This blog on Texas education contains posts on accountability, testing, K-12 education, postsecondary educational attainment, dropouts, bilingual education, immigration, school finance, environmental issues, Ethnic Studies at state and national levels. It also represents my digital footprint, of life and career, as a community-engaged scholar in the College of Education at the University of Texas at Austin.
As a blogger and undergraduate English major that exposed me to many novels and genres of writing at an early age, I found this piece by Mark de Silva from 3:AM Magazine very interesting. He reflects on the state of the art-novel and whether it should bear the burden as fiction to be visionary—unlike so many other forms of writing to which we are regularly exposed—especially the ever-expanding appeal of the first-person, "testimonial voice."
In what he terms the "leisure-contract," de Silva acknowledges the impact of the "blog-memoir culture" and its capacity to both entertain and provide the reader with immediate rewards. Since novels require a different form of commitment, so many are simply "putdownable," that is, not quite as gripping as what one may describe as more "pedestrian" or everyday forms of writing that are consumed ad nauseum by most readers.
For novelists, de Silva offers the "art contract" as an alternative, albeit in a form that is visionary and transformative to the reader. Here is his helpful definition of vision:
“Vision” calls to mind such a range of things: thought, sense
experience, first principles, imagination, discernment, invention,
prescience, revelation. It’s this cluster of valences that explains the
alchemical effects visionary works, fully appreciated, can have on us.
Put simply—and I mean this as a retrieval of a critical ideal, not a
novel proposition—such works are capable of reshaping our basic ways of
experiencing and conceptualizing the world, ourselves, and the relation
between the two. They don’t merely present us with new objects of
experience or new information, offering fresh fodder for the mind, but
extend and refine our experiential capacities themselves, whatever
objects we train them upon.
All is not lost however, as his concluding paragraphs outline:
By now we are only too familiar with the broader cultural reasons
nudging us in this direction: the problem of distractibility in the
digital era; reality television and its glorification of the banal and
demotic; the populist leveling of aesthetic and critical standards
encouraged by the ease of publishing online; the seeking out of
micro-communities that reinforce our points of view and taste rather
than alter them; the rise of the notion that everyone, by virtue of
having a pulse, must have a story worth telling and the correlative
explosion of blog-memoir culture.
Perhaps these shifts are making us lose not just our taste for
visionary fiction, but our belief in its very possibility: that novels,
or anything, might have the sorts of transformative powers I’ve ascribed
to them. In that case, though, preserving our intellectual integrity
would mean that we stop paying lip service to a notion of artistry in
literature that no longer carries conviction. This would still leave us
free to give ourselves over to the pleasures of leisure fiction (and
journalism too), but without the bad faith.
There is another choice, of course. Rather than annul the art
contract, we could try recommitting to it. That would mean expecting our
best writers to push themselves to visionary heights, and expecting
ourselves, as readers, to make the climb, not always easy, to meet them
there. In the offing, perhaps, that profound experience of art, for
writer and reader both.
In short, this piece investigates that very important space between writer, audience, and expectations held by both (or not). My read of this is that a fitting trade off to the leisure contract is an art contract where we, as readers, can expect to have a profound experience with art—at least to the degree that writers indeed push themselves "to visionary heights." Angela Valenzuela c/s
Mark de Silva is the author of the debut novel Square Wave, forthcoming from Two Dollar Radio in February 2016. An excerpt from the book will be published in Guernica Magazine in January. He holds degrees in philosophy from Brown (AB) and Cambridge (PhD) and has written for the New York Times, the New Inquiry, and the Paris Review Daily.
I've been posting on the subject of white privilege lately. Here's a website developed by Seattle Public School teacher, Jon Greenberg, that is specifically dedicated to this. I incorporate a few of the helpful resources herein below.
This
website is named after the high school course, Citizenship and Social
Justice, that Seattle Public Schools unsuccessfully tried to extinguish
stemming from the complaints of one white family opposed to racial
dialogue in the classroom.
However, the website is NOT officially connected to this course nor intended for student use.
Dedicated to social justice and civic engagement, it is the personal website of educator and writer Jon Greenberg.
Follow Citizenship and Social Justice through other social media
Reading Articles Written Specifically for White Americans
Here is a book review by Dr. Pedro Noguera that appeared in the Sunday, NYTimes Sunday Book Review this month on a book by Vicki Abeles in what is likely to be a controversial text. Much to ponder here. I have long been a critic of the narrow definitions of success in our schools, especially standardized test scores. It'll be interesting to see where the locus of change is/needs to be and whether authentic learning and assessment or culturally relevant curricula are a part of this.
Kids and their parents
collect flyers before a rally against teacher evaluations in front of
P.S. 321 in Park Slope, Brooklyn, last March.Credit
Jake Naughton for The New York Times.
In
the thought-provoking “Beyond Measure,” Vicki Abeles offers a
compelling set of arguments for reconsidering how we define success in
American education and for radically altering the approach we’ve taken
to get there. High grades, high test scores and admission to one of the
nation’s elite colleges have long been embraced as symbols of excellence
and, by extension, successful parenting. Abeles suggests that pursuit
of this narrow form of success is actually harming children and
families, and distorting our educational institutions. Her book is bound
to be controversial, particularly to the education establishment —
university presidents, the testing industry and the policy makers who
support them. For many of them, “Beyond Measure” is likely to be
regarded as a threat, if not downright subversive.
Powerful reflection by Emory Professor George Yancy on internalized sexism and white privilege from The Stone, New York Times Opinionator Blog. It's refreshing to read from a man owning up to his sexism and then drawing a direct line from this to so-called "white innocence" with respect to white racial privilege. I like how he asks all of us to be honest and transparent with ourselves, owning up to race and gender privilege, turning the otherwise outward gaze on racial and gender privilege inwardly. In order for any of us to have any hope of bettering ourselves in ways that makes a real difference in society, he ask us to first put ourselves under the microscope so that we might emerge as enlightened, compassionate, and yes, more loving, human beings.
In 2015, I conducted a series of 19 interviews
with philosophers and public intellectuals on the issue of race. My aim
was to engage, in this very public space, with the often unnamed
elephant in the room.
These discussions
helped me, and I hope many of our readers, to better understand how race
continues to function in painful ways within our country. That was one
part of a gift that I wanted to give to readers of The Stone, the larger
philosophical community, and the world.
The interviewees
themselves — bell hooks, Cornel West, Judith Butler, Peter Singer, David
H. Kim, Molefi Kete Asante among them — came from a variety of racial
backgrounds, and their concerns and positions were even more diverse.
But on the whole I came to see these interviews as linked by a common
thread: They were messages to white America — because they often
directly expressed the experience of those who live and have lived as
people of color in a white-run world, and that is something no white
person could ever truly know firsthand.
This Stanford Graduate School of Business study finds that whites claim hardship and deny the existence of inequalities in response to evidence on white privilege.
Since one of my areas of expertise is race and ethnic relations, I can similarly attest to the difficulty of teaching white privilege in the context of contravening ideologies of individualism, individual merit, and white supremacy—as if the right and opportunity to be an individual were equally distributed and as if merit were unmediated by the status of one's racial/ethnic, class, or gender group. Never mind strong and consistent patterning of "merit" (e.g., test scores, educational attainment, income, etc.) indicators along these axes to the contrary.
Regarding the myth of white superiority, this is not only a U.S. problem, but a global one. It exists as an ideology—however implicit or explicit—within our majority and minority communities alike. Even in our own families. In many families, children that are more fair-skinned than others get more attention or are deemed more attractive than their darker-skinned siblings. Heck, babies are barely born and parents or relatives are quick to comment on children's skin color. "Salió muy güerito," they say. "She (or he) came out fair-skinned," they say. Unfortunately, in some form or fashion, no one on the planet is entirely immune from the ideology of white supremacy.
Central to the very concept of white privilege is to not even have to acknowledge it to begin with. Were this not the case, we wouldn't be having the offensive conversation in our state right now regarding a "World Geography," McGraw-Hill textbook that eliminates the term "slavery," by referring to slaves as “workers” and then placing them in the section “Patterns of Immigration." You can read about this here.
McGraw-Hill has backtracked and has corrected the online version. Yet even this decision fails to get at the depth of white privilege in the curriculum. For a great, thorough read on the state's politics over its history curriculum written by Texas history professors, read: Politics and the History Curriculum: The Struggle over Standards in Texas and the Nation (2012) by K. Erekson(Editor) (Note: It's pricey but you can get your local library or university to make sure it is one of their holdings for check out.)
Were this example on slaves an exception, then the claim about white privilege in children's textbooks would indeed be hyperbole. Instead, this is the rule. That is, our textbooks not only are truly erroneous in instances like these, but they are entirely biased in favor of white histories, stories, accomplishments, and epistemologies (or ways of knowing). While "micro-aggressions" (discrimination and prejudice) are important to the study of white privilege and minority-majority relations, what should not get lost are the institutional mechanisms for the reproduction of status in society. Curriculum, in particular, is powerful. We here in Texas would not be having these contentious battles over curriculum were this not the case.
Moreover, since curriculum equates to the reproduction of consciousness, systematic exclusion of subaltern histories reinstantiates privilege and ways of knowing and viewing the world in our society and helps account for why so little seems to change. Fortunately, our children have alternative media for getting a more complete story and many are savvy in this regard. None of this mitigates, however, the power of our state-approved curriculum either to validate (frequently white) teachers' stories or exploit their ignorance. In my own work, I call this "subtractive schooling." The alternative is "additive schooling" as a specific antidote. This is an anti-racist, culturally and linguistically relevant curriculum and pedagogy about which much has been written (e.g., Bartlett and Garcia (2011), Additive Schooling in Subtractive Times).
Educate yourselves. Read history. Get involved in textbook and curriculum battles. Promote equity, inclusion, and honesty. And not only disavow that the concept of "white privilege" is even a debate, but also acknowledge that our never-ending struggles for inclusion in Texas' textbook selection process is wholly about the ideological agenda of maintaining current arrangements of power that align stubbornly to racial/ethnic, class, and gender divides in our society. Peace and justice for 2016. Angela Valenzuela c/s
Researchers at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business have found that white people
respond to evidence that they are privileged by their race by insisting that they face greater hardships in life. In a study published in the November issue of Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, L. Taylor Phillips and Brian S. Lowery point out that progress on racial equality is limited by the fact that many whites deny the existence of inequities. “Despite this reality, policy makers and power brokers continue to debate whether racial privilege even exists and whether to address such inequity,” the researchers noted. “One reason for this inaction might be an unwillingness among Whites to acknowledge racial privilege — acknowledgment that may be difficult given that Whites are motivated to believe that meritocratic systems and personal virtues determine life outcomes.” “However, claiming personal life hardships may help Whites manage the threatening possibility that they benefit from privilege.” The researchers argued that understanding the reaction to evidence of racial inequality was important because whites who did not feel that they personally benefited from their ethnicity would be less willing to support policies that were designed to reduce racial inequality. Subjects in the study were separated into two groups. The group that was shown evidence of white privilege “claimed more hardships than those not exposed to evidence of privilege,” the study found. A second experiment suggested “that people claim more life hardships in response to evidence of in-group privilege because such information is threatening to their sense of self.” Researchers observed that whites who read self-affirming statements before completing the survey claimed less hardships, and they found that self-affirmations could actually reverse the denial of white privilege. “Furthermore, Whites’ claims of life hardships mediated their denials of personal privilege, supporting our hypothesis that hardship claims help people deny they personally benefit from privilege — that White privilege extends to themselves,” Phillips and Lowery wrote. “Importantly, these denials of personal privilege were in turn associated with diminished support for affirmative action policies — policies that could help alleviate racial inequity.” Researchers recommended that efforts to reduce racial inequalities also include the education of advantaged populations. “Our work suggests that privilege reduction efforts might need to focus not only on convincing or educating advantaged group members about privilege, but also on reducing the feelings of self-threat this information induces,” Phillips and Lowery explained. “The existence of hardships does not reduce racial privilege, since racial privilege entails comparison to someone of a different race with equivalent hardships. People may erroneously think privilege entails complete ease in life and that the presence of any hardships denotes an absence of privilege.” In conclusion, the study postulated that whites may claim hardship “to maintain not only a positive sense of self, but also the material benefits associated with racial privilege.” “Whites’ claims of hardship might also serve to legitimize the racial advantages they enjoy, and thereby justify a system that benefits their group.”
This is an interesting piece. It considers the possible "silver lining" to Prop. 227 that eliminated bilingual education in California although it continued via an institutionalized waiver process. That is, it allegedly eliminated a lot of low performing bilingual education programs. Since then, particularly among the ranks of white, middle class parents wanting bilingual education for their children, dual language has gained a lot of traction. Great graphic on "America the Multilingual" from the Migration Policy Institute within. (see below).
Third graders at Redwood City’s Hoover Elementary School present a collaborative group project
Ocean animals was the theme in pre-kindergarten classes at a
California school in early May. Some
pre-K teachers introduced “octopus”
and “tentacle,” while others taught “pulpo” and “tentaculo.”
In all the
pre-K classes, children acted out vocabulary words with hand movements,
sang songs,
and played a guess-the-ocean creature game. Then they moved
to tables, where some of them
painted paper octopuses, while others
gingerly smelled, touched, and then dangled little octopuses
from a
local fish market.
Down the hall, kindergartners wrote about their favorite desert
animals, talked with a partner about
where cacti grow, and chanted about
biomes: Arid deserts drying Luscious forests growing Polar caps freezing Green prairies growing …
First graders discussed a story their teacher had read aloud in which
a grandfather remembers courting
his wife. In Common-Core style, they
cited “clues” from the text of the grandfather’s feelings and
learned
words to describe emotions.
“How do you know he’s happy?” asked Heidi Conti, the teacher.
“He ‘winked’ at the boy,” answered a student.
“Good,” responded Conti. “You made an inference.”
Ninety-five percent of students at Redwood City’s Hoover School, in
San Mateo County, come from low-income and working-class Latino
families, and nearly all start school as English language
learners
(ELLs). The elementary and middle school piloted the Sobrato Early
Academic Language
(SEAL) program in 2009 in hopes of raising reading and
math scores and moving more students to
the college track.
Programs like SEAL offer a fresh approach to educating English
language learners. The focus in
schools is shifting “from the language
of instruction to the quality of instruction,” says Kenji Hakuta,
a
Stanford professor who specializes in language learning. As a result,
long-standing debates about
whether English learners should be taught
only in English or also in their native tongue feel
increasingly
obsolete.
I am happy to share some thoughts that I have about leadership. This was just posted today on the UT College of Education website. Other commentaries are provided by Early Childhood Education Assistant Professor Jennifer Adair and Educational Administration ProfessorMark Anthony Gooden, director of The University of Texas at Austin Principalship Program.
Originally Published: December 4, 2013 | Updated: March 23, 2015
According
to Code.org, 90 percent of U.S. schools are not teaching any computer
science. Eyebrows were raised in 2013 as the U.K. passed a plan to educate every child how to code. In 2014, Barack Obama made history as the first U.S. president to program a computer.
Yet critics claim that often only the more affluent schools offer
computer science courses, thus denying minorities potential to learn the
skills required by the 1.4 million new jobs that will be created during the next ten years.
In my opinion, parents of every student in every school at every
level should demand that all students be taught how to code. They don't
need this skill because they'll all go into it as a career -- that isn't
realistic -- but because it impacts every career in the 21st century
world. Any country recognizing that will benefit in the long term.
Here's how you can start.
With the following resources, you can teach programming with every student and every age.
Apps and Tools to Teach Coding All Year Round
Code.org Resources
While the Hour of Code is in December, Code.org has suggested resources for educators, unplugged lessons (those not requiring computers), and tutorials to help you teach computer science to kids of all ages any time of the year.
Teaching Coding to the Youngest Students
Tynker Games: Use these age-appropriate games to teach your elementary students coding concepts. From Puppy Adventures to Math Art and Maze Craze, you'll find games that your grades 1-8 students will enjoy. Tynker also has a curriculum and STEM Product Library that you may want to peruse if you're interested in combining programming with social studies, English, math, and science.
Kodable started as an app targeted to students as young as kindergarten age, but it's now a complete curriculum.
The first 30 levels are free, more than enough for an hour of code.
They recommend this for age 5 and up, but there are stories of kids even younger
using the app with great success to learn to program. iPad schools will
want this app on every device. Students don’t need to know how to read
in order to program using this game.
Cargobot
(for age 5 and up) starts very easy but becomes more challenging as
your progress. In the game, you're moving blocks around with a claw.
This is an intriguing game because it was programmed entirely on an iPad
using Codea. Students can also record solutions to the 36 unique puzzles and upload the videos to YouTube. This is free on the iPad.
Some more advanced programs have “junior” versions. ScratchJr is the version of Scratch intended for ages 5-7 and available as a free iPad app. A favorite of some programmers, LightbotJr targets children ages 4-8.
Robot Turtles is a board game to teach children the basics of programming without having to use any technology.
Teaching Coding to Age 8 and Up
Hopscotch is the free iPad app for upper elementary and above. Wesley Fryer has created and excellent free ebook
(Dropbox account required) for Hopscotch in the classroom, full of
challenges that you can use with students. He also recommends activating
the emoji keyboard (go to Settings > General > Keyboards) for use
with the program.
Scratch is a programming game that can be downloaded or used on the Web and is supported by MIT. They've got a powerful Hour of Code tutorial where students can program a holiday card in their web browser. Or, if you want options for other times of the year, use the one-hour "Speed Racer" activity to teach your students Scratch. Teachers can watch this tutorial video to learn how, visit ScratchED's Hour of Code Ideas forum
to ask questions, or search "Hour of Code" on the forum for lesson
plans using everything from coordinate geometry to Latin. Scratch is
considered acceptable for beginners. (Some educators use Snap,
originally a version of Scratch but now written in Javascript that is
supported by University of California at Berkeley. There are several
alternatives to Scratch with a similar interface. Give this list to your IT department if there are technical reasons why you can't run Scratch or Snap.)
Lightbot has a version on just about any platform and even has an online one-hour version. This puzzle game has a free version
which lasts an hour but sells full versions on iTunes and Google Play.
It teaches planning, testing, debugging, procedures, and loops.
Alice is another popular platform with a unique storytelling aspect. You can use it to create a game, tell a story, or make an animated video. Like Scratch, Alice is free and supported by a powerful community of educators.
There are two versions of Alice. (The newer 3.0 version still has a few
bugs but also sports many new, very cool animations.) This longstanding
platform is a rewarding tool that kids will want to keep using past the
initial hour. Alice is considered more for the intermediate student,
but experienced teachers can use this with beginners.
Kodu
is another programming tool that can be easily used on a PC or XBOX to
create a simple game. There's also a math curriculum. This is one method
that Pat Yongpradit, Code.org's Director of Education, used in his computer science classroom. (I've used it as well.)
Gamestar Mechanic
offers a free version that you might want to use for your hour, but if
you fall in love with it, the educational package allows teachers to
track student progress, among other features. The company supports
educators, and there's also an Edmodo community that shares lesson plans and ideas for the tool, along with videos and a must-see teacher's guide.
GameMaker is an option if you want to make games that can be played in any web browser. The resources
aren't as comprehensive and the community isn't vibrant, but this one
has been around for a while and might be fun for a more tech-savvy
teacher.
My Robot Friend is a highly-rated app according to Common Sense Media. It costs $3.99, but no in-app purchases are required to go to higher levels.
SpaceChem
is an interesting mix of chemistry, reading, and programming for age 12
and up. As students read the 10,000-word novelette, they have to solve
puzzles by assembling molecules. SpaceChem created a helpful guide for educators. This tool is available for download on Steam and installation on Windows, Mac, and Ubuntu. (Download a free demo.)
CodeCombat
is a multiplayer game that teaches coding. It's free to play at the
basic level, and students don't have to sign up. This has the advantage
that teachers don't have to know computer science to empower learning in
this programming. It's recommended for age 9 and up. See the teacher guide for the information and standards covered in this game.
Minecraft.edu
is an option that lets you install and use Minecraft in the classroom.
While this does require some purchase and setup, Minecraft seems to be gaining in popularity among educators as an in-house, 3D world-programming environment that kids love. Minecraft.edu has a Google group and best practices wiki. (My son took a course at Youth Digital that taught him Java to mod Minecraft -- while pricey, it was a great course.)
Do you want a board game for older children? Code Monkey Island is designed for children age 9 and up. This is a great addition to your game corner.
Flip Your Classroom or Use an Existing Curriculum
Follow the Hour of Code lesson plan tutorial
on Khan Academy for ways to teach your students. These lessons are for
older students with one computer each, or they could be adapted to a
flipped class model.
Use Hardware and Make Something Cool
Programming, making, and creating have never been easier. If you're
getting into the maker movement or Genius Hour, these are staples for
your classroom. While they may take longer than an hour of code, they're
definitely something 21st-century schools can use, because students are
programming and building with their hands.
The Raspberry Pi is an inexpensive computer. While Kickstarter's Kano kit isn't available yet (but is likely what we'll be talking about next year), there are so many things kids can make
with the Raspberry Pi. After setting one of these up with my
15-year-old nephew, I recommend that the teacher be a tad more advanced!
This is definitely a tool I'd use in my classroom. (Cost for a kit runs
less than $100.)
I am in love with the Hummingbird Robotics kit -- it makes Arduino easy. An Arduino
is basically a motherboard that you can make, plus a programming kit. I
have one of these in my classroom, and the students are fixated for
hours. (Cost for a kit is around $100.)
LEGO MINDSTORMS
are part of my curriculum every spring. Students love LEGOs! I have six
older MINDSTORMS kits that we've used for years. The newer NXT kits
even have cool robots that can be made and programmed. This product has
been around for years, so there are many resources for teachers. If you
purchase an older kit on eBay, make sure it will work with newer
operating systems.
Dash and Dot
are two endearing little robots that can be used with age 5 and up.
These robots have apps that can be used to program them, for which
children age 8 and up can use Blockly, the visual programming language created by Google. Older students can even use Objective C or Java to program the bots.
Sphero and Ollie are fantastic robots that can go almost anywhere (my students have taken them across water). The SPRK education program gives teachers and parents a curriculum to use the bots and teach programming even when the adult is still learning.
How Do You Teach Coding in Your Classroom?
In this post, you've seen 15+ ways to teach coding in your classroom,
but there are many more. Please join the movement to help reach every
child by sharing your story in the comments -- or a link to your
favorite resources for teaching kids to code.
Founded by John and Donnie Brock of Oklahoma, the Brock International Prize in Education
receives distinguished nominations from experts around the world. This year
marks the second consecutive nomination of Dr. Angela Valenzuela, professor of
Educational Administration, and Curriculum and Instruction at the University of
Texas at Austin’s College of Education. Valenzuela’s innovations and big ideas,
like her “subtractive schooling” theory of student identity and schooling, make
her a thought-leader and ideal nominee for an award that honors meaningful
change in how educators think and act.
“I am deeply honored to have been nominated twice for this
prestigious award,” said Valenzuela, who also serves as director of the
University of Texas Center for Education Policy and of the National LatinoEducation Research and Policy Project (NLERAP). Her blog, Educational Equity, Politics and
Policy in Texas, highlights issues like accountability, testing, college
readiness, bilingual education, and immigration.
Valenzuela’s fellow nominees include theoretical physicist
Walter Massey of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, education
technology professor Sugata Mitra of Newcastle University in England, and
research professor Cecilia Fierro of the Universidad Iberoamericana Leon in
Mexico. Dr. Fierro is the 2016 Brock International Prize laureate and shares
Valenzuela’s devotion to combating the marginalization of children in rural
communities.
As a faculty member in the College of Education’s
Educational Policy and Planning Program, Valenzuela continues to inspire change
in a field that demands activism and leadership. Since beginning her professorial career 25
years ago, she continues to advocate outside the classroom, testifying on
legislative issues, delivering speeches and lectures across the world, and
publishing a number of acclaimed books about Latino education in America.
Rosa Jonasz leads her 2nd grade dual language class in a reading lesson.
Credit Virginia Alvino / Texas Public Radio News
More
than 17 percent of Texas’ public school students learned a language
other than English first. There are a number of approaches to teaching
these English language learners - many researchers consider dual
language learning to be one of the most effective. They say it allows
students to learn English while simultaneously helping them advance
literacy in their native language.
Texas Public Radio’s
Virginia Alvino reports on the benefits and limitations of dual language
learning, and why some educators see it as an issue of social justice.
Listen
Listening...
4:06
Hear Virginia Alvino's story about one approach to teaching English language learners in public schools.
At Passmore Elementary it’s time for a reading lesson in Rosa Jonasz’ 2nd- grade class.
Some
of her students are native English speakers. Most are native Spanish
speakers. This is a dual language class. The goal is to help all the
students become bi-lingual and bi-literate, by learning from the
teacher, and each other.
“Like today it will be Spanish reading,
tomorrow it will be English reading," says Jonasz. "So we just continue,
so if they didn’t catch it today they will catch it tomorrow, so that’s
why we try to make the connections between the two days.”
They
also use that pattern with math, and science. It’s not just learning
both languages. It’s learning how to learn in both languages.
Many
researchers agree – dual language programs are effective. Among them is
Howard Smith, professor of bilingual studies at UTSA.
He says
language education is a highly political issue - that many educated
folks have always seen bilingualism as a sign of being well bred. So
while public dual language programs are growing nationwide, Smith says
that’s largely at the request of white, middle class families. The plus
side is Hispanic students can benefit.
"Here in Texas we have
some problems but we are recognizing the rights of children to have
access to education," says Smith, "and the bilingual programs and dual
language programs in specific are helping that to be achieved.”
While
school districts are federally required to provide an option for
English learners, they aren’t told which one. The advantage of dual
language is that unlike other models, it also cultivates Spanish skills.
“And
so when we see so many low economic families being denied bilingualism
with the excuse that you have to learn English, English only, etcetera,"
says Smith. "But then you have these same students who are told forget
Spanish, they reach high school, and the high school counselor says you
know if you want to get into college you have to have three years of a
foreign language. Then you have kids named Gonzalez and Suarez who fail
Spanish 1 in high school, because they are successful products of the
system.”
That’s why Smith says there should be more dual language
programs, and they should continue through High School - which only one
San Antonio district does. But he says there’s a lack of infrastructure
– for programs to grow, every district would need way more bilingual
teachers, and language materials.
Noelia Benson is Northside
ISD’s Director of Bilingual Education. She says "we don’t have enough
ELL’s for the dual language to grow it and have it across the
district.”
Benson says NISD is majority Hisanic, but only 7
percent are English language learners. So, the district can’t meet the
demand for the program - demand which she says, is coming from English
speaking families. For now the district is still seeing the win-win
benefit of this approach.
"Our dual language students usually outperform our mainstream English only,” says Benson.
Last
year at Passmore 78 percent of fourth graders met state writing
standards, while 100 percent of dual language ELL’s met the same
standard.
In Passmore’s fifth grade dual language class, it’s
hard to figure out which students are ELL’s while everyone’s speaking
English. Anahi Reyes says she hardly spoke any English when she started.
"Since pre-K I've been in dual language," she says.
As far as
the Spanish language learners they aren’t fully carrying on
conversations with each other in both languages, but they’re following
along. At least in this class, a lot of the students seem to get that
they’re lucky to be in the program. Plus, 5th grader Anahi Reyes
says “people that know two languages get paid more.”
That's a favorite fact of many of the students who do get the opportunity to participate in dual language learning.
Presidential candidate Donald Trump has galvanized the Latino vote and we know that this vote makes a big difference in national elections.
"[M]ore than 2 million
Latino voters — may head to the polls in November because of the “Trump
effect.” Donald Trump’s disparaging remarks
against unauthorized Latino immigrants have angered most Latinos because
of their family immigrant histories — many of them are second- or
third-generation Americans. And many Latinos may know someone dear to
them who is or was an immigrant."
It’s a common refrain, heard repeatedly before elections: “Latinos don’t vote.”
Increasingly,
however, it appears the reverse may be true, according to a new study
released by the William C. Velasquez Institute in San Antonio last week.
And local elected Latino officials are seeing the same trend. In
the 2014 midterm elections, more than 1 million Latinos turned out to
vote in Texas. That translates into 48 percent of Latino registered
voters — a considerable percentage when their numbers had gone down by
300,000 since the 2012 elections.
In addition, total voter turnout in Texas and around the country was anemic — 28 percent in Texas, and 36 percent nationwide.
“Never
have we seen such a stunning turnout when a state loses so many voters
but still performs in the turnout better than in the last two midterm
elections,” said Lydia Camarillo, vice president for the Southwest Voter Registration Project in San Antonio.
“The narrative that Latinos don’t vote is just not true,” she said.
She
cited other barriers to voting that still may play a role in depressing
turnout, such as voter ID laws and a cumbersome electoral system that
inhibits rather than encourages easy access to the polls the way
same-day registration does in other states.
“You cannot blame
Latino voters anymore,” she said. “If you want to change voting patterns
for all groups, then you have to change the system.”
Nevertheless,
the institute is projecting that a record number — more than 2 million
Latino voters — may head to the polls in November because of the “Trump
effect.” Donald Trump’s disparaging remarks
against unauthorized Latino immigrants have angered most Latinos because
of their family immigrant histories — many of them are second- or
third-generation Americans. And many Latinos may know someone dear to
them who is or was an immigrant.
Fort Worth City Council member Salvador Espino said he has already seen it at work.
He
said he has seen Latinos more engaged early in the presidential
election cycle than in past years because of “frustration and concern”
about comments by Trump.
He saw a similar situation when Ramon Romero ran for the District 90 legislative seat in 2014.
“There was a concern with Austin and the lack of diversity in the Tarrant County delegation,” Espino said.
Today, it is Trump who is lighting a fire under Latinos to become politically engaged.
“We
take Donald Trump very seriously,” he said. “The more outrageous his
statements, the more he rises in the polls. If he is not the nominee, no
one is going to forget that many in the GOP did not call him out.” Laura Barberena, president of the political consulting firm Viva Politics, echoed Espino’s sentiment.
“To
what extent does his rhetoric define the Republican brand and is
shaping it is the question,” said Barberena, who was present at the
Velasquez Institute’s briefing last week.
“If they embrace Trump,
then they’re embracing these politically charged positions that can be
detrimental to the GOP brand in the long term with Latinos.”
The bigger question, though, is will Latinos still turn out if Trump is not the GOP presidential nominee.
Camarillo
said that, either way, if Democrats want to win in Texas, “they can’t
afford to sit on the sidelines and not invest in turning out the Latino
electorate.”
Twitter: @molivera79
Great piece in today's NYTimes on the Abigail Fisher, Affirmative Action case out of the University of Texas at Austin. Summative quote:
Imagine how much
students might be getting wrong, how much they are conforming to
comfortable ideas and ultimately how much they could be underperforming
because of this.
Ethnic
diversity is like fresh air: It benefits everybody who experiences it.
By disrupting conformity it produces a public good. To step back from
the goal of diverse classrooms would deprive all students, regardless of
their racial or ethnic background, of the opportunity to benefit from
the improved cognitive performance that diversity promotes.
Research by Evan P. Apfelbaum and colleagues (2014) is brought to bear on the question of the importance of diversity in a market context with direct implications for higher education.
One can't help but wonder what influence the student movement nationwide that largely is calling for greater diversity in higher education will have (learn about their demands here), if any, on the court's decision today. One would think that even if not directly addressed by the SCOTUS, the unfolding backstage story will nevertheless give them some pause.
AFFIRMATIVE
ACTION is back before the Supreme Court today. The court has agreed to
hear, for the second time, the case of Abigail Fisher, a white applicant
who claims that she was rejected by the University of Texas at Austin
because of her race. Ms. Fisher invokes the promise of equal protection
contained in the 14th Amendment, reminding us that judging people by
their ancestry, rather than by their merits, risks demeaning their
dignity.
Upholding
affirmative action in 2003, in Grutter v. Bollinger, Justice Sandra Day
O’Connor argued that it served the intellectual purpose of a
university. Writing for the majority, she described how the University
of Michigan aspired to enhance diversity not only to improve the
prospects of certain groups of students, but also to enrich everyone’s
education.
Ms.
Fisher argues that diversity may be achieved in other ways, without
considering race. Before resorting to the use of race or ethnicity in
admissions, the University of Texas
must offer “actual evidence, rather than overbroad generalizations
about the value of favored or disfavored groups” to show that “the
alleged interest was substantial enough to justify the use of race.”
Our
research provides such evidence. Diversity improves the way people
think. By disrupting conformity, racial and ethnic diversity prompts
people to scrutinize facts, think more deeply and develop their own
opinions. Our findings show that such diversity actually benefits
everyone, minorities and majority alike.
To study the effects of ethnic and racial diversity, we conducted a series of experiments
in which participants competed in groups to find accurate answers to
problems. In a situation much like a classroom, we started by presenting
each participant individually with information and a task: to calculate
accurate prices for simulated stocks. First, we collected individual
answers, and then (to see how committed participants were to their
answers), we let them buy and sell those stocks to the others, using
real money. Participants got to keep any profit they made.
When
trading, participants could observe the behavior of their counterparts
and decide what to make of it. Think of yourself in similar situations:
Interacting with others can bring new ideas into view, but it can also
cause you to adopt popular but wrong ones.
It
depends how deeply you contemplate what you observe. So if you think
that something is worth $100, but others are bidding $120 for it, you
may defer to their judgment and up the ante (perhaps contributing to a
price bubble) or you might dismiss them and stand your ground.
We
assigned each participant to a group that was either homogeneous or
diverse (meaning that it included at least one participant of another
ethnicity or race). To ascertain that we were measuring the effects of
diversity, not culture or history, we examined a variety of ethnic and
racial groups. In Texas, we included the expected mix of whites, Latinos
and African-Americans. In Singapore, we studied people who were
Chinese, Indian and Malay. (The results were published with our
co-authors, Evan P. Apfelbaum, Mark Bernard, Valerie L. Bartelt and
Edward J. Zajac.)
The
findings were striking. When participants were in diverse company,
their answers were 58 percent more accurate. The prices they chose were
much closer to the true values of the stocks. As they spent time
interacting in diverse groups, their performance improved.
In
homogeneous groups, whether in the United States or in Asia, the
opposite happened. When surrounded by others of the same ethnicity or
race, participants were more likely to copy others, in the wrong
direction. Mistakes spread as participants seemingly put undue trust in
others’ answers, mindlessly imitating them. In the diverse groups,
across ethnicities and locales, participants were more likely to
distinguish between wrong and accurate answers. Diversity brought
cognitive friction that enhanced deliberation.
For
our study, we intentionally chose a situation that required analytical
thinking, seemingly unaffected by ethnicity or race. We wanted to
understand whether the benefits of diversity stem, as the common
thinking has it, from some special perspectives or skills of minorities.
What
we actually found is that these benefits can arise merely from the very
presence of minorities. In the initial responses, which were made
before participants interacted, there were no statistically significant
differences between participants in the homogeneous or diverse groups.
Minority members did not bring some special knowledge.
The
differences emerged only when participants began interacting with one
another. When surrounded by people “like ourselves,” we are easily
influenced, more likely to fall for wrong ideas. Diversity prompts
better, critical thinking. It contributes to error detection. It keeps
us from drifting toward miscalculation.
Our
findings suggest that racial and ethnic diversity matter for learning,
the core purpose of a university. Increasing diversity is not only a way
to let the historically disadvantaged into college, but also to promote
sharper thinking for everyone.
When
it comes to diversity in the lecture halls themselves, universities can
do much better. A commendable internal study by the University of Texas
at Austin showed zero or just one African-American student in 90
percent of its typical undergraduate classrooms. Imagine how much
students might be getting wrong, how much they are conforming to
comfortable ideas and ultimately how much they could be underperforming
because of this.
Ethnic
diversity is like fresh air: It benefits everybody who experiences it.
By disrupting conformity it produces a public good. To step back from
the goal of diverse classrooms would deprive all students, regardless of
their racial or ethnic background, of the opportunity to benefit from
the improved cognitive performance that diversity promotes.
Sheen S. Levine is a
professor at the Jindal School of Management at the University of Texas
at Dallas; David Stark is a professor of sociology at Columbia.
“I am deeply honored to have been nominated twice for this
prestigious award,” said Valenzuela, who also serves as director of the
University of Texas Center for Education Policy and of the National LatinoEducation Research and Policy Project (NLERAP). Her blog, Educational Equity, Politics and
Policy in Texas, highlights issues like accountability, testing, college
readiness, bilingual education, and immigration.
In
the 2014 midterm elections, more than 1 million Latinos turned out to
vote in Texas. That translates into 48 percent of Latino registered
voters — a considerable percentage when their numbers had gone down by
300,000 since the 2012 elections.
In
the 2014 midterm elections, more than 1 million Latinos turned out to
vote in Texas. That translates into 48 percent of Latino registered
voters — a considerable percentage when their numbers had gone down by
300,000 since the 2012 elections.