This study has some interesting findings although it's important to mention that parental involvement in this study and the other cited in the article appear to define involvement based on few criteria (showing up to school).

What might be useful is how schools can also partner with parents outside of school and make use of opportunities to engage with them during events and activities where they are involved and supporting their children in diverse ways.

Research on low-income high-achieving youth reveal the impact of non-traditional methods of parental involvement that played a significant role in not only the confidence to do well in school, but the positive constructions of self (an understanding of their culture, history, retaining of a second language, etc) that were also key to their success. All of these factors combined with a supportive contact (teacher, counselor, mentor, etc.) in and out of school can/ should be viewed as a potential model that would help youth be successful in school.

Schools need to first recognize and place value on those diverse methods of involvement, then see how they can learn from and build upon parents' efforts so that they're stronger and more well versed on how to be advocates for their children's education. To see parental involvement efforts as a dichotomous phenomenon (present in school or not) really undermines those things that parents do for their children, and when schools (and research) promote this model it can create walls that make it difficult to forge reciprocal relationships between schools and parents.

Check out the full report

-Patricia

Oct. 23, 2008
WASHINGTON, Oct 23, 2008

-- Parents wish to be more engaged by schools, but need better tools and information
Parents across America share high hopes for their children's academic success and many know their involvement is vital. But parents with students in low-performing high schools say their schools don't give them the tools and information they need to be more effective in helping their students succeed, according to a national report released today.

"One Dream, Two Realities: Perspectives of Parents on America's High Schools," by Civic Enterprises, and based on research conducted by Peter D. Hart Research Associates, captures the views of parents of high school students in America's urban, suburban, and rural communities from diverse backgrounds and income levels. The findings point to concrete steps that can improve parental engagement in schools and strengthen efforts to prepare all young people for success in college and the workplace. The report was commissioned by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The full report can be accessed at: www.civicenterprises.net.

"The critical role parents play in educating children is often a blind assumption or a target of attack," said John Bridgeland, president and CEO of Civic Enterprises and co-author of the report. "The findings of this report call for a halt to the blame game. This report disproves the prevailing myth that low-income parents are not interested in their children's academic success. The opposite is true. Parents, especially those with students trapped in low-income or low-performing schools, desperately want to be involved and want their students to succeed. What parents need is an access point - a way into schools - so they can become partners in helping students learn and achieve."

Many parents surveyed believe that schools should do a better job of reaching out to them or engaging them as partners, particularly parents of students in low-performing schools. In fact, 80 percent of all parents surveyed, and 85 percent of parents of students in low-performing schools, believe parents should be involved as advocates for their children when it comes to picking courses and teachers.
The report reveals a stark contrast between the experiences of parents with students in low-performing schools and those with students in high-performing schools. According to the survey:



-- Only 15 percent of parents with students at low-performing schools feel
that their school is doing a very good job challenging students,
compared with 58 percent of parents with students in high-performing
schools.
-- Forty-seven percent of parents with students in low-performing schools
said that their schools were doing a good job in encouraging parents to
be involved compared to 85 percent of parents with students in
high-performing schools.
-- Twenty-five percent of parents with students in low-performing schools
say that their school informed them about academic and disciplinary
problems compared to more than half (53 percent) of parents with
students in high-performing schools.
-- Less than 20 percent of parents with students in low-performing schools
believe schools do a very good job preparing their students across four
categories: preparation for college; helping students develop
confidence, maturity, and personal skills; developing a special talent;
and preparing them for a good job. Half of parents with students in
high-performing schools feel this way.
-- Half of parents of students in low-performing schools said they felt
welcomed in the schools compared to four out of five parents with
students in high-performing schools.


Each year, more than one million students fail to graduate from high school on time. Research shows that when parents are involved, students perform better and are less likely to drop out. Yet studies have shown that as students grow older, parents tend to become less involved with their children's academic lives due, in part, to unique barriers like difficulty in helping them with homework or lack of resources for parents of high school-aged students.

The report is a follow-up to the 2006 Gates Foundation-funded survey of high school students, "The Silent Epidemic: Perspectives of High School Dropouts." "The Silent Epidemic" report noted lack of parental involvement as one of the key reasons dropouts gave for leaving school. Out of 470 dropouts surveyed around the country, only 21 percent said their parents were "very involved" in their schooling. More than 70 percent of dropouts said that one key to keep them in school was better communication between parents and schools, and increasing parental involvement in their education. "One Dream, Two Realities" suggests that parents can play a significant role in reversing this trend.
"Unfortunately, parents of students trapped in low-performing schools--those who need the most support--are the ones that are least likely to be engaged by their children's schools," said Geoff Garin, president of Peter D. Hart Research Associates. "But we know there is a clear pathway to help improve student achievement in these low-performing schools, and that is through schools and parents working together to create opportunities where parents can play an active role in their children's academic success."

The report includes parents' recommendations to strengthen opportunities to support their children's academic success. The report suggests schools meet with parents before high school starts to be clear on what constitutes success in school. Other suggestions include: providing a prompt notification of academic problems; establishing an ongoing dialogue, not just when problems occur; partnering with community organizations to offer parent involvement classes; providing information packets that give parents details about the school and the courses each child is taking; assigning a single point of contact within the school to allow each parent to address key questions or concerns regarding their children; recruiting parent volunteers to serve as liaisons between the school and other parents to help identify ways of including otherwise disengaged parents; and including parent perspectives in the America's Promise Alliance 100 dropout summits in all 50 states over the next three years.

"We know that ensuring that every student is prepared for success in college, career, and life means keeping the doors of our high schools and communication lines open to parents," said Vicki Phillips, director of education at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. "This report shows that we must do more to ensure that all parents, particularly those with students in low-performing schools, are given new and better ways to enlist their full participation and engage them as even stronger advocates for their children's success."

Civic Enterprises

Civic Enterprises is a public policy development firm dedicated to informing discussions on issues of importance to the nation. www.civicenterprises.net

Statement from America's Promise Alliance President and CEO Marguerite Kondracke on "One Dream, Two Realities: Perspectives of Parents on America's High Schools"

"Our Cities in Crisis report revealed the stark contrast between the graduation rates of high schools in our nation's largest cities and their surrounding suburbs. This new report by Civic Enterprises shows that there is also a stark contrast that exists when it comes to providing opportunities for parents of students who attend low-performing high schools to be fully engaged in the academic success of their children compared to those whose children attend high-performing schools.

"This report makes clear that parents of students at both high- and low-performing high schools want to play an active role in their children's education, but there is more work to be done to ensure that parents in all communities have the resources and the support to be as actively engaged as they want to be. Research tells us that their involvement is essential to our young people's success, and the lack of it is a tragic, but real factor in young people failing to graduate on time.

"Two years ago, Civic Enterprises released a watershed report revealing just how dire the high school dropout crisis was in our country. Appropriately titled, 'The Silent Epidemic,' this study illustrated for the first time the true depths of an educational and social catastrophe that was jeopardizing the financial security and future of our nation. Each year, more than one million students drop out of high school--that's one teenager every 26 seconds and 7,000 each school day. The cost of this crisis is equally staggering as dropouts from the class of 2007 alone will cost the nation more than $329 billion in lost wages, taxes and productivity over their lifetimes.

"America's Promise Alliance's national Dropout Prevention Campaign is working hard to reduce the dropout rate. In the next two years, we will sponsor 100 Dropout Prevention Summits in all 50 states and parental involvement in education is a key element of this campaign. In addition to parental involvement, we need curriculum reform, after-school programs, efforts to improve health care and nutrition programs, increased resources and greater accountability. Most of all, we need to recognize that no one entity can solve this crisis alone, but working together, we can make enormous strides to ensure our children succeed."
SOURCE Civic Enterprises, LLC

http://www.civicenterprises.net/

Labels: Parent Involvement

posted by Patricia Lopez at 9:20 AM 0 comments Links to this post

By Nicole Gaouette
October 23, 2008

Reporting from Washington -- In a final drive to toughen immigration enforcement, the Bush administration will again try to institute a system that would force employers to fire workers who have discrepancies in their Social Security data.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Thursday that he would ask a federal judge to lift an injunction imposed against the "no-match" rule after foes including the American Civil Liberties Union and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sued to stop it last year.

The move could affect millions of workers -- citizens and immigrants alike -- and continues to draw fierce opposition from business as well as civil liberties and immigrant advocate groups.

In an annual address on border enforcement and illegal immigration, Chertoff said that he expected continued resistance to the rule but that his agency had addressed concerns raised in the lawsuit.

Under the rule, businesses could be prosecuted for failing to respond to notices from the Social Security Administration that workers' information does not match data on file with the government, often an indicator of illegal immigration but frequently the result of simple inconsistencies or clerical errors.

The no-match rule would be part of the Bush administration's wide-ranging crackdown on illegal immigration, a campaign that also involves controversial mass workplace raids and requirements that federal contractors verify that every employee is authorized to work.

With less than three months before a new administration comes to power, Chertoff used the annual address to try to hammer out a legacy for himself and his young agency, founded in 2003. Chertoff declared that Homeland Security had made unprecedented progress in slowing the flow of migrants crossing the border.

"For the first year in many years that anybody can remember, the efforts we've undertaken at the border have begun to turn the tide of illegal immigration," Chertoff said, citing a flat or declining number of illegal immigrants in the country, more aggressive enforcement at work sites and greater levels of infrastructure and personnel at the border.

"Many of the things we've accomplished are things that people thought we couldn't do," Chertoff said. "We've done more in five years than has been accomplished in decades before."

The Homeland Security chief said the next administration should maintain current levels of enforcement and urged Congress to return to the controversial issue of comprehensive immigration reform, which lawmakers abandoned after efforts sputtered last year.

Chertoff said the crackdown would cast immigration reform in a more favorable light.

"Americans will soon say, 'OK, it's now time to allow more legal immigrants in,' " he said. "Ultimately, we're going to have to go back to Congress and ask for comprehensive immigration reform."

Chertoff also said the agency had completed about 370 miles of the Southwestern border fence and put odds that it would reach its year-end goal of 670 miles at "90% to 95%."

The no-match rule requires employers to give workers 90 days to clear up any discrepancy in their Social Security data, such as names and numbers that do not correspond to government records. If a mismatch can't be resolved, the worker must be fired or the firm runs the risk of federal prosecution.

As part of the injunction last year, Homeland Security was ordered to examine the rule's potential effect on small businesses, and it determined it would cost up to $36,624 a year for the largest small businesses to comply, not including the costs of termination and replacement of workers.

Some business owners were dismayed by Thursday's announcement.

"Local folks do not want to do the hard manual labor," said Jim Wilson, owner of a suburban Minneapolis nursery.

"People act as if we just pay enough, we'll get the [American] workers," said Sheridan Bailey, who owns an Arizona steel fabrication business where the hourly pay has increased to $22 this year, from $15.43 in 2006. "It doesn't matter how much you pay, you can't get blood out of a turnip if the workers aren't there."

Chertoff was not sympathetic. "Making money is not a sufficient justification for violating the rule," he said.

But Bailey said the issue was not making money, but survival. "We have to have labor; we can't do it without labor," he said.

Gaouette is a Times staff writer.

Labels: immigration

posted by Patricia Lopez at 9:00 AM 0 comments Links to this post

This is terrible! Also in recent news were articles about South Texas recruiting these Dallas teachers. Wonder how many took job opportunities.

-Patricia

(CNN) -- The Dallas, Texas, school district laid off hundreds of teachers Thursday to avoid a projected $84 million deficit.

"Today is a day of tremendous sadness throughout the district," Dallas Independent School District Superintendent Michael Hinojosa said in a written statement.

"These teachers and counselors are people who devoted themselves to helping Dallas students, and we will do everything within our power to help them find new jobs."

The district laid off 375 teachers and 40 counselors and assistant principals Thursday, and transferred 460 teachers to other schools within the district.

The deficit was caused by a massive miscalculation in the budget, CNN affiliate WFAA-TV reported.

Children, one crying, crowded Thursday around Mary Crose, a music teacher at San Jacinto Elementary School.

"I've had them since they were in kindergarten," she told The Dallas Morning News, as she wrapped her arms around two of the children. "We've been through a lot at our school, and it's going to be so hard. We need the prayers and support of everyone in Dallas."

"Why do you have to leave?" a girl wailed, through her tears.

"I've been looking at some of the notes they've already written," Crose said, unfolding several pieces of notebook paper. A pink heart had been drawn on one. Words were scrawled on others in crayon.

"My kids are going to lose out because I'm a very good teacher, and so they're going to lose out because they won't have me," a tearful Sandy Keaton, a second-grade teacher at San Jacinto Elementary, told WFAA. Video Watch teacher's tearful lament »

The 375 teachers represent about 3 percent of the district's more than 11,500 teachers. Last week, 152 employees -- including clerks, office managers and teacher assistants -- voluntarily left their jobs, the district said. On September 29, 62 central staff members lost their jobs.

Voluntarily resignations and transfers spared 88 jobs, WFAA reported.

The district estimates that the job cuts and unfilled vacancies will save $30 million. An additional $38 million will be saved by cutting various programs throughout the district.

The Dallas Independent School District is the nation's 12th largest, with more than 160,000 students.

"The children are going to suffer," Karina Colon, a prekindergarten bilingual teacher at San Jacinto Elementary, told The Dallas Morning News.

Colon kept her job, but was crying for her colleagues. "I should feel happy," she said.

The Dallas Independent School District will hold a job fair Tuesday for all employees who were given notice. More than 110 employers will attend the fair, which was put together by the district, the United Way and the Dallas Regional Chamber.

Labels: teachers

posted by Patricia Lopez at 11:45 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Check out the full report

-Patricia

By Linda Harris and Evelyn Ganzglass | Center for American Progress
October 17, 2008


This paper looks at strategies for connecting high school dropouts between the ages of 16 and 24 to pathways to postsecondary credentials that have value in the labor market. We will highlight examples of innovations in policy, program delivery, pedagogy in adult education, youth development and dropout recovery, and postsecondary education. We do this not only to advocate for expanded adoption of these best practices, but to seed thinking about ways these policies and practices, if better integrated and funded, can bring about more robust and successful dropout recovery and postsecondary education to address this challenge.

Without question, many of the millions of youth who have dropped out of school have talent, ability, and aspirations for a better future and can benefit from being connected to a supported pathway to postsecondary credentials. This tremendous pool of talent and potential, if properly supported and channeled, can help close the skills gap in this country and greatly contribute to our nation’s productivity and competitiveness. These youth deserve a second chance, but our second-chance strategies must be more robust and focused on delivering to youth the set of postsecondary skills and credentials that will open the door to higher wages and career opportunities. Thus, converting this raw talent into skilled workers with the credentials and mastery for the 21st-century economy will require considerable rethinking of how our secondary, postsecondary, workforce, adult education, youth development, and youth recovery systems work in tandem to build the supports and create the pathways at some scale to bring these youth back into the education and labor market mainstream.

Labels: Dropouts, higher education

posted by Patricia Lopez at 11:41 PM 0 comments Links to this post

How horrible!
-Patricia

By YOAV GONEN, Education Reporter
October 14, 2008

City officials have agreed to pay for the education of hundreds of students who claim they were prevented from attending regular classes at their Brooklyn high school and otherwise encouraged to drop out, The Post has learned.

The preliminary settlement was spurred by claims from former Boys and Girls HS students that they had been assigned shortened schedules and noncredit-bearing classes or else warehoused in the auditorium of the Bedford-Stuyvesant school beginning in 2002.

Once they fell behind, some students said they were told they were cut from the school's register or pressured to pursue a General Equivalency Diploma.

"It seemed to me like they just wanted me to get out of their hands," said Darrius Spann, 20.

Now working as a security guard, Spann said he spent much of the 2003-04 school year in the school auditorium with as many as 80 students.

His classmate Roger Hutchinson, now 19, said he similarly reported to the auditorium for much of 10th grade - where he and other students spent hours filling out math worksheets under the watch of school deans.

"I was really totally discouraged - I wasn't caring about anything," said Hutchinson, who, like Spann, said he eventually dropped out in order to work.

Both are now hoping to attend Apex Tech - one of the trade schools that the city will pay for under the terms of the agreement, which could affect as many as 500 students enrolled at the school between 2002 and 2008.

The settlement of the suit, filed in 2005 by the group Advocates for Children, is expected to get final approval at a Nov. 14 hearing.

City Law Department officials said they couldn't comment until after the hearing.

Labels: accountability

posted by Patricia Lopez at 10:57 PM 0 comments Links to this post

COLUMN OF THE AMERICAS
JULY 21, 2008
BY ROBERTO DR. CINTLI RODRIGUEZ
THE CHUPACABRA PSYCHOLOGICAL WAR AGAINST MIGRANTS

Scapegoating appears to have become the U.S. national pastime. Despite the deaths of thousands of brown peoples on the border and despite the rise of draconian laws massive nationwide immigration sweeps that rip families apart, scoundrel politicians have been waging an intense psychological war that has managed to convince much of the nation that these invading "brown hordes" are the source of all of their problems.

Scapegoating against the most exploited sectors of society shouldn't work, save for this sophisticated war. They – whom have come here primarily to work – have been demonized and dehumanized and nowadays treated as a threat, both to national security and the American Way of Life.

The sophistication lies in the ability to create loopholes to the precept that all people are created equal. In the United States, this equality is nowadays reserved for citizens. While exceptions generally offend our moral compass, they are not new to this country. This helps to explain land theft, genocide and slavery, along with the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. It is thus not a difficult leap to condone periodic massive repatriation campaigns against millions of brown peoples.

In this psychological war, we are told that it is not brown people who are being targeted: Only the illegal ones (the ones not truly human).

What is it that permits people to spew out venomous hate and to orchestrate campaigns that call for the incarceration and repatriation of brown peoples and confuse it for law and order? For example, CNN's Lou Dobbs, commentator Pat Buchanan, Rep. Tom Tancredo and Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio all share something in common; they are obsessed and have made a career of haranguing so-called "illegal aliens." If their focus were Whites, African Americans, American Indians or Jews, their careers would have rightly been over long ago. Yet, because their hate campaigns target "illegal" and "faceless" brown people, these hate-mongers convince themselves that they are not racists.

However, in this same psychological war, the words "racist" and "sexist" have also now been rendered meaningless. Some even take pride in being labeled as such. In part, this is because psychological warfare is aimed at destabilizing and subverting the meaning of the words and languages we speak. This is what permits right-wing talk-show hosts and politicians to call for what amounts to ethnic cleansing, while avoiding a negative stigma. They can do this because in their own minds, they are simply calling for the protection of the nation's borders, not advocating campaigns against legitimate human beings.

In part, they are able to get away with this precisely because they have carved out a moral exception for human decency. This is the same psychological device that continues to permit segregation and discrimination – this while continuing to proclaim that we're all the children of the same God (It is not an irony that their anti-immigrant messages are not preached anywhere in any mainstream house of worship. Quite the reverse. Neither is it an irony that their hate is closely monitored by the highly respected Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project: http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intpro.jsp).

The primary practitioners of psychological warfare that utilize the mis-use of language as a primary weapon are government, the military, global media giants and multi-billion dollar corporations (The president's butchering of the language does not count). Such warfare can result in the public coming to believe that wars are waged to bring about peace, that greedy and polluting corporations need to be given massive tax-breaks, that the Constitution is obsolete, that our privacy, rights and our freedoms are quaint and that the exploitation of human beings is part of a natural order.

It is what George Orwell warned about in his classic novel, 1984. Through psychological warfare, the world gets turned upside down. This is how bigots become patriots and how human rights champions become traitors. This is in full evidence everywhere, including Tucson, where Pima County Legal Defender, Isabel Garcia, is in danger of losing her job – over a piñata incident – in which she and many protestors urged Sheriff Arpaio to "get out of town." Rather than the nation's #1 racial profiler having to explain his policies, it is Garcia who is on the defensive. Phoenix Mayor, Phil Gordon, who also opposes Arpaio's racial profiling, has also been put on the defensive.

Ironically, there does not appear to be an adequate appellation for someone who does not recognize the humanity of millions. In English, there are no such words. The closest I can find is "a human Chupacabras" – a devourer of flesh, spirits and souls.

Labels: immigration

posted by Patricia Lopez at 10:29 PM 1 comments Links to this post

Some students wouldn't have to pass test to move to the next grade, panel proposes
By ERICKA MELLON and GARY SCHARRER Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Oct. 21, 2008, 11:56PM


AUSTIN — Texas public school students could face less pressure on the TAKS test under a proposal that key lawmakers unveiled Tuesday to overhaul the state's school accountability system.
Under the plan, elementary and middle school students would no longer have to pass the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills test to advance to the next grade level.
Schools still would be held accountable for low test scores, but they would get credit for improvement — even if students fell short of certain targets.
While several parents and school leaders praised the proposed changes to the school grading system as being more fair, others expressed concern that Texas would be lowering its standards. The Legislature is expected to consider the idea, offered by a special House-Senate committee on school accountability, next year.
"What this proposal does is eliminate the high-stakes testing in elementary schools, and I think that's a very positive development," said Spring Branch Superintendent Duncan Klussmann.
But one prominent member of the accountability committee disagreed with some of his colleagues, worried that Texas would return to a social promotion policy that allows children to advance to the next grade level regardless of their ability.
"I don't want to go back to the days where we just hope and pray that the system will find a way to retain or promote where appropriate," said attorney Sandy Kress, who served as a senior education adviser to President Bush.
Social promotions in Texas schools were supposed to end with a 1999 law pushed by then-Gov. George Bush, but lawmakers allowed an exception if a committee made up of the student's teacher, parent and principal agreed to the promotion despite failing test scores.
"Kids who can't read or can't do math get passed on," Kress said. "We see a substantial number of kids get passed on by those committees, and those kids are failing the next class as well. It's not working very well because the loophole is so darn big."
Lessening pressure
The revamped school grading system, which would require extra help for the struggling students, also would base annual performance ratings on three years of test scores instead of a single year and would give credit for student improvement. Districts would get judged on their financial health, too.
Pasadena ISD Superintendent Kirk Lewis applauded the move to averaging scores, noting that under the current system a school could be stigmatized with a low rating if it barely missed the mark in one subject one year.
"I think it will be helpful in taking some of the pressure off the schools," Kirk said. "I believe in accountability ... but the tweaks they're making, it appears it would be a positive improvement over what we've got."
Legislative leaders concede weaknesses in the current system — which rates schools on TAKS scores, graduation rates and dropout rates — and they heard complaints from educators and parents during hearings around the state this year.
"We found that the TAKS was the main focus of a lot of our education efforts, and it's a minimal-skills test," said House Public Education Chairman Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands.
The new system would incrementally increase standards so that within a decade Texas would perform among the top 10 states nationwide in terms of college and career readiness.
Up to legislators
Eissler, who co-chaired the accountability committee with Senate Education Chairwoman Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, said he expects lawmakers will embrace the recommendations and approve a revised system after they return to session in January. Echoing parents' complaints, Eissler said the current accountability system has led to a narrowing of the curriculum, with teachers focusing on drilling students to pass the TAKS.
Katie Coughlen, who has a son at Bellaire High School in the Houston Independent School District, said she would support the state putting less emphasis on standardized tests.
"I'm not a big fan of the TAKS test," she said. "A district like HISD has so many high-risk students that you can penalize a school for some issues that really aren't in their control."
For Nancy Lomax, a parent activist in Houston, the problem is with the teaching.
"I do think it is a problem when they spend too much time doing these rote things where you prepare for the test and are not really challenging the kids to think," she said.
ericka.mellon@chron.com gscharrer@express-news.net

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 5:25 PM 0 comments Links to this post

TAKS test passage rules may change
11:10 PM CDT on Tuesday, October 21, 2008
By TERRENCE STUTZ / The Dallas Morning News

tstutz@dallasnews.com

AUSTIN – Texas students in certain grades would no longer have to pass the state achievement test to be promoted under a new school accountability plan unveiled Tuesday by leaders of the House and Senate education committees.

The proposal would scuttle a requirement originally championed by former Gov. George W. Bush as a way to curtail the widespread practice of social promotion – automatically passing students regardless of achievement.

In addition, the new accountability plan would base annual school performance ratings on three years of test scores rather than the most recent year, allowing school districts and campuses to make up for a bad year of results with a couple of positive years.

Also Online
Blog: Dallas ISD
Archive: TAKS cheating cases
More education news
Those changes, presented to a special House-Senate committee on school accountability, are expected to be welcomed by school superintendents and teachers across the state, who have repeatedly complained about requiring students in three grades – 3, 5 and 8 – to pass the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills.

The requirement, part of the Texas Student Success Initiative, was first pitched by Mr. Bush in his 1998 gubernatorial re-election campaign and subsequently passed by the Legislature in 1999.

Senate Education Committee Chairwoman Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, said school districts would be able to decide their own criteria for promotion of students, using test scores, grades and whatever else is considered appropriate. She said students who fail in the three grades would receive additional instruction.

"These decisions need to be made locally and not dictated by the state," Ms. Shapiro said, insisting the move would not undermine promotion standards. "We're not saying [these students] won't be held back. We're just saying the decision won't be based on one test."

But another member of the committee, former Bush education adviser and current education lobbyist Sandy Kress, called the proposal a "step back" in a state that still has a serious problem with social promotion.

Mr. Kress said leaving it to local school districts to decide when a student should be promoted could result in many students being pushed through the system without the skills they need.

"I think we know many students are readily promoted to the next grade when they are not ready academically," he said.

Len Phipps, a teacher at Cowart Elementary School in southwest Dallas, said most teachers don't like the idea of a single test determining whether a student moves up to the next grade.

"The test by itself is not enough to make the decision on whether a child should be promoted," Ms. Phipps said. "Other factors, like teacher input, need to be considered. There can also be extenuating circumstances for some children."

Studies indicate that the test requirement slightly raised the number of students retained in grades 3 and 5, but many students who failed the TAKS still were promoted under an exception that allows the student to move up with agreement of the teacher, principal and parent.

House Public Education Committee Chairman Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands, said another big change that school districts will welcome is proposed ratings of school districts and campuses based on three-year "rolling" averages of student achievement. Test scores will be averaged over the current school year and two prior years.

"This proposes a three-year rolling average of achievement so that one snapshot will not kill accreditation" for a campus, he said, noting that schools will be evaluated based on achievement growth rather than passing percentages.

In addition, the plan envisions a new state achievement test to replace the TAKS test for elementary and middle school students. "It will measure a broader range of achievement, not just basic skills," Mr. Eissler noted.

Lawmakers have already decided to phase out the high school TAKS, replacing it with a series of 12 end-of-course tests in four subject areas. The new tests will be used beginning with incoming ninth graders in the fall of 2011.

Students will have to get an average passing score of 70 in each subject area to earn a diploma. That requirement is not changed under the plan laid out on Tuesday.

PROPOSED CHANGES

A proposed accountability plan would set new criteria for accreditation of Texas school districts and campuses. Among them:

•Performance ratings would be based on three-year rolling averages of student test scores.

•Districts would be evaluated based on growth in achievement, especially growth on target to meet standards in three years.

•New standards would apply to subgroups of students based on ethnicity and socioeconomic status.

•Standards would gradually increase, aimed at putting Texas among the top 10 states in college readiness.

SOURCE: Select Committee on Public School Accountability

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 5:24 PM 0 comments Links to this post

BILINGUAL EDUCATION -- IS IT LEGALLY DISCRIMINATORY? -- 9.30.08

Blogging politics, elections and the Capitol with the Austin bureau

September 29, 2008

Bilingual ed opinion could have major impact

A bilingual education issue headed for Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott could blow up the public education budget
or force state lawmakers to decide if they want multiple bilingual education programs - or none.
And that's exactly what State Board of Education member David Bradley, R-Beaumont, had in mind when he asked
board Chairman Don McLeroy, R-Bryan, Monday to request the attorney general's opinion.
When it comes to bilingual education programs, the state of Texas only accommodates Spanish-speaking students.
But state law requires that public school districts "shall offer a bilingual education or special language program" if they
enroll at least 20 students of limited English proficiency in any language classification in the same grade level.
State education officials say dozens of foreign languages would qualify for bilingual education under a strict interpretation
https://webmail.unt.edu/OWA/?ae=Item&t=IPM.Note&id=RgAAAABnOoJu...b9BrIAAAAJ&attid0=EAA1JU%2fXwmvySKVaasJ18G%2fB&attcnt=1&a=Print (1 of 2) [10/3/2008 6:44:22 PM]
FW: BILINGUAL EDUCATION -- IS IT LEGALLY DISCRIMINATORY? -- 9.30.08
of the law.
In Texas last year, more than 14,000 school children spoke Vietnamese. Other popular foreign languages included:
Urdu (national language of Pakistan), 3,627 students; Arabic, 3,594 students; Korean, 3,195 students; and
Mandarin Chinese, 2,054 students.
Last year, Texas enrolled 775,432 students considered limited English proficient - with more than 711,000 Spanish-
speaking students.
The attorney general will be asked whether Texas must adopt textbooks, assessments and teacher certification programs
to provide equal opportunity for all languages that meet the requirements of the state education code.
Bradley believes the attorney general has no choice but to produce an opinion that follows the law. And it would cost
millions of dollars to comply.
"The Legislature will have to decide - do we want to do bilingual education in Texas - because it's all or none," Bradley
said. "Do we need to develop these massive curriculums and textbooks and assessments for all foreign languages and not
be discriminating for doing it in Spanish?"
Vietnamese families could press a discrimination suit, he suggested, but they have not done so "because those parents
want their children taught in English."
Bradley speculated, "At the end of the day, I think we offer no bilingual education ... Do you want to use bilingual
education, or do you want to use immersion? The Legislature has to make a decision."
The number of limited English proficient students is growing by big numbers in Texas - jumping from 570,453 in 2000-01
to more than 775,000 last year.
"The Legislature has to determine what is the most effective route to accomplish English proficiency," said State Board
of Education member Cynthia Dunbar, R-Richmond.
Here is a section in the education code that Bradley wants the attorney general to address:
Continue reading "Bilingual ed opinion could have major impact"
Posted by Gary Scharrer at 05:29 PM in Public education | Comments (1)


https://webmail.unt.edu/OWA/?ae=Item&t=IPM.Note&id=RgAAAABnOoJu...b9BrIAAAAJ&attid0=EAA1JU%2fXwmvySKVaasJ18G%2fB&attcnt=1&a=Print (2 of 2) [10/3/2008 6:44:22 PM]

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 11:16 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Important news for the session. -Angela

Fall Enrollment at The University of Texas at Austin Reflects Continuing Trend Toward More Diverse Student Population

September 18, 2008

AUSTIN, Texas — Enrollment for the fall 2008 semester at The University of Texas at Austin, according to a preliminary analysis, reflects a continuing trend of slight increases in the number of Hispanic, African American and Asian American students.

An enrollment report provided by Kristi Fisher, associate vice provost and director of the Office of Information Management and Analysis, shows enrollment for the semester to be 50,006 students, a decrease of 164 students (0.3 percent) from the fall 2007 semester. The 50,006 includes 37,406 undergraduates, 11,348 graduate students and 1,252 law students.

Fisher said the figures are based on 12th class day numbers. Final enrollment figures will be available in October, but there usually is little variation from the preliminary figures, she said.

The report shows the university's population includes 27,234 white, 213 American Indian, 2,194 African American, 7,540 Asian American, 7,935 Hispanic and 4,539 foreign students. There are 351 students for whom ethnicity is not known.

Enrollment increased for Hispanic students by 129 (1.7 percent increase), African American students by 87 (4.1 percent), and Asian American students by 31 (0.4 percent). It decreased for white students by 410 (1.5 percent), American Indian students by one (0.5 percent) and foreign students by 10 (0.2 percent).

Proportional representation increased for Hispanic students to 15.9 percent this fall semester compared to 15.6 percent in fall 2007, for African American students to 4.4 percent from 4.2 percent and for Asian American students to 15.1 percent from 15.0 percent. The proportional representation for white students decreased to 54.5 percent from 55.1 percent, and remained unchanged for American Indian students (0.4 percent) and foreign students (9.1 percent). The figure for students for whom ethnicity is not known (0.7 percent) also is unchanged from last year.

About 81 percent of the entering freshman students from Texas high schools were admitted under HB 588 (Top 10 Percent Law), compared to 71 percent in fall 2007.

The number of first-time freshmen this fall semester totals 6,719 students, a decrease of 760 (10.2 percent) from the 7,479 last fall semester. The decrease, according to Dr. Bruce Walker, vice provost and director of admissions, was partly a planned reduction to accommodate students' need for lab time while new facilities are built to replace a recently demolished lab building. The yield of incoming freshmen also was less this fall than had been projected.

The overall enrollment totals decreased for all ethnic groups of first-time freshmen. However, the proportional representation for first-time freshmen, according to the preliminary report, shifted slightly, with white and Hispanic students representing an increased percentage of the first-time freshman population and other ethnic/race categories representing a decreased percentage. The figures include white students 52.3 percent (an increase from the 51.3 percent last year), American Indian 0.3 percent (compared to 0.4 percent last year), African American 5.6 percent (compared to 5.8 percent), Asian American 18.6 percent (compared to 19.7 percent), Hispanic 19.9 percent (compared to 19.7 percent) and foreign 3.1 percent (compared to 3.2 percent last year). The figure for students whose ethnicity/race is unknown is 0.1 percent.

Four-year graduation rates increased from 50.9 percent to 52.5 percent, five-year graduation rates increased from 73.0 percent to 76.3 percent and six-year graduation rates increased from 77.4 percent to 77.9 percent.

For the second year, there was a slight decrease in the retention rate in the freshman to sophomore years (from 91.9 percent in fall 2006 to 90.8 percent in fall 2007). There also were decreases in sophomore to junior year retention (from 87.8 percent to 86.9 percent) and in junior to senior year retention (82.0 percent to 81.7 percent).

Undergraduate transfer enrollment decreased by 23 (-1.0 percent) to 2,228. This figure includes 600 transfer students who entered under the Coordinated Admission Program, compared to 634 in fall 2007.

Graduate enrollment (excluding law) decreased by 91 students (-0.8 percent) to 11,348. The number of new graduate students (fall and summer combined) decreased by 121 (-3.6 percent) to 3,225. Graduate continuing enrollment increased by six students (0.1 percent) and graduate re-entering enrollment increased by 24 students (14.1 percent).

School of Law enrollment decreased by 20 students (-1.6 percent) and new law school enrollment decreased by two students (-0.4 percent). There was a decrease in white law student enrollment (24 or -3.1 percent).

The report included college trends showing undergraduate enrollment increased for Communication (2.5 percent), Natural Sciences (0.5 percent), Liberal Arts (0.3 percent), Geosciences (9.1 percent), Architecture (3.2 percent) and Nursing (0.4 percent). Undergraduate enrollment in all other colleges decreased or remained stable. Graduate enrollment increased for Engineering (2.2 percent), Geosciences (14.7 percent), Public Affairs (6.2 percent), Architecture (5.3 percent) and Social Work (3.9 percent). Graduate enrollment in all other colleges decreased or remained stable.

For more information, contact: Robert D. Meckel, Office of Public Affairs, 512-475-7847.

http://www.utexas.edu/news/2008/09/18/fall_enrollment/

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 7:55 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Agents target a chicken processing plant in South Carolina, the latest raid in a stepped-up federal enforcement effort.

By Richard Fausset
October 08, 2008 in print edition A-20

More than 300 suspected illegal immigrants were arrested Tuesday morning at a chicken processing plant near Greenville, S.C. – the latest in a stepped-up federal enforcement effort that has resulted in the deportation of thousands of illegal workers in recent months.

Tuesday’s raid was led by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials and involved hundreds of agents from numerous agencies. The target was Columbia Farms, a processing plant that had been the subject of a 10-month criminal investigation.

Resident David Wynn witnessed the hubbub from down the street and applauded the news.

“The excuse that they’re taking jobs that Americans won’t do – well, that just doesn’t hold water anymore,” said Wynn, 48, the co-owner of a nearby air-conditioning wholesaler who spoke Tuesday afternoon by phone. “With the economic crisis we’ve got going on, we’ve got to put a stop to it.”

Workplace raids such as the one at Columbia Farms have become increasingly common as the Bush administration draws near its end, especially since Congress last year failed to pass an overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws. Critics decry what they contend is the rough treatment of illegal immigrants, as well as the disruption to families.

On Tuesday, ICE Special Agent Kenneth A. Smith of Atlanta said the Greenville raid and others like it get to the root of the problem.

“ICE targets employers because the promise of employment draws illegal workers across our borders,” Smith said in a statement. “By holding employers accountable we are diminishing the magnet and discouraging others from breaking the law.”

Federal officials earlier this year arrested 12 supervisors at the plant. Eleven of them, all Mexican men, were illegal immigrants who were charged with aggravated identity theft and making false statements.

Seven have pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing.

The twelfth was a human resources manager, Elaine Crump, 48. She was indicted on 20 counts of filing false federal identification forms.

Barbara Gonzalez, an ICE spokeswoman, said Tuesday that the investigation was not complete.

“We collected evidence, and we are going to go where that evidence takes us,” she said.

Officials at the poultry company could not be reached for comment.

Labels: immigration

posted by Patricia Lopez at 8:56 PM 1 comments Links to this post

Monday 06 October 2008
by: David Bacon | The Nation


Tucson - A special Federal District court convenes every day at 1 pm in Tucson. All the benches, even the jury box, are filled with young people whose brown skin, black hair and indigenous features are common in a hundred tiny towns in Oaxaca or Guatemala. Their jeans, T-shirts and cheap tennis shoes show the dirt and wear from the long trek through northern Mexico, three days walking across the desert, and nights sleeping at the immigration detention center on the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.

Presiding over one court session in June, Judge Jennifer Guerin called these defendants before her in groups of eight. They walked up in tiny waddling steps, heavy chains binding their ankles and wrists to their waists, and sat. Judge Guerin recited a litany of questions, translated into Spanish through headphones. "You've been charged with illegal entry, a criminal offense...at trial you would have the subpoena power of the court...you have certain rights," she intones. At the end she asks anyone who doesn't understand to stand up. No one does. She asks if they plead guilty. After a moment in which her question is translated, seventy voices mumble "S�."

Leaving the courtroom a young woman stumbles, eyes streaked with tears. A public defender tells the judge her feet are covered with blisters from walking through the wilderness. A boy no older than 13 or 14 searches the room with his eyes as he's led away, perhaps seeking a friend or relative. No one seems older than 30, and most are much younger. They are today's border crossers - the mostly indigenous youth of southern Mexico and Central America.

They all plead guilty to a Federal criminal charge. Sentences run from time served to six months in a Federal lockup run by Corrections Corporation of America.

According to the Spanish news agency EFE, this new court process, dubbed Operation Streamline, convicted 5187 migrants from January 14 to June 10 of this year. Isabel Garcia, who heads Derechos Humanos, a leading immigrant rights organization in southern Arizona, says the current daily quota of 70 chained defendants will soon be raised to 100 - 50 tried on one shift, and 50 on another. Twenty-one new federal prosecutors will handle the surge, with CCA detention facilities to house it.

A new bureaucracy is growing rapidly, thanks to drastic changes in immigration enforcement. In past decades, migrants were treated very differently when caught without papers. They were allowed to leave voluntarily, or deported after being found guilty of an administrative infraction, the equivalent of a parking ticket.

Today's migrants have become criminals. The features pioneered in Tucson's courtroom - serious Federal criminal charges, mass trials of defendants in chains, and incarceration - are becoming standard features of immigration raids from Postville, Iowa, to Los Angeles, California. State laws now supplement Federal statutes, and Federal, state and local authorities cooperate closely to bring a large variety of criminal charges against migrants.

Working without papers has become the most serious crime of all. The vast increase in workplace raids under the Bush administration, however, is motivated by more than a zeal for enforcing the law, or even placating the nativist wing of the Republican Party. Enforcement is part of a pressure campaign designed to win passage of immigration reform centered on guest worker programs.

In November, 2006, 1282 workers were detained by hundreds of heavily armed ICE agents in military garb at six Swift and Co. packinghouses. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff then told reporters that raids would show Congress the need for "stronger border security, effective interior enforcement and a temporary-worker program." Bush wants, he said, "a program that would allow businesses that need foreign workers, because they can't otherwise satisfy their labor needs, to be able to get those workers in a regulated program."

This spring, in a New York Times interview, Chertoff elaborated: "We are not going to be able to satisfy the American people on a legal temporary worker program until they are convinced that we will have a stick as well as a carrot." His carrot is the prospect of massive contract labor programs for business. The sticks are the chains in the Tucson courtroom.

According to Garcia, each day's defendants are less than 10 percent of those picked up on the Arizona border. "They're making an example of them to create a climate of fear," she charges. "We are a laboratory. The model they're developing in Arizona is coming everywhere."

Garcia's warnings have made her a target of rightwing talk radio hosts, who routinely urge listeners to call the county executive to get her fired from her job as a public defender. But in Postville, Iowa, where Tucson's assembly-line justice was transplanted virtually intact, her warning was accurate.

On May 12 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents swooped down on workers at the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant. Twenty minutes after the shift started, Maria Rosala Mejia Marroquin saw people running past the line where she stood cutting up chicken breasts, shouting that the migra was in the plant. She ran too, and in a dark warehouse tried to squeeze between huge boxes. "Men came in with flashlights. One pointed a gun in my face, shouting 'No one will escape!'" she remembered. When she was interrogated, she told agents she had a daughter in childcare, but lied to keep them from knowing where the babysitter lived, fearing she'd be picked up as well. Agents finally strapped an electronic monitoring device onto her ankle, telling her she had to wait for a hearing.

Her brother Luz Eduardo was taken with 388 others to the National Cattle Congress, a livestock showground in Waterloo, two hours away. In a makeshift courtroom they went in chains before a judge who'd helped prosecutors design Tucson-style plea agreements five months before the raid even took place. In order to get a job at Agriprocessors, workers had given the company Social Security numbers that were either invented, or belonged to someone else. The judge and prosecutor told workers they'd be charged with aggravated identity theft, which carries a two-year prison jolt, and held without bail. If they pleaded guilty to misusing a Social Security number, however, they would serve just five months, and be deported immediately afterwards.

"They told [my brother] if he signed the papers they'd deport him, but it was a lie," Mejia says. "He didn't know he was agreeing to criminal charges, and now he's been in prison in Kansas for months." Translation into Spanish was provided, but according to Elida Tuchan, who was also arrested, about half the detainees speak only Cachiquel, an indigenous language from San Miguel Due�as, their Guatemalan hometown. "They felt terrorized, that everything was against them. They didn't understand anything about the process or their rights."

To the workers, deportation became desirable. Anacleta Tajtaj was also braceleted, while her husband was deported and three brothers went to prison. "Our family in Guatemala was eating because of us. Now they'll go hungry," she lamented. It cost them each 33,000 quetazales (about $4000) to get to the U.S., a huge sum in San Miguel Due as, requiring them to mortgage homes and farms. "Now we just want to go back. Everything here is a crime - all the normal things like working." Tajtaj and the other women can't go home yet, however. Three months after the raid they didn't even have dates for their first hearing.

"They can't work, they have no way to pay rent or buy food, their husbands or brothers are in prison or deported, and they're being held up to ostracism in this tiny town," says Luz Maria Hernandez, who heads the support network for 48 braceleted women at Postville's St. Bridget's Catholic Church. "This is a form of psychological punishment."

Ostracism has become a common element of workplace raids. Women released for so-called humanitarian reasons to care for children become isolated and dependent on friends and relatives. In Los Angeles,, women braceleted after a raid at the Micro Solutions electronics plant on February 7 were shunned by their own roommates, who left them and their children facing eviction. A challenge by the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles finally won removal of the bracelets after three months, but the support network of immigrant rights groups is not as strong in northern Iowa.

Workplace raids are sweeping the country. According to Secretary Chertoff, "arrests in worksite cases have jumped from a total of 850 in 2004 to 4,940 last year, including 863 arrests based on criminal charges." From January 1 to May 31, 2008 alone, ICE had arrested 3000 people for immigration violations, and 875 more on criminal charges.

In June among those arrested were 160 workers at Action Rags in Houston, 32 farm workers for Boss 4 Packing in Heber, California, and nine workers at water parks in Arizona. In May "cops and guns and badges and everything" were used to detain 16 workers at San Diego's French Gourmet bakery, according to Rod Coon, company vice-president. The same month, 25 construction laborers were picked up in Florida working on the Lee County Jail. April saw raids detaining 28 landscapers in El Paso, 24 construction workers in Little Rock, 63 taco makers at El Balazo restaurants in the San Francisco Bay area, 22 restaurant workers on Maui, 33 laborers on the federal courthouse project in Richmond, Virginia, 20 workers at Shipley's Do-Nuts in Texas, and 45 workers at a Mexican restaurant chain in several states.

This two-month snapshot is an incomplete count of smaller worksite enforcement actions, which go on constantly, along with frequent raids on street-corner day laborers. But in addition to Postville, large raids have also become much more frequent.

Worksite enforcement, in turn, is used to dramatize Bush reform proposals that come from some of the country's largest corporations. In 1999 a group of corporate trade associations, in industries employing large numbers of immigrant workers, formed the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition because U.S. industry, it said, faced a huge labor shortage. "Part of the solution," EWIC announced, "involves allowing companies to hire foreign workers to fill the essential worker shortages."

The group, headed by the US Chamber of Commerce, includes the American Meat Institute, the National Association of Chain Drug Stores (Wal Mart, among others), the National Council of Chain Restaurants, and other industry associations. While EWIC doesn't contribute money directly to political campaigns, any politician its lobbyists visit know EWIC member industries give plenty. In the 2000 election cycle, for instance, the meat processing industry gave $1,292,877 - $145,520 to Democrats and $1,143,107 to Republicans. So far in 2008, the restaurant industry has already given $7,361,945 ($2,918,797 / $4,427,704).

In an August 2001 letter to Bush, EWIC argued for "a temporary worker framework that provides a role for such workers whose labor is needed in the US." A 2002 Cato Institute report, authored by Daniel T. Griswold, said "the experience of the bracero program demonstrates that workers prefer the legal channel." A huge temporary visa program "should be created that would allow Mexican nationals to remain in the United States to work for a limited period." EWIC and its member associations immediately greeted the report. The National Restaurant Association warned that restaurants faced "a worker shortage of 1.5 million jobs," and said the plan "would give employers greater opportunities to fill these jobs."

The Bush administration issued its own proposals a year and a half later, and they were identical to those in the report. Cato's ties to the media helped guest worker proposals achieve greater legitimacy. When the Institute asserted that industries face a tremendous labor shortage, rather than a corporate unwillingness to pay higher wages to attract workers, much of the media treated it as fact. Cato and EWIC members shared an aversion to minimum wages. Rob Rosado, director of legislative affairs for the American Meat Institute, said "We don't want the government setting wages [in guest worker programs.] The market determines wages."

EWIC's ideas were embraced by Democrats as well as Republicans. The McCain/Kennedy, Hegel/Martinez and STRIVE bills all shared a similar architecture. They established large guest worker programs, allowing corporations and contractors to recruit hundreds of thousands of workers a year outside the country, on temporary visas that would force them to leave if they became unemployed. To force workers to come only as guest workers, and to stay in the program once they were in the U.S., the bills all mandated a tighter border to make crossing without papers more difficult, and beefed-up employer sanctions to make it impossible to hold a job without a guest worker visa.

In the bracero program of the 1950s and early 1960s, many workers simply remained in the U.S., working under the table until they found a way to get a permanent visa. Many workers in current guest worker programs also stay in the country as undocumented immigrants, even though getting permanent status has become almost impossible. The enforcement provisions sought to cut off that option.

"Enforcement is not an issue you can separate from guest worker programs," says Mary Bauer, director of the Immigrant Justice Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center. An SPLC report, Close to Slavery, documents extensive abuse of workers in current programs, and the benefit to employers of a workforce with few rights, whose vulnerable status makes organizing to raise wages difficult. "Immigration enforcement is structurally necessary for these programs," she explains.

Most comprehensive bills also contained legalization provisions for currently undocumented people, but would have imposed fines and long waiting periods from 11 to 18 years, during which time applicants would be as vulnerable as ever. Employers, however, would be immune to employer sanctions for employing them, while recruiting new workers through guest worker programs.

A much more liberal immigration bill sponsored by Congress member Sheila Jackson Lee and members of the Congressional Black Caucus was dismissed as "politically unrealistic" because it contained no guest worker program. EWIC anchored an alliance with immigration lawyers, establishment civil rights organizations and several unions. John Gay, representing the National Restaurant Association in EWIC, became board chair of the National Immigration Forum, a powerful mainstream immigration lobbying group in Washington. Tamar Jacoby, former staffer at the rightwing Manhattan Institute, was one of the coalition's most prominent spokespeople. Today she has organized a new corporate lobby, ImmigrationWorks, that includes EWIC, National Council of La Raza, the National Restaurant Association, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. One key affiliate, the Federation of Employers and Workers of America, calls itself "the national voice of the existing legal guest worker programs," and represents industry associations that push for them.

After Congress failed to pass a guest worker/enforcement/legalization package, the administration began to implement its enforcement proposals through increased raids. "But we would have had raids with those bills too, because of their enforcement and funding provisions," says Marielena Hincapie, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center.

The administration also used the bills' failure as a pretext for relaxing restrictions on current guest worker programs. ICE Director Julie Myers told the Detroit Economic Club in April that "the administration has both streamlined the H2-A [agricultural guest worker visa] application process and has given U.S. employers more flexibility... These changes will make it easier for agricultural employers to hire foreign temporary or seasonal labor to harvest crops." It also allowed employers seeking H2-B guest workers to simply "attest" that they'd tried to find local workers, rather than have the Department of Labor certify that they'd made a real effort.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, the AFL-CIO and immigrant rights groups have bitterly opposed these changes. Employers have generally supported them. "We see employers on the Hill all the time, saying they have to have guest workers. At one hearing they had to open extra rooms to accommodate all the lobbyists," Bauer fumes. "And support is coming, not just from Republicans, but from Democrats like Barbara Mikulski, Zoe Lofgren, Ted Kennedy and even John Conyers."

Making it a crime for an undocumented person to hold a job is made possible by the Immigration Reform and Control Act, passed in 1986. Prior to that, workers could be deported for being in the U.S. without a visa, but working itself was not a crime. The then-Immigration and Naturalization Service conducted some workplace raids, but immigrants were either forced to leave the country voluntarily, or held for deportation hearings. They could make bail.

In the late 1970s, the INS and others began seeking laws to make it illegal for people without papers to work, and for employers to hire them. They argued that if people could not work legally, they would leave. The INS campaigned for passage of IRCA (then the Simpson-Mazzoli and Simpson-Rodino bills), with a wave of raids called Operation Jobs. Agents would arrest workers in a factory, and go to the local unemployment office to hold a press conference. With reporters and unemployed workers in tow, they'd return to the raided factory, claiming they'd "created" jobs. They would then demand that Congress pass sanctions.

Raids became more difficult after the INS was sued by Molders Union Local 164 and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund in the early 1980s. After the suit was won, agents had to stop their practice of locking workers in a factory, interrogating foreign-looking people about their legal status, and instead were required to have warrants naming specific individuals.

Then IRCA's passage made it a federal offense for an employer to hire someone without immigration papers, and for that person to hold a job. Job applicants now have to provide two pieces of identification to show their status, and a Social Security number. By inspecting employer hiring records, INS agents can come up with the names of workers to put on warrants for a raid.

Immigrants didn't go home, however. Defenders of sanctions ignored the ongoing displacement of people by structural adjustment programs in Mexico and other developing countries, reinforced by the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement. In the NAFTA years, over six million Mexicans came to live in the U.S. Since relatively few visas are available for legal immigration, most came without them.

Although Bush officials claim worksite enforcement hardly existed before the present administration, the current wave actually started in the Clinton era. The Social Security Administration began sending letters to employers listing employees' names and numbers that didn't match SSA records. Employers were then left free (and often encouraged) to assume that the reason for the mismatch was that the workers were undocumented. After numerous employers used the letters to fire activist workers during union campaigns, unions and immigrant advocates convinced SSA to include language in the letters warning employers not to construe a mismatch as evidence of lack of immigration status. Nevertheless, although no count has ever been made, thousands of undocumented workers have lost their jobs because of the letters.

In 1999, using Social Security numbers in Operation Vanguard, INS agents sifted through the names of 24,310 workers in 40 meatpacking plants throughout Nebraska. They then sent letters to 4,762, demanding they report to INS agents at their jobs. A thousand did, of whom 34 were arrested and deported. The rest, over 3500 people, were forced to find new jobs. One of Operation Vanguard's architects, INS Dallas District Director Mark Reed, claimed success, saying the operation was really intended to pressure Congress and employer groups to support guest worker legislation. "We depend on foreign labor," he declared. "If we don't have illegal immigration anymore, we'll have the political support for guest workers." Reed and the INS also conducted more traditional raids during those years, seizing workers for deportation at Nebraska Beef, Montfort Packing, Tyson Foods, and other plants.

Social Security grew so uncomfortable with the use of its database for immigration enforcement that after Operation Vanguard the agency refused to make it available for similar operations in other states. Today, however, ICE seems to have regained access to the files, and now uses mismatches to identify workers for raids, and to charge them with criminal offenses. Meanwhile, the money paid by undocumented workers under bad numbers reached $586 billion in 2006. Since those workers may never collect benefits based on those earnings (which go into the Earnings Suspense File), they are contributing a huge subsidy to the retirement of all Social Security recipients.

Worksite enforcement actions accelerated enormously after George W. Bush took office. Following the 9/11 attacks, raids dubbed Operation Tarmac targeted airports around the country, leading to the firing and deportation of hundreds of mostly food service workers. After the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the new Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) took over from the old Immigration and Naturalization Service, and more raids followed.

The administration used worksite enforcement actions to dramatize its call for comprehensive immigration reform (the shorthand name given by Washington groups to the bills combining guest workers, increased enforcement and legalization). On April 10, 2006, the first huge immigrant rights march took place in Los Angeles, protesting House passage of the Sensenbrenner bill (HR 4437) the previous December, which would have made undocumented status a federal felony. On April 19, 1187 workers were arrested at plants of IFCO Systems North America, Inc. in New York, Texas, Wisconsin and Massachusetts. Then in December, after the Senate passed an immigration bill more in line with administration proposals, ICE mounted probably the largest workplace raid in U.S. history, detaining 1282 workers at six Swift and Co. packinghouses.

The administration's drive was dramatized by other large-scale, highly publicized worksite sweeps. They included the arrest of 81 plastics workers at Iridium Industries in Poconos, Pennsylvania, 136 chicken workers at George's Processing in Missouri, 165 workers at Portland's Fresh Del Monte produce plant, 327 workers at the Michael Bianco leather factory in New Bedford, and 200 janitors for Rosenbaum-Cunningham International in 17 states.

Once the comprehensive reform proposals died in Congress in 2007, more major raids followed, including two at the Smithfield pork slaughterhouse in Tarheel, North Carolina, which took place in the middle of one of the country's longest and hardest-fought union organizing campaigns. In addition, 130 immigrants were arrested at Micro Solutions in Van Nuys, dozens at a Fresh Direct produce warehouse in New York City, and 161 poultry workers at Koch Foods in Ohio. Just before the Postville raid, 311 workers were detained at Pilgrim's Pride plants where they cut up chickens for KFC.

As early as the IFCO raid, some workers and low-level supervisors were charged with criminal violations, not just being in the country illegally. At Swift the administration began to shape its new strategy of substituting criminal charges for status violations. Some 65 of the workers arrested there were charged with identity theft or other criminal offenses, as were the workers picked up at Smithfield. Barbara Gonzalez, an ICE spokesperson, told reporters outside one Swift slaughterhouse that "we have been investigating a large identity theft scheme that has victimized many U.S. citizens and lawful residents." ICE head Julie Myers told other reporters in Washington, D.C. that "those who steal identities of U.S. citizens will not escape enforcement."

Dramatic identity-theft charges were intended to gain public support for the raids and the bills in Congress, but ICE was also announcing a new strategy for criminalizing work.

ICE claims that raids and sanctions protect wages against employers' use of undocumented labor. A week after the Postville raid, ICE Director Myers claimed enforcement targeted "unscrupulous criminals who use illegal workers to cut costs and gain a competitive advantage." An ICE Worksite Enforcement Advisory claims "unscrupulous employers are likely to pay illegal workers substandard wages or force them to endure intolerable working conditions. ... ICE's Worksite Enforcement Unit also helps employers improve worksite enforcement of employment regulations."

Actual enforcement of labor standards, however, is in freefall. On July 15 the Government Accountability Office charged that Department of Labor inspectors routinely fail to investigate complaints, and close half of them after short calls to employers.. From 1997 to 2007, the number of inspectors dropped from 942 to 732, and the number of cases went from 47,000 to 30,000, the lowest since World War Two. Meanwhile, the budget for the Border Patrol has climbed to $1.6 billion, while 15,000 agents make ICE the second-largest investigative agency in the Federal government.

The affidavit supporting ICE's search warrant for the Postville plant stated a source saw a supervisor "duct-tape the eyes of an undocumented Guatemalan worker shut and hit the Guatemalan with a meat hook, apparently not causing serious injuries. The Guatemalan did not want to report the incident because 'it would not do any good and could jeopardize his job.'" Although ICE would not identify the beaten worker or confirm his detention, it is probable that after the raid he was in Federal prison, while the supervisor continued working. The Iowa Labor Commissioner documented 57 cases of child labor at Agriprocessors and filed 9000 child labor charges against the company. Some of the 57 young people are now undoubtedly in prison or wearing electronic ankle bracelets. Although some may get temporary visas as witnesses, all will eventually be deported.

Despite ICE claims that raids protect labor standards, enforcement often helps employers attack efforts by undocumented workers to better conditions. The two raids at Smithfield's Tarheel, North Carolina, packinghouse created a climate of terror during the union organizing drive, according to organizers. When housekeepers at the Woodfin Suites in Emeryville, California, tried to enforce a new municipal living wage law, ICE investigated them at the request of Congressman Brian Bilbray (R-San Diego), and company president Samuel Hardage. According to Mejia, supervisors often used immigration status to threaten workers in a union drive at Agriprocessors a year before the raid. And at Pilgrim's Pride packing plants ICE and employers cooperated to arrest employees this spring.

After the first Smithfield raid in January, 2007, Mark Lauritsen, UFCW packinghouse director, said the Department of Homeland Security and the company "were worried about people organizing a union, and the government said, 'here are the tools to take care of them.'" Scott Frotman, spokesperson for the United Food and Commercial Workers, says "raids let companies drive down wages and working conditions." To NILC's Marielena Hincapie, raids show the employers' power: "Enforcement intimidates even citizens and legal residents. The employer brings in another batch of workers and continues business as usual. People who protest get targeted and deported."

Employers, while complaining about the inconvenience of raids, have been very willing to accept greater enforcement. American Meat Institute chair and Tyson Foods CEO Dick Bondhas supported the Bush plan "because it included some of the provisions that AMI and the industry really want: a path to legalization, a guest worker program and a better employee verification program."

Nan Walden, a former Democratic Congressional aide who owns a large pecan ranch near Tucson, and helped organize Arizona Employers for Immigration Reform, worries that "removing 9-12% of the workforce will be a disaster." She advocates a "humane" guest worker program, a verifiable identification system, a path to citizenship for undocumented people, and "market-based quotas" for future migration. She criticizes Arizona's sanctions law, however, for its "piecemeal approach." While she's "disturbed by the hatred stirred up by opponents of immigration," Walden warns that without a reform like the one she describes, employers will move operations out of the state and country. "Raising wages isn't the answer, because our costs are all going up, and we still have to be competitive."

Criminalizing work has helped ICE gain the involvement of state and local authorities. Last year Arizona passed bills requiring state employers to use the E-Verify system to ensure they were not hiring the undocumented. Employers must verify an applicant's immigration status with a database, that DHS said in 2006 "is still not sufficiently up to date to meet the ... requirements for accurate verification." The original bill would have punished any employer with an undocumented employee, but after employers protested, the law was changed so that they would be fined only for future hiring.

E-Verify makes undocumented workers more vulnerable. One woman employed in a Tucson bakery, who withheld her name, explained she was getting only $10/hour for tending the oven, while legal residents were getting $16 for the same job. "If I leave or get fired, how will I find another job with a bad Social Security number?" she wondered. A Tucson union organizer, also afraid to be identified, added that construction workers told her that contractors lowered wages from $18 to $10/hour after the law passed, and told them to bring their own tools to the job. She described rising unemployment, with workers leaving for other states. "It's not going to stop us from organizing the union," she said, "but it will certainly make it harder."

In March Arizona state police arrested 14 employees at a Tucson Panda Express restaurant for mismatching Social Security numbers. After the state prosecutor threatened felony identity theft charges, carrying long prison sentences, workers pleaded guilty to lesser charges and were sentenced to time served. Nevertheless, in June they were still in jail, four months after the raid. As in Postville, deportation became a desirable outcome that would free them from incarceration. Francisco Mondaca, the only one able to get bail, pleaded guilty to "impersonating a Panda worker." He says "I didn't hurt anyone. I filed W-2s and paid taxes. All I did was go to work."

After the raid Panda Express fired all its Arizona workers, according to one terminated employee, and brought in a new workforce. "The company knew we didn't have papers," he said. "Managers would talk about it." No action was taken against company management.

Over a dozen states now have some version of employer sanctions, and Colombia County in Oregon has put a local sanctions ordinance on the ballot. On March 17, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour signed SB 2988, which requires employers to use E-Verify, and gives them immunity for hiring undocumented workers if they do. An undocumented worker holding a job faces felony charges carrying one to five years in prison, and fines up to $10,000. Workers are ineligible for bail.

Then, on August 25, ICE agents raided a Howard Industries plant in Laurel, Mississippi, sending 481 workers to a privately-run detention center in Jena, Louisiana, and releasing 106 women for "humanitarian reasons," most in ankle bracelets. While workers taken to Jena weren't immediately hustled before a judge, as in Postville, they were incarcerated with no idea of where they were being held, and weren't charged or provided lawyers for days. ICE spokesperson Barbara Gonzalez declined to say how long detention would last. Federal prosecutors charged eight with felony identity theft, and Gonzalez said criminal charges might be brought against the others.

Patricia Ice, attorney for the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance (MIRA), called the raid political. "They want a mass exodus of immigrants out of the state, the kind we've seen in Arizona and Oklahoma," she declared. "The political establishment here is threatened by Mississippi's changing demographics, and what the electorate might look like in 20 years." In the last two decades, the percentage of African Americans in the state's population has increased to over 35%. Immigrants, who were statistically insignificant until recently, are expected to reach 10% in the next decade. And workers have been joining Mississippi unions in catfish and poultry plants, casinos and shipyards.

Raids and sanctions come on top of day-to-day harassment. At roadblocks near local chicken plants in Laurel, police stop workers and confiscate the cars of those who can't get drivers' licenses because they don't have papers. "They take us away in handcuffs and we have to pay over $1000 to get out of jail and get our cars back," according to one worker who asked that her name be withheld. Similar roadblocks and auto confiscations are common now in many states.

Jim Evans, state AFL-CIO staffer, leader of the legislature's Black Caucus, and MIRA board chair, says the state sanctions law and the raid serve the same objective. "They are efforts to drive a wedge between immigrants, African Americans, white people and unions - all those who want political change here."

At the same time, he says, "they make it easier to exploit workers. The people who profit from Mississippi's low wage system want to keep it the way it is." He points to the fact that while workers without papers now risk fines, prison time and deportation, Mississippi employers have hired thousands of guest workers in the state's packinghouses, shipyards and casinos. At the Signal International shipyard, workers contracted in India paid thousands of dollars for temporary visas, and were then been fired and threatened with deportation when they protested bad conditions. Guest workers are welcome in Mississippi, so long as they don't settle down with families, organize unions, or push for political change.

Two weeks before the Laurel raid Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff made the same connection. "We tried very hard last year to get a guest worker program which I continue to believe is not only necessary for the economy but it is actually a way of enabling the enforcement," he said. "There's obviously a straightforward solution to the problem of illegal work, which is you open the front door and you shut the back door...Congress wasn't willing to open the front door ... In the interim, to be honest, we're closing the back door." Closing the back door is a euphemism for immigration raids. Opening the front door means guest worker programs.

Immigrant rights organizations and unions, however, have challenged this enforcement program with demonstrations and lawsuits. In Phoenix, county sheriff Joe Arpaio became a hero to nativist groups for invading immigrant communities with deputies, busses and helicopters, picking up people on the street and holding them for ICE. But when Pruitt's Furniture Store hired off-duty deputies to arrest day laborers, and Arpaio brought in the Minutemen, huge picket lines of workers, churches and immigrant rights groups grew to over a thousand people. "Even the Phoenix Police Department came out to protect us from him," says Pablo Alvarado, director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. "The mayor called for an FBI investigation, and the governor took $1.8 million from Arpaio's budget."

The United Food and Commercial Workers organized five hearings to investigate raids, and filed a lawsuit to stop ICE from conducting the kind of mass detentions it made at Swift. The union also organized a National Commission on ICE Misconduct and Violations of Fourth Amendment Rights. "Showing up for work should not subject workers to being detained," says UFCW President Joe Hansen. "Work is not a crime. Workers are not criminals. We do not leave our constitutional rights at the plant gate."

In California the AFL-CIO, two central labor councils and one building trades council, the NILC and the ACLU filed suit in 2007 to stop ICE from issuing a new no-match regulation. Under Chertoff's proposal Social Security would have sent letters to over 160,000 employers, listing the names of at least eight million workers with mismatched numbers. Employers would have had to fire all who could not produce numbers SSA could verify. The order was blocked by U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney, and is still on hold.

And just three days after the Mississippi raid, while many immigrants hid in their homes in fear, MIRA organizer Vicky Cintra and over a hundred raid victims and family members marched down to the Howard Industries plant in Laurel to demand withheld paychecks. When company managers called the police, who tried to arrest Cintra, immigrants began shouting "Let her go!" As news reporters arrived on the scene, the police backed off. Seventy families got paychecks to keep them eating, while their men were in immigration jail and their women were braceleted and unable to work. More protests in the following days forced the company to pay hundreds of other families as well.

Newspaper reports had highlighted an incident in which some workers applauded as immigrants were led from the plant in handcuffs during the original raid. But when Cintra and the braceleted women protested on the grass outside the gate, African American workers leaving at shift change crossed the street, embraced them, and offered to find them food and to support their protest.

Implementing its program by executive action, the administration is using immigration raids to create a large bureaucracy, with rich contracts and high-paying jobs. It hopes to give it an unstoppable political momentum that will tie the hands of any new administration.

Should John McCain be elected President, he is likely to embrace that program, and continue the quest in Congress to weld that system into place. McCain cosponsored the Kennedy-McCain bill, helping set the terms for Washington's immigration debate. As Arizona Senator he belongs to the political establishment that made his state an enforcement testing ground.

Barack Obama has the chance to stop this juggernaut. At the AFL-CIO, Anna Avenda�o, director of immigration programs, is drafting ideas for an Obama administration's first 100 days. "At the very least, it could change the regulations and terms of enforcement," she says, ending, for instance, the practice of charging undocumented immigrants with federal crimes like identity theft.

The larger question, however, is whether Obama would challenge the mushrooming enforcement bureaucracy and the raids it feeds on, advocating a more humane immigration policy. Organizations like the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights urge that instead of the enforcement/guest worker/legalization triad, Congress should legalize people without papers, and make more visas available for legal migration, without setting up guest worker programs. The AFL-CIO, the Network, and many others want much greater enforcement of labor standards and union rights, and call for repealing employer sanctions. Congress member Jackson Lee advocates combining jobs programs with legalization and organizing rights, to bring workers together instead of pitting them against each other.

If an Obama administration and a Democratic-controlled Congress move in this direction, immigration policy would no longer be the "third rail of American politics," in the words of party strategist Rahm Emmanuel. Instead, it would protect the rights and living standards of immigrants, and workers generally. - For more articles and images on immigration, see http://dbacon.igc.org/Imgrants/imgrants.htm

Just out from Beacon Press: Illegal People - How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002

See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006) http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575

See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004) http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html

Research support for this article was provided by the Puffin Foundation Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute.

Labels: immigration

posted by Patricia Lopez at 8:34 PM 1 comments Links to this post

I never get over the criminalizing language used when talking about undocumented immigrants, the phrase: "agents had already rounded up its workers" is so dehumanizing.

-Patricia

Henry K. Lee | SF Chronicle
September 20, 2008

Federal agents have raided three Bay Area homes and two restaurants, arresting 21 undocumented immigrants who had been working at the establishments and living in squalor, authorities said Friday.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents searched homes in Vacaville, Vallejo and Hercules on Wednesday as well as King's Buffet on Orange Drive in Vacaville and the Empire Buffet on Sonoma Boulevard in Vallejo, both Chinese restaurants.

Authorities are also investigating a second outlet of the Empire Buffet in San Pablo. That restaurant wasn't searched because it never opened Wednesday, most likely because agents had already rounded up its workers, said spokeswoman Virginia Kice of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Authorities said 13 suspected undocumented immigrants had been found at the Chinese restaurants and the other eight had been found at homes owned by people linked to the establishments. One person was released on humanitarian grounds; the rest are to appear before federal immigration judges.

The workers were crammed into small rooms or garages with makeshift walls and mattresses on the floor at the homes on Park Street in Hercules, Purple Sage Drive in Vacaville and Glacier Court in Vallejo, authorities said. The homes were infested with rodent droppings, agents said.

The owners of the Vacaville and Vallejo homes have been identified but have not been charged, Kice said. She said the investigation was continuing.

The case began in May 2006, when someone called to report suspicious activity at the Vacaville home. Neighbors reported that residents of Chinese descent were being "picked up early in the morning from the residence and not returning until late at night," immigration Special Agent Jose Ochoa wrote in an affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Sacramento.

Vacaville police went to the home and found 21 mattresses, receipts from King's Buffet and evidence that 30 people had been living there, wrote Ochoa, whose agency took over the investigation.

Investigators said they found evidence that some of the restaurants' undocumented workers were being paid in cash and that their wage information had not been reported to the state Employment Development Department, as required by law.

"No business, regardless of size, type or location, is immune from complying with the law," Daniel Lane, assistant special agent in charge of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigations office in Sacramento, said in a statement. "All too often, illegal alien workers are exploited in some fashion by the businesses that hire them, and that is unacceptable."

Nine of the undocumented immigrants arrested Wednesday are from China, five from Mexico, three from Guatemala, two from Indonesia, one from Singapore and one from Honduras.

E-mail Henry K. Lee at hlee@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page B - 3 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Labels: immigration

posted by Patricia Lopez at 9:19 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Here's an interesting discussion that I think adds to the previous post on college-readiness, or lack there of.

You can also check out the video of this discussion

Below is the transcript.

-Patricia


By Louis Soares | Center for American Progress
October 8, 2008

How successful is the United States' higher education system? Why aren't students leaving high school ready for post-secondary education? And how can we improve higher education and boost degree completion rates?

TRANSCRIPT:
Louis Soares on higher education

How successful is the United States' higher education system?

We rank number one among developed countries for adults ages 55 to 64 with a college education. We rank only number seven for adults ages 25 to 34 with a college education. So something's happened in that 30 year interim. In fact, many things have happened. We've seen the age diversity change, the learning preparedness diversity change, and the number of people combining work and college are changing, as well. In fact, 40 percent of our undergraduates now attend two-year colleges. What's essentially happened is that college going has become more complex on a number of metrics. And we have a federal policy that's largely focused on access, which means making college more affordable. It's not that we don't need that. We need college to be more affordable. But we also need federal policies to take the next step and begin to focus on helping folks actually complete the degrees once they get started in post-secondary education.

Why aren't students leaving high school ready for post-secondary education?

Degree completion is an issue for all college goers, but we do face a particular challenge with the transition from high school to college. Our best data estimates are showing that only 50 percent of high school students are actually prepared to do college level work. And this level of preparedness, or lack of preparedness, is directly impacting their ability to complete college. Our best estimates on college completion show that only 49 of students who are required to take remedial courses in college actually finish their degree. And, when we dig a little deeper, we actually see greater societal challenges along racial and ethnic lines because Hispanics and African Americans are even less likely to be academically prepared for college. So we need to really focus on those students that are the least prepared to build bridges to them for college.

How can we improve higher education and boost degree completion rates?

We need to move to a federal policy that's an access-plus policy. We need to build on our affordability policies of grants and discounted loans and include investments that would make students more college-ready, and colleges more student-ready. Investments that will make students more college-ready include investing in more college preparation, both in high school, and beyond; making financial assistance more transparent so that individuals and their families can understand it more easily; and also, making college quality data much more available so folks can make good choices about the colleges that are best for them.

Investing in making colleges more student-ready involves investment in three core areas. The first is investing in instructional practices and new counseling techniques to help students be more successful and complete their degrees once they start. The second is to align the post-secondary system with secondary school and other with federally-funded training programs so that we have all folks targeting degree completion as a way to get their education. And third, we need to really take a look at frameworks for measuring if students are learning in college programs. Currently, we don't have that, and that will be critical to knowing if students are investing their money properly, and if we're investing the public's money properly.

Labels: college readiness

posted by Patricia Lopez at 9:07 AM 1 comments Links to this post

This is a major issue in the state of Texas. Aside from the costs of remedial courses for incoming college students we should be concerned with how these findings place scrutiny on the [standardized] curriculum many Texas high school students receive, which I think may speak to Romer's ending comment that this curriculum does set the expectations low and bases college-readiness on test performance.

Check out the full report Diploma to Nowhere.

-Patricia

Teacher Magazine
September 15, 2008

It's a tough lesson for millions of students just now arriving on campus: even if you have a high school diploma, you may not be ready for college.

In fact, a new study calculates, one-third of American college students have to enroll in remedial classes. The bill to colleges and taxpayers for trying to bring them up to speed on material they were supposed to learn in high school comes to between $2.3 billion and $2.9 billion annually.

"That is a very large cost, but there is an additional cost and that's the cost to the students," said former Colorado governor Roy Romer, chair of the group Strong American Schools, which is issuing the report "Diploma to Nowhere" on Monday. "These students come out of high school really misled. They think they're prepared. They got a 3.0 and got through the curriculum they needed to get admitted, but they find what they learned wasn't adequate."

Christina Jeronimo was an "A'' student in high school English, but was placed in a remedial course when she arrived at Long Beach Community College in California. The course was valuable in some ways but frustrating and time-consuming. Now in her third year of community college, she'd hoped to transfer to UCLA by now.

Like many college students, she wishes she'd been worked a little harder in high school.

"There's a gap," said Jeronimo, who hopes to study psychology. "The demands of the high school teachers aren't as great as the demands for college. Sometimes they just baby us."

The problem of colleges devoting huge amounts of time and money to remediation isn't new, though its scale and cost has been difficult to measure. The latest report gives somewhat larger estimates than some previous studies, though it is not out of line with trends suggested in others, said Hunter Boylan, an expert at Appalachian State University in North Carolina, who was not connected with the report.

Analyzing federal data, the report estimates 43 percent of community college students require remediation, as do 29 percent of students at public four-year universities, with higher numbers in some places. For instance, four in five Oklahoma community college students need remedial coursework, and three in five in the giant California State university system need help in English, math or both.

The cost per student runs to as much as $2,000 per student in community colleges and $2,500 in four-year universities.

Jeronimo was hardly alone at Long Beach Community College, where 95 percent of students need remedial coursework, according to President Eloy Oakley.

"It's the number one issue to Long Beach City College and the entire California community college system, easily," Oakley said. "I don't believe that the public in general really understands the magnitude of the problem."

Simply dumping the remedial students into large classes isn't necessarily expensive for colleges, although it's also not very effective. But smaller classes typically require more attention and money. Some states have refused to fund remedial courses at the university level. In California, Oakley said, state funding for community colleges favors credit courses. Remediation (or "basic skills" as he and many educators call it) is typically noncredit.

Educators are working to improve remedial courses. Long Beach is developing "success areas" that give extra time and attention to students. Community colleges in Tennessee have completely redesigned giant introductory and remedial courses where many students were struggling.

Boylan says colleges are learning such courses must also teach study skills to be effective.

Indeed, students often report that the hardest aspect of the transition to college isn't the material. It's the new rhythm and structure of college-level work.

"One of the things that they don't teach in high school is time management," Jeronimo said.

Eric Paris, who earned a 3.8 high school GPA but is finding his freshman year at Virginia Tech much more challenging, says the big difference is "it's all on my own." In class, "it's up to me if I want to sit on Facebook or pay attention." He, too, wishes he'd taken more challenging high school classes but thought a high GPA was more important.

Boylan says the gap between what high schools teach and what colleges expect isn't the only problem. He says there's often a mismatch, with high schools and colleges teaching material in different ways.

It's true that only recently have K-12 and higher education begun talking seriously about aligning standards. But Romer, who has also headed the Los Angeles Unified School District, doesn't buy that it's a communication problem.

"We're not expecting enough of our youngsters and the institutions that train them," he said.

Labels: high-stakes testing, higher education

posted by Patricia Lopez at 8:45 AM 0 comments Links to this post

This is a very important and informative article/ reflection.

-Patricia

Monica Garcia| LACCCENTER
October 9, 2008

If the immigrant rights movement doesn’t understand raids, detention, and deportation in the context of the greater prison-industrial complex, and organize accordingly, we will lose the fight of our lives - a fight we can and must win.

During the immigration debates and protests of 2006-2007, a small but significant chorus of organizations - those working with families facing deportation - spoke out strongly against many of the immigration reform legislative proposals. What many in the beltway where calling “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” (CIR) wasn’t comprehensive enough to fix the detention and deportation system that had eaten up and spit out almost two million people and destroyed nearly as many families. Instead, the grand bargain for reform was to allow for stricter immigration enforcement in exchange for a normalized status for some undocumented immigrant workers.

In the limited scope of those debates, the primary contention was whether that normalized status would lead to green cards (legalization) or not for those immigrant guest workers. It seemed the folks in the beltway, some dear friends of ours, felt the need to concede the anti-immigrant forces’ thirst for more enforcement in order to obtain some semblance of legalization. However, it seemed the survivors of immigration enforcement - families facing deportation and families affected by the deaths and militarization of the border - were being made into sacrificial lambs for an elusive blessing of legalization riddled with unwanted curses.

Our intentions weren’t based solely on self-interest. Fighting for justice for our brothers and sisters that died in detention, for our children that had lost parents to deportation, and for our families whose sole income provider suffered the desert terrain alongside the border wasn’t a trivial struggle. But like our colleagues backing CIR, we were also fighting for the future of immigrant communities.


Emerging apartheid

At that time, I wrote in Left Turn about the fight of our lives. Back then, my colleagues and I had highlighted to our friends in the immigrant rights movement that we were witnessing the emergence of immigrant apartheid in the US. A system was developing that would systematically criminalize and attack immigrants’ lives as people of color and working people. This emerging apartheid would use the criminal justice-, prison-, and deportation systems - and any other system - at its disposal to make lives of immigrants - both legal and undocumented - as hard as possible. What we would see, whether we won reform or not, would be more arrests, more raids, more detentions, and more deportations. In sum, more destruction of our communities.

Many people in the mainstream of the immigrant rights movement thought that we were blowing things out of proportion. Some mocked our characterization of what was happening to immigrants as “apartheid.” Some allies had labeled our work against deportation, detention, and the excesses of the criminal justice system as “boutique issues” - sexy, but not as substantive as the fight for legalization. Others were far too enchanted with portraying immigrants as hardworking and law-abiding. They saw nothing wrong with focusing the ire of immigration enforcement on the “bad” immigrants nor saw anything cynical about alluding to rights as something that “good” immigrants deserve.

They sure as hell weren’t going to sacrifice a potential win just to benefit the “bad” immigrants, namely - those in the deportation- and criminal justice systems. We would keep insisting, in vain it seemed, that this fight had to be about more than just green cards in an era where green cards were losing their significance. It also had to be about more than the “good” immigrants in an era where the “good” immigrants could easily be recast as “bad.”

We were speaking from experience. We had seen how the FBI had taken a young hardworking legal immigrant and pizza deliverer named Anser Mahmood and recast him, first, as a suspected terrorist. When that didn’t work, the small financial assistance he gave to immigrant friends was defined as “alien smuggling,” making him a criminal alien and mandatorily deportable to Pakistan, despite the pleas from his own upstate New York neighbors and over a dozen members of Congress. We had seen US Army veteran and legal immigrant Warren Joseph’s post traumatic stress from the first Gulf War cause him to run afoul of the law and into an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center for three years, facing deportation to Trinidad. We had seen post-September 11 raids tear apart the lives of over 1500 working families from South Asia and the Middle East under the guise of the “war on terror.”

The anti-immigrant far Right (and not-so-far Right) had no such illusions of a difference between “good” and “bad” immigrants. They talked openly about a “war of attrition” against immigrants. Late night pundits like Pat Buchanan talked candidly and favorably about going after all unwanted immigrants under the guise of going after the “worst.” Those of us that had worked with families facing deportation for the past decade understood this strategy.


Movement miscalculation

A major miscalculation of some of the immigrant rights movement was the assessment that the immigration system was attacking only immigrants and their undocumented status. So once immigrants had their papers - a path to legalization not to be confused with actual legalization - they would be fine. This ignores the fact that the value of a green card had diminished since the passage of 1996 so-called reforms. It also ignores the fact that many of the aforementioned immigrants still lead their lives as low-income immigrants of color.

Many of our friends in the immigrant rights movement simply couldn’t see that the forces creating apartheid against immigrants were also attacking the ideas and institutions of immigrants - those that allowed them to rise above subsistence (in some cases flourish) -as much as they where attacking immigrants and their status. In the process immigrants - and the ideas and institutions of their everyday lives - were being criminalized. This criminalization had become far easier in a period marked by “wars” on drugs, “wars” on terror, and other “wars” meant to have an elusive target and a beginning with no end.

Some of us had the blessing of knowing elders that fought for civil rights, and those who carried the struggle beyond civil rights, to the Black liberation movement. Historical reflection impressed something upon us. Just maybe, for all the rhetorical linkages that the immigrant rights movement drew with the Civil Rights movement, we failed to see what happened in the Black community after the peak of the Civil Rights movement.

The victories of integration were followed by an explosion in the prison system and mass incarceration in the Black community. Communities that survived poll tests, poll taxes, and grandfather clauses to preserve their right to vote were processed through the criminal justice system only to be disenfranchised again. The vibrant businesses and civic associations that endured decades of Jim Crow would be replaced by extreme capital flight and a criminalized informal sector - a criminalized political economy. What the Civil Rights struggle forced the government to give back to Black folks through the narrative of its “best” (Rosa Parks, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, etc.) the government would later take by pushing narratives of the Black community at its “worst.”

Open eyes

Hindsight is only 20/20 when our eyes are open. The difference between that period and this period is that the clues of what was next for the Black community were not as readily available to our Freedom Fighters of that era. President Nixon’s crime strategy, as he articulated behind closed doors, was to direct the criminal justice system primarily at the Black community without publicly saying so. This only became public knowledge after one of Nixon’s closest aides’ personal experiences with the prison system exposed him to its evils.

By comparison, the blueprint criminalizing immigrants was made readily available to the public. The much-touted and hated Sensenbrenner-King bill of 2005-2006, which passed the House of Representatives, left little encrypted in its desire for wholesale criminalization of immigrant communities. Even earlier, plans like the quickly-recanted “PATRIOT Act II,” crafted in 2002 by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, proposed to criminalize the very way immigrants made their livings and lived their lives.

During the Civil Rights movement, there was a whole chorus of Freedom Fighters that cried that the struggle couldn’t just be about integration. The expansion of the prison-industrial complex in the Black community and its subsequent “wars” (on drugs, for example) was that era’s tragic “We told you so.” In 2006, many of us were screaming, “This can’t just be about green cards!” The expansion of ICE raids was our tragic “We told you so.”

On May 12, 2008, ICE agents arrested 389 workers during a raid at the Agriprocessors Inc meat packing plant in Postville, Iowa. Within weeks, nearly 300 mostly-Latino workers were criminally charged by federal prosecutors with crimes ranging from identity theft to illegal entry. Where a typical ICE raid would result in mostly administrative immigration charges, these workers were railroaded through federal criminal court receiving up to six month sentences in federal prison. In dramatic fashion, ICE instantly made this group of immigrant workers criminal aliens - the “bad” immigrants.

We felt no satisfaction when government tactics confirmed our worst fears. No one wants to be right or prophetic when predicting the destruction of our communities. However, we were taken by surprise by the response from the previously conservative mainstream of our movement. People that would have never been open to understanding the injustices of the criminal justice system and the deportation process saw clearly the need to tackle these systems with a newfound vigor. Over and over again, we would see new voices in immigrant communities come out and say, “Let us fight for legalization, but let us fight for more than legalization.” Organizers and activists that have rarely spoken publicly about a family member’s incarceration or deportation are coming forward. Old adversaries are talking about strategies to tackle the deportation system.

Movement blueprint

Predicting the emergence of immigrant apartheid is far easier than identifying how a movement can defeat it. But individuals and organizers around the country are developing the blueprint for how we may begin to win.

1) We must make this bigger than green cards. We are fighting for the future of our communities. We cannot act like the path to legalization is a path flowing with milk and honey. It is a necessary step in a path towards a greater vision of social justice.

2) We must focus on building power in immigrant communities. Organizers such as Juan Pablo Chávez of the Florida Immigrant Coalition have instructed us at great length on the need to organize rather than mobilize. We cannot be a movement of mobilizations and talking heads. We must build real leaders in real communities to bring about real change.

3) We must organize in immigrant communities most directly impacted. We must stop talking about “good” and “bad” immigrants and build with those most affected. This is the only way to build a movement with more depth. Families that have survived the prison-industrial complex are not sob stories and charity cases; they are individuals that have survived one of the most sophisticated systems this society has for marginalizing someone. Their knowledge and determination makes our movement stronger. New organizations such as Deported Diaspora in Boston, new organizers such as Luisanna Santibanez in Austin, Texas, and older yet formidable organizations such as Homies Unidos in Los Angeles, and Families For Freedom in New York continue to dedicate their time to building in the most impacted communities. More efforts like this have to be incubated and supported.

4) We must build the capacity of grassroots organizations to create the solutions to their own problems. Policies in the beltway must be grounded in the wisdom and intellect of communities on the ground. But that can only happen when immigrant communities develop the faith and the capacity to create those solutions. Otherwise, solutions in the beltway will be made for immigrants, not by immigrants.

5) We must identify the ideas and institutions in immigrant communities that we need to protect, and protect them vigorously. The things that enable a detainee to represent himself and win his freedom, or enable an immigrant family to survive the desert and support family on two continents are the same things that will enable us to build real alternatives to the world we live in today. When we forsake what our communities have already built, we forsake our real power.

6) We must confront the Department of Homeland Security more directly. From Hurricane Katrina, to the ICE raids, to corrupt agents along the border, the Department of Homeland Security has survived numerous investigations and audits only see its budget increase even more. If we don’t find more creative and strategic ways to confront ICE, we will see even more destruction of our communities and have no one else to blame.

Recently, I spoke with a family friend, a young Caribbean woman whose husband was detained by ICE. Nearly everyone had told her that her husband would be deported. Despite this, through her persistence, he was released a month after being detained. On the way home from picking him up she told me “I said my prayers and knew if I fought hard enough, I would see us together again.” With that spirit, I know that if we fight smart and fight hard, our communities, our families, and our loved ones will win this fight.

Author: Subhash Kateel, 08 Oct. 2009, Source: LeftTurn

Labels: detention centers, immigration

posted by Patricia Lopez at 8:34 AM 0 comments Links to this post

By Elizabeth Redden
Inside Higher Education
September 17, 2008

In reinstating a lawsuit challenging tuition policy Monday, a California appeals court unanimously found that a state statute extending lower in-state tuition rates to illegal immigrants conflicts with federal law and “thwarts the will of Congress.”

California is one of 10 states that makes undocumented students eligible for in-state tuition rates. In California’s case, students can be exempt from paying nonresident rates if they graduated from and attended a California high school for three or more years and, in the case of undocumented students, if they file an affidavit stating intent to legalize their status if they become eligible to do so.

On a federal level, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit dismissed a challenge to a similar law in Kansas in 2007 because the plaintiffs were found to lack standing.

In the appeal court’s ruling in Martinez v. Regents of the University of California, which had earlier been dismissed by a trial court, the panel of three judges defined the central question at hand as whether the state’s authorization of in-state tuition rates for illegal immigrants violates federal law, which maintains: “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, an alien who is not lawfully present in the United States shall not be eligible on the basis of residence within a state (or a political subdivision) for any postsecondary education benefit unless a citizen or national of the United States is eligible for such a benefit (in no less an amount, duration, and scope) without regard to whether the citizen or national is such a resident.”

The defendants — spanning all three of California’s public university and college systems — held that the state statute does not conflict with federal law because (1) in-state tuition is not a “benefit,” as it’s defined under federal law, and because (2) rather than being extended “on the basis of residence within a state,” lower tuition rates for illegal immigrants are conditioned on California high school attendance and graduation.

The appellate court rejected the colleges’ arguments on both counts, finding, on the first point, that significantly cheaper in-state tuition is in fact a “benefit.” Furthermore, the judges write, “the three-year attendance requirement at a California high school is a surrogate residence requirement.”

The section of California’s education code at issue here “falls within the principle of implied preemption in that it stands as an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of the full purposes and objectives of Congress,” the appeals court found. The judges returned the case for consideration at the lower trial court level.

“I think it’s going to be very difficult for the defendants to defend this policy, in that the higher court, the appellate court, has already decided that ...this one section of the education code is preempted by federal law,” said Ralph W. Kasarda, a staff attorney for the Sacramento-based Pacific Legal Foundation, which filed a brief in support of the plaintiffs.

Filed as a class action suit, the plaintiffs are a group of U.S. citizen students (or tuition-paying parents). The students are from other states but are enrolled at California public colleges at nonresident tuition rates. They argue that the high school attendance requirement “illegally discriminates” against them “by denying them a benefit provided to illegal aliens.”

“The State of California here tried to claim that they carefully chose their words in the statute in such a way to evade Congress’ intent and find a loophole in the statute. And what the court said was, ‘No, no such loophole exists,’ ” said Kris W. Kobach, a professor of law at University of Missouri at Kansas City who is one of two lead lawyers for the plaintiffs.

While the California appeals court decision is not binding in other states, it will likely have an impact beyond the state’s borders, Kobach said. “Frequently you will hear of states considering nearly identical statutes as the California law, and one of the arguments that is made is, ‘California’s law has never been struck down. None of these other laws have been struck down or held to be in violation of federal law, why don’t we go ahead and do it?’ Now every state legislature in the country will be put on notice.”

“It should serve as a shot across the bow to the other nine states that they are potentially exposed to liability because of their statutes,” Kobach continued.

Christopher M. Patti, university counsel for the UC System, said that while lawyers are still analyzing the opinion, “We are considering the possibility of a petition for review in the California Supreme Court.”

“I think that in any appeal the major focus would likely be on this issue of whether this is a residency-based requirement,” said Patti. “The legislature thought about that issue and tried to fashion a bill that complied with federal law, and we think they did that successfully. So that’s something that if there’s an appeal, the Supreme Court is going to have to grapple with.”

As of now, however, “the law is still in full effect, and [the decision] should not have any immediate impact on the colleges,” said Steven Bruckman, executive vice chancellor and general counsel for the California Community College System. He estimated that about 20,000 community college students, most of whom are undocumented immigrants, would lose their eligibility for cheaper resident tuition if the law were ultimately declared invalid.

“Our mission is to provide broad access to education. A court ruling that would limit access to students is disappointing to us,” he said.

“We will fight it as long as it is necessary to clarify this,” said Michael A. Olivas, a professor and expert on higher education and immigration law at the University of Houston. He faulted the California appeals court for misreading laws relative to residency. “What federal law requires is that people who have access to this status of being a resident may not be given any more advantage if they’re undocumented than if they’re a citizen. I say that’s fine. California still requires that you have been there 12 months [to declare residency]. The undocumented don’t get it by 11 months.”

Olivas disagreed with the assertion that the decision is relevant in other states, although he acknowledges it is being watched widely. “No other state is bound by what one state does, and they’re particularly not bound by it when the state got it wrong. They weren’t bound by it when the trial court in effect got it right.”

Labels: California, dream act

posted by Patricia Lopez at 8:15 AM 0 comments Links to this post

This is very upsetting. I've listed some of the key points at the end of the article.

You can also check out the full study"Generational Gains in Postsecondary Education Appear To Have Stalled" here.

-Patricia

by Robin Chen Delos | Diverse Issues in Higher Ed
Oct 9, 2008

The American tradition of generational upward mobility is at a standstill, and for some minority groups the younger generation is obtaining postsecondary education at lower levels than older adults, according to a new report released Thursday by the American Council on Education (ACE).

The overall percentage of young adults in their 20s and older adults over 30 with at least an associate degree was almost the same. But lower numbers of Hispanics and Native Americans were earning higher education degrees than their elders. For Hispanics, 18 percent of the older generation held at least an associate degree as compared with only 16 percent of young Hispanics, according to the Minorities in Higher Education 2008 Twenty-third Annual Status Report.

“It appears we are at a tipping point in our nation’s history,” says ACE President Molly Corbett Broad. “One of the core tenants of the American dream is the hope that younger generations, who’ve had greater opportunities for education advancement than their parents and grandparents, will be better off than the generations before them, yet this report shows that aspiration is at serious risk.”

Postsecondary achievement rates for Blacks remained the same between the younger and older generations, at about 24 percent. The two groups whose young people made gains over their elders were Asian Americans and Whites. Sixty-six percent of young Asian Americans holding at least an associate degree while 54 percent of the older generation had achieved the same level.

The generational achievement gap is an issue the presidential candidates should tackle, says Dr. Dolores Fernandez, president of predominantly Hispanic-serving City University of New York (CUNY)-Eugenio Maria de Hostos Community College.

Though the economy was the main issue in this week’s presidential debate, “the fact that the younger generation is attaining less than the older generation is something that should really be ringing bells in this nation. Somebody needs to bring higher education and middle and high school education to the table, and it needs to be addressed in a very serious matter because we’re not paying attention to it like we should,” says Fernandez.

Report analysts found minority enrollment in colleges rose by 50 percent between 1995 and 2005. But despite record numbers of minorities attending college, progress was uneven and gaps widened. “This report demonstrates that educational progress, while significant, is not keeping pace with the changing demographic realities,” says Mikyung Ryu, assistant director in ACE’s Center for Policy Analysis and author of the report.

Gaps in higher education not only exist between different ethnic groups and generations, but also between men and women. Significantly lower numbers of males than females enroll in college. Across racial groups, 36 percent of young men enrolled in college as compared with 44 percent of their female peers. Some colleges are already actively working to encourage more males to enroll, specifically minorities. For instance, the CUNY system has an initiative to increase enrollment rates of minority men, according to Fernandez.

The report also looked at minorities working in higher education and found that though the numbers of minority faculty, administrators and presidents increased over the past decade, the vast majority of these positions are still filled by Whites.

More Key Findings from the Report:

*Total minority enrollment at the nation’s colleges and universities rose by 50 percent from 3.4 million students to 5 million students between 1995 and 2005. White enrollment increased from 9.9 million to 10.7 million, a gain of 8 percent.

*Students of color made up 29 percent of the nearly 17.5 million students on America’s campuses.

*Despite significant gains in college enrollment rates for young people from all races, progress was uneven and gaps widened. In 2006, 61 percent of Asian Americans aged 18 to 24 were enrolled in college compared with 44 percent of whites, 32 percent of African Americans, and 25 percent of Hispanics and American Indians respectively.

Additional Findings:

High School Completion

*The high school completion rate for African Americans aged 18 to 24 remained relatively flat over the past two decades at about 76 percent.

*Despite improving their rate of high school completion from 59 percent to 68 percent, Hispanics still had the lowest rate among all racial/ethnic groups.

*Asian Americans had the highest rate of high school completion at 91 percent.

College Enrollment

* College enrollment among African Americans rose by 46 percent between 1995 and 2005 to nearly 2 million students.

*The increase in Hispanic enrollment led all racial/ethnic groups, up by 66 percent to more than 1.7 million students. Hispanic enrollment grew faster at four-year institutions than at two-year institutions.

*Asian-American enrollment increased to more than 1 million over the 10-year period between 1995 and 2005, up 37 percent.

* American Indian enrollment grew by 31 percent in the 10-year period, up from nearly 127,000 in 1995 to nearly 167,000 in 2005.

* Regardless of race, the gender gap in the college enrollment rate continued among young people aged 18 to 24. Thirty-six percent of young men were enrolled in college in 2006 compared with 44 percent of young women.

College Persistence

*College persistence rates declined slightly, and these declines were more pronounced for students who began at two-year institutions, especially for Hispanics.

*Among students who began at two-year institutions in 1995 and 2003, 55 percent of the 2003 freshmen were still enrolled or had attained a certificate or degree anywhere in higher education three years later, compared with 60 percent for the 1995 cohort. For Hispanics, this rate dropped sharply from 62 percent to 54 percent.

*Among students who began at a four-year institution in 1995 and 2003, 81 percent of the 2003 cohort persisted, compared to 83 percent of the 1995 cohort.

Degrees Conferred

*Minorities outpaced whites in the percentage change in total degrees awarded at all levels over the past decade. Minority women showed stronger gains than minority men at all degree levels.

*The number of minorities earning associate degrees between 1995 and 2005 grew 84 percent to just over 201,000. The number of minorities earning bachelor’s degrees over the same period grew 65 percent to 355,000.

*Hispanics nearly doubled the number of bachelor’s degrees received over the last decade to more than 105,000. Hispanics also made dramatic gains in doctoral degrees earned, rising from 950 in 1995 to more than 1,700 in 2005, an increase of 83 percent.

*African Americans more than doubled the number of master’s degrees earned from nearly 25,000 in 1995 to nearly 53,000 in 2005. During the same period, the number of doctoral degrees earned by African Americans increased 84 percent from nearly 1,600 to nearly 2,900.

*During the past decade the number of Asian-American men receiving doctoral degrees dropped by 10 percent, while the number of Asian-American women receiving these degrees increased by 74 percent.

Degrees Conferred by Field

*In recent years, minorities and whites both experienced declines in the number of bachelor’s degrees earned in computer sciences. They also lost ground in engineering over the decade at the doctoral degree level.

Employment in Higher Education

*Although minorities have made gains as college faculty, administrators and presidents over the last decade, whites still fill the overwhelming majority of these positions.

*In 2005, minorities represented 17 percent of all college administrators; 16 percent of full-time faculty and 13 percent of college presidents.

Labels: higher education

posted by Patricia Lopez at 6:55 PM 0 comments Links to this post

The Associated Press
Oct. 8, 2008

AUSTIN — People who aren't U.S. citizens must now prove they are living legally in the country before receiving or renewing a Texas driver's license or identification card.

Under the new administrative rule, the Department of Public Safety will require immigration documents that prove a person's lawful status.

After verifying an immigration document, DPS will include the designation "Temporary Visitor" and the date the person's status expires on the card, the governor's office said in a statement Wednesday. The face of the card also will look different, making it easily distinguishable.

To receive a duplicate or renewal identification or driver's license, the person must show the immigration status has been extended or updated, DPS said.

U.S. citizens do not have to provide documentation, the agency said.

DPS will not issue identification or driver's licenses to applicants who have permission to be in the U.S. for less than six months. Those who are not legally in the country or who overstayed without permission cannot get a driver's license or identification card.

Gov. Rick Perry praised the new rule, which took effect this month. The rule was adopted in August, DPS said.

The Public Safety Commission asked for the guideline, saying it was necessary to verify residency in the state, enhance security and deter fraud and misrepresentation.

The change brings Texas closer to complying with the federal REAL ID Act, said DPS spokesman Tom Vinger. The act requires states to issue drivers licenses to U.S. citizens or legal immigrants or create specially marked licenses if they are issued to people who cannot prove they are in the country legally.

Labels: immigration

posted by Patricia Lopez at 6:52 PM 0 comments Links to this post

By MITCH WEISS and JEFFREY COLLINS | Associated Press
October 8, 2008


GREENVILLE, S.C. (AP) — When Magdalana Domingo Ramirez Lopez moved to this South Carolina city nearly two years ago to work at the chicken processing plant, she felt at home.

On weekends, the neighborhood near House of Raeford's plant was filled with the sounds of salsa music and the scents of Guatemalan cooking. She would shop with her three small sons at nearby businesses that catered to the immigrants — some in the country legally, others not.

While the sights and sounds reminded Lopez of her native Guatemala, she said she was happy living in the United States — a place that offered a better life for her and her three young sons.

But those hopes were shattered Tuesday when federal agents swooped into the plant, arresting 330 suspected illegal immigrants, six of them juveniles, effectively shutting down the factory and tearing apart the close-knit community.

Lopez was arrested and could be deported, as her husband was two years ago.

"My whole life has changed," she said as tears rolled down her cheeks. "I don't want to go back. My sons are better off here. The country is so poor. There's nothing there."

A day after the raid, families waited to hear from loved ones at detention centers. Meanwhile, businesses and streets were vacant because those not rounded up stayed home, afraid agents would return.

Just days before, poultry workers visibly filled the neighborhoods around the plant.

The community's transformation was slow but steady over the last 15 years as the newcomers replaced working-class whites and blacks. Neighborhood residents who knew about federal charges against plant supervisors accused of helping illegal immigrants forge documents didn't think the trouble would trickle down to them.

After all, they were only here to give the plant long hours of joint-aching work and local officials didn't seem to mind. That thought was likely shared by immigrants in communities nationwide including states throughout the South, Iowa and New York who have been caught in similar raids by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Lopez, 29, believed she was safe. But she spent most of Tuesday being fingerprinted and questioned by federal agents and a day later was coming to grips with being sent back to Guatemala. Her sons — ages 4, 5 and 6 — were all born in the U.S.

"The whole time I was there with police, I cried. I kept thinking about my sons. That I wouldn't see them again," she said.

She left Central America because she didn't want her family to grow up in a place where she was so hungry at times that she had to eat grass and dirt.

"I came to the U.S. for work. I came in peace. My goal was to help my sons grow up in a better place. Now that's gone," she said.

House of Raeford processes chickens and turkeys in eight plants in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana and Michigan. The Greenville plant and its nearly 900 workers have been under scrutiny for almost a year as authorities looked into allegations the company knowingly hired illegal immigrants. Eleven supervisors and the plant's human resources director have been arrested, mostly for falsifying immigration documents.

The company has issued a statement saying it never knowingly hired illegal immigrants and was cooperating.

Many workers say they had no idea about the legal troubles or that a raid was imminent.

"We never thought they would come in and start arresting everyone," said 35-year-old Jorge Mendoza, who missed the morning raid because he works second shift. "That would be like shutting down the plant. They wouldn't do that, we thought. The plant is too busy."

Mendoza said he plans to move his family because it's too dangerous to stay.

Greenville County deputies couldn't do much about illegal immigrants because no provision in South Carolina law makes it illegal to be in the U.S. without permission. Instead, deputies who thought they arrested or spoke to an illegal immigrant were told to contact federal immigration officials, said Master Deputy Michael Hildebrand.

Those arrested in the raid face various charges, including re-entry after deportation, counterfeit documents and false statements. All are in the U.S. Marshal's custody and have been processed for deportation.

Luis Garcia, an interpreter in the area, said removing so many people will devastate the community.

"They're breaking families. Everyone is worried," said Garcia, who visited Lopez to see how she was doing.

Lopez is under house arrest and has to wear an ankle monitor until her deportation hearing Nov. 14. She has no money to hire a lawyer.

Her 4-year-old son, Issias, is recovering from surgery she doubted he would get proper medical care in Guatemala, where she plans to take her children to rejoin their father.

When immigration officials asked her to sign a deportation order, she said she refused, replying: "First you kill me, then I'll sign it."

Several miles down the road, Emilio Espinoza manages the Guatemala Restaurant in a strip mall with a grocery store, bakery and nightclub, all catering toward Hispanics.

His usually packed restaurant was empty at lunchtime Wednesday for the first time since he opened seven years ago. Half his employees didn't show up because they were scared immigration agents might be in the area.

"People are afraid to leave their homes," said the 35-year-old Espinoza.

David Wynn said he has watched the neighborhood change around his heating and air conditioning supply store across the street from the plant.

Everyone knew the plant hired illegal immigrants, said Wynn, who added no one wanted to do anything about it because they figured the workers were doing jobs no one else wanted. With the economy getting worse, that's probably no longer true and he worries what is going to happen to all the people caught up in the raid.

"We need to pray for them," Wynn said.

Labels: immigration

posted by Patricia Lopez at 6:49 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Austin school district spending $1.37 million to reform middle schools.

By Laura Heinauer
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Monday, October 06, 2008



She paces, she shouts, she teases them, and she calls them out.

"Gentlemen, the day I wear a jumper and a little apple pin is the day you're back in the fifth grade and you can whine," Dobie Middle School teacher Holly Van Eis, dressed in a no-frills shirt and slacks, said to a classroom full of sixth-grade boys.

Getting the students engaged in the day's lesson — on differences between literal, inferential and thematic styles of writing — took a little strong arming, literally: "Seriously, do you want to arm wrestle?" she asked to one boy, a challenge that seemed to turn every head in the room. "You lose and you lose all bathroom passes for a week."

Dobie's experiment in all-boys and all-girls classrooms is one of the initiatives the Austin school district implemented this year as part of a middle school reform effort, a follow-up to the high school reforms that began in 2005 and brought smaller, career focused "school-within-school" environments to campuses.

The effects of the high school reform efforts are difficult to gauge overall, but Johnston High School underwent two major redesigns before the state closed the school in June after five years of low performance. And Reagan High School, one of several to implement the small-school and enhanced student advisory First Things First model, has not met state goals for achievement test passing rates and dropout rates for the past three years and faces possible closure in 2009 if it doesn't improve.

Al Summers, director of professional development for the Ohio-based National Middle School Association, said the problem with many of these reforms is that there is not enough research on any of them to say which are best.

"The one thing you can say (about middle school students) is that kids this age are really unique, and you need teachers who understand that," he said.

The Austin middle school reforms would create more specialized environments for sixth- to eighth-grade students — including proposals for an all-boys school and a nontraditional school that could, for example, have flexible schedules; an increased focus on professional development for teachers; and the spread of several teaching and student advising techniques that have proved successful at various schools.

The district expects to spend $1.37 million on the plan this year, of which about half will spent on teacher development and recruitment, particularly at lower-performing schools.

Middle school, education experts say, is a crucial time for many students. Average student performance on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills shows a marked drop when Austin students reach middle school: This year, 67 percent of fifth graders passed all tests compared with 59 percent of eighth-graders.

Paul Cruz, the district's associate superintendent of middle schools, said the middle school plan will focus on techniques that address the typical social and academic developments unique to early adolescence, such as tendencies to discourage parent and teacher involvement in their lives and struggles when it comes to controlling their behavior.

"Students at this stage of development learn differently, and we want to accept and take advantage of that," Cruz said. The district's 18 middle schools plan to continue a small schools approach that began several years ago by splitting students up into teams where groups of about 100 students within each grade share the same set of teachers to allow for better lesson planning and interdisciplinary collaboration, he said.

'Ways to connect'

Across the country, districts have increasingly identified middle school as a place where reforms may have a bigger impact on long-term student success. One of the biggest reform trends — a requirement that all eighth-graders take algebra with the idea that having a firm grasp of its abstract concepts is critical to succeeding in high school — is being tried this year in California but has received a negative reaction from some educators who worry that students might be forced into a class for which they aren't ready. Others have tried extending the school day, beefing up their exercise and nutrition curricula, and even eliminating middle school all together by creating schools that go from kindergarten through eighth grade or from sixth to 12th grade.

In addition to the money being spent on teacher development and recruitment, more than $350,000 will be spent on programs for struggling learners and improving lesson designs with a greater focus on technology.

Another $150,000 will pay for a program to help elementary students make the transition to middle school and for family resource centers on five campuses, programs that were started in recent years at Pearce and Webb middle schools.

The district also has brought in adolescent development experts to explain the latest research on cognitive and social development to help teachers better connect with their students, and another $100,000 will be spent on a curriculum aimed at character building and social development.

"You deal with a lot of volatility and a lot of change," said Russell Lyday, a Small Middle School counselor who served on a task force made up of educators and community members that helped craft the middle school plan. "The trick is finding ways to connect with these kids and channel that energy into the things that are ultimately going to make them successful."

Taking a lead role

Dobie was rated an academically acceptable campus in 2007 and 2008 under the state school accountability system after one year of performing below state standards. The school is now sharing with other district middle schools techniques that work.

The campus was the first to hold Student Data Conferences, now a requirement for all middle schools in the district. In the conferences, teachers meet with students and students and their parents at least once every six weeks to address challenges and to review benchmarks and test scores to track progress.

"We're like a physician," Van Eis said. "We do all the necessary diagnostics and blood work exams, so it's not just the parents, but the students who know what they need to work on."

The campus is also playing a lead role in the district with new teaching and learning techniques — such as with single-sex classrooms, something that has already been tried at the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders, the only middle school in the district to earn an exemplary rating this year.

Beginning this year, Dobie administrators put the majority of sixth-graders into all-boys and all-girls math and English classes, leaving some in traditional mixed settings as a comparison group to assess any differences in performance.

Van Eis approaches the boys and girls classes very differently: With the boys, she moves around a lot more, speaks loudly and makes a conscious effort to lighten things up.

"Boys don't hear as acutely, so I really try to project my voice. And they need more silliness, so I'll shake things up to keep them focused," Van Eis said. "With girls, when you re-direct them, it's 'Sweetie, I really need you to do this because ... .' With boys, you can be much more direct and blunt. There's usually no need for the explanation.

"Also with boys, you can call them out when they are messing up," she said. "But with girls, you do that, and they'll hold a grudge for six months."

Sixth-grader Robert Sanchez said he likes the change: "It's better because you can concentrate more."

Another program, Advancement Via Individual Determination, devotes one period in the school day for tutoring and college searches.

Dobie Middle School teacher Christy Jones Barrett said the program provides students with test and note-taking strategies, builds leadership with community service activities, brings college students in to tutor middle schoolers, and helps direct middle school students through the college search and financial aid process.

"These are students, who if they don't get started now, may not ever get the chance to go to college," Barrett said.

Labels: AISD

posted by Patricia Lopez at 6:46 PM 0 comments Links to this post

An Education Agenda for Latino Students
By Melissa Lazarín | September 15, 2008


The strength of our nation’s schools and America’s place in the global economy will be impossible to evaluate in the coming years without focusing on the educational outcomes of Latino students. One in five—approximately 10 million—public school students are Latino. And the proportion of Hispanic school-aged children is expected to grow by 166 percent by 2050, quickly outpacing the 4 percent expected growth of non-Hispanic children. Yet Latinos are among the least likely to enter kindergarten ready to learn and least likely to graduate from high school.

Federal policymakers have a lot of work to do in improving education for Latinos. Here are eight ideas they can start with:

1. Make accountability work for English language learners

Nearly half—45 percent—of all Latino students are English language learners. The No Child Left Behind Act has not only helped to illuminate the large gaps between ELLs and their peers; it has compelled schools to implement strategies to reduce those gaps.

Yet holding schools accountable for the academic progress of ELLs has been met with some resistance due to the lack of valid academic assessments for this population. The 1994 Improving America’s Schools Act first required states to develop appropriate academic assessments for ELLs, but they are still sorely lacking nearly 15 years later.

Instead of potentially excluding half of the Latino student population from statewide accountability systems, the federal government should direct examinations into how to accelerate the development of these assessments. States need dollars and technical assistance to support these efforts, and their progress in developing these assessments needs to be better tracked and enforced.

2. Expand learning time

Lengthening the school day, week, or year can help students who are at risk of falling behind stay on track; expanded learning time gives students additional time to master academic content and provides teachers with an opportunity to better meet individual student needs. Additional time on task is invaluable in furthering English language learners’ and recently arrived immigrant students’ academic content and English proficiency skills. The recently introduced Time for Innovation Matters in Education Act, S. 3431, which provides federal support for state initiatives to expand learning time in high-poverty schools, will ensure that more Latinos benefit from this innovative school-wide reform.

3. Boost high school graduation rates

Only about half—58 percent—of Latinos graduate from high school. Schools will need to make measurable improvements in Latino college-readiness in the subjects of math, reading, and science, as well as increase the proportion of students who graduate with those core academic skills. A necessary first step will be to establish a common definition for calculating graduation rates and linking them to statewide accountability systems across race/ethnicity, language proficiency, income, and other characteristics.

4. Target resources and reforms to struggling high schools

Approximately 2,000 high schools—roughly 18 percent of all secondary schools—produce half of the nation’s dropouts. And 39 percent of all Latino students attend these schools. These statistics, while sobering, indicate that the dropout crisis is, in some ways, locatable, and that resources and reforms can be effectively targeted to the high schools that are struggling the most. The Graduation Promise Act, drafted with this framework in mind and introduced in both the House and Senate in 2007, would target dollars and supports to many of these struggling high schools that enroll a sizeable proportion of Latino students.

5. Pass the DREAM Act

Every year, 65,000 undocumented immigrant students who were brought to the United States as children graduate from high school. Many graduate at the top of their class, yet higher education remains an elusive opportunity. Due to their status, they lack access to loans, federal grants, most private scholarships, and they typically have to pay out-of-state tuition rates regardless of how long they have resided in a state.

A large number of undocumented immigrant students drop out of high school due to the lack of opportunities after high school, exacerbating an already significant dropout crisis. Contrary to common public opinion, these young people have few, if any, opportunities to legalize their status. If passed, the DREAM Act would remove some of the barriers to higher education for these individuals and provide a path to citizenship if they graduate from high school and pursue at least two years of higher education or military service.

6. Ensure that federal Title I dollars are distributed efficiently and fairly

Federal Title I dollars make up a small proportion of K-12 funding, but many poor districts and schools rely heavily on this additional support, and distribution of such dollars must be both fair and efficient. Unfortunately, the Title I formula does not treat states equitably. For example, the federal government sent two states with similar tax efforts, but very different per pupil investments—Massachusetts and California—$2,310 and $1,280 respectively for each Title I eligible student in the 2003-04 school year.

Title I formula grants distributed based on state tax effort and the numbers of low-income students would better ensure that federal dollars are distributed where they are needed the most. So, too, would continued increases in the funding for the Education Finance Incentive Grants, which reward states that equitably allocate state and local dollars, and are the most highly targeted of all the federal funding formulas under Title I.

7. Increase the supply of highly effective teachers

Research by Education Trust shows that Latino, black, and poor students in Texas are “less likely to be assigned to teachers who know their subject matter, less likely to be in classrooms with experienced teachers and less likely to attend schools with a stable teaching force.” Other researchers across the country have also documented this pattern. The reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act is an opportunity to rethink the way teachers are compensated. Those who are willing to teach in struggling schools and deliver positive results, for example, should get paid more.

8. Invest in early childhood care and education

The positive and lasting benefits of early care and education are well documented. Yet only 49 percent of Latino children—compared to 60 to 62 percent of white, African American, Asia, and American Indian children—are enrolled in center-based early childhood care and education programs, which include day care centers, Head Start, preschool/prekindergarten, and nursery school. Greater federal investment in early care and education programs can help increase access for all children from birth to age five, improve the quality of all early care and education programs, and ensure that existing federal preprimary programs, such as Head Start and Even Start, work effectively in coordination.

These policy changes are essential for Latinos’ academic success but would have broad benefits for all students. Some Asian-American students face similar language and immigrant-integration barriers, and African-American students suffer from many of the missed educational opportunities that Latinos experience.

Given our country’s changing demographics, the robustness of America’s public school system will increasingly depend on the academic performance of Latino students and other minorities. Seemingly lofty at first glance, the above policy recommendations have become necessary in the mission to strengthen American schools.

Labels: accountability, English language learners

posted by Patricia Lopez at 6:06 PM 2 comments Links to this post

Chronicle of Higher Ed
Commentary
September 15, 2008


Rapidly growing numbers of colleges and universities are interested in becoming more global, but there is no one model. The best approach varies from institution to institution. Each one must deal with certain basic issues, however, in order to move beyond rhetoric to a broad-based and sustained international effort. John K. Hudzik, vice president for global engagement and strategic projects at Michigan State University — which created the first office of international programs at a major American university, more than 50 years ago, and now has more than 1,200 professors and administrators involved in international scholarship, teaching, and service work — recommends that institutions, regardless of their size or mission, consider these key questions:

* What is the intended scope of the internationalization? Across the institutional mission, or only specific aspects? Whom is the effort intended to reach? Only some students and faculty members, or all of them? What about people outside the college?

* Is the vision for internationalization one that is mainly externally directed, like study abroad or development work abroad? Or is it intended to fundamentally reshape the living and learning environment on the home campus?

* Does the college have a vision, strategic plan, and accountability metrics to guide its intentions and actions? How much have faculty and staff members, students, and administrators bought into and contributed to the new international direction?

* How large and diverse an international student and faculty body does the college seek to have? What is the primary motivation to attract international students and faculty members? What role is envisioned for them with respect to internationalizing the campus environment, and how will they be integrated into the living and learning environment for that purpose?

* Will students and faculty members have access to language learning and cultural information through a variety of means, methods, and alternative pedagogies?

* How internationally experienced and engaged are the faculty members? Will future hiring practices, perhaps through all disciplines, seek those who meet such criteria? Is the college prepared to support and enhance faculty knowledge, skill, and experience in international areas?

* To what extent is the college willing to build strategic partnerships with institutions and groups abroad to support its internationalization of instruction, research, and outreach?

* What are the signature programs that might be seen as high-quality and valuable to partners abroad? Which of the college's programs would be significantly strengthened through systematic international engagement?

* Can the college expand its global reach through specific themes or areas of expertise in which it has a significant capacity to engage in international research, instruction, and community development and problem solving?

* Is the college prepared to become, and to see itself, not only as a local resource but also as a national and a global resource in some disciplines, programs, or areas of expertise?

http://chronicle.com
Section: Commentary
Volume 55, Issue 4, Page A34

Labels: 21st Century Ed

posted by Patricia Lopez at 5:36 PM 0 comments Links to this post

To check out the full report

Also, here's the Brief

-Patricia

A Progressive Approach to U.S.-China Relations in the 21st Century

By Nina Hachigian, Michael Schiffer
Winny Chen | August 13, 2008

Memo to the next president

The choices you make as the next president will have a defi ning infl uence on the contours of U.S.-China relations and, ultimately, China’s trajectory as a rising power. Realizing the potential of the U.S.-China relationship, while guarding against future uncertainties, will constitute a central challenge of your presidency and of American foreign policy this century. Because China’s future remains deeply uncertain, we can assume neither that the stability nor the prosperity that have generally characterized U.S.-China relations for the past several decades will continue, nor that confl ict is inevitable.

As president, you will have to manage the many national security problems bequeathed to you by your predecessor, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan, alongside a struggling global economy. But China’s rise across nearly every dimension of power is a central strategic fact of the 21st century, and your choices will shape the geopolitical environment for a long time to come. While the United States cannot determine what path China takes, your administration can help create the global context for China’s peaceful rise.

Getting China strategy right from the beginning of your administration will be critical to a successful U.S. policy on China. Presidents Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush all entered the White House in the wake of presidential campaigns replete with promises to be “tougher” on China—only to embrace a more pragmatic approach once the realities of the relationship became apparent. All three presidents lost valuable time and political capital.

Today, rapid changes to the global economy, the outsourcing and offshoring of U.S. jobs to China, and overall U.S. economic weakness combine to give unique momentum to the case that you, too, should take a “tougher” stance. To be sure, we have many serious policy differences with China—on human rights, currency exchange rates, and Sudan, to name a few. Yet the urgency of our shared challenges, most particularly on the need for dramatic reductions in global carbon emissions, but also on North Korea and other issues, requires a results-oriented strategy from the beginning.

Thus, you must reject the alarmism that frequently clouds policy debates on U.S.-China relations and take a clear-eyed, practical approach that does not see ruin or victory around every corner, but instead makes steady progress in advancing American interests. Our “risk management” approach to China outlined in this report focuses on real results by recognizing China’s growing importance to global problem-solving. We need to engage China’s leaders and the Chinese people in the urgent challenges of our time, including global warming. Without a serious commitment by the United States and China, humankind will not be able to avoid the most dire consequences of climate change. We cannot afford to continue with a reactive, piecemeal, and uncoordinated policy. Now is the time to embark upon a progressive strategy toward China.
Report Brief

The next four years offer a critical window of opportunity to forge an innovative, durable, pragmatic, and effective approach to U.S.-China relations. A progressive China policy will safeguard U.S. national security interests, encourage the emergence of a China that meets its responsibilities both to the international community and to its own people, and ensure that Americans as well as Chinese are able to enjoy a rising standard of living.

The ultimate goal of our China policy is the emergence of a China that adopts a cooperative and mutually beneficial relationship with the United States, and fulfills its responsibilities as a stakeholder in the global system by addressing the most urgent global challenges, such as tackling climate change, fighting weapons proliferation, and promoting global prosperity. Our China policy aims to encourage a China that develops over time a stable, equitable, and open domestic system—one that guarantees universal human rights, including social, political, economic, labor, and religious rights.

Given China’s uncertain future, the United States must always ensure that it retains adequate capabilities to respond to the variety of scenarios that fl ow from a strong and aggressive China or a weak and unstable one. But our policy toward China must also work toward renewing the international system of multilateral rules, norms, and institutions that has proven durable and effective in integrating new powers, growing the global economy, preserving the peace, promoting political pluralism, and safeguarding U.S. interests.

Many of these multilateral institutions need reform and adjustment, offering the United States an opportunity to recommit itself to this effort, and to draw China into these processes. The United States should work to include China as a more engaged and responsible global partner, give China a greater stake in the current system, and further bind China to the global success of these efforts. Working toward this goal is imperative because effective solutions to the most pressing problems of our time—global warming, terrorism, pandemic disease, expanding the global middle class, and nuclear nonproliferation—cannot happen without the full participation of the United States and China.
A Progressive Strategy: U.S. Strategic Goals

The next president and his administration must move beyond the current, China policy framework of “engaging but hedging.” Instead, we suggest a practical, forward-looking “risk management” strategy to forge a new phase in U.S.-China relations. Such an approach contains these core elements: embedding China in the international arena; managing the risk of China’s uncertain future trajectory; understanding and collaborating with China while engaging the rest of the world in dealing with China; and re-establishing U.S. moral authority and global economic competitiveness.
Embed China

The United States should move beyond the engagement strategy we’ve pursued for 30 years and seek China’s integration into the international system as a responsible, engaged, and respected stakeholder so it can address urgent global problems such as climate change. In the long run, this will strengthen the international system and will also help mold China’s behavior. The United States should signal to China that it understands China occupies an important place in the existing international order, that its development depends on the preservation of that order, and that the United States and the world expect China to fulfill its regional and international responsibilities. In return for China’s fulfi llment of more responsibilities, it will have greater opportunities to shape evolving norms, rules, and institutions.
Manage potential downside and upside risk

The United States must always ensure it retains adequate capacity, militarily and diplomatically, to handle a variety of scenarios that could result from China’s strengths and weaknesses. The uncertainties regarding China’s possible future pathways cut across a broad range of issues, from internal governance, to military modernization, to consumer protection, to nationalism, and to Taiwan. Indeed, the likeliest scenarios for the foreseeable future is a China with a “mixed record,” meeting U.S. expectations and requests in some areas, but falling short in others. We must be prepared for every contingency.
Better understand China

The United States must devote greater resources to understanding China, especially its leaders’ thinking and their priorities in foreign policy, domestic and economic policies, and military planning. Greater diplomatic, intelligence, and military assets should be devoted to this important task.
Collaborate with China

Common challenges, such as sustaining and broadening global economic growth, curbing climate change, staunching the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and combating infectious diseases, will require the United States and China and the international community to cooperate on large-scale, long-term policies.

While we must be clear when we have differences, the next president and his administration should seek to establish a collaborative relationship with China where possible, and dispel notions that the United States seeks to inhibit China’s peaceful development.
Cooperate with other nations to influence China

Persuading China to consider its global responsibilities has not been easy, but working through multilateral channels and building international pressure has effectively induced China to modify its stance, at times, on certain controversial issues, among them nonproliferation and dealing with North Korea. The United States must strengthen its ties with other nations and with global institutions when dealing with China on many issues, including global warming, human rights, international economic integration, and China’s opaque military buildup. On bilateral issues, prioritizing U.S. demands will be key to effectively eliciting results form China.
Reestablish U.S. moral authority

Key to effective bilateral relations with China is reestablishing U.S. moral authority and leadership around the globe. America’s ability to lead by example remains our most powerful asset. The United States must once again provide leadership and direction based on our nation’s fundamental values.
Prepare to compete globally

The United States can neither engage China from a position of strength nor guarantee U.S. competitiveness in a globalized world unless we put our own domestic house in order. To compete successfully amid rapid globalization, the United States must invest in key domestic priorities, among them transforming to a low-carbon economy, feeding our science and technology innovation engine, empowering workers to seize the opportunities of globalization, and ensuring that the next generation is well prepared to thrive.
U.S.-China Policy Priorities

The scope, breadth, and complexity of U.S.-China relations will require coordination and prioritization within the U.S. government—a critical and daunting task. It will require consistent high-level attention and engagement starting with the president. A commitment to regularized presidential-level meetings between the United States and China are necessary both to further strategic dialogue and consensus between our two nations, and to facilitate decisions on pressing issues that demand resolution. Given the array of issues at play in the relationship, we need coordinated policy making—in digestible portions—that addresses the multiplicity of political, security, and economic issues.

These separate but coordinated dialogues should each be headed by appropriate cabinet-level officials, and will be critical to assure that outstanding issues are addressed and strategic dialogue moves forward. And it is imperative that the next administration consult with Congress early and often to forge a coalition that can support a progressive China policy.

The next president should concentrate on six policy priorities in U.S.-China relations:

* Climate change and energy security
* Balanced and sustainable global growth
* Enhanced security in the Asia-Pacific region
* China’s military modernization
* Stability in the Taiwan Strait
* Governance and individual rights

Coordinating U.S. policy on China in these six arenas will demand that senior officials in the next administration manage Sino-U.S. relations across departments and in league with Congress. At the same time, engaging Chinese officials in a coordinated fashion will allow the United States to assess more easily the opportunities and risks inherent in U.S.-China relations at different working levels within China. This pragmatic approach will allow the United States to tackle the tough problems in our bilateral relations while engaging China on our common global interests.
Climate change and energy security

The next president and his administration have an unparalleled opportunity to engage China in a constructive partnership on climate change and energy security—an extraordinary and urgent challenge we face in this new century. The Bush administration’s shortsighted energy policies and refusal to commit to reductions in greenhouse gases prevented the United States from exploring and building on our two nations’ shared objectives. Tackling climate change in earnest offers the opportunity not only to safeguard the future of our environment but also to enhance the U.S.-China relationship by creating common ground on this critical issue. As the two largest emitters of greenhouse gases in the world, both nations must work together to find solutions that will stave off the most severe consequences of climate change. No international effort to address global warming will be successful without the full engagement of both countries.

Consequently, the next president should announce early in his administration that the United States will commit to substantial, mandatory reductions in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions that are not conditioned on the specific actions taken by China. At the same time, the president should make clear that China and other developing countries must assume meaningful, binding commitments to slow and ultimately reverse the growth of greenhouse gas emissions.

To lower its rate of emissions growth, China should commit to ambitious goals for improving energy efficiency, increasing renewable power, and accelerating deployment of advanced clean energy technologies. In addition, China should be pressed to agree to a fixed date by which it would begin reducing emissions in absolute terms. When coupled with the contributions of developed countries, these reductions should be of a magnitude sufficient to achieve an overall global emission reduction of 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

The next president should make clear that, in parallel with far-reaching actions to reduce emissions, our government will protect the interests of U.S. workers in industries that could be placed at risk under a global climate change agreement if unequal cost burdens are imposed on producers in developed and developing countries. The extent of these measures to preserve U.S. competitiveness should depend on how far China goes to reduce its carbon footprint, which will in turn determine whether there is a level economic playing field for our major energy-intensive industries.

To reinforce our efforts to negotiate an acceptable global agreement, the next administration should work directly with China on mutually beneficial initiatives to improve environmental protection, stimulate deployment of clean-energy technologies, and enhance China’s technical and institutional capacity to address environmental and energy challenges. The next president should call for the two countries to immediately undertake a program of cooperative research and development on climate change and energy security, including demonstration projects to speed the deployment of advanced energy technologies. The new administration should also support mechanisms in U.S. climate legislation that create project-based carbon-emission credit opportunities for U.S. companies that allow them to offset their carbon emissions by investing in emission-reduction projects in developing countries.

Finally, our next president should signal the seriousness of our nation’s commitment to work with China as an equal to combat climate change and boost global energy security by pushing for greater and regular Chinese participation in the International Energy Agency. Successfully partnering with China on climate change and energy security on a bilateral basis and on the global stage holds the potential to create positive interactions between our two governments and our two peoples. This, in turn, could generate positive spillover across many aspects of our bilateral relationship.

Making progress on global warming and energy security could benefit our economy by creating new export opportunities for American clean energy companies. It would help promote human rights and civil society capacity-building by strengthening environmental nongovernment organizations and the ability of citizens to hold local leaders accountable for environmental degradation. And tackling climate change and energy security together will strengthen Asia-Pacific regional security and stability by highlighting an issue on which greater cooperation with Japan, a leader in energy efficiency, could be beneficial.
Balanced and sustainable global growth

The next administration will need to build a more equitable and mutually advantageous economic relationship with China. It must encourage China to be a more responsible steward of the international economic system, and to accelerate market-based economic and labor market reforms. But the next administration must also improve America’s own economic and technological competitiveness so that our country competes in the global economy from a more secure position of strength. An important measure of whether the next administration manages a successful economic relationship with China will be rising standards of living for a greater number of Americans, as well as a greater number of Chinese.

The next administration should use a high-level bilateral dialogue (like the ongoing Strategic Economic Dialogue initiated by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson) to sharpen the focus on a number of areas, including not just energy and climate but also enforcement of international trade and regulatory standards; institutional reforms including social safety nets and proper enforcement of labor standards; exchange rate policy; and compliance with international rules on foreign aid. The United States must also bring advancement of working conditions and labor rights into those discussions, and push for China to honor its commitments as a founding member of the International Labor Organization.

The United States must be prepared to use both multilateral and unilateral tools, such as the World Trade Organization and the International Trade Commission, to enforce economic agreements and standards. In addition, the United States, in concert with other nations, should propose that in exchange for China gaining a greater voice in international economic institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the Group of Eight process, China will take further steps consistent with becoming a responsible steward of the global economic system.

At home, the next administration must renew our domestic competitiveness. America must invest in human capital and create a nimble, innovative workforce at every skill level. The United States must empower workers with the public policy tools they need to become an even more fl exible workforce, including universal health care, expanded unemployment benefits, and new jobs training programs, with a focus on the growth sectors of green jobs. We also must seek to restore economic mobility and put ourselves back on a path of fiscal responsibility.
Enhanced security in the Asia-Pacific region

To get national security policy toward China right, the United States needs to get its Asia-Pacific regional strategy right. Stability and security in East Asia is increasingly tied to overall U.S. national security goals; conflict and instability in East Asia would undermine a broad range of U.S. economic and security interests. The rise of China complicates the challenge of U.S. policy in the region, but it also affords us a chance to reinvigorate relations with our long-standing allies and partners in the region. U.S. political and diplomatic leverage in Asia depends on greater engagement.

The new administration should reaffirm the U.S. security commitment to allies and partners in the region. The United States should engage diplomatically with consistency at the highest levels to repair, revitalize, and bolster U.S. involvement in regional security, and economic and political affairs, leveraging traditional bilateral means and new multilateral forums. A first step would be signing the Association for South East Asian Nations’ Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, and, in the context of ongoing progress in the Six Party Talks, working with Japan, South Korea, and China to develop a permanent institution dealing with security issues in Northeast Asia. The United States must also work with China on shared regional interests, including rolling back the North Korean nuclear program.
China’s military modernization

China’s military modernization is focused on developing limited force projection capabilities alongside anti-access and area denial capabilities by leveraging advanced precision strike missiles, cyber-warfare, and anti-satellite weapons. Still, China suffers from very serious weaknesses in its military, including many obsolete weapon systems, a lack of battle experience, and not a single working aircraft carrier or military base outside of China—despite years of double-digit growth in its military budget.

The new president should task the Department of Defense with conducting an in-depth assessment of the ability of U.S. forces to fulfill our security commitments in the Western Pacific in the face of the Chinese military capabilities over the next decade. Based on that review, and in light of the toll Iraq has taken on the U.S. military, the new administration needs to develop a long-term defense program and strategy for U.S. basing and posture in the Western Pacific, and then make specific recommendations for investment, acquisitions, and procurements.

Greater trust and confidence between the United States and Chinese militaries will help contribute to greater strategic stability in the region. The United States should work with allies in the region to press China for greater transparency in its military modernization. The new administration should also intensify the strategic nuclear dialogue with China, deepen the high-level strategic dialogue on regional security issues, and initiate treaty discussions on weaponization and militarization of space. Additionally, the new administration should increase joint military capacity with allies in the region.
Stability in the Taiwan Strait

Taiwan is the most sensitive issue in the U.S.-China relationship. Despite recent improvements in tone and tenor of relations between Taipei and Beijing, Taiwan still remains an issue that could trigger greater tension and perhaps open armed confrontation between China and the United States. To Beijing, the island of Taiwan is the last piece of Chinese territory not reintegrated back into the nation after more than a century of struggle. But to the United States a thriving democratic Taiwan is linked to U.S. regional credibility and our democratic values.

Maintaining the now standard set of diplomatic assurances that offer a common language for Beijing and Washington and Taipei is an important starting point for any efforts to address cross-Strait issues. The United States should encourage Beijing and Taipei to continue building commercial, cultural, economic, and other ties to enhance confidence and trust in their interactions. We should also rebuild a relationship of trust with Taiwan and respond in accordance with the Taiwan Relations Act to appropriate Taiwanese requests to meet their defensive needs.
Governance and individual rights

China’s human rights record remains poor. China’s economic liberalization has lifted millions out of poverty, but progress toward political openness and pluralistic reform is incomplete, and in some ways regressing. Electoral reform at the local level seems stalled, and organized political dissent not tolerated. In other pockets, though, there is progress—the Chinese government is imposing more accountability on officials and providing more societal input into policy decisions.

Political and social change in China will largely need to come from within, but the United States can infl uence those developments. China’s desire to be treated as a respected member of the international community is a principal point of leverage for political change, as are China’s own governance needs and the aspirations of the Chinese people. What is required is a persistent but respectful witnessing to the universality of human rights, and encouraging other nations and groups of nations to reinforce concerns about China’s human rights, including labor rights practices.

The new administration should work with mechanisms that bring together international opinion to pressure China on human rights. The United States should enhance bilateral U.S.-China and EU-China human rights dialogue, and encourage China to ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The new president should pledge that the United States will join, and thus strengthen, the UN Human Rights Council at which China’s record can be reviewed consistently, and support Chinese civil society and rule of law programs and China’s engagement with the International Labor Organization.

America must work to increase its leverage in the human rights arena by reclaiming our moral authority and leadership in the world. Chastising U.S. businesses or the Chinese government will achieve nothing if the United States doesn’t live up to its own principles. The next administration must work to re-establish U.S. moral authority and leadership, which has always been one of the strongest and most efficacious tools in the American foreign policy toolbox. Leading by example is a powerful avenue America can take. Without American leadership and authority, convincing China to change will be all the more difficult.
A progressive strategy for U.S.-China relations

The United States cannot determine China’s future; that task belongs to the Chinese people. But the United States can forge a relationship with China that delivers on American interests and the global common good by working with China to tackle our shared global problems, addressing our areas of difference in a sober and practical way, and facing up to our own challenges. Peacefully integrating China into the international order will embed this rising power in the web of norms and responsibilities that come with being an active participant in the world stage.

In the pages that follow, the authors of this report will detail the progressive strategic goals and top policy priorities we recommend to the new president and his administration. Our policy proposals are presented against the backdrop of current global and Sino-U.S. environmental, economic, and political realities. We believe the analysis and conclusions contained in this paper will prepare the United States to engage China effectively and assuredly in the decades to come.
An unsustainable environment
China's pollution problems are pervasive and costly

China’s environmental problems are enormous and growing worse by the day. China’s leadership has an enormous stake in finding sustainable solutions to its environmental and energy challenges for its own well-being. Unchecked global warming could have devastating consequences for China, and the country is already feeling the impact of horrific pollution problems on its people, government, and economy.
Costs to the economy

Studies conducted inside and outside of China have found that environmental degradation is costing the Chinese economy between 8 percent and 12 percent of gross domestic product each year. Natural disasters, which are up from years past, are said to cost China between 1 percent and 3 percent of GDP annually. Absenteeism, stemming from pollution-related health ailments, is also eating into the country’s productivity levels.

In China’s northern and western regions, desertification and water scarcity are slowing economic growth and limiting agricultural and industrial output. In a study conducted by the Chinese government, scientists found that China’s production of wheat, rice, and corn could decline by as much as 37 percent by the end of the century. Other countries, including the United States, are growing wary of purchasing Chinese products because of contamination by pollution and chemicals. And global warming is expected to bring severe flooding on China’s coastal areas, where 41 percent of China’s population, 60 percent of its wealth, and 70 percent of its megacities are located.
The health crisis

More than 500 million people in China—1.5 times the total U.S. population— live without access to clean water. Only 1 percent of the Chinese urban population breathes air considered safe by the European Union. An estimated 750,000 people die prematurely each year in China from breathing polluted air. And according to state-run media, “China will have the world’s highest number of lung cancer patients,” adding at a rate of “1 million a year by 2025 if smoking and pollution are not effectively curbed.”

Global warming will probably lead to higher rates of infectious disease in China. One Shanghai-based study concluded that the lethal H5N1 virus, also known as Avian Flu, will spread as climate change shifts the habitats and migratory patterns of birds. Another study, conducted by Harvard Medical School, highlighted the link between extreme weather events and the outbreak of diseases such as malaria, typhoid, cholera, and dengue fever. This has serious implications for China, as global warming is expected to result in major fl ooding on China’s heavily populated eastern seaboard. The Harvard study also found that warming climates will lead to the spread of disease-carrying insects such as deer ticks, which spread Lyme Disease and are prevalent in China.
Migration and environmental refugees

Global warming has accelerated desertification of China’s northern regions and exacerbated water scarcity. Regions that benefit from more abundant water sources will need to cope with an influx of migrants from water-scarce areas. One study by the United Nations projected that there could be as many as 50 million environmental refugees in China by 2010, many of them fleeing water shortages and sand dunes. Desertification will also add to the migration of rural Chinese looking for employment in already overcrowded and dangerously polluted urban centers. China’s current rural-to-urban migration constitutes the greatest migration in human history. Overpopulated urban centers will grow in size and population, becoming breeding grounds for disease.
Social unrest

In 2007, The Minister of Environmental Protection Zhou Shengxian reported yet another increase in the number of “mass incidents” related to pollution, citing an 8 percent increase in number of petitions submitted to his agency over the same time period in 2006. This is presumably up from more than 51,000 environment-related protests that occurred in China in 2005, or about 1,000 protests a week, according to an independent report.

Indeed, thousands of protestors took to the streets last year in Xiamen, an economic boomtown in China’s coastal Fujian province, to halt the construction of a chemical plant. This past May, hundreds marched against the building of an ethylene plant in the city of Chengdu, the capital of inland Sichuan province. Though this march was peaceful, the same cannot be said about all of the environment-related demonstrations around the country.

In response, China has elevated the State Environmental Protection Agency into a full-fledged cabinet-level ministry with access to the State Council’s decision-making process, more staff, and greater financial support. In March 2008, Zhou announced that the ministry will bolster its law enforcement capabilities with enhanced surveillance, stricter monitoring, regular meetings, joint enforcement, and information-sharing systems between environmental protection departments of all levels, as well as law enforcement and judicial bodies.

The severity of China’s pollution and climate change problems provide an opening for the United States to collaborate with China on this urgent set of challenges. Both countries have an interest in staving off the most severe consequences of environmental degradation, and both will benefit greatly from a constructive partnership in this arena. It is a global imperative that the next U.S. president work with China and the rest of the world to address China’s pollution problems and the world’s climate change crisis.

Labels: 21st Century Ed

posted by Patricia Lopez at 5:16 PM 0 comments Links to this post

By Rhonda Bodfield
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
08.30.2008

When school started this year, districts across the state were supposed to put students with poor or non-existent English skills into language-development classes for four hours a day.

Mostly, it's not happening.

In part, it's because there were a number of exceptions written into the plan so schools with few English learners or schools participating in certain approved reading programs are excluded from the requirement.

Also, districts are having a hard time pulling it off with available resources. Although the districts submitted funding requests of about $274 million, the state set aside $40 million. And some districts, such as the Tucson Unified School District, received no new money to comply with the new law.

Of the 75 elementary schools in TUSD, for example, only 29 would technically be required to have four-hour blocks. Fewer than five are pulling it off, said Steve Holmes, the chief academic officer in charge of the English-learners program.
Holmes, who said the district needed 100 new positions to be able to fully comply, has set up a meeting with officials from the state Education Department to explain that despite good-faith efforts, this year is simply going to have to be a transition year.
"We're willing to do it, but we're between a rock and a hard place because we don't have the resources to do four hours across the board," he said. "We're doing the best we can, and this year that's going to have to be good enough."

"Good enough" appears to be close enough this time around.

Tom Horne, the state schools chief, said although the four-hour standard is not being universally met, none of the districts is being "defiant."

"My people tell me that the districts are all making a good-faith effort, and we're going to use common sense in making sure that they become fully compliant within a reasonable time," Horne said.

He remains convinced it's a good plan and said he anticipates that students will get reclassified faster out of remedial English classes. Previously, he said, some schools offered only half an hour of language development a day. "It's going to be one of the most important things we've done in education in Arizona for a long time," he said. "The rate at which students are going to be learning English is going to soar."
Horne points to the success of some districts that started the new model early. The Florence Unified School District, for example, was able to reclassify 38 percent of its English learners after a year of the program, more than double its earlier reclassification rate of 15 percent. Humboldt Unified School District, near Prescott, went from 12 percent to 28 percent, he said.

In Tucson, one of the few schools in which the model is in full bloom is Cragin Elementary School, 2945 N. Tucson Blvd., where school officials are skeptical but complying.

Principal Pearl Miller cited a number of concerns.

Putting only English learners in one class together means that some classes are quite small. In third and fourth grade, for example, there are 18 students per class. Other mainstream classes, though, get stuffed full.

With only about six hours of instructional time in a day, she said, working on language skills for four hours doesn't leave much time for other subjects, especially since the school has decided all students should continue getting an hour of math.
And finally, there's the philosophical concern about isolating students from their English-speaking counterparts.

"Our staff is well-trained and committed, and logistically we are able to do it, but we don't really feel good about the segregation that's occurring. It's hard for us to say we're proud of our diversity here, and then say, 'Over here, in this separate room, is where we teach our students learning English,' " she said.

Saralinda Mendivil, a fourth-grade teacher who has taught at Cragin for seven years, said she is thrilled with the smaller class size because classroom management comes easier and she's able to give students more individualized attention. Still, she continues to have reservations.

"Philosophically, we believe that everyone learns from each other," she said, adding that in a more traditional classroom, English-speaking students could partner with those with fewer language skills and model for them. "They're still able to help each other at different levels, but if you want a true model, they should be around other English-speaking children."

Last year, she said, her fourth-graders already were doing a good deal of work to prepare for the science portion of the AIMS test, which got off the ground last year. This year, she's squeezing it in when she can, along with social studies and history when possible.

"They're still getting some exposure, but not in the way that would serve them the best."

Horne said teaching language skills doesn't mean core academics must be neglected. Instead, language skills should be incorporated into those subjects, he said. "Secondly, it's four hours, so there are still two more hours for other subjects," he said, adding there's always summer school if students still need to catch up.
Cragin parent Karla Muñoz, 36, said her 6-year-old first-grader, Keiji, is happier this year than he was in kindergarten last year. "I think it's better," the native Spanish speaker said.

"Last year, he didn't like getting pulled out. He kept asking why he had to leave and what the other students were doing while he was gone. He feels better about it now, because he doesn't feel so different."
Teacher Mendivil acknowledged that the students didn't like the pull-out. She said when she explained at the beginning of the year how things were going to work, a cheer went up when she told them they wouldn't be taken out of class for separate language development.

But, she said, the students also realized right away that they were separated from their old friends.

"I tried to just be forthright with them. I told them they should never be ashamed of their culture and their language, but they're here in the United States and we need to make sure they can master the language so they can succeed."

Labels: English language learners

posted by Patricia Lopez at 4:55 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Teachers, parents, students working on problem, but statistics show Hispanic kids, ones from poorer families fare poorly.

By Molly Bloom
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, August 31, 2008

Austin students from poor families tend to be less physically fit than students from wealthier families, an American-Statesman analysis of school district data shows. And Hispanic students tend to be less physically fit than students of other races.

A 2007 state law required all school districts to give students standardized fitness evaluations measuring height-weight proportionality, cardiovascular capacity, strength and flexibility. The first evaluations were given to students in the 2007-08 school year.

Austin's trend mirrors statewide results, and national studies that show higher rates of physical inactivity and obesity among Hispanic and poor adults and children put them at higher risk of developing diabetes, heart disease, joint and bone disease, and other health problems.

Regardless of fitness trends among various demographic groups in Austin, "what's really striking is the absolute level of poor fitness across the board in general," said Dr. Aliya Hussaini, a health program grant officer at the Dell Family Foundation, which has invested $85 million in childhood health issues in Texas, including support for health and fitness programs at 97 Travis County public elementary schools.

Austin students in general are in worse shape than those in all but three of the state's 10 largest districts. About 19 percent of all Austin students fall in the "healthy zone" on all of the fitness measures; below them on the list are students from the Fort Bend district, near Houston, with 15 percent; Houston, with 13 percent; and Dallas, with 11 percent.

Austin has a higher proportion of unhealthy students, as measured by the percentage of students falling in the "healthy zone" on all of the fitness tests, than all but eight of the 28 public school districts in Travis, Williamson, Hays, Bastrop and Caldwell counties for which fitness data are available.

In the Wimberley school district, none of the 1,010 students tested passed all of the tests, a surprising result considering the district's athletic championships in recent years and its relatively low proportion of students from low-income families.

Wimberley superintendent Dwain York said district staff members are investigating the low fitness scores.

A renewed push

The requirement to test students' physical fitness each year is one of the recent efforts by state legislators, including state Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Lewisville, to draw attention to and improve children's health through the public school system.

After regular physical education classes in Texas elementary schools were phased out in 1995, Texas schoolchildren were not required to participate in physical activity during the school day beyond taking physical education classes in high school.

In 2002, the state began requiring kindergartners and elementary school students to participate in daily physical activity for at least 135 minutes a week, which averages out to 27 minutes a day.

The 2007 law, sponsored by Nelson, also requires middle school students to have at least 30 minutes of daily physical activity in at least four semesters. Those requirements take effect this school year. Lawmakers have discussed physical activity requirements for high school students, who currently must have a minimum of 1.5 physical education credits to graduate.

State law now also requires elementary and middle schools to adopt comprehensive health plans addressing health education, physical fitness, nutrition and parental involvement.

The 2007-08 school year was the first time that all districts were required to give the fitness tests to all students in grades 3 to 12, so most parents won't know whether their schools' efforts to keep kids healthy are paying off until results come back from this school year's evaluations.

Though a growing body of research shows that physical fitness programs can improve student academic performance, several studies, including a 2007 study by the Austin school district, have found that family income has a bigger influence. The Austin study, which included fifth- and seventh-graders, found only a "modest relationship" between fitness and academic achievement.

This fall, the Texas Education Agency plans to release a statewide report examining the relationship between children's fitness levels and academic performance, attendance, discipline and other measures.

Texas tests, but ...

Texas is one of several states that require schools to give students standardized fitness tests and report the results to the state, according to the National Association for Sport and Physical Education. Others include California, Connecticut, Delaware and West Virginia.

But Texas is the only state to require all but the youngest students to be tested: Most other states test only three or four grades. But unlike California and Connecticut, which report schools' fitness test results on their annual school report cards, the Texas Education Agency does not publish individual schools' results.

The $230 cost to each Texas district for the equipment and computer software used to conduct the fitness tests and report the results was covered by private donations raised by the Cooper Institute, the Dallas-based nonprofit that created the software.

In the 2007-08 school year, in part to comply with state law, the Austin school district launched a coordinated effort to improve student health.

The district revised its physical education curriculum and encouraged school staff members and administrators to take physical education as seriously as any other class.

Playing badminton in P.E. class in the spring convinced Isaac Rodriguez, then a fifth-grader at Hart Elementary School in Northeast Austin, that the game could be "kind of fun." But even more important to Isaac was the chance to get up and move around.

"I just like getting out of the classroom," he said.

Feeling the squeeze

In spite of significant school-by-school disparities in Austin students' fitness levels, the Austin school district has no plans to give schools with higher proportions of less healthy students more fitness-focused staff, equipment or professional training, Austin schools health coordinator Tracy Diggs Lunoff said.

Few other Central Texas districts plan to focus resources on less healthy schools, either.

The Lake Travis school district has added centers with nutrition information in every school's library and is introducing a health program this school year focusing on proper nutrition — again, in each school, rather than at specific schools or student groups.

Last week, Austin trustees approved a budget amendment of $60,000 to fund a health and wellness specialist position previously paid for through a grant. The specialist visits campuses to help implement fitness and health programs.

Though schools are responsible for students for at least 35 hours each week, countless factors that affect students' health — like what they eat at home, how much exercise they get, and how much tobacco use they're exposed to — are largely outside the district's control, Lunoff said.

At Maplewood Elementary School in East Austin, parent Wendy Morgan said she didn't think that her daughter and her classmates necessarily needed more physical education teachers or equipment.

However, Morgan said, it is unfair that Maplewood's outdoor facilities are in worse shape than those at Austin schools in wealthier neighborhoods: The basketball poles tilt and the track field is lumpy and lacks a water fountain.

About 46 percent of Maplewood students were at a healthy weight relative to their heights last year, compared with the district elementary school average of 70 percent.

More than 75 percent of the school's students qualify for free- or reduced-price lunches; about 40 percent of students are Hispanic.

Azucena Garcia, principal of Sanchez Elementary School, said more resources at her campus would be welcome.

A few years ago, a grant allowed Garcia to hire an extra physical education teaching specialist who helped supervise students' daily physical activity time. The specialist also set up an after-school yoga program for students and a morning walking group for parents, among other programs.

And it helped. According to the state fitness report, 72 percent of Sanchez's students are at a healthy weight. More than 90 percent of the school's students qualify for free- or reduced-price lunches; about 93 percent of students are Hispanic.

When the grant funding ended, the extra physical education teacher's position was cut, and some of the initiatives the specialist started fell by the wayside, Garcia said.

"I'm always looking for more opportunities," Garcia said. "As it is, it's up to interest and how much you're willing to do."

Labels: AISD, health education policy, Latinos

posted by Patricia Lopez at 4:34 PM 0 comments Links to this post

This is an interesting article documenting the impact of accountability and high-stakes testing policies. Notable line: "The law is unpopular with much of the public. In a recent Phi Delta Kappan/Gallup poll, two-thirds of U.S. adults said the next president should significantly change No Child Left Behind or abandon it."

-Patricia

by Betsy Hammond, The Oregonian
Saturday August 30, 2008

As most of Oregon's 570,000 students head back to class this week, they will report to schools that have been deeply changed by six years of the federal No Child Left Behind law.

The law has put unprecedented pressure on public schools to get students to read and do math at their grade level, and educators have responded by digging into test results, spending more time teaching those two subjects and targeting students who score "on the bubble" just below grade level.

As a result, many schools put less emphasis on science, music, writing and other subjects and do less to spur high-achieving students to strive higher.

The landmark federal law has made its biggest impact on special education students, low-income students and those learning English as a second language. It has recast the definition of a successful school from one with high average test scores to one that gets a big chunk of those students to read and do math at grade level.

Despite widespread complaints among educators, the law has helped those students, whose test scores have risen steadily as schools put more resources and strategies into their learning.

"NCLB has held our collective feet to the fire to say, 'What about every single kid?'" says Aeylin Summers, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction for the North Clackamas School District.

Congress is debating whether to renew the law, and much of the rhetoric about the law's day-to-day effects on schools has been exaggerated by both champions and critics.

No Child Left Behind has not led to huge achievement gains in Oregon or across the nation. Nor has it drummed creativity, the arts and project-based learning entirely out of class.

The law includes consequences for failure, but no Oregon school has been threatened with a loss of federal funds or been taken over by the state or been ordered to undergo wholesale faculty turnover.

Even though most middle and high schools are exempt from any real consequences, the law has motivated secondary school principals and teachers to dig into test scores in far greater detail and to put more energy into getting more students to read and do math well enough to pass the state tests.

"Really looking at (results for small groups of students) and making decisions and interventions based on that is something No Child Left Behind brought to us, and I don't think we'll ever move away from that again," Beaverton Superintendent Jerry Colonna says.
Critics see narrow focus
There are numerous drawbacks to No Child Left Behind, say those who have watched it unfold in Oregon schools.

High-achieving students often get less time and attention. Performance on state reading and math tests is given more weight than measurements such as in-depth classroom assignments, teacher-made tests and graduation rates.

"What you know about a kid's learning is very rigid and limited when all you have are these tests scores," says Summers of North Clackamas.

And then there's the question of whether educators do their best when they feel beat up.

Teachers and principals resent being labeled poor performers when their schools fall short of the law's high expectations of their hardest-to-serve students. Instead of recognizing the gains children make, the law drubs the school as inadequate, demoralizing teachers and parents.

"The punitive part of it makes people nervous, and when people are nervous, they can't really delve into focusing on the teaching and the learning," says Wei-Wei Lou, Beaverton schools' director of English as second language.

Susan Castillo, the Oregon Department of Education's superintendent of public instruction, has championed the law for shining a spotlight on the academic needs of disadvantaged students, but she complains about its "cookie cutter approach" to judging schools.
Market-force education
No Child Left Behind was signed into law by President Bush in 2001. Though Bush considers it his top domestic initiative, liberal lawmakers Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., and Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., also were key champions.

The idea was to raise achievement by using market forces, including school choice and private-sector tutoring companies, along with stepped-up federal money, particularly among low-income and minority students.

Its central provisions require schools to:

• Give reading and math tests every year from third grade through eighth grade plus once in high school.

• Report to parents and the public what percentage of students in a host of groups -- including minority students, special education students, low-income students and those learning English as a second language -- meet grade-level standards on those tests. Only students who are the newest immigrants or have the most severe disabilities can be exempted.

• Face escalating consequences if the school fails to meet even a single performance target. The federal government can mandate consequences only for schools that accept federal aid to help disadvantaged students.

States were free to impose consequences on all schools; Castillo chose not to. She says punishing schools is not the best way to encourage them to improve.

That created a two-tiered system under which schools that get federal aid -- primarily the 65 percent of elementary schools that serve medium or large numbers of low-income students -- are subject to consequences based on their test results, while the rest of schools, including all the state's big suburban high schools, are not.

If a school falls short two years in a row, it must allow students to transfer to a higher performing school in the district. If it fails again, it must also offer all its low-income students free tutoring. Subsequent failure means it must shake up the curriculum, the schedule or the faculty or make a similar change.

So far, more than 70 of Oregon's 1,200 public schools have been subject to one or more of those consequences. Only 12 of them have raised their achievement enough to get off the federal list of troubled schools.

More than 2,500 Oregon students -- most in Portland -- now attend a different public school under the law. An additional 2,000 students get free tutoring paid for by federal No Child Left Behind money.

Gresham's experience

East Gresham Elementary got the bad news in summer 2006. Because only one in three of its nonnative English speakers passed state reading tests, the school was branded inadequate and had to send letters to every parent explaining its shortcomings and offering to let the students transfer out.

To the faculty, that seemed unfair. They understood that schools should be graded -- they issue grades and report cards to their students all the time. But former Principal Tadd Gestrin says it seemed that their school was made to look bad because teachers took on big challenges at a school where two-thirds of the children are poor and a quarter are still learning English.

But with some extra federal money to help, East Gresham teachers started working in teams to ferret out the best information on how to help their students, including interviewing faculty at schools with similar demographics that were getting better results.

The school rewrote its schedule to spend two hours a day on reading, an hour on math and an hour on writing. Teachers began meeting regularly with other teachers to develop their best collective ideas to help students.

It worked.

Teachers focused on student growth and learning instead of test scores. Nevertheless, scores rose dramatically, and the change for English language learners was stunning. Within a year, more than half were passing grade-level reading tests. The school managed to boost achievement even higher this year and was removed from the troubled schools list.

"When people work so hard for such a long time and you know that the work you are doing is making a difference in kids' lives ... that public acknowledgement feels good," says Gestrin, now a middle school administrator.

The law is unpopular with much of the public. In a recent Phi Delta Kappan/Gallup poll, two-thirds of U.S. adults said the next president should significantly change No Child Left Behind or abandon it.

Neither Sens. John McCain nor Barack Obama has released a detailed proposal for how he would rewrite No Child Left Behind. But few education leaders in Oregon expect the heightened accountability to go away.

Stacy Geale, principal of Beaver Acres Elementary in Beaverton, has no problem with that:

"For me, it raises the bar for children, it raises the bar for instruction and it raises the bar for my accountability, Why would I complain when it's raised the achievement level of our kids?"

How has No Child Left Behind changed Oregon?
January 2001: President Bush signs it into law

Summer 2003: Eight schools become the first to face consequences for failing to meet the law's performance targets. Four in Portland, three in Woodburn and one in Milton-Freewater must offer students priority transfers or free tutoring.

Fall 2003: The state issues its first No Child Left Behind ratings of every school, and 365 schools are rated inadequate. Educators reel as two-thirds of the state's high schools are labeled inadequate. Most on the list post low results for Latinos, low-income and special education students.

Spring 2005: Oregon adds standardized tests in reading and math in grades four, six and seven -- grades that previously had no state tests.

2006-07 school year: More than 2,500 students transfer out of low-scoring schools under the law. An additional 10,000 students qualify for free private tutoring because their school had low test scores, and more than 2,000 of them accept the offer.

August 2008: More than 430 Oregon schools fail to reach federal performance targets, their worst showing under the law. Thirty-six are ordered to offer transfers or tutoring.

Labels: high-stakes testing, NCLB

posted by Patricia Lopez at 4:27 PM 0 comments Links to this post

I agree completely that Latin could provide entree to literacy. What's interesting is that Spanish isn't thought of in this way--and in clear terms as expressed below. That is, it lacks prestige.

Well what makes one language prestigious and another not so? Here's where power relations are really important and the fact that--because of the status of the speakers or the language itself due to the status of elite/elitest knowledge—a language is less likely to be viewed as a means for enhanced instruction.

Of course all of this is itself a social construction and Spanish could be imbued with the same or higher status as any other language, but we need leadership in this regard and goood policies.

Angela

COMMENTARY
Give Latin (and Potential Dropouts) a Chance
By Baynard Woods

September 22, 2008

Last year, I was lucky enough to teach Latin to a group of African-American and Latino juniors and seniors at a charter high school in Washington. The school had just, for the first time, made “adequate yearly progress” under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. But it had barely passed, and we knew we still had a long way to go. Many experts may believe that AYP is a poor measure of quality, but in this case it was an accurate indicator of a problem: Many of our students could not read well.
The school, and the literacy consultants it hired, had tried everything to bring students to understanding and independence through texts—and to help them pass the District of Columbia’s annual Comprehensive Assessment System, or CAS, test. On a schoolwide level, we were doing many things right, but the reading problem remained vast. So last year, after working as a literacy coach and a mentor teacher, I was able to try an elective in Latin, which I had taught before in other settings.

Click link to read rest of article.

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 9:00 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Check out the full report

Also, check out the video on Low-Income Families and Communities

-Patricia

Concentrated Poverty, Working Poor, Earned Income Tax Credit, U.S. Poverty, Inequality

Elizabeth Kneebone, Senior Research Analyst, Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings
Alan Berube, Fellow, Metropolitan Policy Program

The Brookings Institution

August 08, 2008 —
An analysis of the changing geographic distribution of low-income workers and their families, measured by receipt of the federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) in tax years 1999 and 2005, nationwide and in 58 major metropolitan areas across the country reveals that:

* The number of tax filers nationwide living in areas with high rates of working poverty increased by 40 percent, or 1.6 million filers, between tax years 1999 and 2005. By 2005, 12.3 percent of low-income working families lived in high-working-poverty communities—ZIP codes where more than 40 percent of taxpayers claimed the EITC—up from 10.4 percent in 1999.

* Of 58 large metropolitan areas studied, 34 experienced increased rates of concentrated working poverty (the share of EITC filers living in high-working-poverty communities) over the first half of the decade, while 24 showed declines. Older industrial metro areas including Detroit and Rochester exhibited the greatest increases in concentrated working poverty, while the Los Angeles and Phoenix metro areas experienced the largest declines.
* Major metropolitan areas in the Midwest and Northeast experienced substantial increases in concentrated working poverty over the first half of the decade, but Western metro areas saw steep declines. Metro areas in the Northeast and West had similar rates of concentrated working poverty in 1999 (13 percent), but by mid-decade, the rate had risen to 18 percent in the Northeast while it dropped to 7 percent in the West.

* Both central cities and suburbs saw an increase in high-working-poverty communities between tax years 1999 and 2005. The number of tax filers living in high-working-poverty areas in the central cities of major metropolitan areas across the country grew by 40 percent, while the surrounding suburbs experienced an increase of 36 percent. Still, central-city EITC recipients were five times as likely (25 percent) as suburban EITC recipients (5 percent) to live in high-working-poverty communities in 2005.

These trends suggest that the decline in concentrated poverty that occurred during the 1990s may be reversing over the course of this decade, particularly in regions hardest hit by the economic challenges of the early 2000s. Policies that foster stronger national and regional economic growth—together with targeted efforts to create and protect neighborhoods of choice and connection—may offer the best route to longer-term progress against concentrated poverty.

Labels: poverty

posted by Patricia Lopez at 5:58 PM 0 comments Links to this post