Here is a report from the Progressive State Network titled, "Increasing-Democracy,"
by Christian Smith-Socaris


Texas Session Roundup

The Texas legislature only meets once every two years, and this year there was enough drama, both real and fabricated, to last until they reconvene in 2011.  The biggest story by the end of the session was the minority parties ability to kill voter ID legislation in the House by "chubbing" or running out the clock by meticulously debating non-controversial legislation.  The need to prevent the disenfranchising ID bill has the unfortunate consequence of killing much good legislation.  And the primary reason there was good legislation to pass in the House was the big intrigue from the beginning of the session - the election of a compromise speaker with minority party support, replacing long-time speaker and conservative stalwart Tom Craddick.



Fabricated drama came primarily came from the governor, who spent much of the session ginning up anti-government fervor with attempts to reject recovery act funding, complete with pandering statements about seceding from the Union.  Like other GOP presidential hopefuls, he blustered about not wanting the money while lawmakers admitted that without the help the state's budget would have been a mess. The other item that the governor and conservatives used to distract the public was another push for voter ID supported by false, and often racist, claims of voter fraud.  The final big drama of the legislative session was the need to come back for two special sessions because the voter ID fight in the House had left some executive agencies without authorization to conduct business.  In the end essential legislation on the agencies and a few other matters were passed relatively quickly.



Budget and Stimulus:  The state is slated to receive over $16 billion over two years in recovery act funds, and passed a two-year budget of over $180 billion.  And while recovery act money has prevented draconian cuts in essential services such as education, and fueled rapid spending on transportation infrastructure, Governor Perry has used the stimulus as a political football, making a show of refusing hundreds of millions of dollars in unemployment insurance benefits for the people of his state.  Lawmakers made concerted efforts to override the governor's decision, but were unable to get a bill to force the issue out of both houses.



Using the recovery funds, the state pass a balanced budget, while being unwilling to tap the state's rainy-day fund of approximately $9 billion despite the economic crisis.  At the same time, the fiscal gains from the reviled stimulus was also used to expand the franchise tax exemption to 40,000 additional small businesses with revenue of up to $1 million.  Unfortunately, the state's business tax revenue is falling already and a structural deficit threatens to force severe budget cuts in the next biennium.



Privatization:  Private toll roads legislation died even as the governor personally pushed it to the very end of the special session.  While Gov. Perry has aggressively pushed privatization, in roads and elsewhere, for many years, serious scandal and misuse of public money has gone hand in hand with this expansion and undercut support in the legislature.



Healthcare: The big story on healthcare this session is what didn't happen - expansion of the Children's Health Insurance Plan (CHIP) to 80,000 more kids.  Texas remains the nation's leader in uninsured kids with a quarter of the state's children lacking health coverage and one in six of every uninsured child in the country lives in Texas.  The CHIP expansion got held up by the voter ID debate, but lawmakers were in strong support of the measure and tried mightily to get the governor to include the legislation in the special session to no avail.  HB 3485, another important healthcare bill was vetoed by the governor.  The bill would have allowed hospitals in counties of 50,000 or less to employ physicians, helping to reverse the shortage of doctors in rural areas of the state.  On a more positive note, a smoking ban for all workplaces gained some traction in the legislature, garnering commitments of support from a majority of senators as well as the
endorsement of the lieutenant governor.  And, importantly, none of the anti-choice bills put forth by conservatives were successful, including an ultrasound bill that was pushed strongly.



Primary and Secondary Education:  Teachers will see a one-time pay raise of $800 under the spending plan for recovery act dollars, and school districts are getting another $2 billion in funding.  This increase is not, however, sufficient to cover shortfalls built up after several years without an increase.  The legislature also passed a revision of the student accountability standards that retains the mandate that students pass standardized tests to advance to the next grade, but reduces the emphasis on the much-derided Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, as well as some other requirements such as the number of mandatory courses.



The Senate rejected the nomination of Don McLeroy to continue as State Board of Elections chairman due to his views on creationism and his lack of leadership.  This was a significant victory for science in a state where biology education is under attack.  Unfortunately, the governor is now likely to appoint someone as bad or worse to the post.  In other areas the new budget explicitly bars public funding for private school vouchers; school districts are now required to inform parents whether sex education classes provide any medically accurate information on responsible pregnancy and disease prevention.  Given that a large majority of parents want their children to receive comprehensive, medically accurate sex education, this bill should help achieve that goal in the long run.  Sadly, HB 130, a bill that would have made high quality, full day prekindergarten programs available to tens of thousands of eligible children, was vetoed despite strong
bipartisan support. 



Higher Education: Texas is currently a lagger in its number of tier one research universities.  Newly passed legislation creates funding pools and incentives for emerging research universities to advance to nationally recognized tier one schools.  The guaranteed admission that the top 10 percent of state high school graduates to state colleges is being scaled back with colleges now required to give only three quarters of students based automatic admission.  The law will primarily affect Univ. of Texas' main campus, which projects that 86 percent of its fall 2009 freshman class will be admitted automatically because they were in the top 10 percent of their high school class.



Energy and Environment:  There was an unprecedented flurry of activity and bipartisan support around renewable energy legislation in this session.  Over 50 bills dealing with such matters were introduced and a couple bills, one on solar subsidies and one enhancing the renewable portfolio standard were viable until the very end of the session.  Were it not for the voter ID debate it is likely one or both of these bills would have passed.  This level of support is primarily the result of the state's current dominance in wind power and the positive impact that is having on the economy.  Yet, in spite of the setbacks, several good pieces of energy legislation did pass:



HB1937 allows local taxing authorities to offer financing for renewable energy installations with payment to be made through an add-on to the owner's property taxes.
HB 1935, a workforce training bill, creates a green jobs training and development program that includes funding through a grant program.
HB 432 promotes low emissions and plug-in hybrid vehicles for fleets of major State Agencies.

Criminal Justice:  Generally Texas has been moving in a more progressive direction on criminal justice policies in the past few year, that trend continued at a measured pace this session.



Death Penalty: A statewide capital defense office is being created, here, in the capital of capital punishment.  This long-overdue reform will help resolve the egregious instances of incompetent counsel that have plagued capital defendants in the state for years.  Dedicated capital defenders are essential to ensuring basic fairness for those facing a possible death sentence and defendants in Texas will clearly benefit from this change.
Human Trafficking: The victims of human traffickers now are able to sue and seek punitive damages from the traffickers and the organizations involved.  Additionally, a task force was established to come up with policies for preventing and prosecuting human trafficking.
Guns: Both of the gun lobby's "right to carry" bills failed to pass.  The most notorious would require colleges to allow concealed handguns on campus; the other would have required that employers allow workers to store guns in their parked vehicles outside of work.



Voter ID:  The session started and ended with pitched battles over voter ID.  To begin the session the Senate voted to exempt voter ID from its rule that requires a 2/3rds vote to end debate.  Having unleashed the nuclear option, a photo ID bill quickly passed that chamber.  However, prospects were not clear in the closely divided House even though the bill had passed that chamber in recent sessions.  The committee chairman in charge spent much of the session trying to craft a compromise bill that Democrats would support.  In the end that failed and a bill requiring photo ID or two non-photo ID to vote was sent to the floor late in the session.  That is when the chubbing began, with minority party members debating every bill for the full ten minutes to wind down the clock.   In the end voter ID didn't come up for a vote.  But the insistence of the majority leadership of pressing on with the bill meant that perhaps
hundreds of worthy bills didn't get a vote.  Hopefully they will get the message that the right to vote is fundamental to our freedom and prosperity and committed advocates within and outside the legislature will continue to fight to preserve it.  On another note, there was a solid election integrity bill passed into law that institutes common sense procedures for handling and testing electronic voting machines.

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 12:31 PM 0 comments Links to this post

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE        
                 
          Contact: Enrique Marquez

July 30, 2009          
                     
   Phone:   512/477.6721 x 104


Historic Coalition Calls for Dropout and Public Education Accountability Reform


Austin – Influential Texas business,
civil rights, public policy, and education groups including the Texas Association
of Business (TAB), the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund
(MALDEF), the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the Center
for Public Policy Priorities (CPPP),  the Greater Austin Chamber of
Commerce (GACC), the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (SAHCC),
Mothers Against Discriminatory Racism in Education and Society (MADRES),
and the University Leadership Initiative came together today to call upon
the Texas Education Agency (TEA) to take meaningful steps to identify and
address the dropout rate and public education accountability system in
Texas.



The coalition announced a set of
education opportunities for improvement within the current accountability
framework:

.  

        Develop
a simplified, accurate calculation of the Texas public school dropout rate

        Improve
standards on minimum skills tests used in current model, which currently
awards “Academically Acceptable” ratings to campuses that pass only fifty
percent of students in science subject areas

        Include
the academic performance of English Language Learner (ELL) students on
English language proficiency tests and state standardized tests and other
measures in the state accountability system

        Continue
to include dropout rate when assessing accountability ratings

        Raise
awareness that a recent academic evaluation shift to a growth model for
academic evaluation that measures student progress based on projected
future success will cause an inflated spike in accountability ratings



“I am honored to stand with some
of the most influential policy, civil rights and education organizations
in Texas that recognize the transformative power of education,” said TAB
President Bill Hammond. “Tomorrow, TEA Commissioner Robert Scott will
release the accountability ratings, and I am delighted that the dropout
rate will be included in the assessments.  TEA deserves credit for
including the dropout rate, but anyone familiar with the calculation knows
their dropout rate statistics are not accurate. We must create a more transparent
system if we are to move forward in developing a world-class public education
system for our children.”



“The failure to include English
Language Learner students in the accountability system creates an unnecessary
caste system in our Texas public schools,” said MALDEF Legislative Staff
Attorney Luis Figueroa. “If ELL students are to have any hope for a better
education, TEA cannot continue to mask their failure, particularly the
secondary students.”



“The LULAC District Office (District
VII) supports these goals to address the unacceptable levels of high school
dropout rates, especially among Hispanic students, that we have endured
for too many years, too many decades,” said Angel Abitua, LULAC District
Director. “The Hispanic community that we serve in the Greater Austin
area needs to be informed, through a simplified, accurate calculation,
of the ‘true’ picture of the dropout rate.  With true and accurate
accounting, then and only then, we can determine and promote strategies
to help address this problem and help our community overcome the severe
disadvantages that plague our younger generations.”



“Academic progress should certainly
be included in any accountability model,” said Frances Deviney, Texas
KIDS COUNT Director at the CPPP.  “But to use it to inflate the TAKS
passage rates does a disservice to the students and the schools by masking
the true number of kids still struggling to meet the state’s academic
standards and hiding the need for additional efforts and supports."



"The San Antonio Hispanic
Chamber of Commerce is intently focused on the livelihood and prosperity
of the Hispanic community,” said Ramiro Cavazos, President of the SAHCC.
 “Education is the surest means to building a competitive workforce,
and we are asking the TEA to give Texans a clear and accurate picture of
how our youth are faring in our public schools."

 

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 12:25 PM 3 comments Links to this post

From the Office of the Governor:


CARROLTON – Gov. Rick Perry today ceremonially signed House Bill (HB) 3, which will improve public education and strengthen the state’s public school accountability system by holding schools accountable for graduating students who are college and career-ready, ensuring that schools retain rigorous high school graduation plans, improving parent access to student academic information and increasing school district financial transparency.

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 12:23 PM 1 comments Links to this post

The NYTimes editors just came out with this. The concern that is not addressed that is shared by most reformers is the standardization and the testing that follows reforms that our laid out in this manner. A focus on high-quality teachers is excellent though.

Angela

July 31, 2009
EDITORIAL
Washington Steps Up on Schools

The federal government talks tough about requiring the states to improve schools in exchange for education aid. Then it caves in to political pressure and rewards mediocrity when it’s time to enforce the bargain. As a result, the country has yet to achieve many of the desperately needed reforms laid out in the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 and other laws dating back to the 1990’s.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan is ready to break with that tradition as he prepares to distribute the $4.3 billion discretionary pot of money known as the Race to the Top Fund. States that have dragged their feet or actively resisted school reform in the past are screaming about the rigorous but as yet preliminary criteria by which their grant applications will be judged.

President Obama gave fair notice of this shift in a speech earlier this year, when he talked about pressuring the states to do better by the country’s 50 million schoolchildren. But Mr. Duncan will need cover from the White House to weather the storm.

The long and detailed list of criteria just released by the administration includes a fine-grained evaluation process under which states get points for reforms they have made and points for changes they promise to make — and conditional funding that can be revoked if they don’t make them. The process finally allows the federal government to reward states that have made progress and to bypass slackers.

The president and the secretary are rightly interested in replacing a wild patchwork of standards with coherent common standards and tests that would allow parents to compare their schools with others. The government cannot and should not write those standards.

But states that have committed to joining, say, the standards consortium started by the National Governors Association will be favored in the funding competition over states that have not. More consideration will eventually be given to states that develop plans for adopting internationally benchmarked K-through-12 standards that build toward college and career readiness.

Similarly, the process requires states to develop systems that evaluate teacher performance, taking student achievement into account. States must also be required to make sure that poor and minority students finally get a fair share of high-quality teachers. But that requirement will be meaningful only if the states are forced to develop serious teacher-quality measures. In general, the plan needs to be clearer about what states must do for long-neglected minority students.

But over all, it marks an important step forward in the federal stance on education.


Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
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posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 12:17 PM 0 comments Links to this post

SCHOOL RATINGS
New measure of accountability success causes stir
Coalition of business, civil rights groups calls for transparency in school accountability.
By Kate Alexander
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Thursday, July 30, 2009
Many Texas public schools are expected to show big gains when accountability ratings are released Friday, but a disparate group of critics says the improvements could be illusory.

For the first time, schools will be able to count as passing students who fail any section of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills but are on track to pass in the future.

Legislative news inside the Virtual Capitol

The new measure, which has been approved by the U.S. Department of Education, is seen as a way to gauge how well schools are helping low-performing students catch up to their classmates. The Texas Education Agency uses a mathematical model based on a student's test score and the school's average scores to determine if the student is projected to pass.

Schools were being punished for having students arrive at their doors ill-prepared, said Julian Vasquez Heilig, a University of Texas education professor. So this measure will provide a truer picture of how effectively a school moves students forward, even if they miss the passing standard, Vasquez Heilig said.

But early indications are that the new measure will also help a large number of schools climb up the four-tiered accountability ratings scale and claim success.

In the Dallas school district, for instance, one-third of the campuses will benefit from the new measure, according to newspaper reports. The Austin district has not released its preliminary test results.

"You're going to have a lot of school districts and a lot of campuses that are going to be given substantial upgrades, but their actual performance won't have changed," said Bill Hammond, president of the Texas Association of Business, a trade group for Texas employers that has pushed schools to better prepare students for the workplace.

Frances Deviney of the Center for Public Policy Priorities, an advocacy group for low-income Texans, said the concern is that "masking the true number of kids still struggling to meet the state's academic standards" will undermine the public and political support for programs that help those students.

The business group has joined with the center and some other "nontraditional friends," as Hammond put it, to highlight the need for transparency in school accountability reporting and strengthening standards. Those two organizations have rarely seen eye to eye on key tax and spending issues that affect education.

Other members of the coalition, which will hold a news conference today to air its concerns, include the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the League of United Latin American Citizens. They joined forces with the business association in 2007 to speak out on immigration issues.

Angel Abitua, the local LULAC district director, said his organization has jumped into this issue because the dropout rate is "horrendous" for Hispanic students and the state needs to be forthright about that problem for it to be addressed. Hispanic students in Texas drop out of school at three times the rate of their white peers, according to the latest state figures.

"We don't want it to be hidden from sight for political expediency," Abitua said.

kalexander@statesman.com; 445-3618

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 11:21 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Not sure how much press this got but I think that Jimmy Carter's decision to sever my ties with the Southern Baptist Convention should be looked at closely. This is surely making waves and in a good way, I hope.

-Angela

Losing my religion for equality
Jimmy Carter
July 15, 2009



I HAVE been a practising Christian all my life and a deacon and Bible teacher for many years. My faith is a source of strength and comfort to me, as religious beliefs are to hundreds of millions of people around the world. So my decision to sever my ties with the Southern Baptist Convention, after six decades, was painful and difficult. It was, however, an unavoidable decision when the convention's leaders, quoting a few carefully selected Bible verses and claiming that Eve was created second to Adam and was responsible for original sin, ordained that women must be "subservient" to their husbands and prohibited from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service.

This view that women are somehow inferior to men is not restricted to one religion or belief. Women are prevented from playing a full and equal role in many faiths. Nor, tragically, does its influence stop at the walls of the church, mosque, synagogue or temple. This discrimination, unjustifiably attributed to a Higher Authority, has provided a reason or excuse for the deprivation of women's equal rights across the world for centuries.

At its most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to education, health, employment and influence within their own communities.

The impact of these religious beliefs touches every aspect of our lives. They help explain why in many countries boys are educated before girls; why girls are told when and whom they must marry; and why many face enormous and unacceptable risks in pregnancy and childbirth because their basic health needs are not met.

In some Islamic nations, women are restricted in their movements, punished for permitting the exposure of an arm or ankle, deprived of education, prohibited from driving a car or competing with men for a job. If a woman is raped, she is often most severely punished as the guilty party in the crime.

The same discriminatory thinking lies behind the continuing gender gap in pay and why there are still so few women in office in the West. The root of this prejudice lies deep in our histories, but its impact is felt every day. It is not women and girls alone who suffer. It damages all of us. The evidence shows that investing in women and girls delivers major benefits for society. An educated woman has healthier children. She is more likely to send them to school. She earns more and invests what she earns in her family.

It is simply self-defeating for any community to discriminate against half its population. We need to challenge these self-serving and outdated attitudes and practices - as we are seeing in Iran where women are at the forefront of the battle for democracy and freedom.

I understand, however, why many political leaders can be reluctant about stepping into this minefield. Religion, and tradition, are powerful and sensitive areas to challenge. But my fellow Elders and I, who come from many faiths and backgrounds, no longer need to worry about winning votes or avoiding controversy - and we are deeply committed to challenging injustice wherever we see it.

The Elders are an independent group of eminent global leaders, brought together by former South African president Nelson Mandela, who offer their influence and experience to support peace building, help address major causes of human suffering and promote the shared interests of humanity. We have decided to draw particular attention to the responsibility of religious and traditional leaders in ensuring equality and human rights and have recently published a statement that declares: "The justification of discrimination against women and girls on grounds of religion or tradition, as if it were prescribed by a Higher Authority, is unacceptable."

We are calling on all leaders to challenge and change the harmful teachings and practices, no matter how ingrained, which justify discrimination against women. We ask, in particular, that leaders of all religions have the courage to acknowledge and emphasise the positive messages of dignity and equality that all the world's major faiths share.

The carefully selected verses found in the Holy Scriptures to justify the superiority of men owe more to time and place - and the determination of male leaders to hold onto their influence - than eternal truths. Similar biblical excerpts could be found to support the approval of slavery and the timid acquiescence to oppressive rulers.

I am also familiar with vivid descriptions in the same Scriptures in which women are revered as pre-eminent leaders. During the years of the early Christian church women served as deacons, priests, bishops, apostles, teachers and prophets. It wasn't until the fourth century that dominant Christian leaders, all men, twisted and distorted Holy Scriptures to perpetuate their ascendant positions within the religious hierarchy.

The truth is that male religious leaders have had - and still have - an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter. Their continuing choice provides the foundation or justification for much of the pervasive persecution and abuse of women throughout the world. This is in clear violation not just of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but also the teachings of Jesus Christ, the Apostle Paul, Moses and the prophets, Muhammad, and founders of other great religions - all of whom have called for proper and equitable treatment of all the children of God. It is time we had the courage to challenge these views.

OBSERVER

Jimmy Carter was president of the United States from 1977 to 1981.

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 3:25 PM 0 comments Links to this post

By Eric Kelderman | Chronicle of Higher Education
July 27, 2009

A few weeks after wrapping up their budgets for the new fiscal year, lawmakers in some states already expect a new round of spending cuts, including to higher education, as tax revenues continue to fall.

Estimates of states' revenue shortfalls have grown worse since the spring, reaching a total of nearly $143-billion when most states began the 2010 fiscal year, on July 1, according to a survey by the National Conference of State Legislatures. But at least 11 states are already expecting to make midyear cuts, totaling more than $22-billion, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, an advocacy group.

Read on

Labels: higher education

posted by Patricia Lopez at 7:29 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Sam Chaltain
The Huffington Post
une 25, 2009

With $100 billion to spend in the next two years, the Obama administration means business when it talks about reshaping the public education system. Why, then, is it ignoring some of the business community's best insights when it comes to core questions of how to spark systems change?

There's a disconnect between what the administration is promising - a set of voluntary national content standards - and what we the people will receive - a standardization of the public school system.

As U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has explained, the Obama administration's top priority is to "make sure our K-12 students are prepared to succeed in college and the workforce." As a first step toward achieving that goal, Duncan wants states to adopt "rigorous K-12 standards that prepare students for success in college and the workforce." Almost every state has agreed to participate - an unprecedented step toward a uniform definition of success in American schools.

At first blush, it's an optimal way to remedy the ongoing injustice that some children receive a high-quality public education, while others barely achieve proficiency. But here's the problem: although the public school system needs greater quality control, content standards are not the optimal measure to pursue.

If our goal is to "prepare students to succeed in college and the workplace," the standards we pursue should be whatever young people need most to be successful in college and the workplace. And in today's world, although young graduates certainly need a foundation of content knowledge, the greater measure of their long-term success will be the extent to which they learn to use their minds well.

Using one's mind well means more than just acquiring large numbers of discrete facts; it means learning how to find, analyze, and use information in adaptive ways. It doesn't mean content doesn't matter, either - just that our decisions about which content to teach (and why) should be made at the school level, by the people who know students best - their teachers. Neither does it mean we should throw up our hands and say there are certain things we just can't measure. In one school, for example, the curriculum is organized around seventeen standards of intellect, and the school has figured out how to measure factors as elusive as "collaboration" and "quality work."

The purpose of a national set of standards must be to ensure that a school in California and a school in Mississippi are reaching for the same golden ring. The standards must be aspirational, not basic. They must be guideposts, not hitching posts. And they must be indicators of wisdom that students will need to be successful in college and the workplace, not shards of knowledge that make it easier to devise uniform tests and mandate standardized modes of instruction.

Numerous experts share this concern. As Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen has observed, "there are powerful economic forces in place to standardize both instruction and assessment despite what we know to be true - students learn in different ways. The question now facing schools is this: Can the (current) system of schooling designed to process groups of students in standardized ways in a monolithic instructional mode be adapted to handle differences in the way individual brains are wired for learning?"

Princeton economist Allan Blinder echoes a similar note of caution. "It is clear that the U.S. and other rich nations will have to transform their educational systems so as to produce workers for the jobs that will actually exist in their societies. Simply providing more education is probably a good thing on balance, especially if a more educated labor force is a more flexible labor force that can cope more readily with non-routine tasks and occupational change. But it is far from a panacea. In the future, how we educate our children may prove to be more important than how much we educate them."

We desperately want to believe it is possible to find simple solutions to the complex problems we face, and to neatly divide cause and effect. To improve student learning, the conventional wisdom goes, we must make schools (and teachers) more accountable to student test scores. As Secretary Duncan said recently in remarks at the Governors Education Symposium: "Once new (content) standards are set and adopted, you need to create new tests that measure whether students are meeting those standards." Duncan has pledged up to $350 million to "help pay for the costs of developing those tests."

I believe the Secretary genuinely believes this path will best serve the needs of all children. I believe just as strongly that it will not. So how do we take this knowledge and create a more effective intervention strategy for our public school system?

Let's start by remembering that in any organization - whether it's a school, a business or the entire public school system - the central challenge is to strike the right balance between individual freedom and group structure. Artful leaders allow enough individual freedom so individuals have the room to be innovative, adaptive, and empowered, and they provide enough structure so all people have the support and clarity they need to do their best work.

Apply that thinking to our current challenges, and a good rule of thumb emerges for the Secretary to follow: First, provide simple structures that clarify for all schools what we mean when we say we want children to learn to use their minds well. And second, provide educators with the freedom to make complex decisions about which content will help them grab the golden ring and truly prepare our children for success in college and the workplace.

Labels: academic standards

posted by Patricia Lopez at 7:26 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Here's the Full Report

-Patricia

Naomi Chudowsky and Victor Chudowsky
Center on Education Policy
July 21, 2009


Many in the research and policy worlds have taken for granted the existence of a phenomenon known as the "plateau effect," wherein test scores rise in the early years of a test-based accountability system and then level off. Drawing from our database of reading and math test results from all 50 states going back as far as 1999, we looked for evidence of a plateau effect in 55 trend lines from 16 states with six to ten years of consistent test data. This report outlines those findings.

Our analysis revealed several main findings:

• In the current testing context, one cannot assume the existence of a plateau effect
when trying to predict state test score trends. Although this study found instances of
plateaus in test score trends in the 16 states analyzed, they were not as pervasive as may be commonly assumed. Percentage proficient trends followed a wide variety of trajectories, including some plateau patterns. Of the 55 trend lines we examined from various states and different grade levels in reading and math, 15 exhibited a plateau pattern. We also found 21 trend lines with steady increases in the percentage proficient over time and 19 more with fluctuating “zigzag” patterns that still moved in an overall upward direction.

• The largest gains did not consistently show up in the early years of a testing program. In many of the trend lines, the largest gains occurred between the first and second years of administering a new test. But just as often, the largest gains appeared between the third and fourth years, or between the fifth and sixth. Thus, we concluded that the largest gains are just as likely—and sometimes more likely—to occur after four or even six years of a testing program as they are in the first few years.

• A clear upswing in test results was apparent after the enactment of the No Child
Left Behind Act (NCLB). In many states, the largest gains in percentages proficient
occurred between 2003 and 2004, two years after NCLB took effect. But the early years
of NCLB were not always concurrent with the first few years of a state testing program. In several states, the tests used for NCLB had already been in place for some years, and a bump in scores still appeared after NCLB. This pattern suggests that test results can increase substantially even after a test has been in place for several years if higher stakes are introduced in the accountability system.

• In the three states with the longest trend lines, gains generally did level off after nine or ten years, but the data were too limited to know whether this is a consistent pattern in state test performance. One complicating factor in studying test score trends is that states tend to change their tests quite frequently, so long trend lines are rare. It may well be that by the time a state would start to show a plateau effect, it changes its tests.

Labels: testing

posted by Patricia Lopez at 6:54 AM 0 comments Links to this post

This post by Professor Stephen Krashen is in response to the previous post.

Here are his comments, posted on this website.

http://www.ncte.org/standards/commoncore/response


-Angela

It is good to know that NCTE does not yet have a position on the
standards movement.

Will NCTE's input assume that national standards and tests are
necessary and only comment on the substance of the standards? Are we
limited to providing input on the draft or can we question the idea of
investing so much time and money on standards and tests?

I am a member of several organizations supporting or planning to
support the standards movement because they think it is inevitable. If
these organizations were to question the standards, maybe they would
not be inevitable.

Children in the US are staggering under the load of tests. Schools
have turned into test-prep factories. It is astonishing that a major
priority of the administration is new standards and tests.

I argue that new standards and tests are unnecessary and unhelpful in
a very short paper called NUT: No Unnecessary Testing. Write me for a
copy: skrashen@yahoo.com.

Stephen Krashen

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 12:48 PM 0 comments Links to this post

July 28, 2009

Dear NCTE Members:

I have traveled throughout the United States this summer working with
teachers across content areas and grade levels, in large urban areas
and small rural communities. In almost every place, teachers have
asked what NCTE’s response is to the Common Core State Standards for
language arts. At times, some teachers have misunderstood what
NCTE’s role has been in the development of these standards. Other
teachers have taken the time to write to me, with concern, about what
the Council’s response will be to these national standards.

I offer this letter to members to clarify what the Council’s role
has been in the development of the Common Core State Standards with
the hope that you will feel assured about the direction of the
Council, the commitment of the Executive Committee to upholding
long-standing Council values, and the promise of this president to
always keep the needs of teachers and students first.

This spring, the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO)
convened a work group to draft a common core of state standards in
math and language arts for grades K–12. These college and workforce
readiness standards were written by a group whose names were released
to the public on July 1 by the National Governors Association, a
partner in the initiative. While drafting the standards document, this
work group received feedback from individuals. Though one member of
NCTE, Carol Jago, agreed to serve as a member of the feedback group,
she did not represent NCTE in that capacity.

In late June, the Chiefs invited NCTE to offer a response to the
draft of the standards. Upon receiving that request, the Executive
Committee met (via phone and Web conferencing) and decided that
providing input on the draft was more advisable than not. It’s
obvious that we will have national twelfth-grade exit standards. As of
now, 46 states have agreed to adopt them. Refusing to offer input
means having no chance of influencing this document. I’m not naïve
enough to think that all suggestions for revisions we make will be
followed. At this point, though, the Executive Committee is dedicated
to providing the input needed so that this document will be as aligned
as possible with NCTE positions on key issues—positions enacted
through democratic processes by NCTE members.

So, the Executive Committee has convened a blue-ribbon panel of NCTE
members to review the standards with NCTE policies and positions in
mind. Last week, this group received a copy of the ELA common core
standards draft, and it is currently beginning its review. Unlike the
feedback group that provided advice to the CCSSO from each
individual’s perspective, this NCTE review team will review the
standards through the lens of NCTE policy.

I have no idea what the Chiefs will do with the report they will
receive from NCTE during the second week of August. What I do know is
that if we refuse to be a part of this process, then any chance NCTE
has of making the document better is lost. Perhaps the Chiefs will
disregard any suggestions for revisions that are made. But perhaps
not. That chance is why the Executive Committee chose to accept the
offer to provide a review.

At this point, it would be premature for me to speculate on what will
happen next. I know that after the standards document is completed
(early September) and released to the public, then the Chiefs will
begin work on grade-level benchmarks. The Chiefs have invited NCTE to
be a part of that process, but the Executive Committee has not yet
addressed this request. It seemed hasty at best, ill advised at worst,
to agree to do that before studying the end-of-grade-12 standards
document carefully. That is what is happening now with the review
team.

I want each NCTE member to be assured that the Executive Committee is
committed to upholding NCTE policies and positions. If it becomes
apparent that the standards document stands in opposition to those
policies and positions, then NCTE will not hesitate to point out the
discrepancies. But to speak against the document before it has been
reviewed could undercut our ability to offer a credible and cogent
critique later in the standards setting process. Additionally, NCTE
will continue to support the position that while standards—a policy
document—might be created by policy groups, assessments of student
learning and curriculum/pedagogical choices that lead to achievement
of standards are best left to teachers.

My goal for the Council is that policymakers turn to us first when
they address policies and practices in English language arts. So, yes,
I was disappointed that the Chiefs did not consult NCTE when they
began their work on the standards document. However, once they did
turn to us, I was happy that the Executive Committee agreed to provide
input. At this point, we are cautiously cooperative. If that
cooperative stance proves ineffective, then we will be respectfully
vocal with our concerns.

Kylene Beers

President, National Council of Teachers of English

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 12:47 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Posted By La Prensa San Diego On July 17, 2009 @ 11:19 pm

By Jorge Mariscal

The impact of the economic crisis on the University of California has been in the headlines over the last two weeks.
Last Saturday's Union Tribune article on the UC budget meltdown drew heavily on a letter that was signed by 23 department chairmen at UC San Diego. Unfortunately, this has been the only public proposal from UCSD faculty and so all of us who teach there have been tainted with its self-serving recommendations.

Although the tone of sociology professor Andy Scull's original letter gave the impression that he was contesting the current UC regime, in many ways the logic of what he proposed coincided perfectly with where the UC was heading long before the economic crisis.

Professor Scull and the other department chairs who signed his letter urged UC President Yudof and the regents to consider "closing campuses and enrolling more out-of-state students, who pay much higher tuition, to minimize long-term damage to the UC's more accomplished campuses."

As the privatization of the UC continues (UCSD, for example, is a public university in name only with only 6% of its budget coming from the state), more out-of-state and international students will be admitted. This has been a shift desired by some for several years now. The mission of the UC that says we should be serving the people of California is sacrificed on the altar of revenue flow.

UCSD then becomes a finishing school for out-of-state students from rich families and affluent foreigners. The University of Michigan, now almost fully privatized and being talked about as a model for the new UC, currently enrolls more international students than Mexican American students.

Once the three "elite" UC campuses make the transition to being in essence private schools, working class and minority students will slowly disappear from their classrooms. Again, this is already happening due to increased tuition (which Scull supports) and enrollment caps. But if UC were to adopt Scull's plan and wipe out the campuses with the most underrepresented students-Riverside and Merced-you accelerate the process.

Of course, this has already happened at the professional schools where Blacks and Chicanos can be counted on one hand. In Scull's scenario, by 2040 when Latinos make up a majority of the state not just the professional schools but the entire UC will be closed to all but a handful of them (although large numbers of them will be academically qualified). Talented 2%, anyone?
It will be argued that wealthy out-of-state and foreign students paying higher fees will subsidize financial aid for less affluent students. But this positive scenario depends on the kind of successful outreach to working families that has never been the norm at UCSD.

The one area where UCSD has made progress in terms of enrolling more Chicano and Black students has been community college transfers. A likely outcome of the crisis is that foreign transfers begin to displace local transfers. The percentage of foreign students among transfers is already higher than it is among new freshmen.

The twin elephants in the budget crisis room that UC administrators and faculty have chosen to ignore are class and race privilege. In the case of UC San Diego, it's in the institutional DNA. When campus founder Roger Revelle first imagined a La Jolla campus in the late 1950s, he saw it as an exclusive "seedbed for future leaders." The unwashed masses, he implied, could attend San Diego State.

The reaction in the central valley to the now infamous letter from the UCSD 23 was rightfully angry and to the point. The Fresno Bee's Bill McEwen put forth one of the better analyses: "So, faced with the challenge of making do with less - as millions of Californians are doing - what did some of the purportedly best and brightest at UC San Diego come up with? Close down the newest UC serving some of the poorest towns in America, a region where thousands of bright, industrious youngsters are working to someday become the first college graduates in their families. I've got a better idea. That campus they've got down there in tony La Jolla, where some two-bedroom condos - I kid you not - list for $2 million? Shutter the university, sell everything off and start all over in Brawley." Or maybe Chula Vista.

Although late last week UC President Yudof rejected the idea of closing campuses, it is important to understand the logic behind what the UCSD 23 suggested-a "disaster capitalism" solution in which the crisis allows those at the top to maintain their privilege, facilitates privatization, and further fetishizes the notion of "excellence." Elite sectors of each campus will become more exclusive as rich, i.e., externally funded, departments turn into gated communities surrounded by the mini-ghettos of under funded programs that are unable to generate their own revenue.

It's curious to see that so many department chairs at UCSD whose own programs could be negatively affected signed on to the letter, e.g. History, Communication. If the crisis continues for two or three more years, as some predict, smaller programs like African American and Chicano/Latino studies will no doubt shrink and may eventually disappear. Big-time donors willing to drop a million dollars on academic programs designed to question economic and cultural injustice simply don't exist.
Is there a way out of the crisis for the UC? President Yudof's contention that if the university could only explain to the people of California how much the UC does for them they would rally to its defense founders on the shoals of powerful stereotypes about "lazy 'radical' professors." If this crisis does nothing else, it hopefully will destroy once and for all the fantasy that "Marxist professors" are running the University of California.

The UC is a giant corporation replete with over-paid executives, a cadre of increasingly entrepreneurial and hyper-professionalized faculty, and an army of over-worked staff and instructors. Milton Friedman would approve; Marx most certainly would not.

On Wednesday, the UC Regents rubber stamped a furlough/pay cut for faculty and staff. Only Lt. Gov. John Garamendi voted against it. Unless the Regents and elected officials come up with new ways for the state to support higher education, the UC system will continue its decline. The Cal State campuses will follow close behind. Who will be the real losers in all of this?-the hopes and dreams of generations of future working and middle class California students.

Jorge Mariscal is director of the Chicano-Latino Arts and Humanities Program at the University of California, San Diego.

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

By Victor M. Rodriguez Dominguez | La Prensa San Diego
July 17, 2009
Editorial and Commentary

Higher Education in California is facing the greatest challenge in its history. But Latino youth will pay a disproportionate share of the consequences for the crisis in the next few years. The impasse between Governor Schwarz-enegger and the state legislature have created the conditions for an ever further worsening of the economy of this state.

The cut in $584 million in the budget of the California State University system has led Chancellor Charles B. Reed, to inform that the 23 institutions that make up the CSU, will accept 10,0000 less students this Fall 2009 term. Also a few days ago he announced that there will be no admissions in any of the 23 universities for the Spring 2010 semester/quarter. This will mean that a total of 45,000 California students will be left without choices for a four-year institution. That is, unless they come from families with the resources to pay for a private college education.
> The chancellor also announced that employees, both faculty and staff, will be asked to accept furloughs to reduce the $584 million in budget cutbacks the system will face this next fiscal year. Even if there are furloughs faculty and staff are also likely to suffer layoffs. The quality of education could likely suffer impacting how many students per faculty, how much time faculty has to provide mentoring and research. In addition, entering students will experience a 10 per cent increase in tuition this year. It seems also likely that in the July 21 meeting of the CSU Board of Trustees an additional 20 per cent raise in tuition will be approved. Cumulatively, this will mean a 32 per cent rise in tuition costs for CSU students.

The CSU system, with its 433,000 students is the second largest higher education system in the state. The other two, the University of California, with 220,000 students and the California Community Colleges (CCC) with 1,548,000 constitute the three-tiered system of higher education in this state. However, it is the CSU who makes the largest contribution to the education of Latinos in the state. Only 3 per cent of UC students are Latinos while Latinos make-up 8 per cent of the 433,000 CSU students. While the CCC has a larger percentage of Latino students, the community colleges do not offer a bachelor which is required in most professions. Therefore, the larger burden of educating the next professional Latino generation rests on the shoulders of the CSU.

These dramatic budget cuts come at a time when studies suggest that by 2025 close to two in five jobs (41 per cent) will require a university degree. This lack of access at a time when, according to Deborah Santiago 2006 study supported from the Tomas Rivera Public Policy Institute, the percentage of Latinos earning a bachelor has not changed significantly in the last 25 years. The percentage has hovered between eight and 10 per cent. These cuts will significantly make these numbers decline even further.

Ironically, the restriction in access to higher education for California youth comes at a time when by 2025, 41 per cent of the jobs will require a bachelor. Given that the "baby boomer" generation will be retiring in a few years and that they tend to have the highest level of education, we will be facing a gap between supply and demand. According to Hans Johnson and Ria Sengupta (2009), the state will need one million more college graduates than what the system of higher education provides. These cuts will increase the gap between supply and demand and will reduce this state's ability to compete in an increasingly competitive world.

The lack of an educated workforce, which by 2020 will be 50 percent Latino, will impact the social security and pension systems which many of the "baby boomers" will be counting on for their economic survival. If Latino youth is not educated, it will affect us all, regardless of national origin, ethnicity or race.

The CSU, according to the Blue Sky Consulting Group (April 2008) contributes to the support of 207,000 jobs and the circulation of $13.6 billions through the state's economy. This does not include the thousands of faculty, staff and administrators employed on the 23 universities. So in addition to the educational effects the economic effects will be immediate and substantial.

We have to invest in the future now, and it is our responsibility to tell Sacramento what we need for ourselves and the future of this state.

Labels: California, higher education

posted by Patricia Lopez at 10:15 AM 0 comments Links to this post

A briefing book detailing legislation passed during the 81st session of the Texas Legislature is now available. About 100 bills impacting public education were approved by lawmakers during their 2009 session. The link to this pdf document ishttp://www.tea.state.tx.us/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id&ItemID=5103 .
There is now a House Bill 3 Graduation Requirements webpage. This page includes a link to the enrolled version of the bill, the first FAQ document and a side by side document. Related information will be added to the page as it becomes available. The URL ishttp://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/curriculum/HB3index.html .
Updates have been made to the 2009-2010 Testing Calendar.
http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/student.assessment/admin/calendar/2009_2010_calendar.pdf

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 4:34 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Duncan's Call for School Turnarounds Sparks Debate
By Catherine Gewertz


The U.S. secretary of education’s call to “turn around” the nation’s 5,000 worst-performing schools has found a warm welcome among educators and policymakers who see that focus as long overdue. But it has also sparked debate about how—and whether—such an enormous leadership and management challenge can be accomplished.

Arne Duncan is pressing for attention to chronically underperforming schools as one of four areas that states must address if they are to receive federal economic-stimulus aid. Those schools have failed to make academic progress year after year, the secretary said in a June speech, but “too many administrators are unwilling to close failing schools and create better options.”
Under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, Mr. Duncan wrote in a Commentary that month in Education Week, school officials have not made dramatic changes in troubled schools but have “taken the path of least resistance.”


Continue reading here.

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 4:09 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Dear Colleagues:

We are excited about the response to date for the upcoming First Triennial Conference on Latino Education and Immigrant Integration, Oct. 26-28, 2009. This conference, hosted by the University of Georgia's Center for Latino Achievement and Success in Education (CLASE) in collaboration with the National Latino Education Research Agenda Project, will provide an important venue for research, policy and information regarding immigrants and education, particularly in the rapidly changing southeast. See our website at http://www.coe.uga.edu/clase/conference/index.htm for more information about keynotes, submissions and registration.

In order to accommodate additional presentation proposals, the call for presentations has now been extended through September 30. (Note, however, that early registration ends September 15th, and that later submissions may not be listed in all published program materials due to publishing deadlines.) Submissions which have been received to date have been sent out for review and confirmations are expected in August.

We know travel budgets are tight, and thus have kept registration costs reasonable, in this case set at $150 for the three day conference (students, $90), and encourage early registration. We also are seeking co-sponsorships to help underwrite expenses, and would be delighted to discuss those options further as well. (Present sponsors include the UGA College of Education, the Journal of Latinos and Education, the National Latino Education Network, the Kennesaw State University Center for Hispanic Studies, and Clemson University.)

Finally, we'd like to request your help in sharing this information broadly with colleagues, list-serves, online calendars of events, etc. so please feel free to distribute to others. (If you'd like paper copies of any of this information to share, please contact us at claseuga@uga.edu.) Again, the conference website is http://www.coe.uga.edu/clase/conference/index.htm.

Labels: immigration and education

posted by Patricia Lopez at 9:49 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Carlos Guerra | My San Antonio.com
July 21, 2009

Don't let ideologues more interested in wedge politics than in educating Texas kids hijack our language instruction programs for political ends.

The fact is that not even immigrants dispute that English is necessary. And if learning other languages were so easy, wouldn't many more Americans be, at least, bilingual?

The real issue is that many children — most, U.S. citizens — start school without the English proficiency needed to succeed at their grade level.

I recently recalled that my parents didn't speak English to me until a few months before I started school to give me a solid foundation in Spanish, upon which I could build my English.

So, by the fall, I could answer most questions that a first-grader would be asked in English.

But like all other Spanish-speaking kids in Robstown, I was sent to “low first grade,” where most kids spent a year trying to learn English from teachers who spoke no Spanish.

Then, they would go to “high first grade” for another year, so by year three, they were a year behind their age-mates. Luckily, my limited English — and my parents' daily counseling — got me promoted in three days.

But even in high first grade, 7-year-olds were routinely disciplined for communicating in the only language they really knew.

Texas finally got bilingual education in 1974, but only as a more humane way to teach English — using the child's first tongue.

Language instruction has developed immensely since then, and its results have been closely studied.

But xenophobes are playing on fears to get bilingual instruction replaced with English-immersion programs.

Iliana Alanis left banking to become a bilingual teacher and, after earning a Ph.D., got a faculty job at UTSA's graduate school.

“It was just something I wanted to do,” she says.

“But the distinction between learning a language and learning is important,” she says. “To many, it doesn't make sense that the best way to learn more English is to learn more Spanish because they don't understand how understanding transfers from one language to another.”

She also notes that in Texas, bilingual education varies widely. Some schools teach English using children's first tongue for one year, others for five; and some incorporate “one-way” and “two-way bilingual models” in which English-speakers learn Spanish and Spanish-speakers learn English.

All of these methods have been evaluated closely. The most extensive of these assessments were conducted by George Mason University researchers who tracked 210,054 students.

They clearly concluded, Alanis points out, that students given dual-language, two-way instruction over five years performed best over the long term. And it is easy to see why.

“When you have the two (language) groups together, they learn from each other and they model for each other because children learn a language to interact with other children,” she says. “And for them, it's a pretty safe place because they're talking to each other and they don't worry about making mistakes.” Or being ostracized.

Labels: bilingual education

posted by Patricia Lopez at 1:04 AM 2 comments Links to this post

The extent to which schools track and Latino/a youth should concern us all. It's important to be critical of conversations surrounding the issue of college OR workforce readiness standards. There's a long history of education reform efforts using curricular tracking methods to funnel Latino/a children in two direction, and many times these practices are informed by school's perception of students as mentioned in this article.

I'm anxious to see if and how the possible appointment of Thelma Melendez de Santa Ana will help in addressing Latino/a, and more specifically ELL students' needs.

-Patricia


By Lisa Schencker
The Salt Lake Tribune
07/23/2009

When Richard Gomez was young, his father discouraged him from going to college.

"My dad was saying, 'No, you're the oldest of eight. You need to graduate and go to work,'" Gomez said.

But Gomez, now coordinator for educational equity at the State Office of Education, went to college anyway after a counselor told him he was "college material."

It's the type of encouragement Gomez said is essential to keeping Latino students -- who might not otherwise envision the same futures as their white peers -- in school. Experts say a number of systemic and personal challenges keep many Latino students from graduating.

Some face economic pressures such as having to work -- or wanting to drop out of school -- to help support their families. Others struggle to fulfill high school requirements in a language they're still learning. Some students who are in the U.S. illegally --- about 7 percent of Latinos younger than 18 -- see no point in finishing school, knowing it will be difficult to secure scholarships and professional jobs, experts say. Others have parents who didn't graduate and can't prepare them for college the same way other parents might, said Patricia Dark of the Utah Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

Still, Latino students as a group are diverse, yet they sometimes are tracked into lower-level classes based on the assumption they all struggle academically, Gomez said.



"A lot of policies, practices and structures in place, some written and some not, have the overall effect of sending a clear message to kids of color that they're really not valued in our high schools," said Michael Wotorson of the Campaign for High School Equity, a Washington, D.C.-based coalition.

For example, Latino students comprised about 8 percent of Utah's Class of 2008, but made up only 5 percent of those who took Advanced Placement exams. East High junior Margarita Rodriguez said she was the only person of color in one of her honors classes.

"You felt uncomfortable like you didn't belong," she said. "People just don't think you can do as much."

Gomez said placing Latino students into lower-level classes is the type of inadvertent practice that makes some feel schools don't value them. Students who don't feel valued are more likely to drop out, said Theresa Martinez, assistant vice president for academic outreach at the University of Utah. "If they knew that ahead of them was a six-figure salary and they would be treated fairly, they would keep going to school," Martinez said. "But they don't see that."

Labels: Latinos, tracking

posted by Patricia Lopez at 12:10 AM 0 comments Links to this post

July 22, 2009

WASHINGTON -- Pell Grants are the federal government's largest direct grant to students with low family incomes. So it's no surprise that when Congress and administrations debate priorities for higher ed spending, the Pell Grant always is a hot topic. Does the program have enough money? Should it be an entitlement? Should it be protected from requirements that don't focus on financial need?

A report released Tuesday by the National Center for Education Statistics details what is known about Pell Grant recipients by taking a close look at data from 1999-2000 bachelor's degree recipients, a group in which about 36 percent of people received at least one Pell Grant while in college. Generally, the report found that Pell Grant recipients are more likely than others to have "risk" characteristics (such as delaying postsecondary enrollment after high school graduation) that suggest statistically greater chances of dropping out of college.

At the same time, the report found that when controlling for these and other factors (such as parents' educational levels), Pell Grant recipients graduate in shorter time frames than others.

Here are demographics of Pell Grant recipients, showing them to be older on average, more likely to be female and first-generation college students and less likely to be white than those who don't receive the grants.

Click here to see the table of the Demographics of Pell Grant Recipients and All Students, 1999-2000 College Graduates

In terms of specific risk factors that make it less likely a student will complete college, several are evident among Pell Grant recipients. More than 11 percent of them are single parents, compared to 4 percent of non-Pell recipients. Just under 60 percent are financially independent of their parents, compared to about one-third of other students. And more than 33 percent delayed enrolling in college after finishing high school, compared to 23 percent of other students.

Despite those risk factors, academic achievement, as measured by grades in the major, was only slightly lower for Pell Grant recipients.

In terms of specific risk factors that make it less likely a student will complete college, several are evident among Pell Grant recipients. More than 11 percent of them are single parents, compared to 4 percent of non-Pell recipients. Just under 60 percent are financially independent of their parents, compared to about one-third of other students. And more than 33 percent delayed enrolling in college after finishing high school, compared to 23 percent of other students.

Despite those risk factors, academic achievement, as measured by grades in the major, was only slightly lower for Pell Grant recipients.

Click here for the table of the Undergraduate Major Grade-Point Average, Pell and Non-Pell Recipients, 1999-2000 Graduates

Labels: financial aid, higher education

posted by Patricia Lopez at 6:54 AM 1 comments Links to this post

THE ECONOMIST

URL: http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13938895

Special report
A special report on Texas
The new face of America

Jul 9th 2009
From The Economist print edition

Texas is the bellwether for demographic change across the country


AT THE age of 34, Julian Castro has pulled off a remarkable feat. On May 9th, without even the need for a run-off, the polished young lawyer won the race to become mayor of San Antonio, the largest Hispanic-majority city in America and the seventh-biggest city in the entire country. He joins Antonio Villaraigosa, the mayor of Los Angeles, as one of America’s half-dozen most prominent Hispanics.
The curious thing is that Mr Castro is only the third Hispanic mayor in San Antonio’s long history; the first, Henry Cisneros, was elected only in 1981. America’s Hispanics have a long way to go before they enjoy the influence that their numbers suggest. “We do have a history of failing to participate,” he admits. “But we have been seeing a series of big advances.”
Things are indeed changing. At the national level voter turnout among Hispanics was 49.9% last year, up from 47.2% in 2004, though still much lower than the non-Hispanic whites’ 66.1%. The body to watch is the Mexican American Legislative Caucus (MALC), which claims 44 of the 74 Democrats in the Texas House (there is not one Hispanic Republican there, a gigantic problem for the party). Trey Martinez Fischer, who chairs MALC, is another young man in a hurry. “MALC is taking over the Democratic Party here,” he says, “and it is time for us to expand our footprint.”
The most pressing issue, he reckons, remains education. “We are creating a majority population here that is limited in its skill set. It is up to us: if we don’t act, we are heading for disaster.” But it is not just education; Hispanics, he says, are poorly served when it comes to access to capital, health care and public transport. “This state”, he says, “has not yet atoned for the sins of its past.”
You only need to tour the Rio Grande valley, which stretches from Brownsville in the east up almost as far as Laredo, to see what he means. The valley includes some of Texas’s fastest-growing and most successful counties, such as Cameron County around Brownsville and Hidalgo County around McAllen; Brownsville has boomed, thanks in large part to its port, which serves Mexico’s buoyant north. McAllen has also become a favoured place for rich Mexicans to buy homes, educate their children and squirrel their money away; its mayor, the engagingly town-proud Richard Cortes, has big plans for an arts district, upmarket shopping centres, a huge public library which he says will be the fifth-largest in the country, and much else.
Down in the valley

But you can also encounter poverty on a scale hard to find anywhere else in America. More than 30% of the valley’s population still falls beneath America’s official poverty level, according to Sister Maria Sanchez of Valley Interfaith, a local charity. The poorest among them are to be found in the colonias, small settlements outside recognised towns. There are around 2,300 colonias in total, and the worst of them still have large numbers of houses without running water. In recent years state money has hugely improved some of them, such as Las Milpas, outside McAllen. Others, like Los Altos outside Laredo, are a national disgrace. “We are the richest country in the world, and we still have this,” says Jaime Arispe, of the Laredo Office of Border Affairs, as he surveys a street that looks as if it could be in Port-au-Prince.
Others echo Mr Martinez Fischer’s views, if not quite the passion with which he expresses them. Rafael Anchia, another House member, was recently tipped by Texas Monthly as the first Hispanic governor of Texas—though not until 2018. He brushes the accolade aside, but like Mr Martinez Fischer says that the state has systematically underfunded public education and insists this will have to change.

Health care is another racial issue. Texas has the worst insurance-coverage rates in America, and Hispanics, as well as blacks, fare much worse than Anglos; most Americans get their health care through their companies, but Hispanics and blacks are more likely to work for employers who provide limited benefits or none, or to be unemployed.
The flaws in the American health system are mostly a federal matter, but Texas makes them worse by failing to take up available federal dollars because of the need for co-finance by the recipient state; by providing few public clinics; and by refusing to reimburse private hospitals for the cost of emergency care for people who cannot afford to pay, forcing them to jack up prices for others. It also operates one of the least generous subsidy regimes for poor children in the country.
The reason why MALC will have to be listened to on all these counts is demographic. The Hispanic population is constantly being reinforced by the arrival of immigrants from across the Rio Grande, though economic, political and security pressures have started to make the border less permeable.
But international migration is not the main driver of Texas’s booming population. Texas’s Hispanics, on average, are younger than the Anglos, and their women have more babies. In 2007 just over 50% of the babies in Texas were born to Latinas, even though Hispanics make up only 38% of the population. Over the eight years to 2008, reckons Karl Eschbach, Texas’s official state demographer, natural increase (which favours Hispanics) accounted for just over half the 3.5m increase in the state’s population, and migration from other states for almost half of the rest.
Even if the border closed tomorrow, Hispanics would still overtake the Anglos by 2034, reckons Mr Eschbach. Recent trends suggest that this will in fact happen by 2015. More than half the children in the first grade of Texas schools are Hispanic. And in the Houston public-school district the proportion is 61%, notes Stephen Klineberg, of Rice University. (African-Americans make up another 27%.)
Getty ImagesPledging allegiance
Nor is it only Texas that is undergoing profound demographic shifts, says Mr Klineberg. Texas today is what all of America will look like tomorrow. At the moment there are only four “minority-majority” states (that is, states where non-Hispanic whites, or Anglos, are in the minority): California, Texas, Hawaii and New Mexico. He expects the 2010 census to show as many as 10-12 states to have passed that milestone; by 2040, he thinks, America itself will be a minority-majority nation.
The geographical spread of Texas’s Hispanic population has changed in a way that will change the state’s politics. Most Latinos used to live south of the I-10, the motorway that joins San Antonio to Houston, notes Mr Anchia. But now Dallas, like Houston, has considerably more Hispanics than Anglos: a little over 40% of the population against around 30%. Mr Anchia himself represents a district that includes part of Dallas and a swathe of prosperous suburbs, including some where there have been nasty rows about illegal immigration.
Even public schools up in the once lily-white panhandle in the north of the state are seeing their classes fill up with Hispanic children; to take a random example, in tiny Stratford up on the border with Oklahoma some 54% of the children at the local high school are Hispanic. “Every single institution in this state was built by Anglos for Anglos,” says Mr Klineberg. “And they will all have to change.”
Come on in

That might be easier than it sounds. Texas has proved far better than the other border states (California, New Mexico and Arizona) at adapting to the new, peaceful reconquista. In California, Proposition 187, which cracked down hard on illegal immigration, was heartily backed by the then Republican governor and passed in a referendum in 1994, though it was later struck down by a federal court. This kind of thing has only ever been attempted in Texas at local level, and even then only very rarely.
Texas has always been a strong supporter of immigration reform that would offer illegal immigrants (of whom Texas has close to 2m, about 7% of its population) a path to citizenship. It has also always favoured NAFTA. Perhaps that is because Texas was itself Mexican until 1836. For centuries the border, demarcated by the Rio Grande, was entirely porous, and its very length meant that much of Texas felt joined to Mexico—a cultural affinity evidenced in the fact that the margarita and the fajita were both invented in Texas.
Only recently, at the behest of distant authorities in Washington, DC, has this sense of propinquity seemed to weaken. Driven by anger elsewhere in America, immigration officials raid businesses looking for workers with false Social-Security numbers. Driven by post-2001 fears, the number of Border Patrol officers is being increased from 6,000 in 1996 to 20,000.
Texans don’t like this much. In April Jeff Moseley, president and CEO of the Greater Houston Partnership, the city’s chamber of commerce, made a powerful speech to a Senate hearing in Washington in which he rebutted the notion that undocumented workers are a drain on America’s resources. According to a study he presented, they are more likely to be net contributors in fiscal terms. He argued that they mostly complement rather than compete with domestic workers, and that they are less likely to commit crimes than the native population. And he pointed out that cracking down on illegals has had a perverse effect, ending a pattern of seasonal or circular migration that has served Texas well for many decades. Instead, it has encouraged the use of people-smugglers bringing across whole families who then tend to stay. It has fenced people in, not out.
Mr Moseley used the word “fence” calculatedly. Down in southern Texas there is no five-letter word more likely to provoke anger. The way Texans see it, the fence that is being built along a third of America’s 2,000-mile long southern border is an expensive waste of time. It sends an appalling signal to a friendly neighbour; it is easy to climb over, with or without a ladder; it is easy to circumvent; it is bad for the environment, because it cuts off animals from their water sources; and it tramples on the rights of landowners, since it has to be built well back from the riverside so as not to interfere with flood channels.
But if the fence itself is likely to have little effect on illegal immigration, the fear of terror that gave rise to it, coupled with the recession on both sides of the border and Mexico’s murderous struggle with the drug lords in its border cities, are certainly affecting both the legal and the illegal sort of crossing. Everyone along the valley of the Rio Grande seems to believe that the border is slowly closing.
At the extreme eastern end of the border, Jude Benavides, an ecologist at the University of Texas at Brownsville, laments how life has changed. “Three of my four grandparents are from Mexico,” he says. “We used to cross over the bridge to Matamoros just for lunch or dinner. Now we don’t go. We are scared of the violence, and it can sometimes take as long as two hours in line to get back across.”
The economy, too, is a powerful reason why people are crossing less often. The Mexican peso has fallen by 18% against the dollar since the beginning of 2008. That has hit retailers on the American side hard. Mexicans in the northern border provinces have been hurt by the collapse of America’s car industry. Many of the maquiladoras, factories set up just on the Mexican side of the border to benefit from lower wages and land costs, have specialised in making parts for Detroit. One of Texas’s main assets is a bit distressed just now.
Don’t mess with Texas

So Texas has a huge challenge to cope with. But it seems wrong to end on a pessimistic note. Texans above all are optimists, and few of them seem to doubt that Mexico’s proximity is a huge long-term source of strength for the Lone Star state. That optimism, rooted in a profound sense of local pride that can sometimes jar with outsiders, is Texas’s dominant characteristic.
It is the reason why the wildcatter, the independent oilman whose test drillings might come up dry 20 times before gushing in the end, is an enduring Texas symbol. And it explains why risk-taking is admired and failure no disgrace. Most of the Enron executives who lost their jobs when the firm went bust in 2001 quickly found new ones. The company’s offices in Houston were swiftly re-let. Enron Field baseball stadium became Minute Maid Park. “Don’t mess with Texas” was once a slogan for a wildly successful anti-litter campaign. It is now the state’s unofficial motto.
To visit America in the midst of the worst recession for decades can be a disheartening experience, but a tour of Texas is quite the reverse. Since suffering that big shock in the 1980s, it has become a well-diversified, fiscally sensible state; one where the great racial realignment that will affect all of America is already far advanced; and one whose politics is gradually finding the centre. It welcomes and assimilates all new arrivals. No wonder so many people are making a beeline for it.

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 9:37 AM 2 comments Links to this post

AUSTIN - The State Board of Education today gave final approval to new curriculum standards for about 190 Career and Technical Education (CTE) courses.

The standards, called Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), update and streamline CTE courses offered in Texas public schools. In recent years, more than 600 CTE courses were available to be taught in Texas schools.

The updated standards were written by teams of Texas secondary and postsecondary educators, business leaders and community members.

The courses are organized into 16 categories or clusters, which are:
• Agriculture, Food, and Natural Resources;
• Architecture and Construction;
• Arts, Audio/Visual Technology, and Communications;
• Business Management and Administration;
• Education and Training;
• Finance;
• Government and Public Administration;
• Health Science;
• Hospitality and Tourism;
• Human Services;
• Information Technology;
• Law, Public Safety, Corrections, and Security;
• Manufacturing;
• Marketing;
• Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics; and
• Transportation, Distribution, and Logistics.

The board at a later date will determine whether some of the advanced CTE courses can count for a fourth mathematics or science course credit. This will potentially provide more course options to students in the Class of 2011 and subsequent classes who are required to earn four math and science credits as part of their diploma program.

During this meeting, board members also learned that the Texas Legislature appropriated about $82 million less than was requested to purchase new English language arts and reading books. The board requested $547 million in funding for instructional materials that are to be used in classrooms beginning in the fall of 2010 but it received an appropriation of $465 million.

Board members agreed that they would not delay the purchase of instructional materials for any subject or grade level. However, they did agree to about $44 million in cost cutting measures that include basing costs on 2008-2009 enrollment figures and reducing the textbook quota to 103 percent.

The current quota is 105 percent, which means that for every 100 students, the district can order 105 textbooks. This allows a district to have extra materials on hand to replace lost textbooks or to provide materials to newly enrolled students. A 103 percent quota simply means that districts will have a smaller quantity of surplus materials on hand. A district could still order additional instructional materials at a later date if needed.

Board members also asked Texas Education Agency staff to work with publishers to see if there were ways publishers could reduce the bid price of materials. The English language arts and literature books are currently scheduled to cost from $55.56 to $174.14 per book or kit, depending on the subject and grade. Board members asked staff members to calculate new maximum costs per textbook to achieve an additional $38 million in cost reductions to close the budget gap.

As part of its efforts to manage the $19 billion Permanent School Fund, the board voted to hire NEPC, LLC to provide investment counsel services to the fund. The board also voted to rehire The Bank of New York Mellon to provide global custody and security lending services for the PSF.

The board awarded a charter to Koinonia Community Learning Academy of Houston.

The July meeting marked the board’s first meeting headed by new Chair Gail Lowe, R-Lampasas. Lowe was appointed chair of the board by Gov. Rick Perry on July 10.

Labels: CTE, curriculum

posted by Patricia Lopez at 7:20 AM 0 comments Links to this post

This is a great piece by Sen. Van de Putte. More of our state leaders should follow suit in speaking out on behalf of Texas children.

-Patricia

Leticia Van de Putte | Austin American-Statesman, SPECIAL CONTRIBUTOR
Monday, July 20, 2009

In the past, the State Board of Education has fought a divisive culture war in establishing curriculum standards for Texas schools rather than engaging in honest, vigorous debate over the best way to prepare our students for the future.

The 15-member board is charged with adopting policies and setting standards for Texas public schools, and it is currently preparing to adopt new social studies curriculum standards. These social studies standards will be in place for the next decade, and publishers will use them to create textbooks for sale in Texas and other states.

The board recently appointed a panel of experts to help revise the social studies curriculum. The panel includes two "experts" whose experience is not in the field of education or curriculum standards, but in partisan politics. These panelists have decided to use our children's social studies curriculum as a platform for their political agendas and have advocated against the inclusion of cultural studies and diversity in the curriculum. Board members and their appointees have complained about an "overrepresentation of minorities" in the current social studies standards. For example, a lesson on citizenship calls for students to identify individuals who have modeled active participation in the democratic process, one such individual being César Chávez. They have voiced objections to the inclusion of Chávez as part of the lesson because they believe that Chávez is not a role model who "ought to be held up to our children as someone worthy of emulation."

Chávez epitomizes a lesson in citizenship. Chávez fought to ensure Latino participation in the political process and for fair work conditions for all. The fact that his place in American history is disputable would surprise the students who attend the 44 schools across the country, including eight in Texas, named in his honor, as well the Texas and California legislators who voted to recognize César Chávez Day as state holidays.

We should all be concerned when the contributions of Chávez or other minority figures to American democracy are cast aside and ridiculed. We should welcome the inclusion of all Americans who have helped to make this nation great. My concern over the recommendation of these panelists regarding the social studies curriculum is part of my larger concern over the current direction of the education board. Some board members continue to put their political agendas ahead of the needs of Texas schoolchildren. This must end.

The social studies review panel will meet in Austin this month. The public will have a chance to weigh in at the public hearings as well as online after the initial recommendations have been posted. The final adoption of the updates is set for March, according to the Texas Education Agency.

We cannot afford to politicize the education of an entire generation of Texas schoolchildren. Education is too important. Decisions of the board are key in shaping our classrooms, and they should not be made based on party affiliation. Our schoolchildren deserve better, and it is my hope that the recently appointed chairwoman of the board, Gail Lowe, will begin a transformation of the board from one entrenched in partisan warfare into one in which the only battle is to increase the quality of our public schools.

Van de Putte, a Democrat, represents part of Bexar County in the Texas Senate and is a member of the Education Committee.

The audio stream of the State Board of Education meetings is available on the Texas Education Agency Web site, www.tea.state.tx.us, by selecting the 'State Board of Education' heading. Beginning in September, Texans will be able to watch board hearings online.

Labels: curriculum

posted by Patricia Lopez at 11:25 PM 1 comments Links to this post

Forwarded message from
Susie Coultress
Assistant Director for Bilingual/ESL
Division of Curriculum, Texas Education Agency


A briefing book detailing legislation passed during the 81st session of the Texas Legislature is now available. About 100 bills impacting public education were approved by lawmakers during their 2009 session.

There is now a House Bill 3 Graduation Requirements webpage. This page includes a link to the enrolled version of the bill, the first FAQ document and a side by side document. Related information will be added to the page as it becomes available. The URL is http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/curriculum/HB3index.html

Updates have been made to the 2009-2010 Testing Calendar.

http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/student.assessment/admin/calendar/2009_2010_calendar.pdf

Labels: HB 3

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

Our society needs a LOT of work and prayer!

-Patricia

By ABBY GOODNOUGH | NY Times
July 20, 2009

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Colleagues of Henry Louis Gates Jr., Harvard’s most prominent scholar of African-American history, are accusing the police here of racism after he was arrested at his home last week by an officer investigating a report of a robbery in progress.

Professor Gates, who has taught at Harvard for nearly two decades, arrived home on Thursday from a trip to China to find his front door jammed, said Charles J. Ogletree, a law professor at Harvard who is representing him.

He forced the door open with the help of his cab driver, Professor Ogletree said, and had been inside for a few minutes when Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge Police Department appeared at his door and asked him to step outside.

Professor Gates, 58, refused to do so, Professor Ogletree said. From that point, the account of the professor and the police began to differ.

According to his lawyer, Professor Gates told the sergeant that he lived there and showed his Massachusetts driver’s license and his Harvard identification card, but Sergeant Crowley still did not seem to believe that Professor Gates lived in the home, a few blocks from Harvard Square. At that point, his lawyer said, Professor Gates grew frustrated and asked for the officer’s name and badge number.

According to the police report, Professor Gates initially refused to show identification.

In the report, Sergeant Crowley said a white female caller had notified the police around 12:45 p.m. of seeing two black men on the porch of the home, at 17 Ware Street. The caller, who met the police at the house, was suspicious after seeing one of the men “wedging his shoulder into the door as if he was trying to force entry,” according to the report.

A spokesman for the Police Department did not return a call seeking comment. But in the report, Sergeant Crowley said that as he told Professor Gates he was investigating a possible break-in, Professor Gates exclaimed, “Why, because I’m a black man in America?” and accused the sergeant of racism.

“While I was led to believe that Gates was lawfully in the residence,” Sergeant Crowley wrote in the report, “I was quite surprised and confused with the behavior he exhibited toward me.”

Professor Gates followed him outside, the report said, and yelled at him despite the sergeant’s warning “that he was becoming disorderly.” Sergeant Crowley then arrested and handcuffed him. Professor Gates was held at police headquarters for hours before being released on his recognizance.

“He is cooperating now with the city to resolve this matter as soon as possible,” Professor Ogletree said, adding that Professor Gates wanted the charges against him dismissed.

Professor Ogletree said that Professor Gates had “never touched” Sergeant Crowley, but did “express his frustration at being subjected to the threat of arrest in his own home.”

He would not say whether Professor Gates believed he had been the victim of racial profiling. But Dr. S. Allen Counter, a black professor at Harvard Medical School, said he and a number of his university colleagues were “deeply disturbed about the actions of the Cambridge police.”

“My colleagues and I have asked the question of whether this kind of egregious act would have happened had Professor Gates been a white professor,” said Dr. Counter, who said he had talked to Professor Gates since the arrest. “We think that it has to be investigated, and we are deeply saddened by what happened.”

Labels: racism

posted by Patricia Lopez at 10:54 PM 3 comments Links to this post

These hate- and racist-filled efforts really show how California, like the rest of the country, is still battling deeply entrenched racism. This should worry all of us.

-Patricia

The measure would end public benefits to illegal residents, challenge the citizenship of their U.S.-born children, cut welfare payments to those children and impose new birth certificate requirements.

By Teresa Watanabe
July 13, 2009

In a stretch of desert just north of the U.S.-Mexico border, men and women in khakis and the colors of the American flag recently gathered at a border watch post they call Camp Vigilance and discussed their next offensive in the nation's immigration wars.

The target: Illegal immigrants and their U.S.-born children who receive public benefits.

The plan: a California ballot initiative that would end public benefits for illegal immigrants, cut off welfare payments for their children and impose new rules for birth certificates.

"We will be out in full force to qualify this initiative," said Barbara Coe, who helped develop Proposition 187, the 1994 measure that would have ended benefits to illegal immigrants but was ruled unconstitutional. "Illegals and their children are costing the state billions of dollars. It's invasion by birth canal."

Supporters of the initiative, recently unveiled by San Diego political activist Ted Hilton, hope to challenge the citizenship of children born in the United States to parents who are here illegally.

The 14th Amendment states that "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the State wherein they reside." Backers of the initiative argue that illegal residents are not "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States and that, as a result, their U.S.-born children should not be citizens.

Before Hilton, Coe and their allies can argue that point in court, however, they have many hurdles to overcome. Whether the initiative will even make it to the ballot remains to be seen. Organizers have just begun to collect the 488,000 voter signatures required to qualify the measure for the June 2010 election. So far, Hilton said, they have raised about $350,000 -- far short of the $4 million generally needed to pay signature gatherers to get a statewide initiative over that hurdle.

But illegal immigration was a powerful political issue in the economic downturn of the early 1990s, and the initiative's backers hope it will be again. Hilton said the group is enlisting an "enormous volunteer base" for the signature gathering. His organization, Taxpayer Revolution, has gathered endorsements from elected officials, including Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach), the American Legion California chapter and immigration restrictionist groups such as NumbersUSA, Save Our State and Coe's California Coalition for Immigration Reform.

The drive coincides with decisions in several states -- including Oklahoma, Colorado Virginia, Arizona and Georgia -- to curtail medical care, mortgage loans, homeless shelter relief and other benefits for illegal immigrants amid the national economic downturn.

Officials estimate that California's 2.7 million illegal residents account for $4 billion to $6 billion of the state's roughly $105-billion budget. Most of those costs are associated with schools, prisons and emergency healthcare.

"Are we going to continue asking taxpayers to pay for these services when the state is completely out of money?" asked Hilton, who first rallied against illegal immigration two decades ago.

Most illegal residents contribute to the state through taxes and labor, but research indicates that the costs to state and local governments outweigh the additional tax revenue, at least in the short term.

The nonpartisan state legislative analyst's office says the measure could reduce costs by more than $1 billion a year if it survives legal challenges.

Peter Schey, a Los Angeles attorney who successfully challenged Proposition 187, said courts would almost certainly strike down the measure.

"This proposal . . . has no chance of surviving a constitutional challenge," he said. "It is plainly driven by racism and a desire to whip up xenophobia during difficult economic times for U.S. citizens."

Backers say, however, that they have carefully crafted the measure to avoid the legal pitfalls that doomed Proposition 187, which would have barred illegal immigrants from receiving any public social services, education and nonemergency medical care. Voters approved it, 59% to 41%, but a federal judge ruled that the measure unconstitutionally usurped federal jurisdiction over immigration.

This time, backers worked with attorneys who have helped craft successful efforts to curtail benefits in other states.

The new measure does not claim any state authority to regulate immigration, said Mike Hethmon, an attorney with the Washington-based Immigration Reform Law Institute who advised the initiative's authors. Instead, he said, it is based on federal authority delegated to the states to restrict access to benefits and verify applicants' eligibility.

Under the 1996 federal welfare reform law, illegal residents are barred from welfare, public housing, food assistance, unemployment aid and other federal benefits. California laws, however, allow illegal residents to receive some state and local benefits, including nonemergency medical care.

The initiative would require all applicants for public benefits to verify their legal status. And unlike Proposition 187, it would not attempt to curtail access to education.

The Supreme Court ruled in 1982 that states could not bar illegal immigrant children from schools.

The measure's most controversial provisions would take aim at the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants. It would end state welfare to an estimated 48,000 households and 100,000 children, aid that now costs the state $640 million a year.

Currently, children of illegal immigrants can receive CalWorks benefits if their parents are poor enough to qualify for welfare. About 42% of child only" cases in the CalWorks program involve illegal-immigrant parents, state officials say.

The measure would also cut off CalWorks payments to the children of citizens or legal residents who fail to meet eligibility requirements for state aid because they are unwilling to work, addicted to drugs or absent, among other reasons.

The initiative would require that applicants for birth certificates verify their legal status.

Those who could not would have to present official identification from a foreign government, a record of any publicly funded costs for delivering the child and other information before receiving their child's birth certificate, which would be marked with the notation "foreign parent."

The records would be sent to Homeland Security officials.

Kristina Campbell, an attorney with the Mexican American Legal Defense & Education Fund in Los Angeles, said that provision is legally vulnerable. "You can't deny a U.S. citizen child a birth certificate," she said.

"They are entitled to equal protection of the law."

The views were different at Camp Vigilance, where many of the 300 people gathered for a Fourth of July program on illegal immigration flocked to sign the petition.

"Coming here in violation of our laws is an act of disrespect," said Tony Dolz, a native Cuban and campaign volunteer. "Those who break our laws should not benefit from it."

Labels: California, immigrant rights, racism

posted by Patricia Lopez at 9:15 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Both conservative and elitist values. How offensive!

-Patricia

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

AUSTIN – Civil rights leaders César Chávez and Thurgood Marshall – whose names appear on schools, libraries, streets and parks across the U.S. – are given too much attention in Texas social studies classes, conservatives advising the state on curriculum standards say.

"To have César Chávez listed next to Ben Franklin" – as in the current standards – "is ludicrous," wrote evangelical minister Peter Marshall, one of six experts advising the state as it develops new curriculum standards for social studies classes and textbooks. David Barton, president of Aledo-based WallBuilders, said in his review that Chávez, a Hispanic labor leader, "lacks the stature, impact and overall contributions of so many others."

Marshall also questioned whether Thurgood Marshall, who argued the landmark case that resulted in school desegregation and was the first black U.S. Supreme Court justice, should be presented to Texas students as an important historical figure. He wrote that the late justice is "not a strong enough example" of such a figure.

The recommendations are part of a long process as the State Board of Education prepares to write new social studies curriculum standards for public schools. Debate on the issue, which will also include questions of the role of religion in public life, could be as intense as that on new science standards that were adopted by the board in March, when evolution was a major flashpoint.

The social studies requirements will remain in place for the next decade, dictating what is taught in government, history and other social studies classes in all elementary and secondary schools. The standards also will be used to write textbooks and develop state tests for students.

Six experts

Although the actual standards are being drafted by teams of teachers, academics and community representatives, the education board appointed a panel of six experts to help guide the writing teams. Three of the experts, including Barton and Marshall, were appointed by Republican social conservatives on the board, while the other three experts – all professors at state universities in Texas – were appointed by the remaining Republicans and Democrats on the 15-member board.

Texas Freedom Network, a nonprofit group that has battled social conservatives on education issues, questioned the academic credentials of Barton and Marshall, and said their negative comments on Chávez are just the start of a "blacklist" of historical figures considered objectionable by social conservatives.

"It is what we expected from unqualified political activists put on this so-called panel of experts," said Dan Quinn of the freedom network. "This is yet another step toward politicizing our children's education."

State board member Don McLeroy, R-College Station, took issue with the criticism of Barton and Marshall, saying they are "very qualified" to consider social studies standards.

"There is no doubt they have the experience and expertise to advise the writing teams and the board on the standards," he said, noting he has not yet read the experts' recommendations.

All six submitted reports to the board this month, critiquing the current social studies standards – adopted in 1998 – and offering suggestions for the curriculum.

Jesus Francisco de la Teja, chairman of the history department at Texas State University and former state historian who was also a curriculum reviewer, said while he had not read the reports from Barton and Marshall, he had a far different view of Chávez.

"I don't share their opinion at all," said de la Teja. "Unlike them, I did include César Chávez in my recommendations as someone who was worthy of attention and discussion" in social studies classes.

"Whether you approve or disapprove of what he did, there is no doubt about his contribution to bettering the lives of an untold number of Americans of limited economic means and education," de la Teja said.

The third expert appointed by social conservatives was Daniel Dreisbach, a professor in the public affairs school at American University in Washington, D.C. He was more moderate in his recommendations, but he agreed with Barton and Marshall that the Founding Fathers wanted a distinctly Christian nation based on biblical principles.

In his report, Marshall, president of Peter Marshall Ministries in Massachusetts, contended that students in government classes must focus on the historic Roe vs. Wade decision on abortion rights, "which has arguably more impacted American life than any other Supreme Court decision in the 20th century." Marshall strongly opposes the ruling.

'Republican' values

Barton, a former vice chairman of the Texas Republican Party, said that because the U.S. is a republic rather than a democracy, the proper adjective for identifying U.S. values and processes should be "republican" rather than "democratic." That means social studies books should discuss "republican" values in the U.S., his report said.

Both Barton and Marshall also singled out as overrated Anne Hutchinson, a New England pioneer and early advocate of women's rights and religious freedom, who was tried and banished from her Puritan colony in Massachusetts because of her nontraditional views.

"She was certainly not a significant colonial leader, and didn't accomplish anything except getting herself exiled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for making trouble," Marshall wrote.

"Anne Hutchinson does not belong in the company of these eminent gentlemen," he said, referring to colonial leaders William Penn, Roger Williams and others. Williams later invited Hutchinson to help establish a colony in what became Rhode Island.

Labels: curriculum

posted by Patricia Lopez at 8:30 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Here's an upsetting update on the legislation trying to end high-stakes exit-exams. What a shame.

-Patricia

Jill Tucker, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, July 9, 2009


The pass rate for the state's high school exit exam inched up in 2009, with special education students and English learners showing the biggest gains, according to statewide results released Wednesday.

The results were only preliminary, however, and included test scores only through March.

With only the partial information in hand, state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell nonetheless presented the information to the state Board of Education at its meeting Wednesday to make a political point: The California High School Exit Exam is working. Leave it alone.

Last month, a key committee of state legislators, including longtime critics of the test, voted to eliminate the exam as a graduation requirement, saying it was unfair to require students to pass it given the massive budget cuts proposed for education.

O'Connell vowed to fight to save the exam while Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger promised to veto any bill that included elimination of the graduation requirement.

The Board of Education voted unanimously Wednesday to side with the governor and superintendent in urging the state to retain the requirement, O'Connell said.

The effort to get rid of the exam is pending in the Legislature.

"The results do show that we must continue our efforts to help Latino, African American, English learner, economically disadvantaged, and special education students master these critical skills," O'Connell said Wednesday in a statement.

The exam includes math up to Algebra I and English/language arts at about a 10th-grade level. Students, who first take the exam as sophomores, have eight chances to pass before graduation day and unlimited chances after 12th grade if necessary.

Critics argue the high-stakes test at least should be put on hold.

"When the state is making cuts that could lead to a shorter school year, fewer teachers and larger class sizes, it doesn't seem realistic to expect the same results as before the cuts," said Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Baldwin Vista (Los Angeles County), in a statement following the June committee vote.

As of March, an estimated 47,000 students in the class of 2009 still hadn't passed both the math and English sections of the exam compared with 430,000 who had.

Special education students were required to pass the exam beginning in 2008. This year, 55.2 percent of the 36,400 special education students who took the test had passed by March, up from 52.7 the same time the year before.

English learners also showed gains, with 72 percent of 71,000 test takers passing, up from 70.9 percent.

Local and state results for all exit exam administrations for the last school year will be released in September.

Labels: California, high-stakes testing

posted by Patricia Lopez at 8:25 PM 0 comments Links to this post

This is horrible and indeed a racist and classist response.

The following statement needs to be in bold:

"So, faced with the challenge of making do with less - as millions of Californians are doing - what did some of the purportedly best and brightest at UC San Diego come up with? Close down the newest UC serving some of the poorest towns in America, a region where thousands of bright, industrious youngsters are working to someday become the first college graduates in their families..." -- this hits a personal nerve for me being from the Valley.

-Patricia


La Prensa San Diego
By Jorge Mariscal
July 17, 2009

The impact of the economic crisis on the University of California has been in the headlines over the last two weeks.

Last Saturday's Union Tribune article on the UC budget meltdown drew heavily on a letter that was signed by 23 department chairmen at UC San Diego. Unfortunately, this has been the only public proposal from UCSD faculty and so all of us who teach there have been tainted with its self-serving recommendations.

Although the tone of sociology professor Andy Scull's original letter gave the impression that he was contesting the current UC regime, in many ways the logic of what he proposed coincided perfectly with where the UC was heading long before the economic crisis.

Professor Scull and the other department chairs who signed his letter urged UC President Yudof and the regents to consider "closing campuses and enrolling more out-of-state students, who pay much higher tuition, to minimize long-term damage to the UC's more accomplished campuses."

As the privatization of the UC continues (UCSD, for example, is a public university in name only with only 6% of its budget coming from the state), more out-of-state and international students will be admitted. This has been a shift desired by some for several years now. The mission of the UC that says we should be serving the people of California is sacrificed on the altar of revenue flow.

UCSD then becomes a finishing school for out-of-state students from rich families and affluent foreigners. The University of Michigan, now almost fully privatized and being talked about as a model for the new UC, currently enrolls more international students than Mexican American students.

Once the three "elite" UC campuses make the transition to being in essence private schools, working class and minority students will slowly disappear from their classrooms. Again, this is already happening due to increased tuition (which Scull supports) and enrollment caps. But if UC were to adopt Scull's plan and wipe out the campuses with the most underrepresented students-Riverside and Merced-you accelerate the process.

Of course, this has already happened at the professional schools where Blacks and Chicanos can be counted on one hand. In Scull's scenario, by 2040 when Latinos make up a majority of the state not just the professional schools but the entire UC will be closed to all but a handful of them (although large numbers of them will be academically qualified). Talented 2%, anyone?

It will be argued that wealthy out-of-state and foreign students paying higher fees will subsidize financial aid for less affluent students. But this positive scenario depends on the kind of successful outreach to working families that has never been the norm at UCSD.

The one area where UCSD has made progress in terms of enrolling more Chicano and Black students has been community college transfers. A likely outcome of the crisis is that foreign transfers begin to displace local transfers. The percentage of foreign students among transfers is already higher than it is among new freshmen.

The twin elephants in the budget crisis room that UC administrators and faculty have chosen to ignore are class and race privilege. In the case of UC San Diego, it's in the institutional DNA. When campus founder Roger Revelle first imagined a La Jolla campus in the late 1950s, he saw it as an exclusive "seedbed for future leaders." The unwashed masses, he implied, could attend San Diego State.

The reaction in the central valley to the now infamous letter from the UCSD 23 was rightfully angry and to the point. The Fresno Bee's Bill McEwen put forth one of the better analyses: "So, faced with the challenge of making do with less - as millions of Californians are doing - what did some of the purportedly best and brightest at UC San Diego come up with? Close down the newest UC serving some of the poorest towns in America, a region where thousands of bright, industrious youngsters are working to someday become the first college graduates in their families. I've got a better idea. That campus they've got down there in tony La Jolla, where some two-bedroom condos - I kid you not - list for $2 million? Shutter the university, sell everything off and start all over in Brawley." Or maybe Chula Vista.

Although late last week UC President Yudof rejected the idea of closing campuses, it is important to understand the logic behind what the UCSD 23 suggested-a "disaster capitalism" solution in which the crisis allows those at the top to maintain their privilege, facilitates privatization, and further fetishizes the notion of "excellence." Elite sectors of each campus will become more exclusive as rich, i.e., externally funded, departments turn into gated communities surrounded by the mini-ghettos of under funded programs that are unable to generate their own revenue.

It's curious to see that so many department chairs at UCSD whose own programs could be negatively affected signed on to the letter, e.g. History, Communication. If the crisis continues for two or three more years, as some predict, smaller programs like African American and Chicano/Latino studies will no doubt shrink and may eventually disappear. Big-time donors willing to drop a million dollars on academic programs designed to question economic and cultural injustice simply don't exist.

Is there a way out of the crisis for the UC? President Yudof's contention that if the university could only explain to the people of California how much the UC does for them they would rally to its defense founders on the shoals of powerful stereotypes about "lazy 'radical' professors." If this crisis does nothing else, it hopefully will destroy once and for all the fantasy that "Marxist professors" are running the University of California.

The UC is a giant corporation replete with over-paid executives, a cadre of increasingly entrepreneurial and hyper-professionalized faculty, and an army of over-worked staff and instructors. Milton Friedman would approve; Marx most certainly would not.

On Wednesday, the UC Regents rubber stamped a furlough/pay cut for faculty and staff. Only Lt. Gov. John Garamendi voted against it. Unless the Regents and elected officials come up with new ways for the state to support higher education, the UC system will continue its decline. The Cal State campuses will follow close behind. Who will be the real losers in all of this?-the hopes and dreams of generations of future working and middle class California students.
Jorge Mariscal is director of the Chicano-Latino Arts and Humanities Program at the University of California, San Diego.

Labels: budget cuts, California, higher education

posted by Patricia Lopez at 7:27 PM 0 comments Links to this post

posted by Patricia Lopez at 3:09 PM 0 comments Links to this post

The quote of the week from this WSJ piece on the SBOE: "The Age of Reason has apparently not made its way yet to the Texas Board of Education. ” — Roger Johnson

-Angela


JULY 14, 2009
The Culture Wars' New Front: U.S. History Classes in Texas
By STEPHANIE SIMON

The fight over school curriculum in Texas, recently focused on biology, has entered a new arena, with a brewing debate over how much faith belongs in American history classrooms.

Read here.

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 8:59 AM 0 comments Links to this post

A Critical Analysis of the Citizen's Commission on Civil Rights report,
National Teachers Unions and the Struggle Over School Reform

by Monty Neill, FairTest
July 14, 2009

The Citizens' Commission on Civil Rights (CCCR) recently released a report attacking the role of unions in "education reform." National Teachers Unions and the Struggle Over School Reform focuses on how the National Education Association (NEA) and American Federation of Teachers (AFT) have addressed school assessment and accountability. In doing so, it criticizes reform proposals that are, in fact, shared widely beyond the unions, including vigorous support from numerous civil rights organizations.

The CCCR report should be dismissed for lack of evidence, misrepresentations, and misleading conclusions. It reads as if it were designed to score political points for the controversial “No Child Left Behind” law, which CCCR helped write, rather than to inform and advance the debate.

It is sadly ironic that CCCR has issued a full-throated defense of provisions in the “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) law that have been shown by independent researchers to have degraded the quality of instruction most severely for low-income and minority students. Rather than work with other groups, including teachers unions, to transform NCLB into a tool for real improvement and equity, CCCR has chosen to defend a law that has failed to achieve its goal of closing achievement gaps between blacks and whites.

In the report, CCCR misrepresents proposals for developing state assessment systems that include local assessments, then outrageously equates such proposals to the positions of segregationists. In doing so, CCCR ignores the more than 20 civil rights groups that indicated their support for including local assessments in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA, now named No Child Left Behind, NCLB) by signing the Joint Organizational Statement on NCLB. It ignores a similar number of such groups that signed a letter to Congressional education committee leaders endorsing local assessments. It also ignores the fact that Reps. George Miller and "Buck" McKeon included, in their proposal to reauthorize NCLB, a plan to fund pilot projects in 15 states to develop such mixed local and state systems. This section of CCCRs' report appears designed to stampede Congress and the Administration into opposing local assessments. It should be disregarded.

CCCR attacks when it should praise the unions for opposing sections of the law that have proven to be harmful or that lack evidence they will improve education. These include privatizing control of schools and the use of student test scores to determine teacher pay.

Organizations that signed the Joint Statement and participate in the Forum on Educational Accountability may be shocked to find that CCCR assigns full credit (or blame) for these joint endeavors to the National Education Association. Perhaps it hopes to isolate the NEA by such misrepresentations, then push groups into disavowing the Statement and other FEA work, thereby weakening efforts to bring needed changes to ESEA.

NCLB’s authors chose the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) as the yardstick to measure students’ actual progress or lack thereof. NAEP results clearly show that our students’ rate of improvement has slowed since the law was adopted. CCCR could have invested its energy in examining such data and working with others to design a better law. Instead, it has chosen to disregard a virtual mountain of evidence of NCLB’s flaws. By doing so, it aligns with those who base their support on ideology, not evidence.

This article is on the FairTest website at http://www.fairtest.org/critical-analysis-citizens-commission-civil-rights .

The CCCR report is on the web at http://www.cccr.org/doc/Natl%20Teachers%20Unions%20and%20the%20Struggle%20Over%20School%20Reform.pdf .

The Joint Statement and FEA materials are at http://www.edaccountability.org .

A detailed analysis of the assessment discussion in the CCCR report

1) Local assessments

While CCCR and its chair and lead author, William Taylor, criticize both unions, the sharpest attacks are reserved for the National Education Association.

The report claims: "[The NEA] is arguing for allowing school districts and schools to adopt differing assessment systems, making comparisons between schools difficult, if not impossible. The bottom line is that the NEA would permit different standards for different children, a system that was prevalent during the days of racial segregation in schools" (p. 16).

Equating the NEA's position with that of segregationists is outrageous. Moreover, the report offers no serious analysis or examination of the proposals to back up its claim. It also ignores the fact that more than 20 civil rights groups signed a letter supporting local assessments as described in draft legislation to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). The language of the draft bill, presented by House Education Committee Chairman George Miller and Ranking Member "Buck" McKeon, said that to obtain funding under this provision, a state would have to "demonstrate that it has developed a process to certify that the locally developed assessments are aligned with State standards, are comparable and measure the same level and range of rigorous skills and content across all local educational agencies." That is, they could not be used for accountability if they allowed different standards in different districts, contrary to what CCCR claims.

The August 7, 2007, letter from the civil rights groups said, "Multiple forms of assessment include traditional statewide tests as well as other assessments, developed and used locally or statewide, that include a broader range of formats, such as writing samples, research projects, and science investigations, as well as collections of student work over time." A list of prominent academics signed a letter in support of the civil rights groups’ statement. One signer was Linda Darling-Hammond, who chaired the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, which CCCR relies on to define high quality teaching.

Taylor's group also claims that in the proposal to use local assessments, "The NEA position is more far reaching than that of either side in the multiple measures debate." Again, the letter from the civil rights groups and the draft language from Miller and McKeon contradict this. Further, in October 2004, several dozen education and civil rights groups released the Joint Organizational Statement on No Child Left Behind, which stated as one of its 14 recommendations for overhauling NCLB's assessment and accountability structures: "Help states develop assessment systems that include district and school-based measures in order to provide better, more timely information about student learning." The Statement has now been signed by 151 national civil rights, education, disability, parent, religious and civic organizations (on the web at http://www.edaccountability.org ).

The Forum on Educational Accountability (which I chair) builds on and promotes the ideas in the Joint Statement. FEA commissioned an independent panel of national assessment and education experts to offer proposals for a new assessment approach for NCLB reauthorization. The Expert Panel clearly supports the inclusion of local assessments in accountability, arguing that such evidence can be part of growth systems (also at http://www.edaccountability.org ).

The CCCR report mischaracterizes the Joint Statement and the Forum. At footnote 30, CCCR calls the Statement an “NEA statement.” It is not. NEA helped draft the Statement, it posts it on its website, and has drawn on it for its own positions. But the Statement was and is a joint effort. At note 31, CCCR claims the Forum on Educational Accountability is part of NEA. Again, it is not. Note 31 also takes FEA positions out of context. FEA developed legislative language in 2007 for reauthorization of ESEA. That language and how it amends NCLB provides the context which CCCR ignores; it is on the web at http://www.edaccountability.org .

In short, CCCR misrepresents the proposals of a broad-based coalition, pretends they belong to the teachers unions alone, and then attacks the unions. The report ignores the wide range of organizations, including many civil rights groups, and expert opinion that support the proposals.

It is reasonable to express concern over possibly flawed implementation, or question how comparability and local variation can be balanced effectively. Such questions can and should be answered before such assessments are used for accountability purposes in states as part of a reauthorized ESEA. Neither the Joint Statement nor (to my knowledge) the NEA says that standardized statewide tests should not be included in a revised law; they should and no doubt will be. But the CCCR report appears to be more interested in mischaracterization and an effort to preclude discussion and to pressure Congress and the Administration into rejecting proposals for local assessments.

2) CCCR's misguided criticism of unions for opposing flawed and dangerous aspects of NCLB

The report claims the NEA professed to support NCLB in part by launching its "Great Public Schools for Every Child" campaign, which says Taylor, seemed to advocate the same principles as NCLB," to wit (p 14):

- “Support common sense standards and accountability as well as adequate and equitable funding and resources for public schools;
- Encourage districts to help close the achievement gap by investing in public schools and holding teachers, administrators, parents, students, and elected officials responsible for the success of our children and our schools;
- Encourage states and districts to take the lead in setting and implementing high standards to ensure student success; and
- Support multiple measures of student success that help prepare students for work and life.”

The CCCR report continues: "Yet more privately, NEA was advising its local affiliates how to fight against these very principles by noncompliance." While NCLB correlates to some extent with the NEA positions on paper (e.g., NCLB calls for use of multiple measures that include assessments of higher order thinking skills, in precisely the same language that existed in the 1994 ESEA law), in practice the state tests and the Department of Education's enforcement precluded the use of multiple measures and assessment of higher order thinking skills. Nor did the promised money come through, not even enough, in many cases, to implement the law. More generally, the law focused on punishment via testing, “adequate yearly progress” and sanctions –rather than support for school improvement, which the NEA (among many others) called for.

Taylor's group then attacks the NEA and AFT for their critiques of the limited "growth" models that the Department approved and the flaws in the Miller-McKeon draft. CCCR states that criticism of these narrow and flawed approaches means that the NEA and AFT oppose meaningful reform. The CCCR report, moreover, presents no evidence that NCLB actually creates meaningful learning opportunities and school improvement. Perhaps this is because such evidence does not exist.

CCCR criticizes the NEA for supporting less mandated testing. But in a conversation I had with Taylor prior to passage of NCLB, he agreed that the law should not mandate testing in every grade, in part because it was likely to ensure lower quality tests than could be implemented if there were more limited testing. More recently, he has taken seemingly contradictory positions such as criticizing the low quality of state tests while attacking the unions for opposing the high-stakes uses of such tests.

In a brief section on accountability, CCCR attacks the unions for opposing NCLB’s ultimate sanctions, saying the NEA proposed to "Eliminate four of the five options specified in NCLB for sanctioning schools in corrective action. Districts could not reopen the school as a charter; replace teachers or support personnel; turn the school over to a private company; or turn the school over to the state." Taylor's report ignores the wealth of evidence showing that these approaches have not achieved anything more than anecdotal "success." Even the pro-NCLB Fordham Foundation released a report critical of these options. How to dramatically improve schools that have not been successful requires a more thoughtful approach than that provided by NCLB.

CCCR also says the NEA sought to "Prohibit the use of test scores in employee evaluations." Fortunately, this is true. Research shows that payment for performance is rare for professionals in other fields, has had harmful consequences in other fields such as medical care, and has not worked in education when it has been tried. There is no evidence that payment for boosting test scores would do anything more than further inflate state exam results, producing misleading evidence on how well children were doing, while intensifying teaching to the test and further narrowing the curriculum. There is zero evidence this will help low-income or minority-group children. Again CCCR criticizes unions for taking positions consistent with good evidence. Civil rights advocates should do no less.

PS: A blog post by John Thompson also critiques CCCR claims on payment for boosting test scores and related points. It is at http://scholasticadministrator.typepad.com/thisweekineducation/2009/07/thompson-with-friends-like-these.html .

(Additional references are available on request.)

On the FairTest website at http://www.fairtest.org/critical-analysis-citizens-commission-civil-rights .


Monty Neill, Ed.D.
Deputy & Interim Executive Director
FairTest
15 Court Sq., Ste. 820
Boston, MA 02108
857-350-8207 x 101
fax 857-350-8209
monty@fairtest.org
www.fairtest.org
Donate: https://secure.entango.com/donate/MnrXjT8MQqk

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 2:11 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Conservatives say Texas social studies classes give too much credit to civil rights leaders
12:00 AM CDT on Thursday, July 9, 2009

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

AUSTIN – Civil rights leaders César Chávez and Thurgood Marshall – whose names appear on schools, libraries, streets and parks across the U.S. – are given too much attention in Texas social studies classes, conservatives advising the state on curriculum standards say.

"To have César Chávez listed next to Ben Franklin" – as in the current standards – "is ludicrous," wrote evangelical minister Peter Marshall, one of six experts advising the state as it develops new curriculum standards for social studies classes and textbooks. David Barton, president of Aledo-based WallBuilders, said in his review that Chávez, a Hispanic labor leader, "lacks the stature, impact and overall contributions of so many others."

Marshall also questioned whether Thurgood Marshall, who argued the landmark case that resulted in school desegregation and was the first black U.S. Supreme Court justice, should be presented to Texas students as an important historical figure. He wrote that the late justice is "not a strong enough example" of such a figure.

The recommendations are part of a long process as the State Board of Education prepares to write new social studies curriculum standards for public schools. Debate on the issue, which will also include questions of the role of religion in public life, could be as intense as that on new science standards that were adopted by the board in March, when evolution was a major flashpoint.

The social studies requirements will remain in place for the next decade, dictating what is taught in government, history and other social studies classes in all elementary and secondary schools. The standards also will be used to write textbooks and develop state tests for students.

Six experts
Although the actual standards are being drafted by teams of teachers, academics and community representatives, the education board appointed a panel of six experts to help guide the writing teams. Three of the experts, including Barton and Marshall, were appointed by Republican social conservatives on the board, while the other three experts – all professors at state universities in Texas – were appointed by the remaining Republicans and Democrats on the 15-member board.

Texas Freedom Network, a nonprofit group that has battled social conservatives on education issues, questioned the academic credentials of Barton and Marshall, and said their negative comments on Chávez are just the start of a "blacklist" of historical figures considered objectionable by social conservatives.

"It is what we expected from unqualified political activists put on this so-called panel of experts," said Dan Quinn of the freedom network. "This is yet another step toward politicizing our children's education."

State board member Don McLeroy, R-College Station, took issue with the criticism of Barton and Marshall, saying they are "very qualified" to consider social studies standards.

"There is no doubt they have the experience and expertise to advise the writing teams and the board on the standards," he said, noting he has not yet read the experts' recommendations.

All six submitted reports to the board this month, critiquing the current social studies standards – adopted in 1998 – and offering suggestions for the curriculum.

Jesus Francisco de la Teja, chairman of the history department at Texas State University and former state historian who was also a curriculum reviewer, said while he had not read the reports from Barton and Marshall, he had a far different view of Chávez.

"I don't share their opinion at all," said de la Teja. "Unlike them, I did include César Chávez in my recommendations as someone who was worthy of attention and discussion" in social studies classes.

"Whether you approve or disapprove of what he did, there is no doubt about his contribution to bettering the lives of an untold number of Americans of limited economic means and education," de la Teja said.

The third expert appointed by social conservatives was Daniel Dreisbach, a professor in the public affairs school at American University in Washington, D.C. He was more moderate in his recommendations, but he agreed with Barton and Marshall that the Founding Fathers wanted a distinctly Christian nation based on biblical principles.

In his report, Marshall, president of Peter Marshall Ministries in Massachusetts, contended that students in government classes must focus on the historic Roe vs. Wade decision on abortion rights, "which has arguably more impacted American life than any other Supreme Court decision in the 20th century." Marshall strongly opposes the ruling.

'Republican' values
Barton, a former vice chairman of the Texas Republican Party, said that because the U.S. is a republic rather than a democracy, the proper adjective for identifying U.S. values and processes should be "republican" rather than "democratic." That means social studies books should discuss "republican" values in the U.S., his report said.

Both Barton and Marshall also singled out as overrated Anne Hutchinson, a New England pioneer and early advocate of women's rights and religious freedom, who was tried and banished from her Puritan colony in Massachusetts because of her nontraditional views.

"She was certainly not a significant colonial leader, and didn't accomplish anything except getting herself exiled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for making trouble," Marshall wrote.

"Anne Hutchinson does not belong in the company of these eminent gentlemen," he said, referring to colonial leaders William Penn, Roger Williams and others. Williams later invited Hutchinson to help establish a colony in what became Rhode Island.

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 12:10 AM 0 comments Links to this post

By MATTHEW SALTMARSH
Published: July 7, 2009

PARIS — Community colleges could become a tool to help economic recovery in the United States and a model for developing countries debating how to improve their education systems, Jill Biden, the wife of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and a longtime teacher, said Tuesday.

Mrs. Biden made the comments as she wrapped up a five-day visit to Europe, her first independent trip abroad since President Barack Obama was inaugurated in January.

The visit started in Germany, where she celebrated Independence Day on July 4 with U.S. soldiers, and ended in Paris, after a speech to a Unesco conference on higher education.

“Community colleges are the way of the future,” she said in an interview by telephone. “Now with people losing their jobs, they’re a great place to go for new training.”

Community colleges are higher-education institutions with, typically, open admission policies. They provide vocational and language training and award diplomas. After graduating from such schools, some students transfer to university for full degrees.

There are almost 1,200 community colleges among the 4,100 public and private higher-education institutions in the United States, serving almost 12 million students.

Mrs. Biden described the schools as one of America’s “best-kept secrets” that could be a model for other countries. They “lead the way in preparing graduates in the fields of green technology, health care, teaching and information technology — some of the fastest-growing fields in America and the rest of the world,” she said.

That message resonated in a report released Tuesday by the World Bank, which said countries that aspire to build “world-class universities” to drive development and compete in global rankings of the best international universities may be “chasing a myth.”

Countries like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have announced plans to create world-class colleges from scratch. Such institutions take years to build, cost hundreds of millions of dollars and may still fall short of the economic rewards associated with elite schools, the report says.

The Obama administration, Mrs. Biden said, sees higher education as a tool to revitalize the economy and has increased aid to students and unemployed workers, bolstered tuition tax credits and streamlined the financial aid process.

Mrs. Biden, 58, earned a doctorate in education from the University of Delaware in 2007. The “second lady,” as she is referred to, divides her time between a suite in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, next to the White House, with a staff of eight, and North Virginia Community College, where she teaches English as a second language.

Mrs. Biden now seems ready to carve out a more public role. She said that she would use her “microphone” to promote a handful of causes, including breast cancer awareness, the importance of national service and the support of military families.

Labels: community colleges

posted by Patricia Lopez at 12:46 AM 3 comments Links to this post

By HOLLY K. HACKER and JEFFREY WEISS / The Dallas Morning News
Sunday, July 5, 2009

When the state announces school ratings this month, hundreds of schools are expected to claim higher marks – and part of the credit goes to new state rules that count some students as passing the TAKS test when they actually failed.

The state created school accountability ratings in 1993 to help parents gauge the successes and shortfalls of individual schools. But over the years, the state has made so many changes that it is a test in itself to figure out if a school is doing better, doing worse or holding even.

A new adjustment kicks in this year: the Texas Projection Measure. It allows schools to count students who failed the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills as passing, as long as a complex formula shows that those kids are predicted to pass in a future year.

So many schools are likely to benefit from this latest academic "get out of jail free" card that it raises the question: At what point do the ratings become meaningless?

"We know that when the rules change every year and there are exemptions on top of conditions on top of projections, that really begins to water down the meaning of any of these labels," said Daria Hall, director of K-12 policy for the Education Trust, a nonprofit group that advocates for poor and minority students. Hall served on a federal panel that reviewed Texas' new model.

Here's how the new projection measure works:

Say a seventh-grader failed the math TAKS. The Texas Education Agency developed a statistical formula that predicts whether that student will pass the math test in eighth grade. The formula considers the student's math and reading TAKS scores, plus the average math TAKS score at his school.

If the student is predicted to pass, the school gets to count him as actually passing – even though he really failed.

School ratings are based on the test scores of all students, plus the performance of certain groups of students, including those who are black, Hispanic or poor. If just one group falls short academically, the whole school's rating can suffer.

An evolving tool

The projection formula was originally developed for the federal accountability system, called No Child Left Behind. Schools must show students are making "adequate yearly progress" as measured on standardized tests.

TEA officials note that a national panel of testing experts approved the model. They say it is not a perfect predictor but very accurate.

"We're looking for a way to recognize those schools where they've done a phenomenal job of increasing student performance, but they just haven't quite gotten every student over that last bar," said Criss Cloudt, a TEA associate commissioner.

But Hall, speaking for Education Trust, said one problem with Texas' model is that it gives schools credit based on future performance and doesn't go back and compare that to actual performance.

Case in point: A sixth- or seventh-grader who fails the TAKS could be projected to pass in eighth grade. The school receives credit for that. But suppose the student reaches eighth grade and does not pass as predicted. The school is not penalized. Instead, the Texas model looks ahead again – this time, determining whether the eighth-grader will pass the 11th-grade TAKS.

"From a school perspective, a student never has to actually be proficient. It's always projected into future grades," she said.

TEA officials say they will review the new model to see if students who were expected to pass did, in fact, pass.

"We see this very much as an evolving measurement tool," Cloudt said.

Local schools to benefit

Many North Texas schools expect higher ratings because of the new projection measure. But many other schools will show genuine student improvement, without the help of loopholes or fine print.

•Richardson ISD expects 16 of its 53 schools to benefit from the new projection measure.

•Dallas ISD expects 71 of its more than 200 campuses to benefit.

•Irving ISD expects two of its 20 elementary schools to jump from acceptable to exemplary, and a third campus to move up from recognized to exemplary. Irving hasn't had an exemplary campus in years.

•Of the 34 schools in Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD, officials estimate that 17 will have higher ratings than last year. Nine of those schools will be aided by the new projection measure.

Cecilia Oakeley, Dallas ISD's evaluation and accountability director, said the new rule is fair to districts that serve students who struggle with poverty or language barriers.

"We're giving credit to students who are showing some growth but have not quite made the standard," she said. "They're on that trajectory."

That's the whole reason for using the model, TEA officials said. They also note that other changes in policy have made ratings harder on schools. For instance, the state has gradually phased in a stricter definition of dropouts that, for the first time this year, could lower some ratings.

Texas reports the percentage of students scoring at the higher "commended" level on the TAKS, but those rates do not affect the bottom-line school rating. The growth model changes also won't affect those rates, which can be useful for parents to see how many students at a given school are surpassing the basic passing standard.

State education officials say that school rating reports will make it clear what the pure TAKS passing rates are, compared to those boosted by the new projection model.

Changes not over yet

Major changes to the state's accountability system will continue, as the Legislature voted this spring to create a new rating system for 2013. Details are being worked out, but the new system won't rely so much on TAKS passing rates. Other measures, such as college readiness, will be included.

But it's unlikely the core of the debate will change: Ongoing tensions will remain between fairness and transparency, between stability and sophistication.

The TEA's Cloudt said there's a difficult balancing act: making the system understandable while recognizing that not all students come to school equally prepared.

While the promise was for clarity, the current system is based on formulas that few understand.

"It's so complex that very often parents are not fully informed on exactly what an individual rating means," said David Simmons, Richardson school superintendent.

But he said that confusion may be unavoidable.

"Any state-mandated, state-created accountability system is going to struggle to capture how individual campuses and districts perform on multiple measures," he said. "That may, to a great extent, be unattainable."

Donna Kent will be PTA president for the second straight year at Lake Highlands High School, which preliminary test scores indicate will need several exemptions to be ranked as recognized. Last year, the school was rated as academically acceptable.

She readily admitted that she was unaware of the various formulas behind the ratings, but said that the details were less important than the idea that her school was improving. She said the broad labels mean less than the information TAKS data provides, which helps schools target groups and students who need help in certain areas.

She said the situation is a lot like the Bowl Championship Series, used to select the top college football team. People complain about that system, too.

"We know we're going to have something, and we need to learn what we have and how to deal with it."

Staff writer Matt Peterson contributed to this report.

Labels: growth models, TPM

posted by Patricia Lopez at 11:38 PM 0 comments Links to this post

by Richard Rothstein
July 2009

[Richard Rothstein is a Research Associate of the Economic Policy Institute. This article is excerpted from his book, Grading Education: Getting Accountability Right (Teachers College Press and the Economic Policy Institute, 2008). For more detail on private sector experience with "pay for performance", see also Teachers, Performance Pay, and Accountability — What Education Should Learn From Other Sectors, by Scott J. Adams, John S. Heywood & Richard Rothstein (Economic Policy Institute, 2009)].

It is conventional to say that holding educators accountable and paying for higher test scores will improve performance. Eli Broad, whose foundation promotes incentive pay for teachers, states, "Virtually every other industry compensates employees based on how well they perform. … We know from experience across other industries and sectors that linking performance and pay is a powerful incentive."

Yet in reality, private sector pay is almost never based primarily on quantitative performance measures.

It is not hard to see why. Under No Child Left Behind, reliance on math and reading scores to evaluate performance has corrupted schooling. Educators have responded rationally to incentives that, to devote more time to math and reading, spur reductions in social studies, science, art, music, physical education, cooperative learning and other character-building activities. Reductions have been most severe for disadvantaged students who are most in need of a balanced curriculum. In math and reading themselves, drills leading to limited long-term learning have become commonplace. Some schools manipulate data -- for example, by opportunistic assignment of students to sub-groups where they do the least harm to ratings.

Such corruption could have been foreseen. There are many commonplace illustrations of harm from quantitative accountability.

For example, U.S. News and World Report ranks colleges, based partly on their selectivity - determined by the percentage of admitted applicants (more selective colleges admit a smaller percentage of applicants).

This would be reasonable if the measurement were low stakes. Colleges accepting fewer applicants are likely of higher quality, but once this indicator became an accountability measure, colleges had incentives to boost their rejection rates. Some send promotional mailings or drop application fees for unqualified applicants. The acceptance indicator has thus lost much of its value.

Other public sectors have had similar experiences. The government has held local job training agencies accountable for placing unemployed workers in jobs that last at least 90 days. Some agencies then provided child care and transportation to newly hired workers, terminating these services on the 91st day. Other agencies refused to enroll the most difficult-to-place unemployed workers. Others cut back on educational activities designed to train workers for higher-paying and longer-lasting jobs because only short-term employment counted for accountability purposes.

Medicare has issued report cards on health providers. One has been based on mortality rates of open heart surgery patients. Some hospitals and physicians responded by refusing to operate on the sickest patients. Because the accountability system attempted "risk adjustment," statistically controlling for patient characteristics, other providers simply claimed the patients were sicker than they were.

The U.S. General Accounting Office reviewed health care report cards, concluding: "[A]dministrators will place all their organizations' resources in areas that are being measured. Areas that are not highlighted in report cards will be ignored."

Most private-sector jobs, like teaching, include a composite of easily measured and less-easily measured responsibilities. Because of the ease with which employees game purely quantitative incentives, most private-sector accountability systems blend quantitative and qualitative measures with emphasis on the latter. Certainly, supervisory evaluations of employees may be tainted by favoritism, bias, inflation and even kickbacks or other forms of corruption. That subjective evaluations are so widely used, despite these flaws, suggests that most employers consider quantitative judgment even worse.

Bain and Company, the management consulting firm, advises clients to focus on long-term, not short-term (and more easily quantifiable), goals. A company director estimated that at Bain itself, each manager devotes about 100 hours a year to evaluating five employees for purposes of its incentive pay system. "When I try to imagine a school principal doing 30 reviews, I have trouble," he observed.

Curiously, the federal government administers a balanced approach, simultaneously with its test score-based NCLB. Since 1988, the Commerce Department has made Baldrige National Quality Awards for exemplary businesses. Numerical performance indicators play only a small role. For the private sector, 450 out of 1,000 points are for "results," although even here, some results, such as ethical behavior, social responsibility, trust in senior leadership, workforce capability and customer satisfaction are impossible to quantify.

The Baldrige program was extended to health and education institutions in 1999. For school districts, 100 of 1,000 points are for student learning outcomes, with other points awarded for subjectively evaluated measures, such as "how senior leaders' personal actions reflect a commitment to the organization's values."

The most recent Baldrige school district award was given in 2005 to the Jenks, Okla., school district. The Commerce Department cited the district's test scores, as well as low teacher turnover and innovative programs, such as an exchange relationship with schools in China and the enlistment of residents of a long-term care facility to mentor kindergartners and pre-kindergartners. Yet in 2006, the Jenks district was deemed by NCLB to be sub-standard because students had failed to make adequate yearly progress in reading test scores.



Our Children (and Our Country) Deserve Democratic Schools
by Forum National Director Sam Chaltain

A few years ago, a reporter in Columbia, South Carolina asked local elementary school children why America celebrates the Fourth of July.

Most of the answers were predictably personal. To eat hot dogs, said one boy. To watch fireworks, a girl answered. Another child thought we all celebrated the Fourth of July because it was his brother’s birthday.

One student, a fifth grader from Nursery Road Elementary School named Vante Lee, gave a different answer. “We celebrate the 4th of July,” he said, “because we celebrate our freedom and the chance to make our own decisions.”

When you were nine, which child’s answer would yours have resembled?

Only Vante’s words connect the event – Independence Day – to the greater meaning behind it – the birth of a country committed (on our best days) to “freedom and the chance to make our own decisions.” What impresses me most is that he understands the right to choose is freedom’s greatest gift.

As we prepare to celebrate another 4th of July, I worry that too few of us – young and old – understand freedom as well as Vante Lee.

There are many factors contributing to this weakening of our civic character. Only one institution has the potential to help us reclaim a fuller appreciation of the duties and obligations of citizenship in a democracy – our public school system.

Public education is the only institution that engages 90% of the next generation of
adults, is governed by public authority, and has the explicit mission of preparing children to be active participants in our democracy. As a 2008 report by Common Core noted, “The first mission of public schooling in a democratic nation is to equip every young person for the responsibilities and privileges of citizenship.”

To reclaim this “first mission,” we need to do more than just tell our children about their rights. Instead, we must ensure that the central elements of our social covenant are also in place in our schools: a clear sense of structure and shared identity on one hand, and an unwavering commitment to individual freedom on the other.

In my years as an educator, I have witnessed scores of schools across the country that choose, consciously or unconsciously, to value one of these needs at the expense of the other. In some schools, kids have too much freedom, and educators end up abdicating their responsibility to serve as authoritative professionals that guide student learning. In others, educators impose too much structure, and kids end up being taught in authoritarian environments that stifle student self-direction and curiosity.

So my Independence Day message is simple: We do not need to choose. It is possible – indeed, essential – to find the right organizational balance between individual freedom and group structure. In fact, research confirms that when school leaders do so, they create the optimal conditions for student learning, motivation and engagement.

As every educator knows, there is in each of us a deep, powerful and fundamental need to be seen and heard. We want to find our voice – and discover how to utilize it effectively. Learning how to use language effectively is therefore one of our chief resources for becoming visible to the world.

Think about Vante Lee. Even though he was still in elementary school, he had already come to feel that the world he lived in was one where his voice mattered. Better still, it was a world that had already heard that voice.

Imagine what the future must look like to a young person like that? Imagine what a school would need to look like to support the intellectual, social and civic development of a young person like that?

These are not questions that get asked enough in education policy circles. Each of us must ask them at every turn.

The good news is that scores of schools across the country are already helping students like Vante find their voice, thanks in part to networks like the Coalition of Essential Schools (essentialschools.org), and organizations like the Five Freedoms Project (www.fivefreedoms.org), both of which help school leaders create healthy, high-functioning democratic learning communities. The bad news is that this work remains the exception and not the rule.

All of us – whether we are concerned citizens, parents, classroom teachers or school principals – must become more attuned to the individual and group needs of the people around us. When we do so, we create the types of schools that confer not just academic diplomas, but also “degrees” of individual freedom, of civic responsibility, and of shared respect for the power and uniqueness of each person’s voice.

Note: This article originally appeared in the Huffington Post.

Labels: accountability

posted by Patricia Lopez at 10:37 PM 0 comments Links to this post

By By Mary Ann Zehr | Ed Week
June 17, 2009

About the same share of 8th graders attend schools where music and visual-arts instruction are offered as a decade ago—a proportion that accounts for only about half the nation’s schoolchildren at that age.

That’s according to results from the first administration of the National Assessment of Educational Progress in arts in 11 years.

The NAEP report, which was scheduled for release this week, shows that 57 percent of 8th graders in 2008 attended schools where music instruction was provided at least three or four times a week, while 47 percent went to schools where visual-arts instruction was offered at least as often. The percentages don’t differ significantly from those in 1997.

The findings don’t provide evidence to fuel “a concern expressed that schools are cutting out music or other arts,” said Stuart Kerachsky, the acting commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, the branch of the U.S. Department of Education that produced the report.

Read on

Labels: curriculum, NAEP

posted by Patricia Lopez at 10:28 PM 0 comments Links to this post

La Opinión
July 5 ,2009

There was good news and bad news this week for the undocumented. As part of a new official strategy, massive raids at workplaces will no longer occur. That’s the good news. The bad part is that workers will lose their jobs anyway.

President Obama condemned the past approach to immigration control based on persecuting undocumented workers and giving employers who hire them a free ride. In some cases, businesses aren’t able to hire legal workers to fulfill all of their operational needs; in other cases, they prefer to take advantage of hiring the undocumented to exploit them and pay low wages. For some time, the argument has been made that it is unfair to detain and deport workers and not to take action against those who employ them. Now this has changed.

Last Wednesday, 650 businesses across the country were notified that they might have undocumented workers among their employees and that they must review their personnel and dismiss those without work permits under penalty of fines or charges.

This action comes at a moment in which Washington is debating the possibility of immigration reform this year. The new policy demonstrates the administration’s commitment to security and thereby undercuts the charge that it is only interested in legalization. Notification to employers provides political cover while, at the same time, complies with the law.

We believe the new approach would have been more appropriate after an immigration reform that would first have allowed workers to regularize their status and only then, put pressure on employers. We are also concerned about the effect these actions will have on the Latino community and the undocumented, who are already weary from the aggressive raids and now must face yet another threat against their source of work. This frustration can lead to bad choices such as boycotting the census, which reflects a justified outrage against the current situation but, at the same time, puts in place measures that will end up hurting the very community they hope to help.

The new immigration strategy is certainly better and more just than terrorizing workers with aggressive raids. And, it is embedded within a political strategy toward immigration reform. At the same time, this is of little consolation to those who lose their jobs and to the families that will suffer.

Labels: immigration

posted by Patricia Lopez at 10:19 PM 1 comments Links to this post

FOR RELEASE:
July 2, 2009 Contact: John White
Press Secretary
john.white@ed.gov
(202) 401-1576

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan today praised the National Education Association for its effort to improve the quality of the education workforce and challenged the union to reevaluate some of its policies on compensating teachers and offering them job protections.

Speaking at the NEA's annual convention in San Diego, Duncan said that the unions needed to relax contract rules to recruit, reward and retain highly effective educators, especially in low-performing schools in need of dramatic improvements.

"If we agree that the adults in these schools are failing these children then we have to find the right people and we can't let our rules and regulations get in the way," Duncan said. "Children have only one chance to get an education."

Specifically, Duncan asked the union to bargain for contracts that change rules creating a single salary schedule, offering seniority benefits, and protecting ineffective teachers who have tenure. Duncan also encouraged the union to include student achievement when evaluating teachers and deciding their compensation.

"Test scores alone should never drive evaluation, compensation or tenure decisions," Duncan said. "That would never make sense. But to remove student achievement entirely from evaluation is illogical and indefensible."

Duncan praised the NEA for its work to improve teacher quality in its advocacy for the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards and other professional development programs. Duncan noted that more than a thousand teachers earned certification from the national board during his seven years as CEO of Chicago public schools.

"I ask you to join President Obama and me in a new commitment to results that recognizes and rewards success in the classroom and is rooted in our common obligation to children," Duncan said.

The speech was the last in a series in which Duncan outlined the specific goals on the four policy initiatives states must address under the $5 billion Race to the Top Fund, a competitive grant program that will make grants to states leading the way in school reform.

Duncan's earlier speeches addressed the importance of using of data to inform instruction and education policy decisions, the imperative for world-class standards and assessments, and the need for charter school operators to join the effort to turn around low-performing schools.

Immediately after his speech, Duncan participated in a panel discussion, where he discussed the No Child Left Behind Act with 10 NEA members and heard comments from the NEA members in the audience. The event was the sixth stop on the secretary's "NCLB Listening and Learning Tour." He previously visited West Virginia, Michigan, Vermont, Montana and New Jersey.

Duncan and senior members of his team will continue traveling across the country to gather ideas on how to improve the NCLB and inform the Obama administration's proposal to reauthorize it.

Remarks of Arne Duncan to the National Education Association—Partners in Reform

FOR RELEASE:
July 2, 2009

Good morning. Thank you for having me and thank you for hosting one of our Listening and Learning events. We embarked on this tour to hear from people in classrooms and schools—people who are facing educational challenges and finding solutions.

I've now been to 22 states and dozens of communities. I've met with hundreds of teachers and principals, education support staff, students, parents, superintendents, college professors, higher education administrators, and community leaders.

Everyone I spoke with understands that the status quo is not good enough. They want to get better—they need to get better—and they're willing to work even harder. They just want to be part of the process and they want their voices to be heard.

So I look forward today to hearing your voices—hearing what you have to say—hearing your ideas for improving American education. I encourage you to think boldly and courageously—to challenge me, challenge yourselves, and challenge each other.

But we must be willing to do more than talk. We all must be willing to change. As I said recently, education reform isn't a table around which we all talk. It's a moving train and we all need to get on board.

I have had some compelling conversations with the NEA leadership and many of your members. I'm convinced that if everyone is on board this train—it will gain enough speed, momentum and direction to take public education to a new and better place.

In recent weeks, I have given a series of speeches about the four core reforms embodied in the Recovery Act leading up to the release of $5 billion dollars in competitive grants.

The first speech was about creating data systems that follow the progress of students from pre-K through college so teachers can better meet the needs of students and we can help identify teachers who are doing well or who are struggling.

The second speech was about adopting higher standards and creating high-quality assessments. I want to thank you for your support of higher standards. That's the kind of leadership we need on a whole range of issues.

The third speech was about turning around our most troubled schools. We proposed several models and invited everyone to be part of the solution: unions, charters, non-profits, for-profits, universities, states and districts.

I also challenged the audience of charter school operators and authorizers to get much more serious about accountability. They must not protect third-rate charters. Those schools need too close. Charter schools are public schools and they should be held to the same standards as everyone else.

Today is the last of my four speeches—and the focus today is on the quality of the education workforce—teachers, principals and education support professionals. I want to acknowledge some of the good things that we have done—and talk about some of the things we haven't done.

I came here today to challenge you to think differently about the role of unions in public education because—when thousands of schools are chronically failing and millions of children are dropping out each year—we all must think differently.

It's not enough to focus only on issues like job security, tenure, compensation, and evaluation. You must become full partners and leaders in education reform. You and I must be willing to change.

I know we won't all agree on everything—but I'm confident there will be more we agree with than not. It starts with our shared values.

We believe it is our moral obligation to give children the very best education possible. We believe every child can learn and every school can succeed. We believe teaching is a profession and good teachers and principals are essential to success.

Unlike many of you, my values and views on education were not shaped in the front of a classroom. In 1961 my mother began an after-school, inner-city tutoring program on the South Side of Chicago and raised my brother, sister and me as a part of her program.

That daily experience was an absolutely formative one for all three of us and we all tried to follow in her footsteps in various ways. It was work filled both with great heartbreak and also amazing triumph.

We experienced our share of early, violent deaths because of the community's chaos, and those experiences shape you and frankly scar you in ways that to this day are difficult to talk about.

But from the group of friends I grew up studying with and playing ball with, from one street corner at 46th and Greenwood, emerged literally a brain surgeon, a Hollywood movie star, one of my top administrators at the Chicago Public Schools, and one of IBM's international corporate leaders.

How did this happen? Because these children despite tremendous poverty, despite staggering neighborhood violence, despite challenges at home, had my mother and others in their lives who gave them real opportunities, real support and guidance over the years, and had the highest expectations for them. And because of that opportunity, their gifts and their talents, and their fierce desire to succeed, blossomed.

What I learned as a little boy, what continues to motivate my mother today 48 years after she began her work, are the same two values that motivate all of you.

It is a fundamental, unalterable belief that every child can learn, and a fundamental understanding of the tremendous urgency of our work. Simply put, we cannot wait because our children cannot wait.

I've met a thousand educators like my mother in schools all across America. I've seen them on an Indian reservation in Montana, in a West Virginia middle school, at a high school in Detroit and a charter school in Newark.

All of us remember educator or coach who changed our life. It stays with us forever. It sustains us, guides us and inspires us. They're the ones who commit those everyday acts of kindness and love and never ask for anything in return. They counsel troubled teens, take phone calls at night, and reach into their pockets for lunch money for children who are too ashamed to ask.

I've seen how much these educators want to be valued for their work and honored for what they are: dedicated, professional, compassionate, serious and responsible. These are the qualities of a great educator and we have millions of them all across America.

My next experience was with the I Have A Dream foundation—where we adopted a class of students and agreed to send them to college if they stayed in school. The previous class had a 67% dropout rate while we had an 87% graduation rate.

After that, I helped start a small new traditional neighborhood public school—the Ariel Academy. It wasn't a charter. It had union teachers and today it is one of the highest-performing public schools in Chicago—even though all of the kids come from poverty.

Finally, I spent seven years running the Chicago Public Schools—where I learned other important lessons. We set up 150 community schools open 12 hours a day offering classes to adults and students.

We paid teachers to work extra hours and many of them took on that responsibility because they were committed to the school's success. Schools must support the social and emotional needs of students and engage the whole family.

We also increased the number of National Board Certified teachers in Chicago to about 1200—from about a dozen when I started. We partnered with the Union and with the Chicago Public Education Fund—which is a group of business leaders. Together we grew NBC faster than anywhere else in the nation.

I am big believer in this program, but let's also be honest: school systems pay teachers billions of dollars more each year for earning PD credentials that do very little to improve the quality of teaching.

At the same time, many schools give nothing at all to the teachers who go the extra mile and make all the difference in students' lives. Excellence matters and we should honor it—fairly, transparently, and on terms teachers can embrace.

The President and I have both said repeatedly that we are not going to impose reform but rather work with teachers, principals, and unions to find what works. And that is what we did in Chicago. We enlisted the help of 24 of the best teachers in the system to design a pilot performance compensation system. We also sat down with the union and bargained it out.

It was based on classroom observation, whole school performance and individual classroom performance, measured in part by growth in student learning. The rewards and incentives for good performance went to every adult in the school—including custodians and cafeteria workers—not just the individual teachers.

Where you see high-performing schools—it's the culture—every adult taking responsibility and creating a culture of high expectations.

We're asking Congress for more money to develop compensation programs "with" you—and "for" you—not "to" you—programs that will put money in the pockets of your teachers and support personnel by recognizing and rewarding excellence.

So I begin our conversation today around some important areas of agreement: excellence in teaching, good professional development, school's open longer hours, and a shared responsibility for student success among all the adults in the school building.

But the President and I want to go further. I want to describe some tough challenges and ask you how we can work together to meet them. Let's start by talking about under-performing schools.

We don't need a study to tell us that chronically under-performing schools do not have the best principals and teachers. Experience tells us that failing schools usually have poor leadership—and poor leadership usually drives away good teachers.

Now often—we try replacing the leadership—and sometimes that works. We need to invest much more in principal leadership. We need to recruit and train the very best people possible because the job is hard and the cost of failure is too high.

Principals run multi-million dollar budgets, they hire, train and manage scores of people, and the best of them are also instructional leaders who are trained in classroom observation. It's a lot to ask of anyone—and we need 95,000 of them in America.

Great principals lead talented instructional teams that drive student performance and close achievement gaps. They deserve to be recognized and rewarded. But if they're not up to the job, they need to go.

Similarly, in struggling schools, we have tried boosting support for teaching staff and making other changes around curriculum, school day, etc.—and sometimes it has worked. I always favor more support, collaboration, mentoring and time on task.

But sometimes, despite our best efforts, these methods don't work. Today, America has about 5000 schools that continue to underperform year after year, despite our best efforts.

2,000 high schools produce half of the dropouts in the country. Their kids are years behind grade. They are perpetuating poverty and social failure. When it comes to these schools, we need to think differently. We need the courage to change.

We need to go into a room—states, districts, unions, administrators, foundations, think tanks, charters, non-profits, parents, and elected officials—lock the door—throw out the rule books—and start with a clean slate.

We need to be open and honest about the challenges and the barriers. If we agree that children need more time—then we must give it to them. If we agree that teachers need more support, then we must give it to them.

But if we agree that the adults in these schools are failing these children then we have to find the right people and we can't let our rules and regulations get in the way. Children have only one chance to get an education.

It's also not about charters or unions. Chicago has turnaround schools led by a businessman who uses union teachers and he's getting great results. So does Green Dot in Los Angeles.

But Mastery Charters in Philadelphia is a different turnaround model and we need that as well. There is so much urgency and so much need in under-performing schools that we can't impede successful models like these, regardless of governance structure.

The NEA has an honest and passionate leader in Dennis Van Roekel. He shares our sense of urgency. He has told me personally that he'll walk into any room with anyone to talk about how to turn schools around.

And that gives me hope. We're losing too many children today and incremental change won't save them. We need dramatic change.

And we can't continue to blame each other or blame the system. We are the system and it is up to us—you and me—to change it. So let's talk about that.

We created seniority rules that protect teachers from arbitrary and capricious management—and that's a good goal. But sometimes those rules place teachers in schools and communities where they won't succeed—and that's wrong.

We created tenure rules to make sure that a struggling teacher gets a fair opportunity to improve—and that's a good goal. But when an ineffective teacher gets a chance to improve and doesn't—and when the tenure system keeps that teacher in the classroom anyway—then the system is protecting jobs rather than children. That's not a good thing. We need to work together to change that.

I told the charter schools they need to police themselves or their progress will be stalled. I told the school boards that if they can't improve student achievement—they have a moral obligation to consider mayoral control.

And I'm telling you as well—that when inflexible seniority and rigid tenure rules that we designed put adults ahead of children—then we are not only putting kids at risk—we're putting the entire education system at risk. We're inviting the attack of parents and the public—and that is not good for any of us.

I believe that teacher unions are at a crossroads. These policies were created over the past century to protect the rights of teachers but they have produced an industrial factory model of education that treats all teachers like interchangeable widgets.

A recent report from the New Teacher Project found that almost all teachers are rated the same. Who in their right mind really believes that? We need to work together to change this.

Now let's talk about data. I understand that word can make people nervous but I see data first and foremost as a barometer. It tells us what is happening. Used properly, it can help teachers better understand the needs of their students. Too often, teachers don't have good data to inform instruction and help raise student achievement.

Data can also help identify and support teachers who are struggling. And it can help evaluate them. The problem is that some states prohibit linking student achievement and teacher effectiveness.

I understand that tests are far from perfect and that it is unfair to reduce the complex, nuanced work of teaching to a simple multiple choice exam. Test scores alone should never drive evaluation, compensation or tenure decisions. That would never make sense. But to remove student achievement entirely from evaluation is illogical and indefensible.

It's time we all admit that just as our testing system is deeply flawed—so is our teacher evaluation system—and the losers are not just the children. When great teachers are unrecognized and unrewarded—when struggling teachers are unsupported—and when failing teachers are unaddressed—the teaching profession is damaged.

We need to work together to fix this and I will meet you more than halfway. I will demand the same of every principal, administrator, school board member, elected official and parent. I ask only the same of you that I ask of myself and others.

The NEA has long history of reform on issues of health care, child advocacy, civil rights, and disabilities rights. And I don't begin to suggest that all teachers and unions are standing in the way of reform. I know many of your members and affiliates have been working on these issues. In Illinois for example—the IEA has led a 20-year effort to build labor-management partnerships around school improvement.

One of the leaders of that effort—Jo Anderson—has joined our team. He's here today and I thank him for his work.

I also want to acknowledge my general counsel Charlie Rose who was our labor lawyer in Illinois. Charlie told me—years ago—that the key to making progress on education reform begins with respect for the labor-management relationship.

I believe that and I salute union-management partnerships all across America that are working together to develop better hiring, compensation, evaluation and turnaround strategies. But we need to move faster and we need to go further.

America's teachers are yearning to be partners in reform and change. They want teaching to be a respected profession that has high standards for performance, rewards excellence, provides opportunities for advancement, and promotes real collaboration.

They are tired of being demonized, blamed, and disrespected. They want to get on the train. Let me share a powerful quote from your former President, Mary Hatwood Futrell:

"The education reform movement demands not only that we seize the opportunity, but that we embrace the responsibility that is ours. You and I must provide the leadership ... and share this responsibility with every parent and citizen who is concerned about safeguarding the sanctity and purpose of public education for all."

Taking her words to heart, our challenge is to make sure every child in America is learning from an effective teacher—no matter what it takes. So today, I ask you to join President Obama and me in a new commitment to results that recognizes and rewards success in the classroom and is rooted in our common obligation to children.

You've heard my voice—and I appreciate that. Now I want to hear your voices. I began my remarks with a personal story. I just want to close with one more:

Dr. Martin Luther King came to the West Side of Chicago in 1966 to protest housing discrimination. His powerful and inspiring message brought billions of dollars into that community for housing, job-training, and community development.

But when I took over the public schools in Chicago—35 years later—the children of North Lawndale were still desperately poor. You have to ask yourself why—after so much money and time—nothing had changed?

It's because they forgot to invest in the one thing with the power to transform lives. They forgot education. They put all of that money into bricks and mortar and social programs but they forgot to give the people the skills they need to help themselves.

President Obama learned that lesson and that's why the Recovery Act invests more than $100 billion dollars in education. I want to thank NEA for your support. That money is going into our classrooms to keep teachers teaching and kids learning—so we can educate our way to a better economy.

The President understands that the nation that out-teaches us today will out-compete us tomorrow. He understands that education is the foundation of our economic strategy and the only sure path to long-term economic strength.

That's why he wants America to produce the highest percentage of college graduates by the end of the next decade. This is our moon-shot. This is our call to action.

It is an economic imperative and a moral imperative. This is the civil rights issue of our generation—the fight for a quality education is about so much more than education. It's a fight for social justice. And he's counting on you to lead that fight.

There is simply no more important work in our society than education. The President understands that, parents understand that, America understands that. Now we—all of us together—must act on that understanding and move forward.

Thank you.

Labels: Duncan, teachers

posted by Patricia Lopez at 11:22 AM 1 comments Links to this post

By GARY MARTIN | Houston Chronicle
June 30, 2009

WASHINGTON — University of Texas System Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa told Latino leaders Tuesday that the lack of educational attainment, particularly for minorities, is “a gathering storm” that threatens America’s competitiveness.

With only three-fourths of U.S. teens graduating from high schools and only 39 percent of high school graduates entering college, the country is losing a competitive student pipeline for professions that include medicine and health care, the UT leader told the Latino Leaders Network.

“We can no longer risk complacency as we face a looming storm,” said Cigarroa, who was being honored as the 2009 Nambe Eagle Leadership Award recipient for his contributions to the Latino community and his achievements in medicine and academia. “We must ensure that the student pipeline remains wonderfully competitive, diverse, open and bountiful.”

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that minorities are expected to comprise 54 percent of the overall student population in 2050, and Cigarroa said that more must be done to improve their opportunities in health care, medicine and other fields.

“It pays multiple dividends by helping students enter a profession and improving the availability of health care in a chronically underserved region,” he said.

A native of Laredo, Cigarroa reflected on his South Texas upbringing in his speech to 400 people at the Capital Hilton. He recalled leaving the mesquite and brush years ago to attend Yale University.

“The most difficult transition in my life was that transition from Laredo to Yale,” Cigarroa said to laughter from a crowd of lawmakers, public officials and students.

When he later left a medical residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore to take a position at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, a colleague told Cigarroa he was “committing academic suicide.”

But Cigarroa later became president of the University of Texas Health Science Center, and was named chancellor of the entire University of Texas system in January.

Mickey Ibarra, founder and chairman of the Latino Leaders Network, said Cigarroa’s accomplishments in surgery and medical research “make him one of the foremost Latino medical leaders in the world.”

A pediatric and transplant surgeon, Cigarroa received a bachelor’s degree from Yale and his medical degree from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.

In 1997, he was part of a surgical team that split a donor liver for transplant into two recipients, the first time the procedure was performed in Texas.

Labels: higher education

posted by Patricia Lopez at 11:03 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Here's an update on LA's curricular tracking.

-Patricia

The provision in Louisiana puts the state in the center of a national debate about where to set the bar for high school graduation.

By Stacy Teicher Khadaroo | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
June 30, 2009

High-schoolers in Louisiana will soon be able to opt for a "career diploma" – taking some alternative courses instead of a full college-prep curriculum. The new path to graduation – expected to be signed into law by Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) in the coming days – bucks a trend in which many states are cranking up academic requirements.

The legislation puts the state in the center of a national debate about where to set the bar for high school graduation.

Advocates of the new diploma option say it will keep more struggling students in school and will prepare them for jobs, technical training, or community college. Critics doubt the curriculum will be strong enough to accomplish such goals and say it shortchanges students in the long run, given the projections that a large number of future jobs will require a college degree.

The impact may ultimately depend on how well the new option is implemented by school districts.

"Not all career-tech [education] is created equal," says Mary McNaught, chief of staff at Civic Enterprises, a public-policy group in Washington. "High-quality programs offer real skills that can be used in the workplace.... At other times, it is watering down standards, and kids who are put on that track don't [gain] the skills needed to compete in the technical arenas [or] in a 21st-century economy."

As a former judge who sent many high school dropouts to prison, state Sen. Robert Kostelka (R) sponsored the bill in hopes of inspiring students who are more interested in nuts and bolts than "Beowulf." As they enter high school, many "are finding less and less relevance to the normal college-prep curriculum and [want] technical training," he says. "It's really not lowering standards; it's just another pathway ... for those that can't go the harder, more rigorous path."

With the new measure, Louisiana will join roughly half the states in offering less demanding pathways for a diploma, says Michael Cohen, president of Achieve Inc., a Washington-based education-reform coalition. "What Louisiana has done is take a step backwards," he says.

In recent years, more than 20 states have "identified a rigorous core [curriculum] intended for all or nearly all kids," Mr. Cohen says. Louisiana had been one leader in that trend.

All along, Louisiana has offered some career and technical courses, but the new track will put more emphasis on them.

Educators are generally split on the issue: Fifty-nine percent of teachers and 41 percent of principals believe there should be separate tracks to allow students who are not college bound to get a diploma, according to a recent Civic Enterprises report.

Yet Louisiana has raised academic standards and graduation rates simultaneously, critics of the legislation, including the state superintendent of education, have pointed out. Among ninth-graders, for instance, the graduation rate rose from about 61 percent in 2001 to 66 percent in 2007, according to the state.

Supporters of the legislation offer another figure: Among seventh-graders, only about 54 percent graduate from high school, and many of them leave the system before ninth grade, says Keith Guice, president of the Louisiana State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Another controversial element of the new plan allows eighth-graders to score lower on state tests and still enter high school – as long as they get parental consent and participate in remediation and dropout-prevention programs. "This diploma, hopefully, is going to provide a second chance for many students who are on the dropout road," Mr. Guice says.

Labels: tracking

posted by Patricia Lopez at 10:56 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Inside Higher Ed
July 1, 2009

Most states don’t have systems in place to measure college students’ learning outcomes, and rare is the state that actually uses accountability data to drive policy decisions, a new report says.

Education Sector, a think tank promoting education reform, analyzed accountability systems across the nation and found varied results in its report, "Ready to Assemble: Grading State Higher Education Accountability Systems." The group’s survey determined that 38 states have little if any system for measuring learning outcomes, adding that 36 states have yet to develop a method for linking college funding to performance.

“Accountability isn’t just about gathering information; it’s about doing something useful with it,” said Kevin Carey, policy director for Education Sector.

“There’s a lot of innovation for states to learn from,” he added. “The bad news is I don’t think any state has put together a complete package.”

Education Sector measured states in 21 categories of accountability, analyzing any systems that might be in place to assess areas like affordability, degree production, research and scholarship. States that promote or require the use of assessment tools, and take steps to publicize the information, were given the highest marks. Those that had few tools for assessment and did little to spread information were graded lower.

Education Sector graded 50 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia on a three-grade scale. The highest grade, “best practice,” was given to 10 states with well developed reporting mechanisms. The second ranking, “in progress,” was given to 27 states that have less complete efforts underway. The lowest category, “needs improvement,” went to 13 states, D.C. and Puerto Rico, where little is being done in the way of accountability, according to Education Sector.

To assess the level of accountability, Education Sector examined whether states use new assessment tools like the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) or the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA). States have used these tools, developed by nonprofit organizations, in part to answer critics who say higher education hasn’t held itself accountable. Some fear that if colleges and universities don’t develop their own standards to measure effectiveness, federal standards could be implemented. Carey said he would not be interested in a large government accountability system akin to No Child Left Behind.

“Nobody I think wants a No Child Left Behind for higher education; we certainly don’t,” he said. “But if you’re not going to have direct regulation, which we don’t think we should have, then really accountability will only work if we create strong incentives. Incentives have to be tied to what institutions care about.”

In other words, states need to develop systems to reward colleges that show improvement in areas like student engagement, graduation rates and research production, Carey said.

While there is great room for improvement, there are some bright spots in the accountability universe, the report acknowledges. South Dakota, for instance, uses the Collegiate Assessment of Academic Progress (CAAP) -- developed by the makers of the ACT college-entrance examination -- to see if students are making satisfactory progress in their first two years of college. If students fail to meet standards three times, they are not permitted to re-enroll in state institutions. The provision affects about 2 percent of students each year, according to the report. While that may not sound like much, it's one of the few examples in the report of a state setting a data-driven standard that has consequences.

While several states use the NSSE, institutions vary when it comes to publicizing what students say about them. Vermont, which was ranked as a “needs improvement” state, puts the results of all 80 NSSE survey questions into a searchable database accessible to the public. While the state got high marks for transparency, Vermont could still be more proactive in informing the public about the performance of its institutions, the report said.

Even states that do a good job of collecting data often fall short when it comes to publicizing the findings, Carey said.

“The average student and parent can’t be expected to sift through mountains of PDF files and an obscure spreadsheet,” he said.

The states with the lowest grades were often cited for failing to compile information by race and gender, something many states do regularly. On the other hand, the report sought to find out which states collect less commonly used data. Only five states, for instance, were given the “best practice” designation for measuring the way colleges improve their community’s quality of life through arts and cultural programs. Connecticut, which was rated “best practice” in this category, is the only state to track the number of artistic and creative products attributable to state institutions, according to the report. The state keeps tabs on how many plays, compositions, paintings and other cultural contributions can be traced back to colleges and universities.

Overall Grades for States on Education Sector's Accountability Measures

Labels: higher education, measures of rediness

posted by Patricia Lopez at 10:53 AM 0 comments Links to this post

This is great news!

-Patricia

By Georgia Pabst | the Journal Sentinel
Posted: June 29, 2009

Some illegal immigrant high school graduates will be able to attend Wisconsin state universities by paying in-state tuition, under a provision in the two-year budget Gov. Jim Doyle signed into law Monday.

Wisconsin now becomes the 11th state to enact such a law.

To qualify, students would have to reside in the state for three years, graduate from a Wisconsin high school or earn an equivalency degree here.

The students would have to apply through the normal channels.

It's estimated from 400 to 650 illegal immigrants annually graduate from state high schools, but they must pay out-of-state tuition if they enroll in the state university system or technical colleges.

In-state tuition at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is $7,576 a year in the 2008-'09 school year, compared with out-of-state tuition, which is $17,306.

State Rep. Pedro Colón (D-Milwaukee) first introduced the in-state college tuition measure in 1999, when he was new to the Assembly.

"I really think this gets us back on course with our brightest having more access to education," he said. "It's not a huge scholarship program, but an important step for more access to higher education than we had yesterday."

Immigrant advocates who have pushed for the measure attended the signing in Madison. Christine Neumann-Ortiz, director of Voces de la Frontera, an immigrant and worker rights organization, called it "a historic step forward in recognizing the civil rights of immigrants in the area of education."

Opponents such as state Sen. Glenn Grothman (R-West Band) criticized the provision.

Labels: immigration and education

posted by Patricia Lopez at 10:43 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Economists worry about ripple effect throughout Austin economy.

By Jeremy Schwartz | AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Evelia Arrellano surveys the empty barber chairs with a worried look. It's 1 p.m. on a recent weekday, and she has yet to see a client at her salon, which also sells phone cards, compact discs and sodas to a cluster of mostly Mexican immigrants in the St. Johns neighborhood in North Austin.

She traces her salon's woes to hard times among Austin's immigrant workers, especially those in the hard-hit construction industry. "If they don't work, we don't work either," she said. "Things are getting worse. It's disillusioning. They say the economy is getting better, but it's not true."

Arrellano is feeling the effects of a recession that is hitting Austin businesses that cater to immigrants with a pronounced fury, according to interviews with more than a dozen managers, cashiers and business owners. With construction jobs dwindling, money is no longer flowing freely through Austin's immigrant community, hurting the many businesses selling Norteño records, phone cards, boots, groceries and other goods.

It's a far cry from the go-go days of a few years ago, when Austin's home construction industry helped power boom times for many businesses serving immigrants.

Austin officials say they don't study the economic impact of immigrant businesses or track business closures. But experts say that declining immigrant buying power has ripple effects throughout the city's economy, driving down tax revenue and sparking layoffs.

A November 2008 study by the U.S. Small Business Administration found that nearly 30 percent of all new business owners in Texas are immigrants.

Nestor Rodriguez, an immigration expert at the University of Texas, said immigrant-aimed businesses tend to provide a clear picture of economic conditions in immigrant communities. "When something is happening among immigrants — either prosperity or economic restrictions — they are the first to feel it," he said. "These mom-and-pop immigrant stores are on the front lines. They trust those places, they speak the same languages."

Construction work has decreased in Austin, with jobs in the sector dominated by construction

falling 6 percent in May compared to 2008, according to the Texas Workforce Commission.

Austin is on pace for its slowest year for new home construction since 1995, according to Metrostudy, with new home starts expected to fall from 8,000 in 2008 to 6,000. Nationally, the unemployment rate for immigrants in the construction industry is 20 percent, according to the Center for Immigration Studies, and unemployment rates for immigrants, both legal and illegal, outpace those for the native population, according to several recent studies.

Experts think some immigrants have opted to return home because of the recession, although it's not clear if they are returning in significant numbers or planning to recross the border after the economy improves.

Vicente Limon, an Austin construction worker from Ciudad Victoria in the border state of Tamaulipas, said he hasn't had steady work since December. As a result, his spending habits have changed drastically. "Before I used to buy a new pair of pants or some boots to look good," he said on a recent afternoon. "Now what you earn is for rent, for food. You spend half of what you used to at H-E-B."

Business owners say Limon's story, multiplied by thousands, spells doom.

Jose Manuel Rodriguez used to own five branches of his popular Furia stores, selling high-end belt buckles, Western wear and records. He says he's had to close three of the stores because of the current downturn, laying off a handful of employees in the process. "I've been in business for 10 years, and this is the worst," he said. "This is worse than after Sept. 11."

At the El Paisano used car lot on North Lamar Boulevard, the sales staff has watched sales drop from about 40 vehicles a month to about 20, accompanied by a rise in the number of buyers returning their cars because they couldn't make the payments. "They come to look, but they don't bring money," saleswoman Dayna Salinas said.

In the city's many small grocery stores and meat markets serving immigrants, managers and owners say buyers are sticking to staples such as beans and vegetables and avoiding expensive meats and other luxury items. "It's a chain from the economy to the construction worker to us," said Montana Cooper, owner of La Carreta grocery store on East Oltorf Street. "You're being affected just because these guys don't have money."

According to University of Texas economist Michael Brandl, a lack of immigrant buying power causes trouble throughout Austin's economy, leading to less sales tax money in city coffers, dips in property tax revenue as landlords see their apartments go empty, and layoffs at businesses that serve immigrants.

"No economic group is isolated even though they think they are," Brandl said. "We are all ultimately interconnected."

Rodriguez said stricter enforcement of immigration laws, both among employers requiring valid documents and agents along the border, might also be reflected in the struggles of Austin immigrant businesses. Apprehensions along the border have fallen precipitously, a likely sign that fewer people are trying to cross illegally, experts say. According to the Department of Homeland Security, border agents made 724,000 apprehensions in 2008, down from 1.2 million in 2005. Federal officials attribute the decline to a combination of the bad economy and tougher border security.

Meanwhile, there is little consensus among experts on whether the recession has caused a significant number of immigrants to return home. But immigrant business owners in Austin suspect that's what many of their former clients and buyers have done.

Arrellano says the one thing selling well at her shop are bus tickets to the Mexican interior. "We've talked to them, and they say they're going back because there is no work," she said. "That's what's happening now — there's no money flowing through the community."

Labels: immigrant labor

posted by Patricia Lopez at 10:38 AM 0 comments Links to this post

The Post and Courier
Monday, June 29, 2009

The words "uneducated" and "unemployed" share more than a prefix. U.S. Labor Department statistics show that while the nation's overall jobless rate rose last month to 9.4 percent (the highest since 1983), it was a staggering 15.5 percent among those who haven't completed high school — and a mere 4.8 percent among those with four-year college degrees.

You don't need a college education to detect this indisputable lesson of those numbers: The more educated you are, the less vulnerable you are to recession-related job loss.

And the rise in unemployment apparently will continue. President Barack Obama said last week that the national jobless rate will soon eclipse 10 percent. The news for us was even worse in numbers released recently: South Carolina's jobless rate climbed to a staggering 12.1 percent.

The recession-boosted peril of job loss for the uneducated is particularly severe among males. As The Wall Street Journal recently reported, due to the collapse of the U.S. housing market, "the male-dominated manufacturing and home-building industries are both suffering, and that has hurt less educated men far more than less educated women."

Harvard University labor economist Lawrence Katz said that the last two recessions, in 1990-91 and 2001, were more "egalitarian" in their consequences.

But beyond concerns over uneven gender distribution of today's unemployment pain lies the spreading realization that regardless of sex, racial, age and regional categories, more education generally equals more job security. Thanks to that enhanced, bottom-line awareness, many Americans are taking positive action to remedy their disadvantages on the schooling front.

From the Journal: "Across the country, community colleges report record demand from students who want to quickly plug the gap in their resumés."

That trend extends to our community, where Trident Technical College President Mary Thornley has cited the economic downturn as a factor in her school's record enrollment.

South Carolina's leaders should keep in mind that direct link between education and economic competitiveness when setting priorities for how to spend our money. Just as a person's future can be undermined by a low level of individual education, a state's future can be undermined by a low level of collective education.

And though it's alarming to see U.S. unemployment at record levels, at least it's encouraging to see so many Americans catching on to the modern labor-market reality that without a good education, they're highly unlikely to get — and keep — a good job.

Copyright © 1995 - 2009 Evening Post Publishing Co.

posted by Patricia Lopez at 10:34 AM 0 comments Links to this post

$4 billion federal grant program is unprecedented, highly selective effort to spur education innovation.

By Kate Alexander AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Monday, June 29, 2009

Texas appeared to have a head start on its competitors when the Obama administration announced it would offer select states huge grants to encourage cutting-edge reforms in education. But recent signals from Washington could indicate the competition might be stiffer than Texas officials thought.

The state has pioneered programs, involving such things as rigorous standards and teacher incentives, that the Obama administration said would be priorities for the education money in the federal stimulus package, including the $4 billion Race to the Top grant program intended to spur innovation.

"Texas is very well-positioned in terms of the work we've done over the past several years to take advantage of this," Education Commissioner Robert Scott told a legislative committee in March, shortly after the program was announced. "We can bring to completion some of the reform work we've been working on."

But as more information has trickled out of the U.S. Department of Education in recent weeks, it appears that Texas might also have some notable strikes against it:

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan warned that states could harm their chances in the grant competition by using stimulus money to "backfill budget holes" while protecting state dollars.

Texas left untouched $9.1 billion in its rainy day fund while using $3.2 billion in stimulus money to pay for textbooks and increase school funding. State officials argue that the use of money was in compliance with the law and say there was a lack of federal guidance on spending the money.

The Legislature failed to enact a key charter school overhaul that would have lifted a cap on the number of charter schools in Texas and given the commissioner more tools to hold charter schools accountable for poor performance, both key priorities for the Obama administration.

"Texas would not be considered a charter-friendly environment," said David Dunn, executive director of the Texas Charter School Alliance.

Texas is one of only four states that has declined to participate in a national effort to craft common standards for English and math instruction in public schools.

State officials say that Texas already leads the nation in embracing rigorous standards and that the state requirements could be tougher than the common standards. Moving to new standards would also be costly, so the state is taking a wait-and-see approach.

"It's not just Texas that has done exemplary work," said Bill Slotnik, executive director of the Boston-based Community Training and Assistance Center, which helps districts nationwide, including Austin, put in place reform programs. "If you're claiming you're the exemplar, than why wouldn't you want to work with the other states on this?"

Each of those issues is clearly important to Duncan, who has addressed them generally in recent speeches and interviews, and he has discretion over the grant allocations. Education Department representatives have said the issues could put Texas at a competitive disadvantage in the Race to the Top.

But their weight in the final grant determination is not yet known.

Jerel Booker, associate commissioner for the Texas Education Agency, said none of the potential strikes against Texas should count it out of the Race to the Top.

"As long as we're meeting these core reforms and improving student achievement," Booker said, "I think we'll be in great shape."

Michael Kirst, professor emeritus of education and business administration at Stanford University, said "the key thing is maybe not these off-the-cuff statements being made, but what are the real regulations and guidelines for getting this money?"

The rules are due to be released in late July.

The state's history of reform is going to be very important, said Kirst, an author and expert in education reform policies. Texas has been the first state to try some reforms and is way ahead of other states in many areas, such as giving teachers merit pay and integrating college-readiness standards into the curriculum, Kirst said.

But Slotnik said Texas will have to show that its reforms have produced results. "Are the things that you're doing reaching the classroom in a way that is demonstrably benefiting students?" he asked.

"Just being from Texas is not going to carry the weight that it did in a previous administration," Slotnik said.

Many critical details about the Race to the Top program will not be known until the Education Department issues the rules. A first round of grants is expected in early 2010 and another later in the year.

The unofficial word is that only three or four states will get money in the first round and perhaps another 10 states in the second round, said Mike Griffith, a senior policy analyst for the Education Commission of the States, which helps states develop public education policies and practices.

"We want to reward those states that are willing to lead the country where we need to go and are willing to push this reform agenda very, very hard," Duncan told the Associated Press in May.

"There are a number of states that are leading this effort, and we want to invest a huge amount of money into them, a minimum of $100 million, probably north of that," Duncan said. "And the states that don't have the stomach or the political will, unfortunately, they're going to lose out."

The stakes are high for states and the federal government.

"The states that get it will be viewed as leaders, and the states that don't will be viewed as laggards," Kirst said.

And private grant money is likely to follow the federal money, Kirst said.

For the federal government, the amount of money being injected into public education substantially increases its investment. If this experiment is not successful, it is going to complicate any future argument for a greater infusion for education, Slotnik said.

"The federal government wants to see a return on this investment," Slotnik said, and the successful states will understand that and respond to it.

Booker said Texas will "make a great argument" for the federal government to invest here.

Labels: Race to the Top fund

posted by Patricia Lopez at 10:22 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Inside Higher Ed
June 29, 2009

WASHINGTON -- Online learning has definite advantages over face-to-face instruction when it comes to teaching and learning, according to a new meta-analysis released Friday by the U.S. Department of Education.

The study found that students who took all or part of their instruction online performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through face-to-face instruction. Further, those who took "blended" courses -- those that combine elements of online learning and face-to-face instruction -- appeared to do best of all. That finding could be significant as many colleges report that blended instruction is among the fastest-growing types of enrollment.

The Education Department examined all kinds of instruction, and found that the number of valid analyses of elementary and secondary education was too small to have much confidence in the results. But the positive results appeared consistent (and statistically significant) for all types of higher education, undergraduate and graduate, across a range of disciplines, the study said.

A meta-analysis is one that takes all of the existing studies and looks at them for patterns and conclusions that can be drawn from the accumulation of evidence.

On the topic of online learning, there is a steady stream of studies, but many of them focus on limited issues or lack control groups. The Education Department report said that it had identified more than 1,000 empirical studies of online learning that were published from 1996 through July 2008. For its conclusions, however, the Education Department considered only a small number (51) of independent studies that met strict criteria. They had to contrast an online teaching experience to a face-to-face situation, measure student learning outcomes, use a "rigorous research design," and provide adequate information to calculate the differences.

The department noted that this new meta-analysis differs from previous such studies, which generally found that online education and face-to-face instruction were similarly effective on issues of learning, but didn't give an edge to online learning that may now exist.

While the new study provides a strong endorsement of online learning, it also notes findings about the relative success (or lack thereof) of various teaching techniques used in online courses. The use of video or online quizzes -- frequently encouraged for online education -- "does not appear to enhance learning," the report says.

Using technology to give students "control of their interactions" has a positive effect on student learning, however. "Studies indicate that manipulations that trigger learner activity or learner reflection and self-monitoring of understanding are effective when students pursue online learning as individuals," the report says.

Notably, the report attributes much of the success in learning online (blended or entirely) not to technology but to time. "Studies in which learners in the online condition spent more time on task than students in the face-to-face condition found a greater benefit for online learning," the report says.

In noting caveats about the findings, the study returns to the issue of time.

"Despite what appears to be strong support for online learning applications, the studies in this meta-analysis do not demonstrate that online learning is superior as a medium," the report says. "In many of the studies showing an advantage for online learning, the online and classroom conditions differed in terms of time spent, curriculum and pedagogy. It was the combination of elements in the treatment conditions (which was likely to have included additional learning time and materials as well as additional opportunities for collaboration) that produced the observed learning advantages. At the same time, one should note that online learning is much more conducive to the expansion of learning time than is face-to-face instruction."

In a statement, Education Secretary Arne Duncan urged educators to consider the report's findings. “This new report reinforces that effective teachers need to incorporate digital content into everyday classes and consider open-source learning management systems, which have proven cost effective in school districts and colleges nationwide,” he said.

John R. Bourne, executive director of the Sloan Consortium, a group of colleges and other organizations that work on online education issues, said he was not surprised by the findings, but thought it was quite important that the Education Department was the source. "I think this is incredibly significant," he said. "Those of us in the business have thought these things for some time, but we have had enormous trouble convincing some folks" about the quality of online education. "I think this will give more credibility to the things that have been said."

Diana G. Oblinger, president of Educause, also was pleased with the findings. "Online education provides additional opportunities," she said. "It gives people greater opportunity for flexibility, for experiential learning, for illustrating things in multiple ways such as visualization." What the study demonstrates, she said, is that colleges need to think broadly about using online education, and not be "artificially limited" to face-to-face instruction.

Lawrence N. Gold, director of higher education at the American Federation of Teachers, said via e-mail that it was important to pay attention to the report's caveats and not view it as evidence for shifting everything possible online.

"This report correctly recognizes that online learning and blended learning are growing components of higher education and, employed properly, can play a significant role in promoting student learning. Further public investment in experimentation and technology is certainly warranted," he said.

But noting the caveats in the report about factors other than medium of instruction, he said that "we should not take the report as saying it is simply better to move to online learning. These results demonstrate why more research is needed -- broadly based research that moves well beyond case studies conducted by distance education practitioners, research focused on student retention in online environments and especially research that looks behind the instructional medium to isolate the characteristics of instruction that produce positive results. Successful education has always been about engaging students whether it is in an online environment, face to face or in a blended setting. And fundamental to that is having faculty who are fully supported and engaged in that process as well."

Labels: virtual schools

posted by Patricia Lopez at 10:18 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Inside Higher Ed
June 29, 2009

WASHINGTON -- Community colleges and high schools would receive federal funds to create free, online courses in a program that is in the final stages of being drafted by the Obama administration.

The program is part of a series of efforts to help community colleges reach more students and to link basic skills education to job training. The proposals are outlined in administration discussion drafts obtained by Inside Higher Ed. A formal announcement could come in the next few weeks. In addition to the free online courses, the plan would provide $9 billion over 10 years to help community colleges develop and improve programs related to preparing students for good jobs, and a $10 billion loan fund (at low or no interest) for community college facilities.

John White, press secretary for the Education Department, said Sunday that the department would discuss the plans "when the time is right." He said that there is a lot of "high level discussion and excitement" around these ideas related to community colleges.

The funds envisioned for open courses -- $50 million a year -- may be small in comparison to the other ideas being discussed. But in proposing that the federal government pay for (and own) courses that would be free for all, as well as setting up a system to assess learning in those courses, and creating a "National Skills College" to coordinate these efforts, the plan could be significant far beyond its dollars.

The draft language suggests that the administration is throwing its weight behind the movement to put more courses online -- and offer them free -- and is also pushing that movement in the direction of community colleges.

"This is so spot on in terms of what's needed," said Curtis J. Bonk, a professor of instructional systems technology at Indiana University at Bloomington and author of The World Is Open: How Web Technology Is Revolutionizing Education (forthcoming from Jossey-Bass). Bonk is a fan of programs like OpenCourseWare at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that put course materials online. But he said that the impact of bringing free online courses to those who may need basic skills and job training could have much more of an impact than the free courses from elite universities.

If this program provided more skills training and education to even a small percentage of those leaving high school without a diploma or those who have no college education, he said, the impact on the individuals and the economy could be huge. "I couldn't think of a more important target than high schools and community colleges for open courses," he said.

According to the draft materials from the administration, the program would support the development of 20-25 "high quality" courses a year, with a mix of high school and community college courses. Initial preference would go to "career oriented" courses. The courses would be owned by the government and would be free for anyone to take. Courses would be selected competitively, through peer review, for support. And the courses would be "modular" or "object based" such that they would be "interoperable" and could be offered with a variety of technology platforms.

Under the plan, the government would also support a "National Skills College" at a community college that would, among other things, work to develop examinations that could be given at the end of the courses so that colleges, employers and students could judge how much learning had taken place. Course developers would be asked to consult with colleges on standards, so that the offerings could be created with the goal of having credit transferred to many institutions. And the National Skills College would work to promote programs that might mix the free courses with tuition courses so students could earn degrees at lower cost.

While the program is described as one that emphasizes community colleges and high schools, it would be open to public agencies and to private for-profit or nonprofit groups.

Advocates for open courses guess that the proposal reflects the ideas of Martha J. Kanter, the under secretary of education. Kanter was previously chancellor of the Foothill-De Anza Community College District. In that position, she helped to create the Community College Consortium for Open Education Resources, which has pioneered the idea of making textbooks and other course materials for community college students available free and online.

Bonk said that administration's ideas about open courses are consistent with the "convergence" he sees taking place in online learning. There is a growing belief that for many kinds of courses, there are best providers whose work can be made available online, there are large numbers of students who could benefit from those courses, and those who might benefit don't necessarily have a lot of money. "It's time for this," he said.

As for concerns that the students who could benefit might not have laptops or Internet access, Bonk said that was a real concern. But now, he said, students lack those things and perceive college as too expensive. By making courses available free, he said, communities can then expand library access to computers, or start laptop programs -- and this will make more sense when the tuition issue is removed. "I think the ability to tell people, 'Hey there are these courses now available for free' is going to create incentives for lots of laptop programs to appear," he said.

Support for Job Training and Facilities

The discussion draft for the job training program calls for spending $500 million a year in the first five years of the program, during which grants would be awarded competitively to community colleges, and $1.3 billion after that, at which point 50 percent of funds would be awarded by formula to states, 25 percent awarded to those states showing high performance programs, and 25 percent to community colleges, awarded competitively.

To be eligible, community colleges would need to agree to track and report on student outcomes, and to set targets for graduation rates and "employment-related outcomes," while also serving "high need populations." Funds could then be used to create programs that "blend basic skills and occupational training," to provide "comprehensive, personalized services to help students plan their coursework and careers and support services that will keep them in school," and to create programs in partnerships with employers

The loan fund for community college facilities would receive $10 billion under the plan. The loans would be for 10 years for repairs and renovations and 25 years for construction, and the plan calls for the loans to be "zero or low interest." The funds would first be distributed to states, which would have to pledge that these funds would not cause states to cut funds for the colleges. States would distribute funds based on "demonstrated need," with an emphasis on expanding capacity in programs that "meet employer needs in the areas of health care, green jobs, science, engineering and technology."

Community college leaders said that they had not seen the discussion drafts and wanted to see the details, but that they were generally encouraged by the ideas in play.

George R. Boggs, president of the American Association of Community Colleges, said that the infusion of funds being contemplated "sounds very positive to us," especially given the pressure community colleges are under to meet rising enrollment demands at a time of shrinking state support. He said that colleges are being forced to turn students away, "which is the wrong thing to be doing in this economy," and that the funds for job training programs could help community colleges educate more people, and help them prepare for good jobs.

On the facilities loans, Boggs said that his association has estimated a $100 billion need for new community college facilities, so any new source of funds would be welcome. He added, however, that some community colleges may not be able to participate, even if the loans have little or no interest. Various state and local laws govern community college borrowing, and it may be hard for some of them to issue bonds or make financial commitments to participate in the program, he said. While the program may be "quite helpful" for some colleges, he said, others may not be able to join without "some kind of revenue stream."

J. Noah Brown, president of the Association of Community College Trustees, said that the proposals the administration is drafting "reflect big priorities of ours." Brown said that the colleges recognize that the administration "can't cure all of our infrastructure ills" or sagging budgets. But he said that with community colleges being forced to limit enrollments in ways "that break my heart," these programs are a huge advance.

"Frankly anything is going to be helpful, and this would be a lot more than we have right now," he said. Brown added that these programs would enable community colleges to "help turn around the economy."

Boggs also noted the unusual prominence that the administration is giving to community colleges as institutions that can help deal with the country's economic mess. "I think the spotlight is really shining on community colleges right now," he said.

Labels: community colleges

posted by Patricia Lopez at 10:15 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Also listen to this discussion here

This highlights the underlying problem with this issue - education for ELLs is more about politics than research.

-Patricia

by Claudio Sanchez | NPR

Weekend Edition Sunday, June 28, 2009 · Last week, the Supreme Court ruled that the state of Arizona has not violated federal laws that require schools to help students who do not speak, read or write English. Despite the federal mandates, these kids often fail to do well in school. So why haven't schools figured out the best way to teach English to non-English-speaking students?

"The research certainly has in the past shown dual language programs to be the most effective," says Nancy Rowch.

Rowch oversees instruction for English-language learners in Nebraska. She swears that building on a child's native language, rather than discarding it, has proven to be the best way to help kids make the transition to English — but that's neither here nor there, because the actual programs that schools use have less to do with research than with politics and funding.

'Sink or Swim'

In Nebraska, for example, Rowch says school districts cannot find dual language teachers or pay for dual language programs, so the state has no choice but to allow them to use whatever they can afford, even discredited methods like "sink or swim."

"In small schools, sink or swim may actually occur. Nebraska is a very rural state, but to me, sink or swim is like saying, 'To teach children to read, we're just going to throw them into an environment but we never instruct them how to read,' " says Rowch.

Again, based on the evidence, she says, dual language or bilingual instruction is the answer.

"A dual language program allows both English, and in the case of Nebraska, Spanish, speakers to learn both languages together," Rowch says.

As in many parts of the nation, the non-English-speaking population in Nebraska has exploded, creating enormous problems for schools that have really struggled to keep these kids from falling behind in science, math or history while they learn English. And that's key, experts say: that they learn English so they can function.

Dual Language Programs

The politically charged question is whether the goal should be to teach a child English as quickly as possible or let him learn English more gradually while maintaining his native language so that he grows up bilingual.

"There's nothing wrong with a kid being bilingual," says Rob Toonkel of U.S. English. The group opposes any program that delays a child's transition to English-only classrooms.

"The problem with the old bilingual ed was that it didn't have a goal. It said kids would become English proficient at some point — not [in] three years or five years or seven years," Toonkel says.

It means these kids are often stuck in so-called dual language or bilingual maintenance programs indefinitely, says Toonkel. Another problem, he says, is that schools have gotten little or no guidance from states, the federal government or the courts.

All the courts have said is that "schools must take appropriate action to help students overcome language barriers," Toonkel says.

The result, he saysl: a hodgepodge of ineffective, poorly funded programs and poor academic results. Low test scores, low graduation rates and high dropout rates, especially among Spanish-speaking students.

"You're seeing it in places in the South and Midwest suddenly going 'OK, we have to look at these programs and figure out what's best because we have a lot of people moving here," Toonkel says.

No Child Left Behind

Right now, the little guidance states are getting from the federal government is wrapped up in No Child Left Behind, the sweeping eight-year-old law that evaluates schools based on students' academic progress and test scores.

James Crawford, a longtime proponent of bilingual education and president of the Institute for Language and Education, says NCLB poses another hurdle for kids who don't know English.

"What NCLB does is attach very high stakes to tests that are given primarily in English," Crawford says. Consequently, schools are throwing kids into English-only classrooms too quickly, because they "are so worried about the consequences of not making adequate yearly progress for English-language learners," he says.

In other words, says Crawford, instead of adopting proven programs that help non-English-speaking students do well in school, we're back to sink or swim.

"It's ironic that as more research comes showing the benefits of bilingual ed, we're seeing a political trend toward minimizing the use of bilingual ed," Crawford says. Why? "It's tied up with the immigration debate. It's also a reflection of the kind of culture wars we've had."

As long as that's the case, Crawford says, politics will trump the research and continue to put more than 5 million students classified as English-language learners at risk.

Labels: English language learners

posted by Patricia Lopez at 9:46 AM 0 comments Links to this post

This op-ed piece is concerning!

We know that historically minority youth have been negatively impacted by standardized tests and that using them to determine whether or not a student receives a high-school diploma is a values-based decision. The tests are made for diagnostic purposes to measure where students are. This would remain in tact with NCLB's 10th grade testing mandate as mentioned here.

Buying into the idea that one test has the ability to determine readiness, whether it be college or workforce, is flawed. The University of California's decision to do away with the SAT as an eligibility indicator, partially in the basis that it excludes minority youth, further acknowledges the flaw.

The motivation argument in this letter is also concerning and is not supported. This places the onus of achievement, and in the most severe cases failure, on the shoulders of students. And where's the analysis of the harmful effects of disproportionate access to opportunities to learn and their role in preparation for life after high school?

To gloss over that in pursuit of advocating for standardized testing is shameful!

-Patricia

Legislative efforts to kill the test wouldn't save that much money and would cheat our students.
June 27, 2009

California is broke, but kids still need to know how to read and do basic algebra. It's an insult to the aspirations of California students that legislators moved to kill the high school exit exam as a graduation requirement.

Excusing it as a budget move, all six Democratic legislators on the budget conference committee voted quickly, with little debate and no real public airing. The state would still give the exam in 10th grade -- it has to, because that's the test it reports to the federal government under the No Child Left Behind Act -- but it would do away with further testing in later years for students who flunk the first time.

The state can't afford the remedial lessons to help students pass, the legislators said. On the contrary, the state cannot afford to have students enter the work world without eighth-grade math and 10th-grade reading skills, which is what the exam tests. Employers, who can be choosier than ever in an economy like this, aren't going to lower their job requirements just because the state dropped the most fundamental expectations for its students.

This isn't really about money. The state would save perhaps $8 million, a relative pittance, by eliminating the graduation requirement. Several legislators have been itching for years to get rid of the exam, which is unpopular with teachers unions and which, truth be told, disproportionately keeps black and Latino students from receiving diplomas. But those young people are also disproportionately harmed when they lack the academic skills that would qualify them for well-paid jobs. The exit exam is one initiative aimed at closing that gap; it also is the one school reform that gives students an incentive to work toward mastering basic schoolwork, and prods their parents to pay more attention to what's happening at their schools. It is shameful that minority students continue to receive an education inadequate to their needs, but it's wrong to blame the test.

If there's anything to criticize about the exit exam, it's that the expectations for our graduates remain so low. They pass by getting barely more than half the answers right, a flunk in most testing situations.

For too many years, elementary and middle schools have promoted students without teaching them the required material. High schools responded by giving diplomas as rewards for students who warmed a classroom seat for four years. Fortunately, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has vowed to veto any attempt to return to those days. We urge him -- and the legislators who understand that a basic education isn't something we reserve solely for flush economies -- to hold firm.

Labels: California, high-stakes testing

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

This article does not give a balanced critique of the massive overhaul that Texas' HB 3 has done to public school education.

Further down in the article the following quote by Ratcliffe regarding the bill's use of multiple criteria assessment for 3rd graders is made: “The lawmakers were concerned that one test, the snapshot aspect, determined so much for a school.”

This article does NOT share with readers that HB 3, as filed, afforded this consideration to 5th and 8th graders as well. The change to remove them was made at the end of the process.

Also mentioned by Ratcliffe: “[Under the new law,] three years of data are taken into account when we determine a rating. If they’ve had one bad year, that doesn’t reduce their rating.”

Yes, school-centered accommodations like this and proportionality (i.e., requiring schools to meet 85% of all indicators rather than all) were retained in the bill. This again highlights lawmakers' recognition and concerns for using "one test" to determine "so much" but only when it came to schools but not when it came to children other than those in the 3rd grade.

Very concerning.

-Patricia

By Mary Ann Zehr | Ed Week
June 26, 2009

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has signed legislation that will make some significant changes in the state’s accountability system and budgeting requirements for schools, including tougher high school graduation standards and elimination of a requirement that school districts must spend 65 percent of their operating budgets on classroom instruction.

But some high-profile bills failed to pass in the session that ended June 1—including a proposal to lift the cap on the number of charter schools permitted, a request that U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has made of all states.

Lawmakers also failed to approve measures that called for a reduction of the power of the Texas board of education, which has been criticized by some as making some decisions based on political ideology, particularly in the area of science.

In addition, they didn’t pass any bills that would have made changes in the state’s programs for English-language learners, such as stepping up monitoring. A U.S. district court has ruled that Texas doesn’t provide adequate programs for its ELLs on the secondary level, but the state has appealed that decision and is waiting for a decision from the appeals court.

Read on...

Labels: HB 3

posted by Patricia Lopez at 8:37 AM 0 comments Links to this post

by Pat Kossan | The Arizona Republic
Jun. 23, 2009

Nearly 40,000 Arizona students will advance out of English-language learning programs and into regular classes this coming school year, more than double the number of students who made the move just two years ago, the Arizona Department of Education will report today.

The report, obtained Monday by The Arizona Republic, comes days before the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule on whether Arizona adequately funds its programs to help students learn English. A decision in the 17-year-old lawsuit, known as Flores vs. Arizona, could come as soon as Thursday.

State schools Superintendent Tom Horne said the rise in the number of students testing out of English-learner courses is a direct result of a new and controversial four-hour-a-day course that focuses on English grammar, reading and writing. Schools began to put the new program into place during the 2007-08 school year. The state mandated it for every language learner this past year.

Students must pass a state exam testing their ability to speak, read and write English before they can exit the learning programs and move to regular grade-level classes.

In the 2006-07 school year, when students who were still learning English averaged 30 to 60 minutes of language instruction a day, 17,813 students passed the exam, or 12 percent of all English learners in the state. This past year, 29 percent of English learners passed the exam, most of them in kindergarten through sixth grade, officials said.

"It went from half an hour to an hour to four hours (of instruction). That's a radical difference," Horne said. "It's predictable it would effect results. This enables them to compete with other students on an equal basis."

Despite the test results, some educators are not as convinced that the new program will help English learners in the long run.

Many say the biggest question remains: Will the newly proficient students have the language skills and academic knowledge to catch up and keep up with their peers in math, science and history?

The answer won't emerge until today's elementary students reach middle school, when one-time English learners historically began to lag and their average AIMS math and reading scores slipped. Some educators say the state's English test is too easy to pass; others worry that segregating students for four hours of English a day deprives them of an opportunity to keep up in other subjects.

The daily four-hour immersion course was put into place as the state's most recent effort to comply with part of a 2000 U.S. District Court order in the Flores case. The court required Arizona to create an English-learner program, determine how much it would cost and fund it. Schools requested $274 million last school year to put the new four-hour program in place. The state provided $40 million. Many school officials say that's not enough to pay for the added teachers, classroom space, and textbooks needed to make the program work.

The U.S. Supreme Court is weighing whether Arizona is funding its English-learner program adequately and not arbitrarily. Justices also are considering whether federal judges overstepped their roles in their efforts to push the state to comply with the 2000 District Court order and meddled too deeply into state business.

The Flores case is based on the Equal Education Opportunity Act of 1974, which requires states to help students learn English and succeed in school.

The justices also are considering if Arizona's compliance with the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 has fulfilled that requirement.

Labels: English language learners, testing

posted by Patricia Lopez at 7:59 AM 0 comments Links to this post

By Stephen Sawchuk | Ed Week
June 23, 2009

As part of the first major overhaul of its system in nearly a decade, the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education will give education schools a choice of two different pathways for seeking reaccreditation, officials for the group announced today.

Under the first option, schools must commit to working toward a higher level of performance on NCATE’s six standards. Alternatively, institutions can propose and undertake a major research project, or a partnership with a school district, to further the knowledge base on effective teacher preparation.

The changes will come concurrent with a reduction in the amount of paperwork and data schools must submit for review as part of reaccreditation.

“This is not a minor tinkering,” James G. Cibulka, the president of the group, said in a recent interview. “It is a major redesign to accomplish some ambitious, but essential, goals.”

Read on...

Labels: teachers

posted by Patricia Lopez at 7:38 AM 0 comments Links to this post

The 8-1 decision says Arizona school officials lacked justification for such an invasive search of a 13-year-old girl, who was suspected of hiding ibuprofen pills.

By David G. Savage | LA Times
June 26, 2009

Reporting from Washington -- After two decades of giving school officials wide leeway to search students for drugs or weapons, the Supreme Court set a legal limit on Thursday, ruling out of bounds the strip-search of a 13-year-old girl who was suspected of hiding pain relief pills.

In an 8-1 decision, the court called this search degrading, unreasonable and unconstitutional.

Justice David H. Souter, in what could be his final opinion before his retirement, said a strip-search is "categorically distinct" from other efforts to find drugs or weapons on campus because it is embarrassing and humiliating to the children who are targeted.

In the past, the court has said school officials can search purses, backpacks or lockers if they have reason to believe a student has drugs. And twice, justices have upheld mandatory drug testing of high schoolers, including athletes, even when there was no reason to think any of them was using drugs.

But requiring a student to remove her clothes goes too far, Souter said. He suggested such a search would be justified only if a school official had strong reason to believe a student was hiding a dangerous drug or a weapon in his or her underwear.

Savana Redding, now 19, whose lawsuit in Arizona led to Thursday's ruling, said she was pleased and surprised by the outcome. "I'm very excited and very happy knowing it means this is not likely to happen to anyone else at school," she said. Redding will attend Eastern Arizona College this fall, she said.

Her lawyer, Adam Wolf of the American Civil Liberties Union, said he was encouraged that the court had made clear that students have privacy rights at school.

"Schoolchildren are not little prisoners subject to search. This says the Constitution applies in school, and children have rights that must be respected," he said.

School lawyers read the decision as nearly prohibiting strip-searches.

"We don't think it is a horrible decision, but it is going to limit the discretion of school officials. They will think long and hard before they authorize a strip-search in the future," said Naomi Gittins, a lawyer for the National School Boards Assn.

In 2003, Redding was an eighth-grader in the small town of Safford, Ariz., near the border with New Mexico. That fall, one boy had gotten violently ill from taking pills at school. When another girl was found with several white pills in a folder, she told Vice Principal Kerry Wilson she got them from Savana. The pills were prescription-strength ibuprofen, equivalent to two Advil tablets.

Savana said she knew nothing of the pills. Her backpack was searched. When no pills were found, Wilson sent her to a nurse's office, where she was told to remove her outer clothes and to pull out her bra and underwear to check for hidden pills.

Nothing was found, and the school officials did not apologize when Savana's mother, April, confronted them over the strip-search. The Reddings then filed suit, alleging a violation of Savana's rights under the 4th Amendment, which forbids unreasonable searches by the government.

The decision in Safford Unified School District vs. Redding was only a partial victory for the Reddings, however. The justices threw out their suit against Wilson and other school officials on the grounds that the law against strip-searches was not "clearly established" at the time of incident.

Under federal law, public officials can be sued and held liable if they violate a person's "clearly established" rights under the Constitution. Souter noted that until Thursday, judges around the nation were divided over whether a strip-search at school was unconstitutional.

Thursday's decision sets a standard for all future school searches, but it may result in no compensation for Savana and her mother. The court sent the case back to Arizona to consider whether the school district may face some liability.

Souter agreed that the vice principal had reasonable grounds for questioning Savana about drugs and for searching her backpack. But he went much too far, Souter added.

"In sum," he said, "what was missing from the suspected facts that pointed to Savana was any indication of danger to the students from the power of the drugs or their quantity, and any reason to suppose that Savana was carrying pills in her underwear. We think that the combination of these deficiencies was fatal to finding the search reasonable."

Only Justice Clarence Thomas dissented. He complained that the ruling "grants judges sweeping authority to second-guess the measures that these officials take to maintain discipline in their schools and ensure the health and safety of the students in their charge."

It is the second time this week that Thomas alone has dissented in a major case. On Monday, the court rejected a challenge to the Voting Rights Act, but Thomas said he would have struck down the law provision in question as unconstitutional.

In the school case, Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg said they would have gone further and upheld a liability ruling against the school officials in this case.

Quoting from an earlier case, Stevens wrote that he had long believed that "it does not require a constitutional scholar to conclude that a nude search of a 13-year-old child is an invasion of constitutional rights of some magnitude."

Ginsburg, the court's only woman, said the vice principal's conduct was inexcusable. He had no real evidence to suspect Savana of wrongdoing: He did not contact her mother, and he made Savana sit in the office for several hours after the strip-search, she said.

"Abuse of authority of that order should not be shielded by official immunity," Ginsburg wrote.

Souter will retire after this Monday, when the court's final rulings are handed down. The nominee to succeed him, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, has taken a similarly strong stand against strip-searches. In 2004, she voted to uphold a suit against several Connecticut officials who had authorized the strip-search of two girls at a juvenile detention center.

These were "troubled adolescent girls facing no criminal charges," Sotomayor wrote. Because of strip-searches' potential to humiliate the victims, she wrote, "we should be especially wary" when children are targeted.

California and six other states forbid strip-searches at school. The others are Iowa, New Jersey, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Washington and Wisconsin.

Labels: immigration and education

posted by Patricia Lopez at 7:26 AM 0 comments Links to this post

By JACQUES BILLEAUD
07.01.09

PHOENIX -- The Arizona House has defeated a bill that would have made it the only state in the nation to criminalize the presence of illegal immigrants.

The House voted 26-15 for the bill to expand Arizona's trespassing law Wednesday morning, but that was five votes short of the 31 needed for passage. The Senate approved the bill 16-11 earlier Wednesday.

Supporters say an expanded trespassing law would provide a second layer of enforcement to help local police catch immigrants who slip past federal agents.

Opponents predicted it would lead to racial profiling for thousands of Latinos who are U.S. citizens.

Illegal immigrants account for an estimated 500,000 people in Arizona's 6.5 million population.

Labels: immigration

posted by Patricia Lopez at 7:23 AM 0 comments Links to this post

This includes $3,272,000 in grants for Texas. -Patricia

Effort will build on promising remedial programs and inform others on innovative ways to help more students earn their college degrees

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – Today, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and MDC, Inc. announced $16.5 million in grants to 15 community colleges and five states to expand groundbreaking remedial education programs that experts say are key to dramatically boosting the college completion rates of low-income students and students of color.

A recent report from Jobs for the Future found that that nearly 60 percent of students enrolling in the nation’s community colleges must take remedial classes to build their basic academic skills. For low-income students and students of color, the figure topped 90 percent at some colleges. Remedial classes cost taxpayers more than $2 billion a year, money that is mostly wasted as few students even complete the classes, let alone continue on to graduate.

The grants announced today will fund the Developmental Education Initiative, which will build upon the most promising programs developed through Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count, a multi-year national initiative to boost graduation rates at community colleges, particularly among low-income students and students of color. The remedial education models developed by the 15 community colleges receiving these grants represent some of the most promising work in the country aimed at boosting college completion rates among struggling students.

The lessons learned through Achieving the Dream—such as streamlining high school and college standards, using technology to boost basic skills, and the power of mentorships—are proving that these students can succeed when colleges develop programs that fit students’ needs.

More than 133,000 students take remedial education classes in the 15 community colleges selected for these latest grants. The number of students moving from remedial to college-level courses improved 16 to 20 percent through these selected programs.

Achieving the Dream was launched as a partnership in 2004 with funding from Lumina Foundation for Education. Lumina is also committing $1.5 million to this latest initiative for evaluation and communications. Jobs for the Future is the advocacy partner for Achieving the Dream.

"The pressing need to shore up weak academic skills in first-year students is one of the most significant, but least discussed, problems confronting higher education,” said Carol Lincoln, director of the Developmental Education Initiative and national director of Achieving the Dream for MDC. “Colleges that can figure out how to quickly and efficiently boost basic skills, particularly among students of color and low-income students, will play a leading role in helping them earn the college degrees necessary for economic success in America today.”

The grants also will support state-level efforts in Connecticut, Florida, Ohio, Texas, and Virginia to implement new data collection systems that will help them better track the success of their remedial programs. A sixth state, North Carolina, will participate with its own funding. These states have also pledged to measure their progress against those in other states.

“Too many institutions have not developed powerful and effective ways to accelerate academic progress for students who start college underprepared,” said Hilary Pennington, director of Education, Postsecondary Success and Special Initiatives at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “By working together, states, community colleges, and local school districts can design programs to accelerate high-quality learning and shorten the amount of time it takes to earn a degree.”

The grants announced today advance the Gates Foundation’s efforts to help ensure every young person in the United States graduates from high school ready for college and obtains a postsecondary degree that prepares them to succeed in the global economy.

In today’s America, a college degree or postsecondary certificate is required to obtain a family-wage job and a shot at the middle class. Until recently, education reform efforts and national policies have focused on increasing access to college, but have done little to help students earn credentials that employers value. The Obama administration has called on the states and education leaders to work together to help the United States lead the world in percentage of college graduates by 2020.

Go here to see a summary of the grants by state.

Labels: community colleges

posted by Patricia Lopez at 8:19 AM 0 comments Links to this post

By GARY SCHARRER AUSTIN BUREAU
June 21, 2009

AUSTIN — All Texas school districts will get a state funding increase of at least $120 per student this fall, but superintendents already are dialing up talk about another school finance lawsuit to remedy what appears to be a chronic inequity between districts.

One of the hardest hit school systems in the Houston area is the Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School district, which stands to get anywhere from $222 to $1,196 less per student than neighboring school districts.

Across the state, school superintendents say the distribution of resources is less equitable today than it was four years ago when a lawsuit resulted in the Texas Supreme Court rejecting the public school funding system.
Per student disparity

The court rejected it because so many districts had reached the maximum property tax rate allowable, which in effect, created an unconstitutional statewide property tax.

“What parents of children need to understand is that the funding of public education is in serious condition,” said John Folks, superintendent of San Antonio’s Northside Independent School District, the fourth largest in Texas.

The Edgewood Independent School District in Bexar County — lead plaintiff in a 1984 landmark school funding lawsuit, which the state lost — stands to get $1,239 less per student than Alamo Heights.

The disparity can result in tens of thousands of dollars per classroom and many millions of dollars per district.

“This is a very, very unfair distribution of dollars for school districts. Some school districts are getting way more than they should, and other districts are getting way less than they should. That’s just not palatable,” said Randall Buck Wood, an Austin lawyer and school-funding expert who has represented school districts in previous cases.

The Texas Constitution requires the Legislature to fund an “efficient” public school system because that preserves “the liberties and rights of the people.”

The current system is irrational, Wood said, adding, “Anything that is irrational, by definition, can’t be an efficient system.”
Staying at the bottom

Fast-growing Cy-Fair ISD, which receives less money per student than most other Houston-area school districts, cut 400 positions and $27 million last year.

“Those who were on the bottom are pretty much still on the bottom,” Superintendent David Anthony said of the school-spending plan.

But state academic standards have not gone down, nor have expectations and mandates, Anthony said.

Among neighboring districts, Cy-Fair will get $1,196 less per student than Tomball ISD; $587 less per student than Katy ISD; $507 less per student than Houston ISD; $504 less per student than Spring Branch; $246 less per student than Spring ISD and $222 less per student than Klein ISD.

Anthony recently made a controversial recommendation to reduce or eliminate the district’s cherished 20 percent optional homestead exemption, in effect since 1983, which comes on top of the constitutionally guaranteed homestead exemption of $15,000. The proposal is expected to be discussed at a board meeting this week.

While the exemption cost Cy-Fair millions of dollars a year, Anthony said his district is hurt under the state’s funding system, whether it grants the tax break or not.

“It does seem to make a lot of sense when you look at the equity issue,” he said. “It’s not efficient. It’s not equitable. It seems, in many cases, that those who were doing better are better off and those who are doing worse are, maybe, worse off.”

Cypress-Fairbanks will have about 104,000 students this fall, making it the third largest school district in the state. The district expanded by more than 4,000 students this year.

Labels: school finance

posted by Patricia Lopez at 8:11 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Malone's approach is very similar to how correctional facilities operated prior to the formative era when the goal was about rehabilitation. The community took a responsibility for the [risk] factors that led to the "deviant" behavior, how to reintegrate the individual back into their community, and finally how to reduce and eliminate risk factors altogether.

Vermont's attempt to restore these practices sounds hopeful.

-Patricia

Julia Steiny
Sunday, June 21, 2009

This is the second of four columns in a series about the nation’s oldest and most mature restorative juvenile justice system.

In the late 1980s, communities frightened by the surge in national crime statistics pushed their state judicial systems to “get tough” with offenders. By 2000, “zero-tolerance” and “three-strikes” laws had stuffed inmates into U.S. prisons at world-record-breaking rates. Echoing this get-tough attitude, K-12 schools instituted their version of zero-tolerance, expelling and suspending students in droves. And today, the United States punishes its own people with a zeal unmatched by any other country.

But while the rest of the nation ramped up their punitive systems, leaders in Vermont searched for alternative ways to hold kids more accountable for their actions.

Many Vermonters credit Bob Becker with creating that state’s unique restorative juvenile justice system. Back in the 1980s, when he was the social-services supervisor for Bennington District, Vermont’s system was rehabilitative, focused strictly on treating bad behavior, as opposed to punishing it. Becker says that back then “we wanted the kids to be more accountable for what they had done, but to us that meant developing more competencies, more skills for being successful in the community.”

Vermont did not share the national lust for building prisons. “Kids may need to be temporarily removed from the community for public safety, but that should be part of a planning process, not just for punishment. Kids learn nothing from punishment.”

Becker and his colleagues were impressed with the work and ideas of Dennis Maloney, then the director of community justice in Deschutes County, Ore. So three districts each sent a social worker to a conference to study Maloney’s methods.

They came back totally jazzed about the potential of restorative justice. Over the next few years they began to implement a Vermont version of Maloney’s ideas.

In a video called People’s Sense of Justice (on YouTube), Maloney explains his approach with a simple scenario. I’m paraphrasing: You come home from work and a woman is lying hurt, surrounded by her frantic children. A shadowy figure is getting away. The natural impulse is to attend to the victim first, secondly to the kids — which is to say, the community. And then third and last to the one who did the harm.

But Maloney says, “From the standpoint of ... the criminal justice system, who do we deal with first? The offender. Who’s our customer? The offender. Who do we deal with second? Many people would say, the offender. One of the reasons we [criminal-justice professionals] have trouble with our public is that we do not attend to the victim’s needs first.” If at all. Essentially justice becomes revenge, with little or no healing power, even for the offender.

Maloney says of the victim-first focus, “When you travel the world, that’s their natural sense of justice. Some call it an ancient idea whose time has come.”

The key to Maloney’s ideas is to call together a mini-community to help the victim and offender figure out how to restore the harm. In Vermont, Becker and his colleagues fashioned “restorative panels.”

The state contracts social-service agencies to vet and train community volunteers, who meet with kids who admit to their crimes and want their records sealed. Offenders tell their stories and answer any clarifying questions. Panels strongly encourage victims to come to tell their side of the story. Victims who participate have the satisfaction of feeling heard, and they tend to receive restitution far more often than in the regular courts. Victims are integral players in the Vermont judicial process.

As are the parents who accompany their kids. Generally parents are cooperative and appreciate being included in a team approach to dealing with their kid’s misbehavior.

Becker tells the story of the miscreant who knocked over an old lady in the street and stole her purse. The kid felt like it was no big deal, because he was caught before he had a chance to spend the money. In the panel meeting, however, the old woman described what had been a horrible experience for her. She was now terrified to go downtown on ordinary errands. The kid totally got how much harm he’d caused.

Panel meetings are often very tearful.

Becker says, “I think we forgot that the kids themselves were victims of their own actions. Ironically, taking responsibility to make it right with the people you’ve harmed makes it much more conducive to moving on with your life in a positive way. Restorative justice is a very effective way of handling kids. It’s incredible when you see the lights go on in some kid’s eyes, in the middle of a panel. They may not be happy about it, but they get what they’ve done.”

As is the panels’ practice, the old woman, the volunteers, the kid and his parents worked out a restitution contract for him. It included doing community service in a home for the elderly. He completed his contract.

Becker says, “Some people think imposing community service is punitive. It is a consequence, but if done right, it gives a kid worth in the community. Community service is an opportunity to repair the harm they’ve done, to the extent possible, and move on. If there is monetary restitution, we strategize how to get it paid back. Not big money, but enough to make the point. If the kid likes animals and there’s no other obvious community service related to the offense, we’ll see to it he works with animals. The point is to make positive relationships. Build competencies. If they can actually learn a new skill on top of it, that’s a twofer. But this is not punitive. It’s to help your kid avoid future involvement with the system, juvenile or adult.”

In 1994, Becker moved to the state level where he began to introduce restorative practices statewide. In 1999, large federal grants helped his team implement the program comprehensively, with services to support restitution. Recently, he completed a three-year appointment as the juvenile justice director.

When the federal money dried up in 2004, the state issued a strong vote of confidence by assuming the full cost of the restorative panels.

The cost of the program helps Vermont maintain the lowest juvenile prison population in the nation. We’ll look at their one little locked facility next week.

Labels: zero tolerance

posted by Patricia Lopez at 7:42 AM 0 comments Links to this post

By Lindsay Kastner - San Antonio Express-News
June 21, 2009

Texas has always been known for its independent streak.

Now the state is one of four that is sitting out an effort to create voluntary national standards for what students are expected to learn in school.

“I think people understand that Texas is just being Texas,” said Mike Petrilli, vice president for national programs and policy at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education think tank that supports national standards.

Forty-six states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands are on board with the project, which is spearheaded by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. Education Secretary Arne Duncan is a backer. Last week, he sweetened his support with $350 million in federal stimulus money to be used for the creation of national tests.

Partners in the project, including the College Board, ACT and Achieve Inc., hope a set of national standards will make U.S. students more competitive in a global marketplace, where studies show U.S. students lag behind many other developed nations. Plus, the current system, with its 50-state hodgepodge of standards, means students in Massachusetts — known for its rigor — have different expectations than students in, say, Mississippi. A set of common standards could help colleges, teachers and textbook publishers, supporters say.

Texas Commissioner of Education Robert Scott said he'll look at the finished standards but that he's not interested in taking part in the discussion.

“I will absolutely look at them and make sure that Texas' standards are always higher,” Scott said.

The idea that students from Maine to Hawaii should leave school with the same set of skills is not new, but it hasn't always been so popular. Education policy has long been the purview of the states.

It will remain that way under this new project, which will create a “common core” of math and reading standards that states can adopt.

“We really don't want the federal government setting standards,” said Gene Wilhoit, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers.

Texas just updated its standards and textbooks and doesn't need to start over, Scott said. Doing so could cost the state “in the neighborhood of $2 (billion) to $3 billion dollars,” said DeEtta Culbertson, a spokeswoman for the Texas Education Agency.

States spend billions in taxpayer dollars to periodically develop new curricula and tests, money that could be saved with a joint effort, supporters say.

“It's economically prudent,” said Dane Linn, director of the education division at the National Governors Association.

From an academic perspective, the hope is that national standards would raise the bar for everyone.

The No Child Left Behind act requires states to test students annually and to take steps to turn around schools and districts that aren't up to par. But states create their own tests, based on their own standards.

“Most states have set the bar way too low,” said Petrilli of the Fordham Institute. “There's one theory that that is because of political pressure.”

High standards mean a high risk of failure, and few states are willing to take that risk. Putting every state on the same page “can kind of provide some political cover,” Petrilli said.

But critics say the project is no easy fix, and they question whether Texas would benefit from the partnership.

“If you come up with common assessments, it doesn't really mean you have an economy of scale; it means you have an enormous coordination problem,” said Richard Middleton, superintendent of North East Independent School District.

“I don't think we're ready to have a mandated curriculum and mandated assessments across all 50 states,” said Middleton, who noted that states have divergent views on everything from how to test special education students to how to teach English language learners.

“This nation is a federal system. It is a group of unique states coming together,” Middleton said. “Education should be ... taught in a way that best fits that community.”

Former Education Secretary and native Texan Margaret Spellings called the effort a “little bit of a Trojan horse.”

Though she has been a critic of Texas' standards, Spelling said the state is making progress — on its own.

“Texas is moving forward on higher standards right now; you don't need to move forward on some multistate process to tell you what to do,” she said. “I worry that this is a lot of process and a lot of changing of the subject.”

John Folks, superintendent of Northside ISD, disagreed.

“Ten years ago, I would have said, ‘I don't know, probably not,'” Folks said of the common standards. “But our kids are competing globally.”

Folks and Middleton are often in lock step on policy issues, but Folks said he could see little reason not to take part in the development of national standards for reading and math. “And I would go so far as to say we should consider having core standards in technology.”

Folks stressed that standards are simply what students are expected to learn.

“How you instruct kids is another thing,” which could still vary from place to place, he said.

In addition to Texas, the three other states yet to get on board with the project are Alaska, Missouri and South Carolina. But at least one of those has not ruled out the idea. Scott Holste, a spokesman for the Missouri governor's office, said the state is holding off at least until its new commissioner of education is named. Commissioner Kent King died in January.

“We're not closed off to signing on to the standards in the future here,” Holste said.

Labels: HB 3

posted by Patricia Lopez at 7:30 AM 0 comments Links to this post

What disappointed me about this piece is that the authors want to talk about culture without any parallel analysis of the kinds of opportunities that are differentially available to these youth. Clearly, and even as suggested herein, exposure to particular kinds of educaitonal arrangements, policies, or structures creates greater pro-school orientations than others. The risk IS blaming the victim.

A lot of these students do poorly because their languages, cultures, dialects, and community-based identities are themselves disparaged and disrespected.

Angela

By Sharon Noguchi and Jessie Mangaliman
Mercury News
Posted: 04/06/2008 01:38:55 AM PDT
Updated: 07/16/2008 08:44:47 AM PDT


Sandra Romero and Bibiana Vega do their best to shrug off taunts from fellow Latino classmates at Del Mar High School in San Jose.
The 17-year-old seniors are called "whitewashed." Mataditas - dorks. Cerebritas - brainiacs. They're told they're "losing their culture" - just because Sandra has a 4.0 grade-point average and Bibiana has a 3.5.
The put-downs are clear: Smart is not cool.
And too many Latino students are choosing cool over school.
But a few miles away at Hyde Middle School, in the heavily Asian Cupertino Union School District, Tiffany Nguyen detects the opposite attitude. If you're not smart, "you're really looked down on," said the Vietnamese-American eighth-grader.
After years of tiptoeing around racial issues for fear of invoking stereotypes, California educators are now looking squarely at how ethnicity and culture shape achievement and attitudes toward school.
The Mercury News interviewed dozens of students from varying backgrounds to examine the "racial achievement gap" and a delicate question that underlies it: Why do so many kids - especially Latinos - believe "school is uncool."
The challenge isn't limited to California. Using surveys of 90,000 secondary-school students, Harvard University researchers found that white students were more popular when they had higher grade-point averages. But black students' popularity sharply declined when their GPAs reached a B-plus. For Latinos,
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the price of good grades was even costlier: Popularity peaked at a C-plus, then plunged.
The 2005 study, titled "An Empirical Analysis of 'Acting White,' " was based on a survey that asked students to name their friends.
'Embarrassed to be Mexican'
When Latinos are accused of "acting white," the language can be cruel.
"Some of my friends have told me I'm being something I'm not - that I'm embarrassed to be Mexican," said Bibiana, the youngest of three children in a family that immigrated from Mexico eight years ago. Her success is all the more impressive because her father did not attend school and her mother went only as far as third grade.
Throughout the state, education leaders are huddling on how to raise the achievement of Latinos, who now make up about half of California's K-12 students and are growing in proportion.
Without finding ways to help more students succeed, the state risks churning out an undereducated generation, with dire social and economic consequences. So educators are trying to reshape the culture of learning - at home, in the classroom and among peer groups.
Motivation is one obstacle. Numerous students and teachers told the

Mercury News they know kids - from all backgrounds - who are smart but choose to slack off.
"They'd rather be around friends who make them feel stronger and more powerful," said Viviano Perez, 12, a Latino seventh-grader at Morrill Middle School in San Jose. And, he said, they pay more attention to the clothes they wear and hanging out than homework.
Think nerds vs. jocks, and it's hard to imagine smart equals popular. Indeed, many education experts argue that mainstream America worships pop culture and athletic prowess more than intellectual accomplishment.
"At my school, the ratio of athletic to academic trophies is easily 100-to-1," said Boston-based educational consultant Douglas Reeves.
The Harvard study didn't break out the attitudes of Asian-American students, but interviews with local students indicate that many Asians think classmates must be smart - but not act smart - to be popular.
If you get good grades, "people look up to you," said junior Kim Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American who attends Piedmont Hills High School, an East San Jose campus where nearly half the students are Asian.
The stark difference in attitude corresponds with a striking difference in standardized test scores in California: Black and Latino students generally score much lower than Asians and whites. And it's not just a matter of poverty. On state achievement tests, poor whites and Asians score higher than or about the same as black and Latino students who are not economically disadvantaged.
Educators stress that race and culture are only two parts of a complex matrix that influence student performance. Poverty, English-language fluency, parental education and school inequality are also factors.
But unlike ugly past controversies over race and academic achievement, this latest debate doesn't focus on whether there are racial differences in IQ.
The issue now is how cultural values influence learning, educators say.
Critiquing culture, however, is a potentially explosive endeavor. Comedian Bill Cosby has lambasted patterns in the African-American community that undermine success - in particular, single parenthood and undervaluing education - and provoked a firestorm. His critics say Cosby is ignoring racism and injustice and instead blaming the victim.
The culture of race
In the ethnic salad bowl of Silicon Valley, educators would love to season all the ingredients with the best values and attitudes from each culture.
Confucian values on education, obligation to family and high parental expectations of many Asian immigrants contribute to success in school, local educators say. Some Asian cultures also have traditions of collaboration and mutual support that lead to helpful study habits.
"Before a big test we have a study party at someone's home," said sophomore Doanh-Dalena Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American at Evergreen Valley High School.
Joseph Rios, an educational consultant and former administrator in the Berryessa Union School District, says Latino parents traditionally take responsibility for educating their children by teaching morals, manners and respect for family "to create a good human being based on the Golden Rule." But education experts also say many Latino immigrants struggle to navigate the U.S. education structure, not grasping the need to advocate at school and oversee homework and progress.
And some in the Latino community are tackling what they call "cultural resignation," an attitude born of generations trapped in poverty. "In rural Mexico, generation after generation, no matter how hard you work, you are just stuck in life," Rios said.
What's puzzling is why some groups advance so quickly while others don't. The answer lies partly in how Americans receive different immigrant groups, and how newcomers' values dovetail with white middle-class culture, said Carol Schmid, a North Carolina sociologist.
What's clear is that, helpful or not, parents' values percolate down.
Thoa Hoang, 17, a Vietnamese-American junior at Piedmont Hills High, said her Asian friends absorbed their hardworking attitudes from their immigrant parents. "We're brainwashed," she said with a sigh. "Every one of us is afraid of being stupid or looking dumb."
What are 'good grades'?
Students from all backgrounds told the Mercury News that their parents value education and expect good grades. Many get rewards, such as a dinner out or iTunes cards, for good performance. They're punished - no text messaging, restricted computer access or grounding - for bad grades.
But families' definition of "good grades" varies. It means "higher than a C," said Victoria Mendoza, a Latina and an eighth-grader at West San Jose's Monroe Middle School who nonetheless gets mostly A's.
Thoa said her parents expect A-pluses, although she said she doesn't meet that standard. "I have to bring it down a notch to be real," said Thoa, who has a 3.6 GPA and is taking two advanced-placement classes this year.
High expectations also motivate Sarah Lin. Even when the Evergreen Valley High junior thinks she's doing really well, her Taiwanese immigrant parents say she's comparing herself with the wrong group. The engineer and accountant see their daughter's competitors not at San Jose's Evergreen - which is 46 percent Asian - but as the Asian students at high-scoring high schools in Palo Alto, Cupertino and Sunnyvale.
Even conscientious parents risk losing the tug of war in influence when their children become teens.
And the streets offer a multitude of temptations, said Franklin Collazo, a teacher in the Evergreen School District who as a youth found refuge from a violent home in his studies. Now Collazo tells students, "Tell me who you hang out with, and I'll tell you who you are."
That was the problem for 12-year-old Alejandra Vazquez of San Jose. Before, "she had two friends who were always fighting. They spent a lot of time walking around the streets after school," said her mother, Elena Vazquez. Putting her daughter in KIPP: Heartwood Academy, a back-to-basics charter school in East San Jose, changed Alejandra's behavior and her grades.
Whether school wins out over cool depends partly on who gains a critical mass on campus, educators say.
Peer pressure weighs heavily. "If you have 100 kids and 95 value education and five don't, then the majority can ignore the few," said Rios, the former Berryessa administrator. "The other way around, with 95 who want to be cool but not study, it can be tough on five who don't."
'Make it cool to excel'
One way for schools to close the achievement gap, educators say, is to challenge students who embrace academic failure, or "acting stupid," as part of their identity.
At San Jose's Del Mar High, a school once notorious for gang problems that in 2007 won the coveted California Distinguished School Award, Principal Jim Russell has engineered such a culture change. He posts a student honors list on his door, convenes a monthly meeting of Spanish-speaking parents and personally urges more Latinos like Sandra and Bibiana to take advanced-placement classes.
The idea, Russell said, is to "make it cool to excel."
The success of private schools and charters like KIPP: Heartwood, which is 72 percent Latino, also highlights the importance of culture change. KIPP, whose students are fifth- through eighth-graders, posted the highest Latino scores in the county - 906 out of a possible 1,000 on the state's Academic Performance Index last year.
KIPP students sign 20 pledges, ranging from always telling the truth to attending school from 7:15 a.m. to 5 p.m. most days. Parents and teachers also sign a sheet of promises.
"We are kind of productively neurotic about it," said Principal Sehba Ali.
Elsewhere, educators know too many students have to justify their academic success to their peers - or prove themselves to others.
"Just because you're Mexican and you have an accent, some people think you're not going to do well," said Sandra Romero, the high-achieving Del Mar senior.
But Sandra and her friend Bibiana are fighting back. Backed by education-focused parents, the two are college-bound and raising scholarship money for other Latino students through a group they lead, Latina Juventud, or Latina Youth.
"When somebody puts me down and tells me I don't have a life because I have good grades, I stand up for myself," Sandra said. "OK, I say, you think I'm whitewashed now. But I could be your boss someday."
Mercury News news research director Leigh Poitinger contributed to this report. Contact Sharon Noguchi at snoguchi@ mercurynews.com or (408) 271-3775. Contact Jessie Mangaliman at jmangaliman@ mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5794.

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 12:54 AM 2 comments Links to this post

Check out the full report The Schools Teachers Leave: Teacher Mobility in Chicago Public Schools. What's not mentioned in this article or the report are how policies facilitate the creation of "poor climate" schools when they define performance solely on test performance. This undermines both students and teachers.

Patricia


By Azam Ahmed | Chicago Tribune reporter
June 29, 2009

A cornerstone of student achievement is school stability, a goal that includes keeping consistent teaching staff that collaborates and offers students a steady learning experience whether in elementary or high school.

But a new report shows about 100 Chicago schools lose more than a quarter of their staff every year, crippling efforts to create an effective learning environment for children in largely African-American schools.

The study by the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago highlights a national concern over how to keep good teachers in tough environments.

The study, which was released Monday, reviewed personnel records from 35,000 public school teachers in 538 elementary schools and 118 high schools over a five-year period from the 2002-03 to 2006-07 school years. No charter schools were included in the study.

On the whole, more than half of the Chicago Public Schools teachers whose records were reviewed left their schools within five years, a figure consistent with the state and the rest of the nation. But in high schools where teachers show particularly low morale, 76 percent of teachers left within that time frame, the study shows.

"Once you build that bond, when somebody leaves, it sort of tears away from it," said Clarissa Williams, a third-year teacher at Altgeld Elementary School in the Englewood neighborhood. "For the students, that one face they learned to trust over the whole entire school year is not there any longer.

"In a way it kind of tears at their foundations too."

Teacher turnover is not always a bad thing because it can mean resolution to staffing conflicts or weeding out bad teachers, educators say.

But if high turnover rates are sustained, recruiting staff can become a major challenge, they add. The turnover can lead to teacher shortages in key subjects and devastate efforts to keep good teachers.

Schools with the highest turnover tend to be among the worst performers, creating a vicious cycle that continues to hurt the school, the study shows. Teachers leave because of a poor school climate and poor performance; in turn, both climate and performance suffer when turnover is a high.

"Many of these are low-performing schools are in very high-needs neighborhoods. So it creates a very demanding environment for a teacher to work in," said Cindy Brunswick, director of the Chicago New Teachers Center. Brunswick's group offers coaches for new teachers to help them cope with the pressures and demands in a new school. The first year is a critical time for teachers because 33 percent will leave after one year, the study said.

The culture of a school matters a lot, the study found. Schools where teachers are committed to their school and say they look forward to coming to work only lose about 10 percent of their instructors in a given year, according to the study.

The behavior of students in the classroom is a very important factor in teachers leaving, particularly at high schools, the study found. Teachers are also more likely to stay in places where they feel they can influence school decisions, the study says, and healthy relationships with parents are another key factor in reducing turnover.

Labels: teacher quality, teacher shortage

posted by Patricia Lopez at 7:54 AM 0 comments Links to this post