Monday, February 25, 2013
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Legislature moving on education bills, if not funding
By Ericka Mellon | Houston Chronicle
February 6, 2013
AUSTIN - Texas lawmakers may not be united on upping public
school funding, but a flurry of recently filed bills shows they have heard
pleas from parents and educators to reduce testing and ease graduation
requirements.
In a sign that lawmakers are listening, senators on
Wednesday passed their first bill of the session, to end the mandate that
students' grades be tied to their scores on state exams. On the same day, the
leader of the House Public
Education Committee filed an omnibus bill with bipartisan
support that would reduce high-stakes testing and give students more options
for coursework.
Parents and superintendents say they are optimistic about
changes this year, while some business leaders worry the state will continue to
produce graduates unprepared for college or the workforce.
"We are definitely being heard," said Susan Kellner,
an organizer of Texans Advocating for Meaningful Student Assessment, a parent
group that supports less testing.
The group's first victory came Wednesday when the Senate
voted to eliminate the rule that state exams count for 15 percent of high
school students' final grades.
The House is likely to follow suit, with similar bills
already filed and Gov. Rick Perry expressing
support for leaving the grading decision up to local school districts.
The omnibus bill filed Wednesday by the House's education
leader, Rep. Jimmie Don
Aycock, would end the grading mandate, as well as cut the number of
mandatory high school exams from 15 to five. The widely feared algebra II exam
would be optional, and students could take a greater variety of courses to meet
graduation requirements.
The bill also would end a three-tiered diploma system that
prevents students on the easiest plan from entering four-year universities.
"I think it is a major step in the right direction with
regard to testing and accountability," Brian Woods,
superintendent of the Northside
school district in San Antonio, said of Aycock's bill.
The proposed changes come just a year after Texas launched
its new, harder testing system, approved by lawmakers several years ago.
Results show that 35 percent of this year's sophomores still have not passed at
least one of the exams, putting them off track for graduation.
"I think lawmakers are listening," said H.D. Chambers,
superintendent of the Alief school district in Houston. "I think the moms
have obviously gotten their attention because those are the people whose
children's education are at stake."
Lower expectations?
Chambers said he can support five end-of-course exams,
though he prefers three - in reading, writing and algebra I.
"I do not believe that every student in the state of
Texas needs to demonstrate mastery of algebra II," he said.
Chambers said he is particularly pleased that bills in the
House and Senate would give students more course options rather than having to
follow a prescribed plan of four years of traditional math and science classes.
Students instead could graduate with "endorsements" in areas such as
business, arts and humanities, or public service careers.
Business groups, however, are worrying aloud that state
lawmakers may lower expectations for students. For example, the new House bill
would require students to pass a test in sophomore English to graduate, instead
of the tougher 11th-grade class.
"The way to improve college readiness is not to reduce
expectations," said Drew
Scheberle, a senior vice president at the Austin
Chamber of Commerce.
Keeping accountability
Texas Education Commissioner Michael
Williams, a Perry appointee, likewise has urged lawmakers not to
retreat from school accountability, noting that elementary and middle school
students did well on the first round of the new tests last spring.
While lawmakers seem to agree generally that high school
graduation requirements need to be more flexible, they are far from consensus
on specifics.
"The details of that will make the next 110 days
interesting," said Ellen
Williams, an Austin lobbyist who specializes in education.
Interactive: 2011-12 STAAR End-of-Course Results by District
Ryan Murphy | Texas Tribune
February 14, 2013
Last spring, Texas ninth graders took the STAAR end-of-course exams for the first time. Using results from Pearson Education, the state's testing contractor, this interactive provides the first look at how the state's school districts performed. Because the data has not yet been released by Pearson Education, these results do not include summer end-of-course retakes, and only represent the tests taken in the spring.
How the test ratings work
Data for a few of Texas' districts:
February 14, 2013
Last spring, Texas ninth graders took the STAAR end-of-course exams for the first time. Using results from Pearson Education, the state's testing contractor, this interactive provides the first look at how the state's school districts performed. Because the data has not yet been released by Pearson Education, these results do not include summer end-of-course retakes, and only represent the tests taken in the spring.
How the test ratings work
Students rated "Unsatisfactory" – also known as Level I – are considered "inadequately prepared for the next grade or course."
Students rated "Satisfactory" – also known as Level II – are considered "sufficiently prepared for the next grade or course."
Students rated "Advanced" – also known as Level III – are considered "well prepared for the next grade or course." Note that students rated "Advanced" are also considered "Satisfactory," and will be represented in both counts.
To learn more about how the TEA defines its performance standards, click here. To use this interactive, select a school district from the drop-down menu to view its results.
Click here to find your school district
Data for a few of Texas' districts:
Poverty's impact seen in tests
By Maria Luisa Cesar and Francisco Vara-Orta | San Antonio Express-News
Saturday, February 16, 2013
The sharp disparities on the latest scores of the state's
standardized test at San Antonio's 16 school districts fit a clear pattern.
Districts with higher percentages of poor households and
English-language learners did worse on the State of Texas Assessment of
Academic Readiness, or STAAR,
taken last spring.
Educators and parents here called the numbers sobering but
unsurprising. Several said poverty is only a catchall explanation affecting a
host of factors bearing on students' readiness to take the test.
“Just because you are considered in a lower socio-economic
group, it is not a death sentence,” said Susan Lewis,
a teacher and math specialist who works with students in grades 1 to 5 at Meadow
Village Elementary School in Northside Independent School
District. “It's just going to be tougher, but these kids are just as capable as
the others in any other district.”
Northside's students did relatively well on the STAAR.
It's a higher-income, suburban district, although 88 percent
of students at Lewis' school are tagged “economically disadvantaged” by the
state — eligible for free or reduced-price meals, in most cases because they
fit federal poverty standards.
Six miles away, in the heart of Edgewood ISD, poverty is a
major roadblock to student success, said Pamela Reece,
the principal at Roosevelt Elementary, a state “recognized” school. She
recalled a kindergartener there who had to sleep in a car with his homeless
mother.
“It's hard to know what to do to best help students who go
home to no one,” Reece said. “The reality is that these students must first
focus on basic survival, and sadly, that takes away from a focus on academics.”
Area school superintendents
are using the STAAR results to back their arguments for increased state funding,
a rollback of the high-stakes provisions of the test and more rigor in their
own school practices.
But the scores are significant for another reason — unlike
Austin or Dallas, where one school district takes in most of the city, the many
districts in and around San Antonio show student performance at a “granular
level,” said Patricia
López, a research associate at the Texas Center
for Education Policy at the University of
Texas at Austin.
For example, passage rates for the eighth-grade social
studies test — the lowest-scoring STAAR test statewide at 59 percent — are down
in the 30s for four San Antonio districts with student poverty levels of more
than 80 percent.
Other statewide test averages showing passage rates in the
high 60s and 70 can be similarly misleading, López said.
“The aggregate always masks” the true picture, she said.
“You have no idea who's pulling the average up and who's defining the lowest
stratus.”
But the San Antonio numbers do provide an idea — and the
implications are stark.
A state law requiring schools to hold back fifth- and
eighth-graders if they fail the STAAR math or English language arts tests won't
be enforced based on these latest scores — but will for the tests taken this
spring, unless the Legislature changes it.
The difference in those passage rates among local districts
was as high as 47 percentage points, a San Antonio Express-News analysis found.
Eighth-grade science scores had the widest spread among local districts, at 53
percentage points.
Another trend is at work. The Hispanic population is
increasing in both the state and nation faster than other groups — and it tends
to be more economically disadvantaged, said Rice
University Professor Steve Murdock,
a former state demographer and U.S. census director.
In other words, the population struggling the most with the
STAAR is growing. The fate of minorities will predict how well Texas and
subsequently the United States will do, he said.
“And how well they do — the most critical factor is
education,” Murdock said.
Scoring S.A. students
Students in military districts like Lackland and Randolph
Field ISDs and those in Alamo Heights ISD did the best on the STAAR. Only 8.6
percent of students at Randolph Field are considered economically
disadvantaged, 21 percent at Alamo Heights and 31 percent at Lackland. The
state average is 60 percent.
Lackland Superintendent Burnie Roper said
he was somewhat disappointed — more than 90 percent of his students typically
pass standardized tests, but his fifth- and eighth-graders did that on only two
tests this time.
He said educators were told to identify struggling students
and invest more time, but “this is the hardest test we have ever seen.”
Military school districts don't collect property taxes, but
federal and state funding lets them spend more per student than regular districts.
Alamo Heights ISD is property wealthy — although part of
that money goes to the state to be distributed among poorer districts,
officials there are quick to point out.
Roper thinks the notion that socio-economics determines
outcomes is debatable, since several poor districts in Texas have done well on
standardized tests.
About 97 percent of Edgewood's 14,000 students are
economically disadvantaged. That's no excuse for low scores but it does help
explain them, Superintendent Jose
Cervantes said.
“This is exactly why we've been fighting in court, to get
the same as other districts do because we need those resources in preparing our
students and teachers for higher rigor,” he said.
Cervantes, a new superintendent when students took the STAAR
last spring, already had told his board previous scores showed “we are not
doing very well, folks.”
He created “war rooms” at every campus for educators to mull
test scores and discuss how to improve them. Critics worry this is a prime
example of “teaching to the test” but Cervantes said it produced steady
progress on the benchmark tests students take to prepare for STAAR.
Edgewood provided free school supplies this year to every
student and has embraced the theory that it must work with parents to provide
students better home lives so they come to school better prepared.
Fast-growing Southwest ISD, with 83 percent of its students
low-income, faces similar challenges. Superintendent Lloyd
Verstuyft said administrators last year revamped curriculum to
prepare for the test, but it will take time: “You have to get through the
thorns to get to the rose,” he said.
State funding cuts forced it to drop after-school programs
and in-school interventions to help its neediest learners, Verstuyft said,
adding: “We can't do it on a budget that only allows us to open the doors in
the morning and close the door in the afternoon.”
Verstuyft pointed out that Texas lets school districts
decide if eighth-graders in high school math classes can choose to be tested at
that level — which makes comparisons of eighth-grade math test scores unfair.
Ted Guerra's two daughters attend the Young Women's Leadership
Academy in the San Antonio ISD. It excels academically, though
73 percent of its students are considered low-income.
Guerra thinks even poorer school districts can be dynamic,
but he said it's easy to see differences in resources affecting local scores.
Wealthier districts can afford reading specialists and other
auxiliary positions that help boost performance, and teachers migrate to
districts offering better pay — “Just like we have to feed our families, they
have to feed theirs,” Guerra said.
Northside, North East and Alamo Heights have higher starting
teacher salaries than SAISD.
Grain of salt
Low incomes don't determine failure, but they surely stack
the cards, Nancy Gunter came
to realize. She taught at Jackson-Keller Elementary School in Castle Hills, a
North East ISD campus with a 93 percent low-income enrollment. Many of her
students were behind.
A fourth-grader, she remembers, couldn't identify a
triangle.
Parents juggling two jobs don't always have the time to
prepare their kids, and when all but a handful are behind grade level, it's
harder to get a class caught up, Gunter said.
An Alamo Heights ISD parent now, she thinks the perception
that that district “is all white and it's all affluent” is too simplistic. Her
daughter Claire will have to pass STAAR fifth-grade tests this year to advance
to middle school.
“I know that our teachers have to work really hard,” Gunter
said. “But I would have to guess that the number they would have to bring up to
the standard is probably less than at other schools.”
Some perspective is needed on the latest test results,
warned Alamo Heights Superintendent Kevin Brown, a vocal opponent of
high-stakes testing.
“These aren't the scores that our colleges and universities
are looking at, quite frankly,” he said. “I would caution anyone from reading
too much into it, and that's coming from a superintendent whose school district
did well.”
The Texas Education Agency is expected to announce a new
accountability rating system for schools and districts next month. The current
system has relied heavily on test scores. State lawmakers also have vowed
sweeping reforms to testing and accountability, although key Republican leaders
have made no similar promises to expand school funding.
The STAAR debuted only last year. Cervantes, the Edgewood
superintendent, said it's somewhat unfair for districts to be judged harshly on
scores that took almost a year to be released. Northside ISD Superintendent Brian Woods agrees.
“If we had gotten these scores last summer, this whole
school year we could have been better targeting what's working and what's not,”
Woods said.
Northside's percentage of economically disadvantaged
students is nearly half of Edgewood's, as is its percentage of English language
learners.
“Many of these students are actually 'educationally'
disadvantaged, which means they didn't get much reading or math skills at
home,” Woods said. “Plain and simple, it takes more resources to get them up to
speed.”
There is no single way to raise test scores, both Woods and
Lackand's Roper stressed.
“If you went to talk to a fifth-grader or
eighth-grader ... when you ask what they are learning, they are likely more to
talk about their relationships with adults, their peers, athletics and what's
fun about school,” Woods said. “Sadly, state tests could never convey that.Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Special Report: Class Struggle - How charter schools get students they want
Special Report: Class Struggle - How charter schools get students they want
(Reuters) - Getting in can be grueling.
Students may be asked to submit a 15-page typed research paper, an original short story, or a handwritten essay on the historical figure they would most like to meet. There are interviews. Exams. And pages of questions for parents to answer, including: How do you intend to help this school if we admit your son or daughter?
These aren't college applications. They're applications for seats at charter schools.
Charters are public schools, funded by taxpayers and widely promoted as open to all. But Reuters has found that across the United States, charters aggressively screen student applicants, assessing their academic records, parental support, disciplinary history, motivation, special needs and even their citizenship, sometimes in violation of state and federal law.
"I didn't get the sense that was what charter schools were all about - we'll pick the students who are the most motivated? Who are going to make our test scores look good?" said Michelle Newman, whose 8-year-old son lost his seat in an Ohio charter school last fall after he did poorly on an admissions test. "It left a bad taste in my mouth."
Set up as alternatives to traditional public schools, charter schools typically operate under private management and often boast small class sizes, innovative teaching styles or a particular academic focus. They're booming: There are now more than 6,000 in the United States, up from 2,500 a decade ago, educating a record 2.3 million children.
In cities and suburbs from Pennsylvania to Colorado to Arizona, charters and traditional public schools are locked in fierce competition - for students, for funding and for their very survival, with outcomes often hinging on student test scores.
Charter advocates say it's a fair fight because both types of schools are free and open to all. "That's a bedrock principle of our movement," said Jed Wallace, president of the California Charter Schools Association. And indeed, many states require charter schools to award seats by random lottery.
But as Reuters has found, it's not that simple. Thousands of charter schools don't provide subsidized lunches, putting them out of reach for families in poverty. Hundreds mandate that parents spend hours doing "volunteer" work for the school or risk losing their child's seat. In one extreme example the Cambridge Lakes Charter School in Pingree Grove, Illinois, mandates that each student's family invest in the company that built the school - a practice the state said it would investigate after inquiries from Reuters.
ARRAY OF BARRIERS
And from New Hampshire to California, charter schools large and small, honored and obscure, have developed complex application processes that can make it tough for students who struggle with disability, limited English skills, academic deficits or chaotic family lives to even get into the lottery.
Among the barriers that Reuters documented:
* Applications that are made available just a few hours a year.
* Lengthy application forms, often printed only in English, that require student and parent essays, report cards, test scores, disciplinary records, teacher recommendations and medical records.
* Demands that students present Social Security cards and birth certificates for their applications to be considered, even though such documents cannot be required under federal law.
* Mandatory family interviews.
* Assessment exams.
* Academic prerequisites.
* Requirements that applicants document any disabilities or special needs. The U.S. Department of Education considers this practice illegal on the college level but has not addressed the issue for K-12 schools.
Continue reading here.
Monday, February 18, 2013
MALDEF, LATINO COALITION FOR EDUCATIONAL EQUALITY LAYS OUT KEY REFORMS
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