As with all research that foregrounds actual tracking either in schools or between them—as is the case here in Chicago—is that rather than improving schools, they just sort or track kids better and in ways that are predictably stratified by race and class.  Moreover, this hierarchy that gets created by this sorting  is not lost on the children themselves.  

So much for "choice" systems and our so-called "meritocratic society" when choice is actually constrained by our states' cost-cutting agendas, poverty, segregation, low-community investment, and thusly, capacity to implement the kinds of changes to policy and practice that our communities want and need.

This should be of concern to us in Texas in the wake of House Bill 5 that essentially also tracks kids in schools by design.  Tracking is not new, but is in fact very historic, meaning that state policy has gotten layered over an already pernicious problem in education.


-Angela


JULY 17, 2014

The Big Sort: How Chicago’s school choice system is tracking kids into different high schools based on achievement

By Linda Lutton

The Big Sort: How Chicago’s school choice system is tracking kids into different high schools based on achievement

By Linda Lutton

This story also appeared at:

This spring, at grammar schools all across Chicago, thousands of eighth graders donned caps and gowns and walked across auditorium stages to receive their elementary school diplomas. This fall, the graduates from each of those schools will scatter—to more than 130 different Chicago public high schools, and counting.
But who goes where?
Over the past decade, Chicago has opened dozens of new high schools, and will open more this fall. The school district is trying to expand the number of “quality school options” and offer students a choice of where to go to school. And in many ways, Chicago high schools seem to be improving. Graduation rates are inching up. The city now boasts five of the top ten high schools in the state.
But a new WBEZ analysis shows an unintended consequence of the choice system: students of different ability levels are being sorted into separate high schools.
WBEZ analyzed incoming test scores for freshmen from the fall of 2012, the most recent year data is available. That year, the district mandated that every high school give students an “EXPLORE” exam about a month into the school year.
The 26,340 scores range from painfully low to perfect.
But WBEZ found few schools in the city enroll the full span of students. Instead, low-scoring students and high-scoring students in particular are attending completely different high schools. Other schools enroll a glut of average kids.
Think of it as academic tracking—not within schools, but between them.

Marshall High School English teacher James Dorrell sees pros and cons to a school filled with low achievers. He says a re-staffing and infusion of funds in 2010 has made Marshall a much better school, but it still struggles. (Photo: Linda Lutton/WBEZ)

The findings raise some of the same long-running questions educators have debated about the academic and social implications of in-school tracking. But they also raise questions about whether the city’s school choice system is actually creating better schools, or whether it’s simply sorting certain students out and leaving the weakest learners in separate, struggling schools.
WBEZ’s analysis shows:

• Serious brain drain. The city’s selective “test-in” high schools—among the best in the state—capture nearly all the top students in the school system. There were 104 kids who scored a perfect 25 on the EXPLORE exam. One hundred of them—96 percent–enrolled in just six of the city’s 130 high schools (Northside, Whitney Young, Payton, Lane, Lincoln Park, and Jones). In fact, 80 percent of perfect scorers went to just three schools. Among the city’s top 2 percent of test takers (those scoring a 23, 24, or 25 on their exam), 87 percent are at those same six schools. Chicago has proposed creating an 11th selective enrollment high school, Barack Obama College Prep, to be located in the same area as the schools already attracting the city’s top performers.
• Clustering of low-performing students. Fifteen percent of the city’s high schools are populated with vastly disproportionate numbers of low-performing students. More than 80 percent of incoming students at these schools score below the district average. The schools enroll 10 percent of all Chicago high school students.
• Black students are most likely to be affected by sorting. WBEZ’s analysis shows African American students are doubly segregated, first by race, then by achievement. Of the 40 most academically narrow schools in Chicago, 34 are predominantly black. Even though just 40 percent of students in the public schools are African American, Chicago has black high schools for low achievers, black high schools for average kids, black test-in high schools for high achievers.
• Within neighborhoods, more sorting. Schools within a particular community may appear to be attracting the same students demographically, but WBEZ finds significant sorting by achievement. Especially in neighborhoods on the South and West sides, the comprehensive neighborhood high school has become a repository for low performers; nearby charters or other new schools are attracting far greater percentages of above-average kids.
• The dozens of new high schools Chicago has opened since 2004 fall on both sides of the “sorting” spectrum. New schools with the widest range of incoming test performers include Ogden International IB on the Near North Side; Goode, a Southwest Side magnet school with preference for neighborhood students; and Chicago High School for the Arts, which admits students based on arts auditions. New schools showing the least amount of academic diversity include Daniel Hale Williams (where incoming students score at about the district average), as well as low-scoring DuSable Leadership Academy Charter (in the same building as Williams, ordered in 2013 to begin phasing out), Ace Tech Charter, and Austin Business and Entrepreneurial High School.

The idea behind school choice is to let families pick the type of school they want for their kids—that’s something more affluent Americans can do by moving or by paying for private school. Choice is also seen as a way to improve all schools by injecting more market-based competition into the school system.
But the sorting of students by achievement into separate high schools seems to be an unintended consequence.

“It certainly wasn’t a goal,” says Paul Hill, the founder of the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington, and the architect of the “portfolio” school choice model Chicago and some other big cities are following. Hill says he and others were concerned about sorting based on race or class, but dramatic sorting by achievement level was not foreseen.
Chicago schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett, who has been on the job for a year and a half, says she is aware that students are clustering in different high schools, and concerned about it.
“There’s no research to support [sorting],” said Byrd-Bennett, who said she, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the school board “come from a very different belief system,” one that opposes sorting students by achievement level. “What we believe is you’ve got to elevate, raise the level and the quality of instruction at all of our schools, including our neighborhood (schools),” said Byrd-Bennett. However, she rejected the notion that sorting is an outcome of school choice or Chicago’s rapid expansion in the number of high schools.
“This has got to be a district of choice. If I choose to go to my neighborhood school, it’s because it ought to be a great school as well,” said Byrd-Bennett.
New York City and New Orleans see a similar dynamic
Despite most New Orleans schools being open to students of all academic levels, “high performing students tend to go to high-performing schools, and low-performing students tend to go to low-performing schools,” says Andrew McEachin, a North Carolina State University professor who has studied school choice in the now all-charter city. “So even though it’s a choice-based district, you see that there’s kind of like a tiered system, where people are choosing schools similar to their background and achievement levels.”

Click to try the interactive graphic.

Sorting is also is happening in New York City, according to Sean Corcoran, professor of educational economics at New York University. He found students tend to choose a high school that looks like their middle school in terms of race, poverty and achievement. “So you ended up having a pretty stratified system of high schools, where high achieving kids tended to cluster together and low achieving kids cluster together as well.”
Why does this happen? Researchers say “achievement” may be an indication of the resources students have at home. Higher performing students’ families are better at getting information about school quality, navigating the system, and securing things like transportation to school or test prep for entrance exams.
In Chicago, the city’s top 20 schools on the ACT exam are largely the same as the list of schools with the highest incoming freshman scores. It’s the same story for the bottom 20 schools.
McEachin and others say the consequences of sorting could reverberate to other aspects of the school system. “What is the unintended consequence of this ability grouping on the teacher labor market?” asks McEachin. “Is it going to make it even harder to get good teachers to the lowest-achieving students?”
Sorting by performance isn’t new in Chicago Public Schools, and isn’t unique to choice systems. Some of the city’s toughest high schools have not attracted generally higher performing middle-class students for decades. But with choice and a dramatic expansion in the number of high schools, parents and counselors say sorting is becoming more pronounced.
Students know the hierarchy

After eighth grade graduation, Chicago students scatter to 130 different high schools. Test scores show that high-performing students and low-performing students in particular are clustering into separate schools under the city’s school choice model. (Photo: Linda Lutton/WBEZ)

In Chicago, students can tell you which high schools are for which students. On a sunny afternoon before school let out in June, kids at Lane Tech—one of the city’s selective schools— describe the landscape.
“If you get straight As and you do really good on testing, the school you’ll probably get accepted into is Northside, Walter Payton, Whitney Young,” says freshman Amber Hunt.
What about the B students? “Schools with IB programs sometimes take solid Bs,” says Amber. “Charter schools are kind of like if you’re average, or slightly below average.”
Lots of students give the same answers. Ninth grader Evelyn Almodovar says she knows “C” students who went to private high schools because “they didn’t want to be embarrassed about going to a school that’s known as having worse students.”
And what about the lowest performers, those who struggle the most in grammar school? They go to neighborhood schools, every student tells me. “Low-ranking schools,” says freshman Anais Roman, naming a neighborhood school and low-scoring charter in her area.
Many elementary school counselors identify the same hierarchy as the kids do (one grammar school even posts its graduates’ “high school destinations” in the same basic A-to-F order).
In an indication of just how segmented high schools have become, a counselor said her elementary school sends “average” students to a nearby high school that’s seen as safe, that admits no low performers, and scores at about the district average. But she said she would not recommend the school for her top students—even though they’re eligible to attend. “I don’t think they would offer the academic rigor,” she said of the school.
A number of counselors lamented the sorting.
“We look at the suburbs, and we look at much of the rest of the country—there’s one school to go to based on your address, and that neighborhood high school would have all sorts of different programs available,” says Walsh Elementary counselor Kristy Brooks.
Brooks says she sees positive aspects to Chicago’s high school choice system—kids leave segregated neighborhoods and find new classmates and opportunities, students push themselves to get into top schools. But she says she sees neighborhood schools being left with low-performing students who didn’t have the academic performance or the help to get to another school. “I think in the long run it would be better to have equity in all schools,” says Brooks.
But if all students were in a single comprehensive high school, wouldn’t they be tracked within that school anyway? Does it matter if they’re in separate schools?
“In part it doesn’t matter—it’s disastrous either way,” says Kevin Welner, director of the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder and an opponent of tracking.
“But in part it matters because once we get to that point of between-school tracking, it’s even harder to try to address,” says Welner. If we’re going to reform the system and make it more equitable, starting with the kids in the same schools is a good first step.”
Top performers benefit from sorting

Marshall High School freshman Akeem Lofton graduated from a nearby grammar school and says he enrolled at Marshall for the school’s budding chess team, which made it to state this year. Akeem says he also applied to Westinghouse, a nearby selective enrollment school, but he wasn’t offered a seat. (Photo: Linda Lutton/WBEZ)

For many students at Lane Tech, this is the first time they’ve attended school with all high achievers.
“It raises the standards a lot,” says freshman Paradise Cosey. Amber Hunt describes being around high-scoring classmates as “good peer pressure. Everybody’s really focused on their grades.”
Another freshman says she feels more “comfortable” at 4,000-student Lane Tech than she did at her elementary school; she says this is the first year since fifth grade that classmates haven’t asked to copy her work.
High-performing students are like gold in a school. Everybody does better around them—including other high-performing students. And it’s not just about test scores. The biggest predictor of whether a school is safe and orderly is students’ academic achievement. Having top performers makes an entire school easier to run.
Paul Hill says some stratification doesn’t bother him. “One thing that this just demonstrates yet again is that human beings just love status hierarchies and we’ll create them any way we can.” Hill says Americans believe in equality, but they also believe in elite schools.
“But when it trickles down to the lowest-performing kids are in the schools with the least of everything, then that’s not tolerable,” says Hill.
The view from Marshall High, a school of “last resort”
At Marshall Metropolitan High School, 86 percent of students come in scoring below the district average. Some can’t read.
Marshall, the attendance-area high school for a big swath of Chicago’s West Side, is among the 15 percent of Chicago high schools enrolling vastly disproportionate numbers of low achievers.
“Well, I didn’t actually choose to come to Marshall,” says rising sophomore Kadeesha Williams. “My mom said because it was in the area.”
Kadeesha had wanted to go to Marine Military Academy down the street. “I wanted to be a Marine, so I wanted to get the type of education they get so I can get ready,” she said. But the family turned her application in late. “We went to take a test. But my mom, she lost the paperwork.”
Kadeesha’s mom says the paperwork was actually lost at the school—they had no record of Kadeesha taking the test, she says.
Kadeesha is liking Marshall. “Marshall’s a good school,” she says. “Because the teachers here, they’re very into you. They’re a lot of help.”

Students lead a discussion in a freshman English class at Lincoln Park High School. (Photo: Linda Lutton/WBEZ)

Other students say they came to Marshall because family went here. Some come to play for Marshall’s storied basketball team or, lately, the school’s budding chess team.
Teacher James Dorrell says for others, “it’s sort of like a school of last resort. They try to enroll in charter schools or selective enrollments, and once they can’t get in, they would come here” — though he sees Marshall as much more than that. About half of Marshall students come from the neighborhood, the other half from outside the attendance boundary.
Dorrell says after a re-staffing and infusion of money in 2010, Marshall is hugely improved. The entire school is set up to help the struggling kids who enroll here. Freshmen have double periods of English and math. Many take reading—a subject other high schools don’t even offer.
But more students still drop out than graduate from Marshall. And test scores have barely moved.
Marshall raises a question at the heart of tracking—and at the heart of Chicago’s system of school choice. Is it better to group low performers together? Better for whom?
“The pros are yes, we can have these interventions,” says Dorrell. “The cons would be–you would want some high achievers because they sort of raise the bar, and other kids could see what it takes to be successful. So I think having kids with higher test scores would benefit all of this group. But I also see the benefit of having these kids…tracked by ability.”
Marshall is open to all students in the neighborhood. But there are no freshman honors courses, no AP classes (the school is trying to change that). There’s little to attract higher achievers.
There are four new high schools within a mile of Marshall. Two are military schools with minimum test score requirements, keeping out low performers. The third is a Noble Street charter school, which requires much more effort to enroll than Marshall. (Parents need to come to an information session on a particular evening in order to obtain an application, for instance. Students must write an essay.) At the two military schools, 48 percent and 64 percent of incoming students score above average. At the Noble Street charter, 41 percent of students enter above average. At Marshall, the figure is nearly three times less — just 14 percent of incoming kids score above average.
WBEZ’s analysis shows that the story of wide disparities in the preparation of incoming students is repeated in neighborhood after neighborhood in Chicago—and raises questions about whether the city’s school choice system is creating better schools, or simply pulling away better performing students, leaving the low achievers segregated into separate, failing schools.
Michael Milkie, the founder and CEO of the Noble Network of Charter Schools, Chicago’s largest high school charter network, sees the entire question of sorting as a “red herring.”
“I think the most important part by far are the adults in the building, their ability to deliver instruction, and the school culture. Those are the things that far outweigh whether you have a concentration of certain learners or a wide variety of learners,” says Milkie. All his schools attract far more high performers than neighborhood schools in the same communities.
Lincoln Park High School: academically diverse, and de-tracking
Lincoln Park High School is an anomaly in Chicago. It enrolls everyone. A 30-year old International Baccalaureate (IB) program attracts elite students. Arts programs draw other kids. The attendance zone guarantees seats to students from both wealthy and poor families.
Principal Michael Boraz likes to say this is the most diverse high school in CPS, and maybe in the country.
“Not just in terms of our racial and ethnic and neighborhood makeup,” says Boraz, “but also academically. We have kids from the 15th percentile rank in their standardized test scores, all the way up to the 99th. So it really is truly a diverse school in just about every sense.”
School is about more than academics, says Boraz. It’s where kids learn to live and work together. And now there’s a big effort inside Lincoln Park to mix kids more.
International Baccalaureate classes once reserved for the elite were opened up to everyone last year. So many kids took the IB math final the school had to set up the test in the gym. Boraz tweeted out a picture of 300 desks.
One morning before school let out, students in a freshman English class at Lincoln Park took turns leading a class discussion on Richard Wright’s Black Boy. The class included low performers and high achievers.
Teacher Mark Whetstone said it was hard to teach a class with such “extreme” diversity, but says he enjoyed it “immensely.”
“And I think more importantly the kids at all levels benefitted from the makeup of that class,” says Whetstone. “I feel like my lower performing students rose to the challenge. They had great examples from their peers around them at all times. And at the same time, for some of my higher performing students, it was good for them to work with someone generally not at their level. To be able to interact, and also to be able to take a lead in the classroom.”
University of Chicago researchers from the Consortium on Chicago School Research are working on a report about the sorting that’s happening among Chicago schools. One of the authors, Elaine Allensworth, says Chicago needs to decide what it wants—a system that sorts students, or a system that mixes them together more.
“The solution is thinking about where we want to be as a society—what kind of system do we want—and how do we make that work for everyone,” says Allensworth.
Allensworth says researchers already know one thing: whatever approach Chicago chooses, schools need to increase supports for the lowest performing students. If kids are mixed, lower achievers need help keeping up so they don’t get frustrated and give up, and so they don’t hold back their high-flying peers. And if Chicago decides to keep sorting students by achievement, then the schools filled with the lowest performers are going to need a lot of extra resources.

College For All? Experts Say Not Necessarily

When you hear economists, policy analysts, and academics claim that no everyone should go to college please ask them if that's the aspirations they have for their children. People can be unapologetically offensive when it comes to other people's children. This is a major problem in education policy that we need more people to commit to disrupting.

-Patricia

ALAN SCHER ZAGIER | The Huffington Post
05/13/10

COLUMBIA, Mo. — In a town dominated by the University of Missouri's flagship campus and two smaller colleges, higher education is practically a birthright for high school seniors like Kate Hodges.

She has a 3.5 grade-point-average, a college savings account and a family tree teeming with advanced degrees. But in June, Hodges is headed to the Tulsa Welding School in Oklahoma, where she hopes to earn an associate's degree in welding technology in seven months.

"They fought me so hard," she said, referring to disappointed family members. "They still think I'm going to college."

The notion that a four-year degree is essential for real success is being challenged by a growing number of economists, policy analysts and academics. They say more Americans should consider other options such as technical training or two-year schools, which have been embraced in Europe for decades.

As evidence, experts cite rising student debt, stagnant graduation rates and a struggling job market flooded with overqualified degree-holders. They pose a fundamental question: Do too many students go to college?

"College is what every parent wants for their child," said Martin Scaglione, president and chief operating officer of work force development for ACT, the Iowa-based not-for-profit best known for its college entrance exam. "The reality is, they may not be ready for college."

President Barack Obama wants to restore the country's status as the world leader in the proportion of citizens with college degrees. The U.S. now ranks 10th among industrial nations, behind Canada, Japan, Korea and several European countries.

But federal statistics show that just 36 percent of full-time students starting college in 2001 earned a four-year degree within that allotted time. Even with an extra two years to finish, that group's graduation rate increased only to 57 percent.

Spending more time in school also means greater overall student debt. The average student debt load in 2008 was $23,200 – a nearly $5,000 increase over five years. Two-thirds of students graduating from four-year schools owe money on student loans.
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And while the unemployment rate for college graduates still trails the rate for high school graduates (4.9 percent versus 10.8 percent), the figure has more than doubled in less than two years.

"A four-year degree in business – what's that get you?" asked Karl Christopher, a placement counselor at the Columbia Area Career Center vocational program. "A shift supervisor position at a store in the mall."

At Rock Bridge High School, one of Columbia's two high schools, 72 percent of the class of 2008 moved on to four-year colleges, with another 10 percent attending community college. That college attendance rate is consistent with national statistics.

Only 4 percent of Rock Bridge students chose technical training like the Oklahoma welding school where Hodges is headed.

Roughly 1,200 students from central Missouri take classes at the career center, supplementing their core high school courses with specialized training in automotive technology, culinary arts, animal science, robotics, landscape design, electrical wiring and more.

Hodges has been set on a welding career since she was 13. She craves independence and has little patience for fellow students who seem to wind up in college more from a sense of obligation than anything else.

"School is what they've been doing their whole lives," she said. "So they just want to continue. Because that's what they are used to."

Sue Popkes doesn't hide her disappointment over her younger daughter's decision. At the same time, she realizes that Hodges may achieve more financial security than a college degree could ever provide.

"It's sad to know she's going to miss that mind-opening effect of an undergraduate degree," Popkes said. "To discover new ideas, to become more worldly."

Ohio University economics professor Richard Vedder blames the cultural notion of "credential inflation" for the stream of unqualified students into four-year colleges. His research has found that the number of new jobs requiring college degrees is less than number of college graduates.

Vedder's work also yielded something surprising: The more money states spend on higher education, the less the economy grows – the reverse of long-held assumptions.

"If people want to go out and get a master's degree in history and then cut down trees for a living, that's fine," he said, citing an example from a recent encounter with a worker. "But I don't think the public should be subsidizing it."

Margaret Spellings, former federal education secretary under George W. Bush, remains a strong proponent of increased college access. She points to research showing that college graduates will on average earn $1 million more over a lifetime than those with only high school degrees.

"It is crucial to the success of our country and to us as individuals to graduate more students from college," she said at a National Press Club forum earlier this year. "We Americans greatly believe that education is the great equalizer."

For many, the dream of earning a college degree – and the social acceptance that comes with that accomplishment – trumps a more analytical, cost-benefits approach.

John Reynolds, a Florida State sociology professor, found that unrealized educational expectations do not lead to depression or other long-term emotional costs.

"Rich kids, poor kids, 'A' students, 'C' students – we really didn't find any lasting impact on not getting the degree," he said.

Scaglione suggested that nothing short of a new definition for educational success is needed to diminish the public bias toward four-year degrees. He advocates "certification as the new education currency – documentation of skills as opposed to mastering curriculum."

"Our national system is, 'Do you have a degree or not?'" he said. "That doesn't really measure if you have skills."

Louisiana's Career Diploma Stirs Concern On Standards

Creation of Alternative Path Stirs Worry About Standards
By Erik W. Robelen | Ed Week
December 1, 2009

At a time when many states are ratcheting up their high school graduation requirements, critics say Louisiana’s new “career diploma” appears to represent a lowering of standards and expectations for students who aren’t headed to a four-year college.

But some state education leaders who had misgivings with the legislative effort this year to mandate the new diploma say they’ve been working hard to make sure that—within the constraints of the law—it holds real value for graduates. In fact, the state board of elementary and secondary education was ultimately handed considerable discretion to hash out some important details. State officials say the board is expected to complete its work on the diploma this month.

"We can shape it some, and I think we have, and we will continue to try to make sure the rigor is there,” said Charles E. Roemer, an elected board member from Baton Rouge. “My original contention was that we ought to be raising the bar, not lowering it. ... Unless the career diploma has proper rigor in it, I don’t believe we’re preparing our kids for the future.”

Proponents of the legislationRequires Adobe Acrobat Reader, which won unanimous backing in the state Senate and a large majority in the House, say the new diploma is intended to stem the state’s dropout rate.

“This legislation gives us an opportunity to reach students that might otherwise slip through the cracks,” Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican, said upon signing the measure in July. “Now ... we can cultivate these students’ interests and skills and help align them with a successful career path.”

Democratic Rep. James R. Fannin, the lead House sponsor, bristles at suggestions that the new diploma lowers standards.

“How much lower is your standard for that student that you push out and put on the street?” he said. “You tell me how we’re lowering it any lower than that.”
Dropout Concerns

Recent state data suggest that about one-third of Louisiana’s nearly 700,000 public-school students do not graduate from high school on time.

The state board of education, which has already voted on many issues related to the new diploma, including curricular requirements, is expected at a meeting this month to wrap up its work fleshing out the new pathway. It has relied on the state’s broad-based High School Redesign Commission to provide recommendations in key areas.

About a dozen school districts began to implement the new diploma route this fall; the rest were granted waivers until next school year.

Paul G. Pastorek, the state superintendent of education, says that while he believes the legislative architects had good intentions, early on he had deep concerns with their approach. But he argues that, through negotiations on the bill and the state board’s more recent actions, the state is now on track to ensure the career diploma will have integrity.

“I feel very comfortable with where we are now, but it was hard to get here,” he said in an interview. “I’m sure there may be some people who still have some misgivings. It all happened very quickly, and it was not driven by the education community, it was driven by the legislature.”

The legislation comes amid a growing push in states and at the national level to establish a more demanding set of core expectations that all students should meet to be ready both for college and a career.

Most notably, the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers are spearheading an initiative to devise common academic standards across states. Louisiana is one of the 48 states that have joined that effort. In September, a draft of college- and career-readiness standards was issued. ("New Standards Draft Offers More Details," Sept. 30, 2009.)

Louisiana itself recently completed a separate, and exhaustive, process to craft new graduation requirements, based on recommendations from its High School Redesign Commission. The state made the so-called Louisiana Core 4 Curriculum—which seeks to make students both career- and college-ready—the default for all students entering the 9th grade. Students may opt out after the sophomore year and pursue a regular diploma through the Basic Core Curriculum.

Daria L. Hall, the director of K-12 policy at the Education Trust, a Washington-based research and advocacy group, said she was surprised to see the new career diploma emerge in Louisiana. She said the state has been making “strong movements” toward setting high expectations for students, but she sees the new diploma as reversing course.

“This policy creates a path to lowered expectations and diminished opportunities for some students, and we know from experience in other states that ‘some’ often means low-income students, and students of color.”

Some observers say the career-diploma law creates a loophole in the state’s high-stakes testing program.

Louisiana has long required all students to pass tests in both reading and mathematics in the 4th and 8th grades to advance to the next grade. The new law says that 8th graders who wish to pursue the career diploma and are 15 or older need a passing score in only one of those subjects.

“That was one of our objections—the idea of lowering the standards that we’ve worked so hard to get in place and adhere to,” said Karen M. Rowley, a policy analyst at the Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana, a research institute and government watchdog. “If they can’t read or write or do basic math, how are they going to succeed in any career track?”

Mr. Pastorek, the state schools chief, said that he, too, was concerned about that legislative provision, but is comfortable with how the state board has responded.

“What we said was, go to the 9th grade building, but you must take and pass a remediation course before you go to 9th grade algebra or 9th grade English,” he said. “What we’re requiring, while not maintaining the full integrity of the [high-stakes testing] program, creates an alternative method, and I’m comfortable [with it].”

Jennifer Dounay Zinth, a senior policy analyst at the Education Commission of the States, in Denver, said Louisiana’s new career diploma appears to be unusual “in the sense that few, if any, other states are explicitly setting lower expectations for students following a career/technical pathway.”

She noted, for instance, that some states, such as North Carolina and Georgia, have recently revised their graduation requirements, replacing systems in which students had to choose either a college-preparatory or technical pathway, and adopting a college- and work-ready curriculum for all students.
An Electrician, a Welder

The Louisiana law lays out some course requirements for students seeking the career diploma, that are different from the college-preparatory curriculum, with more room for electives relevant to a particular career path.

“If you want to go and be an electrician, or it you wanted to be a welder, your first two years [of high school] are pretty similar,” said Rep. Fannin, but later courses could be “more relevant to what your career looks like.”

In math, students on the state’s college-preparatory pathway must take four units, including Algebra 1, Algebra 2, geometry, and one other advanced math course, such as precalculus. Students pursuing a career diploma must also take four math units, but the law’s only explicit requirement is Algebra 1.

Matthew Gandal, the executive vice president of Achieve, a Washington group established by business leaders and governors that advocates tougher academic standards, said omitting Algebra 2 for career-diploma students was troubling.

“It might significantly reduce the opportunities for those students,” he said. “Many other states are making advanced algebra the requirement.”

In general, Mr. Gandal said, he has no objection to vocationally oriented courses, but “our concern is when it’s a substitution for a rigorous core academic curriculum.”

Brigitte T. Nieland, the education director for the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, said even students who are not going to college need more skills and knowledge than in the past.

“It’s a sophisticated world, and it’s getting more sophisticated by the millisecond,” she said.

Mr. Pastorek said recent state board actions will ensure that students pursuing the career diploma will take meaningful courses in math and other subjects.

“We’ve approved a whole list of courses that would satisfy some of the blanks left in the law,” he said, “and we ended up with courses that will have integrity.”

In addition, he emphasized that, if the state school board approves a recommendation just set forth by the High School Redesign Commission, students seeking the career diploma will have to pass the same end-of-course exams all other Louisiana students will face as of next school year, when the state replaces its high school exit exam with end-of-course tests in several subjects.

As a result, “there is still a stringent accountability piece in place,” Mr. Pastorek said.
‘Easy Pathway’

Penny M. Dastugue, a state board member appointed by Gov. Jindal, said she still has misgivings about the career diploma.

One concern is that students who earn it will not have met all the course requirements to be eligible for a state scholarship under the Taylor Opportunity Program for Students, or TOPS. The merit-based program helps pay tuition at community colleges, technical colleges, and four-year colleges.

“They can go to a two-year college [with the diploma], but it has taken them out of getting a scholarship,” Ms. Dastugue said.

More broadly, Ms. Dastugue worries that students and their families are being asked to make a big decision in the 8th grade that may keep a four-year college out of reach.

“Some kids, ... they’re going to want to take the easy pathway,” she said.

At the same time, the state board has approved a measure allowing students one annual opportunity to switch into or out of the career-diploma pathway.

The 23,000 student Rapides Parish school district, in Alexandria, La., is among those that have begun to make available the new graduation path this school year.

“We already had some career offerings, welding, hotel management; we had career clusters anyway, so it was fairly easy for us to start,” said Gary L. Jones, the district superintendent and the president of the Louisiana Association of School Superintendents.

Mr. Jones admits that he was initially skeptical of the career diploma.

“I’m one of the ones who believes there really is only one high school standard, but the legislature saw the need for it,” he said. “But I’m convinced now that ... it is something that kids will benefit from.”

Ultimately, he added, a lot rests with districts to make sure they offer a quality program.

“I think we can do that,” he said, “and salvage a bunch of kids who otherwise might have gotten pushed off to the side.”

Coverage of efforts to promote new routes to college and career success is supported by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Vol. 29, Issue 13, Pages 1,17

Coalition for Multiple Pathways (California)

Here's a group out of California that appeared in 2008 that advances Career and Technology Opportunities.- Angela

As California seeks to improve its high schools and better prepare its students for the future, many see “multiple pathways” as a solution.

The Coalition for Multiple Pathways is a statewide alliance of education, industry, and community organizations dedicated to improving California’s high schools and preparing students for postsecondary education and career, both options and not just one or the other. Over 140 organizations have joined to date.

The Coalition brings a collective voice and coordinated effort to expanding access to multiple pathways—programs of study that connect learning in the classroom with real-world applications outside of school. Pathways integrate rigorous academic instruction with demanding technical curriculum and work-based learning—all set in the context of an industry sector.

Description of Coalition

The Coalition for Multiple Pathways is a statewide alliance of education, industry, and community organizations dedicated to improving California’s high schools and preparing students for postsecondary education and career, both options and not just one or the other.

Purpose of Coalition

The Coalition aims to bring a collective voice and coordinated effort to expanding access for California’s young people to multiple pathways—programs of study that connect learning in the classroom with real-world applications outside of school. Pathways integrate rigorous academic instruction with demanding technical curriculum and work-based learning—all set in the context of one of California’s 15 major industry sectors such as arts, media, and entertainment; building and environmental design; engineering; health science and medical technology; information technology; and law and public services, to name just a few.

Goals of Coalition

The Goals of the Coalition are to:

Build awareness and understanding of multiple pathways
Present unified support for multiple pathways to encourage state, regional, and local decision makers to expand and improve pathway programs
Optimize resources and expertise to help promote multiple pathways
Establish state and local policy priorities that support multiple pathways
Boost Coalition membership to engage more education, industry, and community partners who can strengthen multiple pathways throughout California

California needs to ramp up college education, study finds

This piece lays out the education-skilled-worker crisis in California as follows: 1 we need more college graduates in CA; 2 This is hard because of capacity ["The problem, according to the institute, is that population growth has outpaced the expansion of state schools, leaving students with limited options for college. "]; 3 but even if we had capacity; 3 immigrants complicate the picture [unclear, two possible meanings: a) meaning public support for education? b) immigrants even by the second generation still register low levels of education]; 4 Even with the recession, there is a need for highly skilled workers [tho not necessarily newly minted graduates], especially the skilled help required to service the retiring baby boomers.

Problem in getting to college-going goal is:

1 Not all Ss adequately prepared for college
2 Students don't have money to go to college

Solutions:

1 Government & other sources presumably need to provide financial aid to get more "good students" into college. Hence, merit-based system. [Note: Never mind that merit correlates to socioeconomic status advantages that overlap with ethnicity.]

2 UC can raise fees for higher income students in order to offer financial aid to poor families.

3 Offering community college opportunities to high school students. So eliminate limits so more students can avail themselves of this opportunity in CA.

4 Create a higher education commission that would oversee the state school system.

5 Fund public schooling generally across the state.

Interesting, (perhaps too) concisely written. -Angela


By Dan Abendschein | Whittier Daily News
05/03/2009

A new report estimates that California will have a shortage of 1 million college graduates by the year 2025.

The report by the Public Policy Institute of California suggests that employers would have to move jobs outside the state to find qualified workers, or bring in employees from out of state to fill positions here.

The problem, according to the institute, is that population growth has outpaced the expansion of state schools, leaving students with limited options for college. With many highly-educated older Californians from the Baby Boomer generation set to retire, the demand for jobs requiring higher education are bound to increase, according to the institute.

A growing immigrant population also has changed the outlook on education, said Hans Johnson of the PPIC.

"First-generation Latino immigrants often come to the U.S. with very little education," said Johnson. "Even in the second-generation, you see higher education attendance rates are a lot lower."

California has a lot of demand in high-tech industries. That is also true within Los Angeles County, where engineering, movie production and other technical positions will be in particular demand, said Jack Kyser the chief economist of Los Angeles Economic Development Corp.

"The aerospace industry, in particular, is going to have a lot of Baby Boomers retiring," said Kyser. "In the longer term, we've got to be concerned with the low number of students in those fields."

Kyser added there also will be increased demand for medical technician jobs and possibly for skilled workers in green energy or other new technology jobs that could be created in the following decade or so.

Currently, he said, with the recession, firms are not looking to add new skilled graduates. In the long term, however, with economic recovery, a shortage is likely.

The easiest solution, said Johnson, is for the state to give more people financial aid needed to get them into school and keep them there.

Specifically, Johnson said, the state needs to work on getting more students to college. The report suggests increasing the college attendance rate from 56 percent to 61 percent, and improving the transfer rate from community colleges, while also working to hike the California State University system graduate rate. Those goals would fix about half of the shortage, but would still leave the state 500,000 graduates short.

"We've identified some less expensive goals that the state can achieve even with the current budget problems," said Johnson.

California has gone from being one of the top states in secondary education to being in the middle of the pack, according to the report. In 1960, the state ranked eighth in the percentage of 25- to 34-year-olds with a college degree nationwide. By 2006, it had fallen to 23rd.

Those changes, Johnson said, indicate not that the state has less educated people than it used to, but rather that it has not increased its population of college graduates as fast as other states.

The basic problems facing the schools are two-fold, said Johnson. First, not all students are academically prepared to enter college. Second, a lot of students have problems coming up with enough money to pay their way through college.

The government should offer more money to students with good grades, according to the report.

The UC and CSU system, which often serve students with a higher income than those in community college, could also consider raising their fees for those families that can afford the school, while offering more aid to students who can't, said Johnson.

"Right now those schools are considered very strong academic choices, but still have very low tuition rates," said Johnson. "A lot of students who attend the UCs can afford to pay higher than the rate that is offered, while a lot of other students can't afford to attend."

Finally, the report recommends opening up more community college classes to high school students - giving them a chance to get early experience in what will be required of them when they attend the schools.

That idea is echoed by Assemblyman Anthony Portantino, D-La Ca ada Flintridge, the head of the Assembly's education committee. He has introduced a bill that removes a rule that limits the number of students who can attend community college early.

"Years ago there were fiscal abuses where high school students were enrolled in phantom classes that weren't actually being taught," said Portantino. "But the legislature overreacted and put in rules that put in bureaucratic red tape that is keeping kids from getting a chance to attend these classes early."

Portantino also has another bill that would create a higher education commission that would set binding goals for the state school system.

Nevertheless, Portantino and Johnson both concede that without finding more funding for the public secondary schools, the state will fall short of its goals. The current budget situation has caused the CSU system to cut the number of students it is admitting.

The state also will need to improve the performance of its high schools to see improvement in college graduation rates, Portantino added.

"We're doing the best that we can with a terrible budget situation," said Portantino. "But ultimately we can't get where we need to be without more education expenditures."

Experts: Latino students can feel less than valued

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."

Not going to college? How about a 'career diploma' from high school?

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.

Diploma changes approved

Cohen is right, this IS a step backwards. This is similar to the concerns about This session's House Bill and Senate Bill 3 in Texas. Using tracking as a solution to curb dropout without addressing other school factors that contribute to student push-out (e.g., teacher and counselor shortage, teacher quality, test-driven curriclum, etc.) is poor policy.

-Patricia

The AP
June 19, 2009

BATON ROUGE - High school students could skip college prep courses and instead take classes designed to get them into two-year schools under a plan that Louisiana lawmakers are expected to approve despite criticism that it would produce graduates who can't find jobs.

awmakers are expected to send the bill to Gov. Bobby Jindal in the next few days, over the objections of some national education groups who say the changes would dilute the state's recent work to improve public schools.

They say the legislation lowers standards beginning in eighth grade and would produce graduates who struggle to find work because they never mastered basic reading, writing and mathematics.

"One way to raise achievement is to raise expectations, with a more rigorous curriculum, and Louisiana has done a good job of that recently," said Michael Cohen, president of Achieve, a nonprofit organization that works to raise states' academic standards. "But we're concerned that this legislation would be a step backward."

The governor's aides have said Jindal supports the bill.

Under the legislation, parents could allow their children 15 and older to leave pre-college curriculum and instead take the "career option program."

Graduates who took the new curriculum would get a career-option diploma that would not qualify them for a four-year college or university. Instead, they could attend two-year technical schools or community colleges.

Few legislators oppose the bill. They say the new curriculum would reduce the number who drop out and often turn to drugs and crime when they can't find jobs.

"As we push out and drop out these students, many of them end up on the streets, and many of them end up incarcerated," said state Rep. Jim Fannin, D-Jonesboro, one of two sponsors of the plan.

The other sponsor, state Sen. Robert Kostelka, R-Monroe, has said he supports it because in his former position as a state district judge he was often forced to send teenagers - high school dropouts - to prison.

Kostelka said the career program will keep those children in school, learning skills that will win them jobs after graduation.

Critics, including Superintendent of Schools Paul Pastorek, insist the curriculum change would have the opposite effect that Fannin and Kostelka envision.

Cohen and the presidents of two other national education groups last week sent a letter to the chairmen of the House and Senate education committees, urging them to oppose or rewrite the legislation.

No Longer Letting Scores Separate Pupils

By WINNIE HU | NY Times
Published: June 14, 2009

STAMFORD, Conn. — Sixth graders at Cloonan Middle School here are assigned numbers based on their previous year’s standardized test scores — zeros indicate the highest performers, ones the middle, twos the lowest — that determine their academic classes for the next three years.

But this longstanding system for tracking children by academic ability for more effective teaching evolved into an uncomfortable caste system in which students were largely segregated by race and socioeconomic background, both inside and outside classrooms. Black and Hispanic students, for example, make up 46 percent of this year’s sixth grade, but are 78 percent of the twos and 7 percent of the zeros.

So in an unusual experiment, Cloonan mixed up its sixth-grade science and social studies classes last month, combining zeros and ones with twos. These mixed-ability classes have reported fewer behavior problems and better grades for struggling students, but have also drawn complaints of boredom from some high-performing students who say they are not learning as much.

The results illustrate the challenge facing this 15,000-student district just outside New York City, which is among the last bastions of rigid educational tracking more than a decade after most school districts abandoned the practice. In the 1960s and early 1970s, Stamford sorted students into as many as 15 different levels; the current system of three to five levels at each of four middle schools will be replaced this fall by a two-tiered model, in which the top quarter of sixth graders will be enrolled in honors classes, the rest in college-prep classes. (A fifth middle school is a magnet school and has no tracking.)

More than 300 Stamford parents have signed a petition opposing the shift, and some say they are now considering moving or switching their children to private schools. “I think this is a terrible system for our community,” said Nicole Zussman, a mother of two.

Ms. Zussman and others contend that Stamford’s diversity, with poor urban neighborhoods and wealthy suburban enclaves, demands multiple academic tracks, and suggest that the district could make the system fairer and more flexible by testing students more frequently for movement among the levels.

But Joshua P. Starr, the Stamford superintendent, said the tracking system has failed to prepare children in the lower levels for high school and college. “There are certainly people who want to maintain the status quo because some people have benefited from the status quo,” he said. “I know that we cannot afford that anymore. It’s not fair to too many kids.”

Educators have debated for decades how to best divide students into classes. Some school districts focus on providing extra instruction to low achievers or developing so-called gifted programs for the brightest students, but few maintain tracking like Stamford’s middle schools (tracking is less comprehensive and rigid at the town’s elementary and high schools).

Deborah Kasak, executive director of the National Forum to Accelerate Middle Grades Reform, said research is showing that all students benefit from mixed-ability classes. “We see improvements in student behavior, academic performance and teaching, and all that positively affects school culture,” she said.

Daria Hall, a director with Education Trust, an advocacy group, said that tracking has worsened the situation by funneling poor and minority students into “low-level and watered-down courses.” “If all we expect of students is for them to watch movies and fill out worksheets, then that’s what they will give us,” she said.

In Stamford, black and Hispanic student performance on state tests has lagged significantly behind that of Asians and whites. In 2008, 98 percent of Asian students and 92 percent of white students in grades three to eight passed math, and 93 percent and 88 percent reading, respectively. Among black students, 63 percent passed math, and 56 percent reading; among Hispanic students, 74 percent passed math and 60 percent reading.

The district plans to keep a top honors level, but put the majority of students in mixed-ability classes, expanding the new system from sixth grade to seventh and eighth over three years. While the old system tracked students for all subjects based on math and English scores, the new one will allow students to be designated for honors in one subject but not necessarily another, making more students overall eligible for the upper track.

The staff of Cloonan Middle School decided to experiment with mixed-ability classes for the last eight weeks of this school year.

David Rudolph, Cloonan’s principal, said that parents have long complained that the tracking numbers assigned to students dictate not only their classes but also their friends and cafeteria cliques. Every summer, at least a dozen parents lobby Mr. Rudolph to move their children to the top track. “The zero group is all about status,” he said.

Jamiya Richardson, who is 11 and in the twos’ group, said that students all know their own numbers as well as those of their classmates. “I don’t like being classified because it makes you feel like you’re not smart,” she said.

The other day in Jamiya’s newly mixed social studies class, students debated who was to blame in an ancient Roman legal case in which a barber shaving a slave in a public square was hit by a ball and cut the slave’s throat. At one point, Jamiya was the only one in the class of 25 to argue that it was the slave’s fault because he sat there at his own risk — which the teacher said was the right answer.

Cloonan teachers say they had not changed the curriculum or slowed the pace for the mixed-ability classrooms, but tried to do more collaborative projects and discussions in hopes that students would learn from one another. But Joel Castle, who is 12 and a zero, said that he did not work as hard now. “My grades are going up, and that’s not really surprising because the standards have been lowered,” he said.

In a recent social studies class, the top students stood out as they presented elaborate homemade projects about Roman culture — mosaics, dresses, weaponry — while several of their classmates showed up empty-handed. One offered the excuse that his catapult had disappeared overnight from his bedside.

“A catapult thief?” questioned the teacher, Mimi Nichols, in disbelief before directing him to find his project by the next day.

Afterward, Ms. Nichols said that the less-motivated students had still learned from their classmates’ example. “That in itself is valuable,” she said. “For children to see what is possible.”

So Many Dreams, So Many Diplomas

This sentence from the article brings up the main concern in having multiple diploma tracks:

"Many civil rights advocates are concerned when states have a range of academic expectations for high school graduates because more minority and poor students tend to be concentrated in the less rigorous categories."

This article also doesn't address teacher quality and shortage problems that disproportionately plague low-income, minority-serving schools. If VA is like Texas there's a chance the state might be trying to create a loophole that would allow schools to avoid teacher shortage issues by giving students the flexibility to take applied courses that do not require certified teachers.

It's great to provide students like Fasihi with opportunities to excel in their areas of interest but it's equally important to explain to her the difference between being an employee of a salon and a potential owner, the latter likely requiring a college degree in today's economy.

Patricia

Virginia Offers Various Degree Programs Tailored to Students' Ambitions

By Michael Alison Chandler | Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 18, 2009To prepare for the future, Lhuillier is signing up for honors physics and Advanced Placement English classes at Fairfax High School next year and stockpiling credits for an advanced diploma. Fasihi will take anatomy and English 12 at Fairfax High and continue refining her haircutting and skin care skills in a career academy at Chantilly High. When she graduates next spring from Fairfax High, she will earn a standard diploma and a state license in cosmetology.

The District and many states, including Maryland, offer one main high school diploma. Additional diplomas are often available for special education students.

Virginia offers a growing menu. The advanced diploma requires more math, science, social studies and foreign language credits. Beginning in 2010, students who prefer to learn by doing will be able to earn one of two technical education diplomas.

As Virginia's degrees become more nuanced, traditional distinctions between students learning trades and those bound for four-year colleges are breaking down. Educators and lawmakers increasingly agree that all students should graduate with higher math and literacy skills so everyone has a shot at a higher education and a good job. So, many states are increasing minimum graduation requirements.

A generation ago, Lhuillier and Fasihi would have been unlikely to cross paths in an academic classroom. Yet the teenagers took the same advanced algebra class this year and have struggled through similar chemistry labs.

Virginia officials are trying to increase the number of rigorous academic courses that all students take. Its proliferation of degrees seeks to address a riddle of public schooling: How do you engage large numbers of students with wildly different aspirations and abilities? How do you help the math whizzes, the late bloomers and the too-cool-for-school teenagers so everyone gets the most from school and has a chance at success?

Fifteen-year-old Simon Lhuillier wants to become a pediatrician when he grows up and buy a big house near a lake. Nila Fasihi, 17, thinks she might one day open a hair salon in Afghanistan when the war is over.

"To treat all students the same makes no sense," Virginia Education Secretary Thomas R. Morris said. "Students learn at different rates and at different levels of achievement."

The advanced diploma is the state's most rigorous and defines the route to a four-year college. About half the Virginia students who completed high school last spring earned one.

Lhuillier is pursuing an ambitious course load and degree because he hopes to get into Virginia Tech or one of the state's competitive universities. Football and physical education are his first loves, but he is also a curious student who tries hard. Some classes, such as math, come easily; others don't. Honors chemistry was his toughest class this year.

Lhuillier was born in Singapore, and his family moved around when he was younger, including stops in Canada, the Bahamas and Florida. His early ambitions were to follow in the footsteps of his father, a famous pastry chef. But he was dismayed to learn that only the top chefs make more than $12 an hour. After some research on Careerbuilder.com, he set his sights on becoming a pediatrician. He likes children, he said, and "the income interested me."

So he is taking a sports medicine class next year, pre-calculus and a third year of Spanish, and hoping to get his grades up for college applications. "I'm going to give it my all," Lhuillier said.

Fasihi got a late start in school. Her family fled Afghanistan in the late 1990s and moved from Pakistan to Iran and back, before going to Northern Virginia in 2001. She arrived in the middle of third grade, without speaking English and with little formal education.

She caught up over time but never developed a strong interest in academics. "Why do you want to learn about the past?" she wondered about her history class. And math? "Too many formulas."

Cosmetology is different. She loves doing hair, and she loves her class. One morning last month, Beyoncé played on the radio as Fasihi worked rows of curlers into the hair of a mannequin named Whitney that was mounted on the back of a salon chair. Two dozen girls around her practiced updos and fantasy makeup and gossiped about prom and graduation.

Fasihi works on her trimming and tinting skills at school and at home, practicing on her friends, cousins, sisters and mother.

She plans to work as a stylist after graduation and to enroll at Northern Virginia Community College, like her older brother, who is pursuing a degree in business and accounting.

Her flexible plans are typical, cosmetology teacher Wayne White said. "This is not your mother's vocational school. I have kids taking Advanced Placement tests. . . . We don't teach them that this is the only thing you are going to do," White said.

White estimated that more than 60 percent of his students go on to college. His class emphasizes versatile professional skills, such as résumé writing, as well as business skills.

Thirty years ago, a much more rigid educational tracking system decided students' fate in blue- or white-collar professions. Now things are more gray.

Educators are trying to increase the academic content and prestige of career and technical programs overall. Many fields, such as automotive technology, are highly computer-driven, and all workers benefit from the good communication and reasoning skills that strong academic courses provide, they say.

Career programs can also help students who are bored gain new interest in school by applying what they know.

"A lot of kids who think they are not college material go into career and technical education . . . and transition into college and are very successful in the workplace," said Kimberly Green, executive director of the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium.

Virginia is creating a series of career academies in science- and technology-related fields and recognizing academy students everywhere who go beyond minimum academic requirements.

Right now, the minimum graduation requirements in Virginia are not enough to prepare students for college-level work in math. Students don't need advanced algebra to earn a standard diploma. They also don't need physics or a foreign language.

Many civil rights advocates are concerned when states have a range of academic expectations for high school graduates because more minority and poor students tend to be concentrated in the less rigorous categories.

In 2010, the baseline will increase. The state Board of Education voted last month to increase the rigor of math and science classes needed for a standard diploma. The career and technical education diplomas will also have tougher math and science requirements.

Fasihi chose to pursue a standard diploma mostly because she struggled through Spanish I and was not sure she could handle the required three credits of foreign language for an advanced diploma. By spring, she will have fulfilled most of the coursework for the tougher degree, including in math.

In her advanced algebra class this year, she brought her grade up to a B-plus from an F by staying after class and working hard. She still isn't so interested in math. But if she opens her salon in Afghanistan, she said, "I might need it."

Students learn skills rehabbing Phila. houses

These kinds of opportunities are great for youth as value-added. When they become tracking mechanisms that take the place of academic opportunities it becomes problematic.

It's not in the best interest of the student to determine their destiny's (i.e., college going, or not) so early in life. We need to continue providing students with choice.

-Patricia

By Kristen A. Graham | Inquirer Staff Writer
June 1, 2009

Andre Waite took a deep breath and wedged a crowbar against a piece of rotting wood. A sharp tug, a cloud of dust, and the piece came free.

"Good," instructor Sam Ginsburg told the Bok High School junior last week. "That's it."

Piece by piece, Waite and a group of students from the vocational high school are pursuing an unusual after-school activity: rehabbing a South Philadelphia rowhouse, a former drug den, with their own hands. For two hours a day, five days a week, the students strip floors, frame walls, install plumbing, paint rooms, and lay tile.

But the members of a construction after-school club are also learning about the value of a job done well, the satisfaction of transforming a neighborhood eyesore.

"I am proud of this," Waite said. "I want to get this house finished."

District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham, who brokered the deal to sell the house to the after-school program that runs the construction club, said she was wowed by the work of about a dozen students.

"They're a wonderful group of young guys," said Abraham, who visited the students at the house in April. "This keeps them out of trouble, gives them job skills, and restores a neighborhood that has been blighted by this drug house."

It all began when Loretta Crea, a founder of Sunrise Philadelphia Inc., an after-school organization, heard that the city was selling a seized house to another nonprofit. She wrote to Abraham, asking whether Sunrise's students could have a house to work on.

Abraham agreed, and the city sold the first house to Sunrise for $1 in 2003. It took Bok students four years to gut and remodel the modest structure, but when it was done, officials sold it to a first-time buyer for $75,000. That money was put aside for supplies and salaries - the students earn $5 hourly for their work - and for the house they are fixing up on Cantwell Street, a few blocks from Bok, at Ninth and Mifflin Streets.

The district attorney said the house was seized in a drug prosecution.

"Sometimes the houses are so bad they have to be torn down," Abraham said. "Sometimes, with hard work, they can be saved."

Al Sorichetti, chief executive of Sunrise, whose offices are housed at Bok, said the group planned to equip the house with computers and use it as a center for luring dropouts back to school.

When Sunrise took possession of the house in January, it was a sight: exposed wires dangling everywhere, graffiti scrawled on walls, copper pipes missing. The tiny yard was crammed with old car parts, trash, and other junk.

There was no electricity, water, or gas. At first, the students worked with flashlights and battery-powered lamps.

Ginsburg, a retired Bok educator, now volunteers for Sunrise, and is on site every day. He's aided by club member Eric Schreiber, the most experienced student, who functions as foreman, parceling out jobs and tackling the toughest work.

"It's good experience to take a house that was in such bad condition and turn it into something much better," said Schreiber, 18, whose father owns a contracting business and who plans to work in the industry.

Kiry Mark, 18, a senior, had never picked up a hammer before a friend recruited him to the project.

"I've learned a lot so far, and I'm still learning," Mark said, pausing from sanding a spot under a kitchen window. He plans to use his skills to work construction jobs for a year before he decides what he wants to study in college.

Ginsburg, who spent his career teaching special-needs students vocational skills, is patient with the 12 to 17 young men who show up on any given day. He never loses his cool, even if a ceiling patch has to be redone three times or he has to coax a student off a ladder to put on his goggles, again.

The house is for learning, he said. Eventually, the students will get it right.

"They'll do anything I ask them to," Ginsburg said. "They're good kids."

For years, school districts have been disinvesting in vocational education; shops that were once thriving are now often shuttered. But college is not for everyone, Ginsburg points out, and even for those who do go on to higher education, it's valuable to have the skills to build and maintain a home.

Many of the members of the construction club, who study trades ranging from business to computers at Bok, say they do want to go to college. Others say they'll work in the construction field right away or go on to technical colleges.

The house project is a powerful tool against truancy, said Crea, the Sunrise cofounder.

"If they want to work after school, they have to show up for class," she said.

The students' work on the house means long days. Waite, for instance, has a 90-minute bus ride home to West Philadelphia, and often arrives home after dark. Many go straight from the construction site to another job, and they have given up school holidays to make progress on a particular project.

In the living room, Ginsburg watched over Waite and Denny Huon, 16, a junior, who was trying to remove part of a wall leading to the basement. The plan was to pull out the old, unsound structure and replace it with a new one, plus a door, but Waite and Huon looked a little unsure.

"Just watch the other wall, guys," Ginsburg told them calmly as they picked up tools. "Make sure you don't hit the other wall."

A little more coaxing, some well-placed crowbar work, and the mission was accomplished. The pair moved on to the next task. Also on the agenda for the day was priming the kitchen, framing a wall, hanging a door.

Andrew Meak, 16, a junior, paused from prepping the kitchen for its paint job.

"Maybe it's a guy thing," he said, shrugging. "I really like learning how to do stuff."

Education programs on the chopping block

By Dana Hull | Mercury News
04/08/2009

Alyssa Lopez, 18, attends Del Mar High School in San Jose in the morning. Every afternoon, she rides the bus to take Jeff Schmidt's three-hour video class at the Central County Occupational Center, a vocational center in San Jose. She's creating a short documentary about animal rights and learning how to edit the images with the latest computer software.

"I was going to drop out of school until I found out about this class," said Lopez, who does not have a computer at home. "This is all hands-on learning. I love movies, and I want to learn everything that I can about how they make them. I would cry if they shut this program down."

But the future of her course, and other vocational classes across the state, are in question.

For decades, programs like regional occupational centers, high school counseling, or gifted and talented education got dedicated education funds. So-called "categorical" programs made sure there were services to properly educate California's diverse student body, from teaching migrant students to training principals on how to use technology.

But under the state budget deal crafted this spring, legislators broke such "categorical" programs into three tiers, giving strong protection to two groups but lumping more than 40 programs into a so-called "Tier III" that allows their funds to be raided, or the programs to be eliminated completely. The idea was to give superintendents flexibility in balancing shrinking budgets.

"We wanted to knock down the walls," said H.D. Palmer of the California Department of Finance. "School districts said, 'If you're not giving us money, at least give us maximum flexibility.' "

Now supporters for programs as disparate as adult education, music and California Indians are pushing Sacramento to get them out of Tier III. And as local school districts begin crafting next year's budget, groups are urging their superintendents to spare their programs instead of using the money to pay for, say, class size reduction.

"This was a major shock to the bureaucratic structure that's been in place for 30 years," said Brett McFadden of the Association of California School Administrators. "Each program has its own constituency and its own followers in the education community, and now everyone is like 'Oh My God, we're going to be cut.' Everyone is lobbying for their program to be spared."

Push for flexibility

School districts had been pushing Sacramento for more categorical "flexibility." With state education dollars shrinking, school officials argued, it made less and less sense for the state to be in charge of chopping up the money. Let local people make the hard decisions instead.

"One district may say our biggest need is staff development," said Dennis Meyers of the California Association of School Business Officials. "Another district might say our priority is technology. We finally have a funding system that sends money to the local level without too many strings attached. The problem is that we got it in a really bad budget year."

Originally, every program was supposed to be on the table. But certain issues, like class size reduction, had enormous support from teachers and parents, who immediately began a campaign to save it. Other programs like special education came with federal mandates that helped to protect them. Educators associated with the vast majority of the programs in Tier III, however, are deeply worried. And while everyone is grumpy, advocates for adult education, regional occupational centers and gifted and talented education are complaining the loudest.

"Basically everyone who is in Tier III wants out," said Rick Pratt of the California School Boards Association, a keen observer of the months-long budget wrangling. "We pushed for there to be no sacred cows — for basically everything to be Tier III. But there was a lot of horse-trading that went on, and the outcome is a compromise driven by politics instead of sound public policy."

Teri Burns, a Sacramento lobbyist with School Innovations and Advocacy, is concerned that GATE, or gifted education, now finds itself in Tier III. Children who usually have large vocabularies, ask numerous questions and learn at a swift pace are often identified by teachers and standardized tests as "gifted" when they are in the third grade.

GATE could be gone

Such students attend GATE classes where the work is usually more challenging, requiring different textbooks, specially trained teachers and field trips. The new tier system means school districts could decide to use money that used to go toward GATE for something else entirely.

Nora Ho, principal of Ruskin Elementary in San Jose's Berryessa Union School District, also worries that GATE is in the cross hairs.

"Being in Tier III means they don't have to give us anything," said Ho. "GATE is vulnerable to cuts because people think that gifted children will make it no matter what."

Ho said nothing is further from the truth: Bright children often get bored and act out in class when they are not challenged.

"There's a lot of training on how to work with kids who are not doing well. But there's very little training on how to work with the advanced kids," said Ho. "Leave me enough money so that I can continue training my teachers."

It's unlikely, however, that the tiers will go away.

"My sense is that there's not much political will to move from the structure that was created," said Jennifer Kuhn, director of K-12 education with the state Legislative Analyst's Office. "It's a Pandora's box."

John Young: Stamped as 'college material'?

John Young | Waco Tribune
Tuesday, March 17, 2009

In NBC’s series “Friday Night Lights,” a pampered high schooler goes into a senioritis death spiral. Why? She’s suddenly realized that with her middle-of-the-pack grades, the two Texas-college color schemes of her dreams — burnt orange and maroon — are out of the question.

It’s hard to sympathize. Every student in this state with an eye on college knows, or should, about the rule that has guaranteed admission to the top 10 percent of high school graduating classes.

It’s a rule lawmakers are poised to dramatically alter this week, partially because an underbuilt college system has placed too much of a premium on two primo universities.

But something else is happening in the statehouse this week about college admissions, and it has nothing to do with percentiles.

It has to do with — ah, man, you guessed it — standardized testing.

Doesn’t everything come down to that? And isn’t that wrong?

Whether they would be tacitly or directly influenced, college admissions are among the less-discussed subtexts of ambitious legislation to revamp Texas’ school accountability system.

Two measures, House Bill 3 and Senate Bill 3, portend major, and in many cases very welcome, changes. Among the good:

* De-emphasizing the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills in promoting students. Under the new approach, TAKS scores would supplement other, broader criteria.

* Judging schools on a “growth model” tracking improvement, rather than today’s “gotcha” approach that doesn’t acknowledge different starting points based on economic advantages and disadvantages.

* Better aligning what colleges require and what high schools produce.

All of that is good, unless we get into a mode of standardizing what “college material” is. That would be bad. There’s evidence in this well-meaning legislation that it would result in exactly that, to the detriment of some promising students.

At issue is the use of high school end-of-course exams to certify a student as “college-ready.”

Pass the end-of-course exam for advanced English and Algebra II, and that’s your prize under an “advanced high school program,” according to the legislation. The bill also calls on the state to develop such exams for social studies and science. They would be used to give a state-certified endorsement of college readiness, as well.

Those who didn’t take advanced English or Algebra II, or who couldn’t pass the end-of-course exam in either, could still graduate but with the “alternate performance standard,” meaning “postsecondary-ready” (candidates for community college or technical schools). What critics say it really means is these students would be “remediation-ready” — aka, “not worthy.”

Wait a minute. What about the young man who can master the complexities of a circuit board but who is knock-kneed putting his words in prose? What about the young lady who is the next great novelist but who crumples into a heap in the face of algebraic equations?

I’ll guarantee that I had an “advanced high school program,” but one that was loaded toward English and journalism my senior year, with no math. Would that have made me not “college-ready”?

Some minority advocacy groups fear an “apartheid” system, with the top-10 rule in jeopardy and end-of-course exams assuming such weight. They warn that the Algebra II end-of-course test itself could marginalize staggering numbers of Hispanic and African-American students, making them think they aren’t college material.

It is true that Texas colleges spend too much time and resources on remediation for students who need help in math or English. But let’s acknowledge that it’s a pretty good investment if it results in the first college graduate in a family’s history.

It’s one thing not to reinforce the privileges of the pampered when we want students ready for college. It’s another to admit that for some, no matter how worthy, college is the last place they ever thought they’d be. We should think bigger for them.

John Young’s column appears Thursday, Sunday and occasionally Tuesday. E-mail: jyoung@wacotrib.com.

Bills would bolster technical education

By Kate Alexander | AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Thursday, March 05, 2009

Texas high school students who aren't headed to college need better opportunities to prepare for jobs even before they graduate, legislators said this week as they introduced two bills to bolster career and technical education.

Led by Senate Education Chairwoman Florence Shapiro, the lawmakers said they hope the renewed push for such education will both prepare a better crop of workers for Texas employers and propel more students to a high school diploma.

One bill aims to encourage high schools to offer coursework aligned with specific career opportunities so a student could graduate with both a high school diploma and technical certification. Under the bill, the state would pay for the certification.

Shapiro, a Plano Republican, said the career and technology courses will not be the vocational classes of yesterday. Such courses will be kept "a part of and not apart from our academic program," she said.

Students would still be required to take four years of math and science, as college-bound students are, but they would have more relevant course options, such as engineering mathematics, said Republican Rep. Rob Eissler of The Woodlands, the bill's House sponsor and chairman of the Public Education Committee.

Schools that develop top-notch career and technology programs would have the opportunity to earn accolades under a new statewide accountability bill by Shapiro and Eissler that is to be unveiled today.

The second bill provides grants to foster career and technology programs at community colleges.

Cost estimates for implementing both bills were not available Wednesday.

The renewed focus on career and technology education is coming at a critical juncture, business groups say.

Luke Bellsnyder, executive director of the Texas Association of Manufacturers, said his members are the consumers of what Texas schools produce.

Up to 40 percent of workers in Texas manufacturing jobs will be eligible for retirement in the next five years, but Texas is not producing the skilled young workers to replace them, Bellsnyder said.

"We're just not seeing the product we need to compete globally and compete with our neighboring states," Bellsnyder said.