under age 20 were at or near a majority in only about one-fifth of the counties and, over all, blacks, Hispanics and Asians accounted for 40 percent or more of the population in about one in seven counties.

Even with the growing diversity, all but one of the 82 counties where blacks make up a majority are in the South (except St. Louis), all but two of the 46 where Hispanics are in the majority are in the South or the West (except the Bronx and Seward, Kan., home to giant meatpacking plants), and four of the five counties with the largest proportion of Asians are in Hawaii (San Francisco rounds out the top five with 33 percent).

Except for two counties in New Mexico and South Dakota with large American Indian populations, the 10 counties with the highest proportion of minorities were along or near the Mexican border.

From 2006 to 2007, according to the bureau’s revised estimates, the counties that became majority-minority included Rockdale, near Atlanta.

An analysis by Kelvin Pollard and Mark Mather of the Population Reference Bureau found 489 counties where a majority among people younger than 20 are racial and ethnic minorities and another 274 where they account for 40 percent to 50 percent of people in that age group.

The latest figures confirm the sweep of America’s growing diversity, outside central cities and beyond black and white. In 109 of the 302 majority-minority counties, no single minority made up more than half the total population.

In the New York metropolitan area, the changes suggested that the city was experiencing a racial equilibrium while the suburbs were becoming more diverse.

The number of Asians rose in every county in the New York area. Only Manhattan lost Hispanics. Non-Hispanic whites declined in every county except those that make up Manhattan, Brooklyn and Staten Island, and in New Jersey, Monmouth.

An analysis by William H. Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution, found that since 2000 the top 10 gainers of non-Hispanic whites were all counties in the South or West, except for Manhattan and Will County, near Chicago.

Since 2000, Mr. Frey said, only one in six counties recorded an increase in the number of non-Hispanic white children under 15.

While half the counties recorded losses of non-Hispanic whites, Dr. Frey found, almost five times as many counties are losing white children as gaining them. A growing number of minority families with children are clustering in suburban and Sun Belt counties.

At the other extreme, he said, “are counties in the nation’s industrial heartland, inner suburbs and Great Plains that are losing their largely white child and young adult populations.”

Meanwhile, nine times as many counties are gaining mature adults as losing them.

People 65 or older made up 25 percent or more of the population in 24 counties, led by La Paz, Ariz., home to the Colorado River Indian Reservation, where they make up 32 percent. Most of the counties with disproportionately high populations 65 and older are in Florida, Texas and Michigan. Children under 5 make up 10 percent of the population in 26 counties, led by Webb County, Tex., on the Mexican border, where they constitute nearly 13 percent.

Labels: youth population

posted by Patricia Lopez at 9:49 AM 0 comments Links to this post

By Arturo Villarreal and Charley Trujillo
Article Launched: 08/06/2008

Immigration is driven by historical and economic necessity on both sides of the border. There are times when the United States needs Mexican labor, such as during World War I and World War II, that migration is encouraged. During economic downturns, migration is discouraged. Repression is directed toward this population, such as during the Great Depression, the economic recession of the 1950s and the present downturn.

Perhaps by analyzing and understanding history, we can change our perspective on the issue - not by building a fence across the border but by building a bridge between two countries that share a long history. It is difficult to comprehend that a physical barrier across the border will fence in history.

Most discussions of Mexican migration into the United States lack a historical perspective that lead to characterize it as a spontaneous and recent phenomenon. However, people of Mexican origin are descendants of one of the six original world civilizations and whose ancestors help lay the foundation for the development of the present-day Southwest and other regions.

The melting pot theory of assimilation and its assumptions are most often used by journalists, politicians and citizens who don't believe Mexican immigrants, legal or not, are productive members of society. At best, this theory is applicable to ethnic immigrants of European heritage. Unlike European immigrants who had to traverse an ocean, this theory does not apply to Native Americans or Mexicans who are indigenous to America.

The first significant contact between whites and Chicanos led to the Texas revolt of 1834-36 when the symbolic battle of the Alamo occurred. Many of the whites in the Alamo were undocumented because Mexico barred further white immigration into Texas in 1830. Armed with a strong military and the ideological doctrine of manifest destiny that deemed the United States as people chosen by God to rule from sea to shining sea, the United States invaded Mexico in 1846.

Mexico lost the war and signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. Mexico ceded California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and parts of Nevada, Utah and Wyoming for $15 million. Under the treaty, remaining Mexicans became U.S. citizens with all rights of property, language and religion. However, the provisions were ignored; or, in the case of property, it was taken by legal and extralegal means.

Violence against Chicanos by vigilantes and law enforcement officials was so severe that scores left for Mexico. Violence faced by those remaining was comparable to what blacks faced in the South. By the early 1900s, cheap Mexican labor was needed for work in the mines, railroads, agriculture and other industries. During this period, Mexicans also migrated to the Midwest and Northwest. The Mexican Revolution and World War I also contributed to push and pull factors that brought migration of Mexicans into the United States. It is estimated one-eighth of Mexico's population legally moved into the United States during this period.

Mexican labor has been instrumental in the development of infrastructure and capital accumulation in the United States. However, with the economic depression of the 1930s, Mexican labor was no longer necessary. Hundreds of thousands of Mexicans were deported. This deportation included U.S. citizens, a practice that continues.

Racial categorization in the United States is the confusion of race, nationality and ethnicity, whereby people of Mexican origin are always suspect of being foreign, regardless of legal status. To the dominant society, however, they are all indistinguishable. Unlike European immigrant groups who are removed geographically from home countries, Chicano culture and language are reinforced by new arrivals from Mexico. Unlike immigrants from other countries who can forge a new place for themselves, migrants from Mexico have a ready-made niche for them because of historical circumstances. Historical perceptions and stereotypes of Mexicans precede them as they venture into other parts of the United States. Hopefully, by understanding our shared history, we can refrain from stereotyping and scapegoating Mexicans.

ARTURO VILLARREAL is a professor at Evergreen Valley College in San Jose. CHARLEY TRUJILLO is a writer and publisher in San Jose. They wrote this article for the Mercury News.

Labels: editorial, migration

posted by Patricia Lopez at 10:31 AM 0 comments Links to this post

By Mike Dorsey | Sacramento Bureau
07/25/2008

SACRAMENTO — How many students know that a 1946 California court case on segregation actually set a precedent for the widely heralded Brown v. Board of Education?

The case of Mendez v. Westminster is one of the great triumphs in California legal history — five Latino parents challenged a white private school in court for admission and won, leading to desegregation of all schools in the state.

"All Californians should be proud that we were the first state in the nation to desegregate," said Assemblywoman Mary Salas, D-Chula Vista.

Still, their tale is completely left out of textbooks in California's public school system. Salas would like the story to be told in history classes across the state. Her bill, AB531, would require that Orange County case and its role in desegregation of both California and the nation be included in the next revision and adoption of history-social science courses. The bill has cleared both legislative chambers and awaits a final concurrence vote in the Assembly.

And she isn't the only one looking to make changes in what students are taught.

As a state commission prepares to make final recommendations for the curriculum for history and social sciences next year, California's lawmakers are scrambling to send their brightest ideas through before the bell rings — some looking to introduce teaching methods designed to politically motivate students, others revealing historic events kept hidden from the state education system.

Experts say there is a growing concern among legislators that students are not getting all the material they need — and that there is much history yet unplowed and issues to be explored.

Another bill that gives new life to an issue from the 1940s is AB3084, co-written by Assemblymembers Paul Cook, R-Yucaipa, and Fiona Ma, D-San Francisco.

Their measure encourages instruction to include an accurate history of the contributions of Filipino American veterans who fought in the U.S. Army during World War II — specifically asking for oral or video histories complete with testimony of those involved.

"What they went through on our behalf is almost mind-boggling to me as a history professor," said Cook. "As an educator, I have a little bit of heartburn with the state dictating the curriculum, but as someone who has been on committees in the past, looking for inclusion of broad, relevant topics and in teaching American history, omitting the role of Filipinos in U.S. history is like, are you kidding me?"

The bill, currently on the Senate floor, also contains an urgency clause. The clock is ticking, said Cook, and we can only learn valuable lessons from the veterans themselves for so much longer.

"It would be a travesty to lose all of these," he said. "Like civil rights and huge moments in American history, by neglect they'll fall out of American history books."

Even the methods by which history is taught are being addressed by legislation. A bill currently working its way through the Legislature, SB1254, aims to invigorate youths' interest in history and current affairs through interactive teaching methods.

"All the stats show that over the last 20 to 30 years, knowledge of students and younger people of American history, government and current affairs has fallen dramatically from earlier eras," said Sen. Mark Wyland, R-Carlsbad, the bill's author.

The main objective, he said, is giving students an analytical mind-set toward history rather than simply memorizing facts.

"They're going to be asked to vote, and they should learn more about how to analyze issues across the spectrum — not just one point of view, but all across issues," Wyland said.

He said we must focus on the "formative period" that is high school because it is an intersection of decreased schooling, with the majority of students not going too far after graduating, and of increased civic responsibility with the ability to vote at the age of 18.

Sen. Tom Torlakson, D-Antioch, has introduced a bill that would require the State Board of Education to be flexible to changes needed when content standards are deemed out of date — rather than having to wait a decade when the curriculum commission meets. Content standards are what educators expect students to learn at each grade level in eight different subject areas.

The Antioch Democrat's bill, SB1097, would create a content standards review panel for each subject area. There is currently no system that reviews updates of the standards.

"Students may have learned answers to the outdated curriculum and passed the test very well," Torlakson said, "but may not have relevant information as to what they'll need in the next 10 years if we're missing key new standards."

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has not taken a position on any of the four bills, though in previous years, he has been against bills that tweak the state curriculum, saying in the veto of one that "current law provides necessary flexibility for schools to provide instruction on anything not expressly prohibited by the Education Code."

AB531 and AB3084 are two of several bills that could affect what's taught in California history/social science classes. Here are other proposals that would affect curriculum:
SB1214: Gil Cedillo, D-Los Angeles -- unconstitutional deportation of Mexican citizens during the Great Depression.
AB1502: Ted Lieu, D-Torrance -- instruction on personal financial literacy.
AB1863: Anthony Portantino, D-Pasadena -- role of Italian-Americans in California and the United States' development.
AB2034: Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles -- more information about American Indians, emphasis on California American Indians.
AB2064: Juan Arambula, D-Fresno -- more information on the Vietnam war, and the Secret War in Laos.

Labels: California, curriculum

posted by Patricia Lopez at 10:11 AM 0 comments Links to this post

This is great work that needs to be recognized, especially seeing how so much effort is being put in areas (the Central Valley) that rarely ever see college recruiters.

-Patricia

By Lisa M. Krieger | Mercury News
08/06/2008

California law bans the state's public universities from recruiting students based on race.

But it can't stop student volunteers.

Call it the outsourcing of affirmative action. Stepping into jobs made off-limits to university officials by Proposition 209 - the 1996 California ballot proposition that prohibited public schools from targeting students based on race, sex, or ethnicity - students are reaching back into their own communities to boost diversity on campus.

"We feel an obligation to help open the door to allow for more of our brothers and sisters to enter," said Fuifuilupe Niumeitolu, a Tongan student at the University of California-Berkeley who is a member of the student group Pacific Islanders Higher Education Recruitment Program. "It is a labor of love, rooted in creating social change."

The passage of Proposition 209 hit UC-Berkeley's racial and ethnic communities hard. The number of incoming freshmen from under-represented minorities groups - African-American, Latino, Native American and Pacific Islander - shrank by half.

The numbers are just now beginning to recover. But the campus is still far from reflecting the state's diversity. Although about 47 percent of public high school graduates in California are members of underrepresented minorities, they make up just 25 percent of UC's incoming freshman class. At UC-Berkeley, the system's most elite campus, there are only 15.7 percent.

So while many of her Berkeley classmates were working summer jobs, doing internships, traveling, or just relaxing at the beach, Tavae Samuelu spent July on campus organizing a conference to motivate the next wave of Pacific Island scholars.

Working eight hours a day for weeks, without pay, the 20-year-old Long Beach native telephoned, e-mailed, raised money and organized the logistics necessary to host hundreds of youngsters at Berkeley. Of the more than 200,000 students in the UC system, only 300 are Pacific Islander.

'Inspiring'

In the audience, Woodside High School senior Sekope Kaufusi welcomed the help.

"It's inspiring," said Kaufusi, an East Palo Altan of Tongan ancestry. "They explain what it takes to come to college - especially here."

UC officials can still offer programs to educationally disadvantaged students. But programs must be inclusive, rather than racially targeted. Race and ethnicity can't be a factor in deciding whom to admit, either.

"Universities can reach out. But they have to reach out to everyone," said Sharon Browne, an attorney with the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation, which supported passage of Proposition 209.

It's a fundamental change that forced universities to radically rethink how to connect with minority students.

The California State Universities - which are academically and financially more accessible, and therefore more diverse - have faced less of a challenge.

Institutional efforts

The 10-campus University of California system faced a bigger hurdle. To comply with the law, UC has shifted its focus to academic preparation.

Rather than race-specific outreach, "we're focusing on students with low income and disadvantaged backgrounds," said Jamie Vargas, of the UC-Santa Cruz-based Education Partnership Center.

UC partners with 50 struggling high schools, most of them populated by minority students.

Minority students admire UC's goal: Pull up the whole system. But it can take too long to fulfill, they say.

"Last year there were 10 counties from California that did not send a single student to Berkeley. Ten!" said Vanessa Cuevas, 22, the daughter of agricultural workers in Sutter County. "UC is supposed to be representative, but it's not."

Almost immediately after the passage of Proposition 209, students at all campuses demanded from UC the autonomy to do student-initiated outreach. Overseen by the University of California Student Association, the campuses have race-specific groups that control their own budgets and projects.

"There is some additional flexibility afforded to students, in terms of their outreach and how they design outreach," said UC-Santa Cruz's Vargas.

At Berkeley, Margret Aregbe, 18, an African-American pre-med student from East Oakland, said, "We call the schools and get the demographics of how many African-Americans go to that school. Then we put together thousands of packets, with fliers like 'An Introduction to the University,' 'Financial Aid,' 'How to Write Essays'. . ."

The Central Valley is a top destination for Berkeley's Latino students.

"We sacrificed our whole spring break last year," Cuevas said. "We go to the classes that have never heard of Berkeley before."

UC officials cheer the students' recruitment efforts.

"They are passionate about what they're doing, because they care," said Walter Robinson, director of undergraduate admissions at UC-Berkeley. "The students have seen the need for greater diversity and have taken it upon themselves to assist and supplement the university's effort.

"There are public policy limits to what we can carry out . . .They can go to any population and target any group because they don't represent the university, but themselves," he said. "They make the campus a better place."

Labels: California, higher education

posted by Patricia Lopez at 9:54 AM 0 comments Links to this post

It's so refreshing to see legislation that validates and recognizes the contributions of immigrants. These are the kinds of polices and investments that benefit all communities.

-Patricia

Honoring the Contributions of Immigrant Communities

Throughout America's history, immigrants have built our infrastructure, fueled our economy through entrepreneurship, and made social and cultural contributions that enable us to better understand the rest of the world.

I introduced a bill to honor those contributions, by providing immigrant families access to critical assistance such as English language and civics education. The Strengthening Communities through Education and Integration Act will help immigrant communities become a more integral part of the American fabric and maximize their social and economic contributions.


The Need for English Language Acquisition Resources

According to the Census Bureau, over 19% of the population (54.8 million) speaks a language other than English at home. Between 11 and 21 million individuals are estimated to have limited English proficiency. While the English language learner population is often characterized as solely immigrant, the reality is that the native-born English language learner population nearly doubled between 2000 and 2005 and is increasing at a higher rate than the immigrant population. Between 2010 and 2030, these first and second generation immigrants are projected to account for all growth in the U.S. labor force. Better preparing this workforce will unite and strengthen our country.

What the Legislation Does

With the growth of the English language learner population comes the urgent need to devote resources to education and ensuring that we fully embrace them into their communities. The Strengthening Communities through Education and Integration Act would:
Invest in adult education programs for English language learners

* Increases our investment in adult education by codifying English literacy and civics adult education programs and creating a new appropriation for these programs.

Ensure that our nation’s children and schools have adequate funding and resources for vital literacy programs for English language learners

* Increases the authorization for Even Start Family Literacy programs to $350 million.

* Provides resources for expanded learning time programs for English language learners in middle and high school.

Assist schools with teacher recruitment for English language learners

* Creates a $1,500 tax credit for teachers of English language learners and a deduction for their certification.

Provide incentives for employers to offer adult education and ESL programs to their employees

* Creates a 20% tax credit to employers that expend their resources to provide English language instruction and GED training.

Provide technical assistance and support to state and local efforts supporting newcomers

* Re-establishes the Office of Citizenship in USCIS as the Office of Citizenship and Immigrant Integration, which would coordinate federal policies on integration and serve as a liaison to state and local entities

* Makes grant money available to states to establish New American Councils that bring together business, faith, civic, philanthropic, non-profit and education stakeholders to create and implement immigrant integration programs.

Labels: immigration and education

posted by Patricia Lopez at 9:32 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Reuters
July 9, 2008

National Parent Involvement Initiative Challenges U.S. Education Policy

WASHINGTON, July 9 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- More than 40 percent of Latino
students drop out of high school each year, in large part because of the
education policies that do not hold high schools accountable for graduation
rates. The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) - a founding
member of the Campaign for High School Equity (CHSE), a leading coalition of
civil rights organizations striving for stronger education policies - said
"Enough is enough" today during a town hall meeting at its National Convention
& Exposition. At the meeting, LULAC launched its national Parent Involvement
Initiative to engage Hispanic parents in education reform.

"The inequalities that exist in the current U.S. education system are
appalling at best," said Rosa Rosales, president of LULAC. "In our
communities, with the full support and involvement of parents, is where we
will see change happen so that more of our young people graduate from high
school prepared for college, work, and life. Working with CHSE, LULAC will
engage its strong grassroots network to create a future for Hispanic students
that is based in academic success."

The Initiative will be piloted in 18 cities, including several that are home
to "dropout factories" - schools where no more than 60 percent of entering
freshmen make it to their senior year three years later. These include Los
Angeles; Philadelphia; Chicago; Kansas City, Mo.; Dallas; Houston; and
Milwaukee. Dropout factories make up only about 12 percent of all high
schools, but they produce approximately half of America's dropouts and
two-thirds of all African American and Hispanic dropouts.

In each city, the Initiative will enlist a core team of parents and family
members who are already active in their schools and districts and prepare them
to take their efforts to the federal level, advocating for substantial reforms
to education policy. In turn, this group of parents will empower others to
join in a rallying cry to take charge of the situation and change the course
of federal education policy for Hispanic students and all students of color.

At the town hall meeting, Rosales was joined by federal, state, and local
policymakers, as well as education advocates, to discuss and identify
community-based solutions to the challenges in education policy that leave
many Latino youth without academic opportunities.

Panelists, including Dr. John Arnold, chair of the National LULAC Education
Commission, and CHSE members Peter Zamora of the Mexican American Legal
Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) and Hilary Shelton, director of the
NAACP's Washington Bureau, addressed strategies for strengthening the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act to better serve students of color. CHSE
members called for federal policy reforms that: 1) make all students
proficient and prepared for college and work; 2) hold high schools accountable
for student success; and 3) redesign the American high school.

Other panelists at the town hall meeting included Holly Kuzmich, deputy chief
of staff for policy, U.S. Department of Education; Dr. Joel Gomez, associate
professor of educational leadership, The George Washington University; Roberto
Rodriguez, senior education advisor, Senate Health, Education, Labor and
Pensions Committee; and Dr. Emma Violand-Sanchez, a parent and candidate for
the Arlington County School Board. The group addressed necessary policy
changes that will ensure equitable learning conditions, as well as federal
program initiatives that will encourage parental and community involvement in
U.S. high schools and strategies for redesigning high schools so that all
students graduate prepared for college, work, and life.

The Campaign for High School Equity is a diverse coalition of national civil
rights organizations representing communities of color that believe high
schools should have the capacity and motivation to prepare every student for
graduation, college, work, and life.In addition to LULAC, MALDEF, and NAACP,
members of the Campaign include the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights
Education Fund, the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed
Officials Educational Fund, the National Council of La Raza, the National
Indian Education Association, the National Urban League, The Alliance for
Excellent Education, and the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center.

SOURCE Campaign for High School Equity

Lizette Olmos of LULAC, +1-202-365-4553, ljolmos@lulac.org; or Laura
Rodriguez, +1-202-331-4323, lrodriguez@vancomm.com, for the Campaign for High
School Equity

Labels: Parent Involvement

posted by Patricia Lopez at 8:52 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Austin Statesman EDUCATION

TEA sued over grants

A statewide teachers group sued the Texas Education Agency on Tuesday over dropout recovery grants awarded to three private, nonprofit entities.

The Texas State Teachers Association argued that the TEA doesn't have authority to grant public money to nonprofit organizations to provide direct student services.

Critics have maintained that Education Commissioner Robert Scott is using the $6 million grant program to create something akin to a school voucher program in which public dollars can be used at private schools. Scott has denied that contention.

Grants were also awarded to 19 public school districts, charter schools and community colleges.

Labels: Dropouts

posted by Patricia Lopez at 8:03 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Disproportionate number of poorly certified educators in poor schools

By GARY SCHARRER | Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau
Aug. 5, 2008

AUSTIN — Texas is headed for big problems if state lawmakers don't fix serious inequities in teacher quality and experience between rich and poor schools, a noted education researcher warned Monday.

Wealthy, high-performing schools attract and keep experienced, higher-quality teachers, while schools with large numbers of low-income and minority students are left with less-experienced teachers, according to a new study.

Schools with high populations of low-income students have twice as many teachers not properly certified to teach math and science as schools in more affluent neighborhoods, according to the report.

In high poverty schools, nearly 20 percent of math teachers and 40 percent of science teachers were assigned to teach courses for which they were not properly certified.

Unless state legislators act, the gap is expected to grow, as incoming high school students are now required to take four years of math and science.

"We could be in a world of trouble in five years when this plays out," said Edward Fuller, a professor in the Educational Policy and Planning program at The University of Texas at Austin.

Fuller conducted his study for the Association of Texas Professional Educators.

Meaningful incentive pay

"Unfortunately, poor, minority and low-achieving students are far more likely to be taught by an under-qualified teacher than their more affluent, white and high-achieving peers," said Jerry Bonham, president of the 112,000-member association and a middle school English teacher in Mesquite.

"The students most in need of the most qualified teachers are the least likely to be taught by them."

Some school districts offer incentive pay in efforts to entice experienced and high-quality teachers to low-income, low-performing schools, but the typical $1,000 to $3,000 bonus is insufficient for teachers to deal with the extra stress and pressures, Fuller said.

It's going to take extra mentoring, more professional staff development and meaningful incentive pay to improve the teacher quality at low-income, low-performing schools, he said.

"Otherwise, we will continue to have the inequity. It's not going to go away," Fuller said.

Matching funds required

Lawmakers set aside extra money last year for teacher incentive pay, but many districts did not apply because matching funds were required.

House Education Chairman Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands, expects lawmakers to consider legislation next year involving high-quality teachers and teacher retention at hard-to-staff schools. Eissler said he would like to see bonuses in the $10,000 range for hard-to-fill positions.

"It's been shown that the most important factor in closing the achievement gaps is the work of an effective teacher. We need to get as many as we can in the right places," he said.

Texas' example

If someone wrote a primer on "how to make your teachers quit, they would look at what the state of Texas does," said Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, a member of the Senate Education Committee. "We place brand new teachers in very hard-to-teach schools. We don't have strong mentoring programs, and they get very frustrated."

It's an easier career choice for experienced teachers to stay in higher-performing schools, she said, "where they have a fighting chance that at least three-quarters of the student body will pass the test."

It typically takes court litigation to force legislators into action on public education issues, she acknowledged.

About 56 percent of the 4.6 million students attending Texas public schools come from low-income families, and the percentage of white children continues to drop — down to 35 percent last school year.

Labels: teacher quality

posted by Patricia Lopez at 9:48 PM 1 comments Links to this post

Below are links to listen to audio of the AISD news conference on this issue. -Patricia

Newsroom
8/1/2008

Austin School Administrators have their work cut out for them now that the state has declared 11 schools as academically unacceptable.

CLICK TO SEE KLBJ WEB VIDEO

CLICK TO HEAR ENTIRE AISD NEWS CONFERENCE
(news conference audio run time: 34 min, 16 sec)

But all is not gloom and doom for AISD, because more than a hundred schools in the district are considered either "acceptable" or "exemplary" by the Texas Education Agency.

Superintendent Pat Forgione admits there's not a level playing field educationally in Austin.

"Just give me your zip code and I can tell you your wealth, right, in Austin?," Forgione said, in a Friday afternoon news conference. "We don't have a level playing field, but when Campbell Elementary School can go exemplary, we know that everyone can do it."

Forgione says new programs, better training for teachers and wiser investments are slowly turning things around. But he says the testing standards are still very new.

"I've been 35 years doing this. This is a new world, this accountability," he says. "You see, you have five subject areas and five subgroups? That's 25 cells. You must make every one of them."

Forgione says he understands the stakes are high for getting academic standards up to state levels.

"It's about a sense of urgency. Pay now, or you pay five times as much at the big house. We've gotta stop our young men from going to Huntsville. We've got to get them literate."

But the superintendent has a message, a reality check of sorts, for some of the district's students.

"You know, my problem isn't a few kids skipping school. It's a lot of kids coming and skipping classes," Forgione said.

AISD schools which ranked Academically Unacceptable by state standards include: (HS=high school; MS=middle school; ES=elementary school) Johnston HS, Reagan HS, Crockett HS, Pearce MS, Garcia MS, Becker ES, Travis Heights ES, Norman ES, Winn ES, Overton ES.

Labels: AISD, failing schools

posted by Patricia Lopez at 10:41 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Too extreme is too nice a reaction. This is crazy! -Patricia



Larry Wehde, Gonzales Independent School District deputy superintendent, holds one of the jumpsuit options for students who don't abide by the dress code.


Parents say the inmate jumpsuit is too extreme for attire offense

By ELIZABETH WHITE Associated Press
Aug. 1, 2008

GONZALES — Violating Gonzales High School's dress code is not a crime, but some of the offenders are about to start looking a lot like convicts.

Soon after classes begin Aug. 25, violators of the district's beefed-up dress code must don navy blue coveralls unless they get another set of clothes from home — or serve in-school suspension. The outfits aren't just styled like prison jumpsuits — they're actually made by Texas inmates.

"We're a conservative community, and we're just trying to make our students more reflective of that," said Larry Wehde, Gonzales Independent School District deputy superintendent.

The new policy in Gonzales, about 70 miles east of San Antonio, has drawn plenty of criticism — along with some speculation that all the district will accomplish is to set off a new fashion trend.

Some parents and students are crying foul.

"They're not little prisoners," said Mary Helen Douglas, who has a 17-year-old son starting his senior year.

The 2,650-student district has ordered 82 coveralls, which are most often sold to county jails, state mental institutions and juvenile prisons. School districts have bought lunch trays and similar items from inmate labor, but no other school district has ordered the jumpsuits in the last year, said Michelle Lyons, spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

The jumpsuits aren't the only option for dress-code violators from fifth through 12th grade. School board President Glenn Menking said parents can still bring a change of clothes, or they may request that the student go to in-school suspension instead.

Labels: dress code

posted by Patricia Lopez at 10:37 AM 1 comments Links to this post

By MOTOKO RICH | NY Times
July 27, 2008
By MOTOKO RICH

BEREA, Ohio — Books are not Nadia Konyk’s thing. Her mother, hoping to entice her, brings them home from the library, but Nadia rarely shows an interest.

Instead, like so many other teenagers, Nadia, 15, is addicted to the Internet. She regularly spends at least six hours a day in front of the computer here in this suburb southwest of Cleveland.

A slender, chatty blonde who wears black-framed plastic glasses, Nadia checks her e-mail and peruses myyearbook.com, a social networking site, reading messages or posting updates on her mood. She searches for music videos on YouTube and logs onto Gaia Online, a role-playing site where members fashion alternate identities as cutesy cartoon characters. But she spends most of her time on quizilla.com or fanfiction.net, reading and commenting on stories written by other users and based on books, television shows or movies.

Her mother, Deborah Konyk, would prefer that Nadia, who gets A’s and B’s at school, read books for a change. But at this point, Ms. Konyk said, “I’m just pleased that she reads something anymore.”

Children like Nadia lie at the heart of a passionate debate about just what it means to read in the digital age. The discussion is playing out among educational policy makers and reading experts around the world, and within groups like the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association.

As teenagers’ scores on standardized reading tests have declined or stagnated, some argue that the hours spent prowling the Internet are the enemy of reading — diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans and destroying a precious common culture that exists only through the reading of books.

But others say the Internet has created a new kind of reading, one that schools and society should not discount. The Web inspires a teenager like Nadia, who might otherwise spend most of her leisure time watching television, to read and write.

Even accomplished book readers like Zachary Sims, 18, of Old Greenwich, Conn., crave the ability to quickly find different points of view on a subject and converse with others online. Some children with dyslexia or other learning difficulties, like Hunter Gaudet, 16, of Somers, Conn., have found it far more comfortable to search and read online.

At least since the invention of television, critics have warned that electronic media would destroy reading. What is different now, some literacy experts say, is that spending time on the Web, whether it is looking up something on Google or even britneyspears.org, entails some engagement with text.

Setting Expectations

Few who believe in the potential of the Web deny the value of books. But they argue that it is unrealistic to expect all children to read “To Kill a Mockingbird” or “Pride and Prejudice” for fun. And those who prefer staring at a television or mashing buttons on a game console, they say, can still benefit from reading on the Internet. In fact, some literacy experts say that online reading skills will help children fare better when they begin looking for digital-age jobs.

Some Web evangelists say children should be evaluated for their proficiency on the Internet just as they are tested on their print reading comprehension. Starting next year, some countries will participate in new international assessments of digital literacy, but the United States, for now, will not.

Clearly, reading in print and on the Internet are different. On paper, text has a predetermined beginning, middle and end, where readers focus for a sustained period on one author’s vision. On the Internet, readers skate through cyberspace at will and, in effect, compose their own beginnings, middles and ends.

Young people “aren’t as troubled as some of us older folks are by reading that doesn’t go in a line,” said Rand J. Spiro, a professor of educational psychology at Michigan State University who is studying reading practices on the Internet. “That’s a good thing because the world doesn’t go in a line, and the world isn’t organized into separate compartments or chapters.”

Some traditionalists warn that digital reading is the intellectual equivalent of empty calories. Often, they argue, writers on the Internet employ a cryptic argot that vexes teachers and parents. Zigzagging through a cornucopia of words, pictures, video and sounds, they say, distracts more than strengthens readers. And many youths spend most of their time on the Internet playing games or sending instant messages, activities that involve minimal reading at best.

Last fall the National Endowment for the Arts issued a sobering report linking flat or declining national reading test scores among teenagers with the slump in the proportion of adolescents who said they read for fun.

According to Department of Education data cited in the report, just over a fifth of 17-year-olds said they read almost every day for fun in 2004, down from nearly a third in 1984. Nineteen percent of 17-year-olds said they never or hardly ever read for fun in 2004, up from 9 percent in 1984. (It was unclear whether they thought of what they did on the Internet as “reading.”)

“Whatever the benefits of newer electronic media,” Dana Gioia, the chairman of the N.E.A., wrote in the report’s introduction, “they provide no measurable substitute for the intellectual and personal development initiated and sustained by frequent reading.”

Children are clearly spending more time on the Internet. In a study of 2,032 representative 8- to 18-year-olds, the Kaiser Family Foundation found that nearly half used the Internet on a typical day in 2004, up from just under a quarter in 1999. The average time these children spent online on a typical day rose to one hour and 41 minutes in 2004, from 46 minutes in 1999.

The question of how to value different kinds of reading is complicated because people read for many reasons. There is the level required of daily life — to follow the instructions in a manual or to analyze a mortgage contract. Then there is a more sophisticated level that opens the doors to elite education and professions. And, of course, people read for entertainment, as well as for intellectual or emotional rewards.

It is perhaps that final purpose that book champions emphasize the most.

“Learning is not to be found on a printout,” David McCullough, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer, said in a commencement address at Boston College in May. “It’s not on call at the touch of the finger. Learning is acquired mainly from books, and most readily from great books.”

What’s Best for Nadia?

Deborah Konyk always believed it was essential for Nadia and her 8-year-old sister, Yashca, to read books. She regularly read aloud to the girls and took them to library story hours.

“Reading opens up doors to places that you probably will never get to visit in your lifetime, to cultures, to worlds, to people,” Ms. Konyk said.

Ms. Konyk, who took a part-time job at a dollar store chain a year and a half ago, said she did not have much time to read books hersel