Spent time in Georgia this past week. The changing demographics are definitely impacting outcomes. They're registering, for example, a phenomenal 300% increase in the Latino population—virtually all immigrant and poor. They are concentrated in the poultry, carpet, and farming industries. They are mostly all Mexican and first generation with virutally no Mexican/Mexican American middle class. It breaks up the black-white dynamic and introduces a new mix, as well as new challenges. The upside is that Georgia has no history with Mexicans/Mexican Americans and despite fears of this new diaspora, hope also seems to exist coupled with a will on the part of many in power to do something positiive about this. Have had Georgia on my mind....
-Angela
Some minorities have less than half a chance to earn a diploma on time.
Paul Donsky - Staff
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Less than half of Georgia's black and Hispanic students graduate from high school within four years, according to a study by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University.
The report, to be released Thursday during a conference at Atlanta's Spelman College, found that 47 percent of the state's black students and 43 percent of Hispanic students graduate on time, compared with 64 percent of non-Hispanic white students.
The study, which looked at graduation rates across the South, is based on 2002 data, the latest available.
"A 50-50 chance for minority students . . . is just totally unacceptable," said Dan Losen, a co-author of the report.
Georgia's overall graduation rate of 58 percent ranked below the average of 65 percent for the Southern region, which includes 16 states and the District of Columbia.
The study also found that DeKalb County had the lowest overall graduation rate, regardless of race and ethnicity, among the five largest Georgia school systems, with 51 percent of students finishing high school in four years. Cobb County had the highest graduation rate, 73 percent, followed by Gwinnett County at 71 percent, Fulton County at 68 percent and the city of Atlanta at 52 percent.
In each of the five school districts, black and Hispanic students graduated on time at a much lower rate than non-Hispanic white students.
"Schools are doing very poorly in terms of providing adequate teaching, curriculum and the kind of resources that poor, minority kids need to achieve," said Losen, a senior associate at Harvard's Civil Rights Project.
Educators on the front lines say students who drop out are often ill prepared when they enter high school.
"They come in behind, and it's just difficult to catch up," said James Jackson, principal at Crim High School in East Atlanta.
Losen said schools looking to increase test scores are increasingly forcing low-achieving students out of school.
The Harvard report said students who fail to finish high school will face much lower earning potential and are at greater risk of landing in jail than their peers who graduate.
Losen said he hoped the study serves as a wake-up call.
"Eventually, people are going to see that we need to be graduating far more students than we are," he said.
The study calculated graduation rates by taking the number of students entering high school and dividing by the number of graduates four years later.
McNair High in DeKalb County, for instance, had 505 students in its freshman class the fall of 2001. Only 200 students are expected to graduate Saturday with a diploma --- a rate of 40 percent, said principal Albert Sye.
"That's a disturbing trend," said Sye, who is finishing his first year on the job.
Atlanta-area school officials are trying to address the problem. McNair, for instance, is one of many high schools now offering more nurturing environments for ninth-grade students. McNair also has so-called career academies with themes like communications and the arts, which aim to spark student interest and make learning more relevant.
Atlanta Public Schools will open two new high schools next year. Crim High in east Atlanta will turn into a "non-traditional" school for students who have dropped out or need a flexible schedule to accommodate work or child care schedules.
The new Carver High will feature four small, largely independent mini-schools with different themes, such as performing arts and science and technology. The goal is to create more intimate, and interesting, learning environments that will make students excited to learn.
"Those kinds of ideas show a lot of promise," said Harvard's Losen.
But he said Georgia must do much more, such as offer incentives to recruit and retain quality teachers to work with minority students.
He urged the state to set higher graduation rate targets. Georgia requires high schools to have a graduation rate of at least 60 percent or face sanctions under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
"That's an outrageously low goal," Losen said.
A study last year by the Harvard group and other organizations found that Georgia's graduation rate was the fourth worst in the nation.
Dana Tofig, spokesman for the state Department of Education, said state School Superintendent Kathy Cox is determined to improve Georgia's graduation rates. Georgia reported a 65 percent graduation rate in 2004, up from 63 percent in 2003 and 61 percent in 2002.
Tofig noted out that students in grades 3 and 5 now must pass parts of the state curriculum test to be promoted. Eighth-grade requirements are coming next year.
"We want to make sure that kids are ready to move on to high school when it's time to get there," he said.
"We're not happy with the graduation rates, and we want it to get better."
2002 GRADUATION RATE
..............Did not graduate on time..Graduated
SOUTH REGION...... 64.5%..................35.5%
FLORIDA............57.4%..................42.6%
GEORGIA............57.6%..................42.4%
LOUISIANA..........66.4%..................33.6%
MISSISSIPPI........60.7%..................39.3%
NORTH CAROLINA.... 64.6%..................35.4%
---
GEORGIA BY RACE
..............Did not graduate on time..Graduated
Native American....67.3%..................32.7%
Asian..............23.4%..................76.6%
Hispanic.......... 57.6%..................42.4%
Black..............52.6%..................47.4%
White..............36.3%..................63.7%
---
Source: Harvard University
/ ELIZABETH LANDT / Staff
http://www.ajc.com/wednesday/content/epaper/editions/wednesday/news_24a8fde117c2e14300fb.html
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Editorial: Don't Expect Miracle on Public Education
Web Posted: 05/17/2005 12:00 AM CDT
San Antonio Express-News
Trying to keep up with education and tax reform efforts in the Texas Legislature is like riding a bucking bronco or attempting to jump on a moving train.
In all three cases, the chances are great for getting left behind in the dust.
While there is agreement that education and taxation in the state require greater equity, there is no clear consensus about how to accomplish both tasks.
And, unfortunately, the need to properly fund education clashes with the Legislature's desire to lower property taxes and avoid other tax increases as much as possible.
That's the situation as differing versions of legislation passed by the House and the Senate head for the conference committee that has the task of reconciling the efforts.
After seeing what the House had produced, we held out hopes that the Senate would arrive at better results. But a statewide property tax that held the potential of more equitable education funding went by the wayside in the Senate. Thus, differences between the two were not so great after all.
Even if legislative leaders pass variations of House Bill 2 and House Bill 3, the education and tax reform bills, this session, they do not provide a meaningful comprehensive reform or a long-term solution to the problems that have bedeviled Texas for a decade or more.
They offer short-term solutions held together with chewing gum and baling wire.
The basic Robin Hood system remains in place, although it affects fewer school districts.
Although property taxes would be cut, less by the Senate bill than by the House version, additional funding for education would come through raising a variety of other taxes, including the cigarette tax and sales tax. Some new form of business tax is inevitable as well.
The smoke won't clear until legislation emerges from conference. Meanwhile, the bronco continues bucking and the train rolls on.
http://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/editorials/stories/MYSA051705.06B.education.27ecfbae9.html
San Antonio Express-News
Trying to keep up with education and tax reform efforts in the Texas Legislature is like riding a bucking bronco or attempting to jump on a moving train.
In all three cases, the chances are great for getting left behind in the dust.
While there is agreement that education and taxation in the state require greater equity, there is no clear consensus about how to accomplish both tasks.
And, unfortunately, the need to properly fund education clashes with the Legislature's desire to lower property taxes and avoid other tax increases as much as possible.
That's the situation as differing versions of legislation passed by the House and the Senate head for the conference committee that has the task of reconciling the efforts.
After seeing what the House had produced, we held out hopes that the Senate would arrive at better results. But a statewide property tax that held the potential of more equitable education funding went by the wayside in the Senate. Thus, differences between the two were not so great after all.
Even if legislative leaders pass variations of House Bill 2 and House Bill 3, the education and tax reform bills, this session, they do not provide a meaningful comprehensive reform or a long-term solution to the problems that have bedeviled Texas for a decade or more.
They offer short-term solutions held together with chewing gum and baling wire.
The basic Robin Hood system remains in place, although it affects fewer school districts.
Although property taxes would be cut, less by the Senate bill than by the House version, additional funding for education would come through raising a variety of other taxes, including the cigarette tax and sales tax. Some new form of business tax is inevitable as well.
The smoke won't clear until legislation emerges from conference. Meanwhile, the bronco continues bucking and the train rolls on.
http://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/editorials/stories/MYSA051705.06B.education.27ecfbae9.html
Monday, May 16, 2005
All About Accountability: Gold Standard or Fool's Gold
May 2005 | Volume 62 | Number 8
Supporting New Educators Pages 79-81
All About Accountability / NAEP: Gold Standard or Fool's Gold?
W. James Popham
Since 1969, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has periodically tested samples of U.S. students to determine their skills and knowledge in major subject areas. NAEP designers call their assessment program The Nation's Report Card, and, because of the substantial psychometric sophistication they lavish on its tests, regard it as the “gold standard” of education measurement.
Recently, state-by-state NAEP results have been reported alongside the results from the state accountability tests required by No Child Left Behind (NCLB).1 With rare exceptions, far fewer students score “at or above proficient” on the NAEP tests than on the state accountability tests. The national test's results are widely viewed as more credible: People believe that the NAEP is objective and rigorous, whereas state NCLB tests can be soft and self-serving.
I can best explain the flaws in this thinking through a modern-day parable. Imagine that two federal health-related programs have recently been installed in U.S. public schools: One focuses on promoting students' physical conditioning (let's call it “Fitness Forever”), and one focuses on students' auditory ability (let's go with “Hearing Health”). For the Fitness Forever initiative, each state measures every student's physical fitness using its own state-chosen assessments and arrives at its own definition of whether a student is normal, above normal, or below normal. Annually, every state must report the percentage of its public school students who display normal-or-above physical fitness.
In contrast, the Hearing Health program evaluates each state's success according to a nationally collected, sample-based assessment of students' hearing using identical, standardized audiometric tests. On the basis of a prestigious national panel's definitions of normal, above normal, and below normal, federal authorities annually report state-by-state percentages of students whose hearing is classified as normal-or-above.
If state-by-state results on the two assessments were published side by side, would it make sense to use the scores on the nationally administered hearing test to confirm the validity of a state's results on its state-determined fitness test? Of course not! The fitness and hearing tests were designed to satisfy different measurement functions.
The moral of this parable should be apparent: It is absurd to confirm the legitimacy of results derived from one test by using results based on a markedly different test. But, the reader may protest, don't state accountability tests and NAEP tests have the same measurement function: namely, to assess students' math and reading achievement levels? Actually, no.
State accountability tests are designed to detect instructional improvements in a state's public schools. Indeed, NCLB gave each state's educators 12 years to get their students to earn proficient-or-better test scores, stipulating that each public school must make adequate yearly progress in attaining that lofty goal. If a state's NCLB tests are not sensitive enough to detect instructional improvement, then the cornerstone of NCLB's accountability strategy crumbles.
NAEP, on the other hand, was originally designed to serve as an objective, nonpartisan mechanism for monitoring long-term student achievement trends in the United States. NAEP was never supposed to play a role in enhancing the learning of U.S. students. In fact, for more than three decades, those who govern NAEP have unrelentingly resisted any serious effort to make their “gold standard” assessments contribute to improving the instruction taking place in the nation's classrooms. NAEP officials are, above all, devoted to the accuracy of NAEP-based longitudinal analyses. Making NAEP truly sensitive to changes in instruction would be antithetical to the thinking of those who run NAEP.
Yes, NAEP provides educators with the curricular frameworks on which its assessments are based. And in my view, those frameworks are first-rate. But during the nuts-and-bolts creation of NAEP tests, developers take care notto create assessments apt to be meaningfully influenced by instructional interventions. Such instructional sensitivity would diminish the measurement bliss that longitudinal analyses can provide to NAEP psychometricians. Looking back at NAEP results over the years, you'll rarely see anything other than fairly minor fluctuations in performance. So, if you're seeking systematic evidence of long-term instructional progress, don't look at NAEP scores. A more accurate label for this costly federal program would be the National Assessment of Educational No-Progress.
Should the public and education policymakers regard NAEP results as “fool's gold”? Of course not. NAEP has carved out its own distinctive measurement mission. But a test that fulfills one measurement function should not be employed to validate a test that fulfills a different function. When the results of this “gold standard” test are invoked in an attempt to judge the accuracy and credibility of state-level NCLB test results, then the people doing the judging are the fools.
Endnote
1 For example, see Skinner, R. A. (2005, Jan. 6). State of the states. Education Week, pp. 77–78, 80.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
W. James Popham is Emeritus Professor in the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information studies; wpopham@ucla.edu.
Supporting New Educators Pages 79-81
All About Accountability / NAEP: Gold Standard or Fool's Gold?
W. James Popham
Since 1969, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has periodically tested samples of U.S. students to determine their skills and knowledge in major subject areas. NAEP designers call their assessment program The Nation's Report Card, and, because of the substantial psychometric sophistication they lavish on its tests, regard it as the “gold standard” of education measurement.
Recently, state-by-state NAEP results have been reported alongside the results from the state accountability tests required by No Child Left Behind (NCLB).1 With rare exceptions, far fewer students score “at or above proficient” on the NAEP tests than on the state accountability tests. The national test's results are widely viewed as more credible: People believe that the NAEP is objective and rigorous, whereas state NCLB tests can be soft and self-serving.
I can best explain the flaws in this thinking through a modern-day parable. Imagine that two federal health-related programs have recently been installed in U.S. public schools: One focuses on promoting students' physical conditioning (let's call it “Fitness Forever”), and one focuses on students' auditory ability (let's go with “Hearing Health”). For the Fitness Forever initiative, each state measures every student's physical fitness using its own state-chosen assessments and arrives at its own definition of whether a student is normal, above normal, or below normal. Annually, every state must report the percentage of its public school students who display normal-or-above physical fitness.
In contrast, the Hearing Health program evaluates each state's success according to a nationally collected, sample-based assessment of students' hearing using identical, standardized audiometric tests. On the basis of a prestigious national panel's definitions of normal, above normal, and below normal, federal authorities annually report state-by-state percentages of students whose hearing is classified as normal-or-above.
If state-by-state results on the two assessments were published side by side, would it make sense to use the scores on the nationally administered hearing test to confirm the validity of a state's results on its state-determined fitness test? Of course not! The fitness and hearing tests were designed to satisfy different measurement functions.
The moral of this parable should be apparent: It is absurd to confirm the legitimacy of results derived from one test by using results based on a markedly different test. But, the reader may protest, don't state accountability tests and NAEP tests have the same measurement function: namely, to assess students' math and reading achievement levels? Actually, no.
State accountability tests are designed to detect instructional improvements in a state's public schools. Indeed, NCLB gave each state's educators 12 years to get their students to earn proficient-or-better test scores, stipulating that each public school must make adequate yearly progress in attaining that lofty goal. If a state's NCLB tests are not sensitive enough to detect instructional improvement, then the cornerstone of NCLB's accountability strategy crumbles.
NAEP, on the other hand, was originally designed to serve as an objective, nonpartisan mechanism for monitoring long-term student achievement trends in the United States. NAEP was never supposed to play a role in enhancing the learning of U.S. students. In fact, for more than three decades, those who govern NAEP have unrelentingly resisted any serious effort to make their “gold standard” assessments contribute to improving the instruction taking place in the nation's classrooms. NAEP officials are, above all, devoted to the accuracy of NAEP-based longitudinal analyses. Making NAEP truly sensitive to changes in instruction would be antithetical to the thinking of those who run NAEP.
Yes, NAEP provides educators with the curricular frameworks on which its assessments are based. And in my view, those frameworks are first-rate. But during the nuts-and-bolts creation of NAEP tests, developers take care notto create assessments apt to be meaningfully influenced by instructional interventions. Such instructional sensitivity would diminish the measurement bliss that longitudinal analyses can provide to NAEP psychometricians. Looking back at NAEP results over the years, you'll rarely see anything other than fairly minor fluctuations in performance. So, if you're seeking systematic evidence of long-term instructional progress, don't look at NAEP scores. A more accurate label for this costly federal program would be the National Assessment of Educational No-Progress.
Should the public and education policymakers regard NAEP results as “fool's gold”? Of course not. NAEP has carved out its own distinctive measurement mission. But a test that fulfills one measurement function should not be employed to validate a test that fulfills a different function. When the results of this “gold standard” test are invoked in an attempt to judge the accuracy and credibility of state-level NCLB test results, then the people doing the judging are the fools.
Endnote
1 For example, see Skinner, R. A. (2005, Jan. 6). State of the states. Education Week, pp. 77–78, 80.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
W. James Popham is Emeritus Professor in the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information studies; wpopham@ucla.edu.
English Spoken Here
Studies Suggest the Best Ways to Help Non-Native Speakers Learn English Well
by Susan Black / American School Board Journal
After the breakup of the Soviet Union, three teenage Lithuanian boys from different families landed in a small school in rural upstate New York. Their parents, hoping to provide them with the proverbial “better life,” remained in their homeland and put the boys in the hands of the school and foster families.
The three spoke very little English -- they could count to 10 and recite only a handful of words and phrases. They showed up with nothing but tattered copies of Lithuanian-English dictionaries and an unstoppable drive to succeed in academics and sports.
“Everyone in the school and community -- teachers, kids, townspeople -- took the boys under their wing,” the superintendent recalled. “Maybe we were inexperienced and a little naive, but we believed we could put a plan together to help them succeed.”
He was right. A first-grade teacher used picture books and phonics to teach the boys basic English, and other teachers chipped in, constructing vocabulary lists with pictures that corresponded to chapters in their high school textbooks. Some students became buddy-readers for classroom lessons and homework assignments, and still others volunteered to tutor the boys after school.
“It was something to see,” the then-counselor remarked. “These boys, each over six feet tall, practiced long shots on the basketball court, but during time-outs they sat on the bench studying their first-grade books.”
How did things turn out? In high school the boys earned GPAs over 3.5 and passed Regents exams with scores of 92 and above. In college they earned graduate degrees in computer science and business administration. Two went on to play professional basketball in Europe.
Learning English well
Will the 5.5 million English-language learners now enrolled in the nation’s schools have similar opportunities?
Or will their English remain rudimentary, increasing the chance that they’ll languish at the bottom of their class and drop out?
Not just learning English, but learning English well, makes all the difference, says Steven Klein in a 2004 report on language minorities for the National Center for Education Statistics. It’s a distinction that’s increasingly important, thanks to the No Child Left Behind Act’s requirement that schools show adequate yearly progress for their English-language learners, as well as their other students.
And, as Klein and his colleagues report, the distinction is crucial for students:
• English-language learners are more likely to finish high school if they speak English “very well.” Students who say they speak English “not well” or “not at all” are more likely to drop out.
• Spanish-speaking students who do not speak English well are more likely to repeat grades and drop out.
• English learners who speak English “very well” enroll in college at about the same rate as native English-speaking students. Students who have difficulty speaking English are far less likely to try college.
• For Spanish-speaking students, 31 percent who speak English very well sign up for college, but only 6 percent of those who speak little English enroll.
The time factor
But learning English well takes time. The American Educational Research Association (AERA) says students who begin school speaking little or no English can gain reading and spelling skills equal to those of native English speakers in two years -- if they receive “skilled, explicit instruction” in phonics and the recognition of spoken sounds, as well as frequent in-class assessments and daily practice reading in English.
In Philadelphia, kindergarten children from low-income Asian families who received systematic reading instruction and individual tutoring read at close to grade level by the end of first grade. And in Canada, nearly 1,000 non-English-speaking kindergartners who had intensive lessons on word identification, spelling, and reading comprehension achieved on par with their classmates by the time they reached second grade.
Kindergartners who grow up speaking English have a repertoire of 5,000-7,000 words, but many English learners know only a handful of English words. Having these students memorize new words, a common strategy, has minimal effect. Instead, AERA recommends teaching words in context, especially through conversations, stories, science experiments, and other vocabulary-building activities.
English learners also need lessons in English grammar and word order, which are likely to be different from the linguistic structure of their native language. English learners of all ages benefit from the same kind of beginning reading instruction that works for English-speaking children -- but they need more of it, and they need immediate intervention to correct pronunciation and other errors. (For more on literacy, see “Reaching the Older Reader,” April.)
Becoming proficient
Many schools give English-language learners a scant one year to become proficient. But researchers such as Florida State University’s Vickie Lake and N. Eleni Pappamihiel say that’s unrealistic.
English learners can master social English -- or basic interpersonal communication skills, often referred to as “playground English” -- in a year or two. But Lake and Pappamihiel say it takes five to eight years to learn academic English, or cognitive academic language proficiency. And this is the English students need to read textbooks, pass tests, and otherwise excel in school.
Appearances can be deceiving, Lake and Pappamihiel caution, noting that many English learners quickly learn to communicate such things as favorite games and foods. But learning textbook words, such as “ecosystem” and “equation,” takes much more time. They recommend that teachers use visual and contextual clues, such as pictures and labels, to speed up these students’ learning during classroom lessons.
The federal government recently acknowledged it takes more time than previously thought for non-native speakers to learn English.
In February 2004, former Education Secretary Rod Paige introduced a new policy that “adds flexibility” to NCLB’s testing requirements for language-minority students. Schools had been required to test English learners in math and reading during their first year of learning English; now schools have “a little extra time” -- an additional one-year transition period -- to help students learn English.
What works and what doesn’t
But the question remains -- what’s the best way to teach English to English learners?
Some states have allowed voters to decide. California, for instance, passed Proposition 227 in 1998, followed by a student accountability mandate in 1999, requiring that English learners be taught and tested through English-only programs instead of bilingual programs. And Arizona passed Proposition 203 in November 2000, requiring public schools to conduct all instruction in English and placing English learners in “an intensive one-year English immersion program to teach them the language as quickly as possible.”
But some researchers say the English-only approach shortchanges English learners in the long run.
A five-year study by the Center for Research on Education, Diversity, and Excellence examined 200,000 K-12 Spanish-speaking students’ achievement in a number of urban and rural school sites from Maine to Oregon.
Wayne Thomas and Virginia Collier, the project’s principal investigators, reviewed English learners’ scores on standardized tests and found:
• Students in English-only immersion classes showed large decreases in reading and math achievement by fifth grade, compared with students in bilingual classes or classes in English as a second language. Most dropouts came from the immersion group, and those who remained in school through 11th grade fell to the 25th percentile on standardized reading tests.
• English learners who were given ESL content classes for two or three years, followed by immersion in English, improved their academic performance.
• English learners assigned to separate remedial programs remained deficient in overall achievement. Students in language-enrichment programs gained higher proficiency in English than those in remedial programs.
• Students with no proficiency in English who were placed in short-term programs of one to three years achieved far less than those in four-year programs. Four years was found to be the minimum required to raise English learners to grade-level performance.
• English learners schooled entirely in English initially outperformed those schooled bilingually when tested in English, but by the secondary grades, bilingually schooled English learners had higher achievement.
UCLA researcher Kris Gutierrez reached similar conclusions. In a 2002 study of English learners attending California schools, Gutierrez and her colleagues found that, contrary to public opinion, English-only programs “predict a very dismal future” for large numbers of elementary-age students.
School programs that are “subtractive” -- that is, they take away English learners’ native language and use English only for classroom learning and tests -- generally produce negative results, Gutierrez reported. Students are far more likely to master English and have higher achievement when schools use an “additive” approach -- that is, when they are allowed to use their native language while they’re learning English.
A 1974 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court supports that approach. In Lau v. Nichols, the Court found that Chinese students were excluded from educational opportunities, even though they had received the same instruction and materials as English-speaking classmates. The court decided that the Chinese students’ inadequate English left them unable to learn in an equal, fair, or developmentally appropriate manner.
Easing into English
All things considered, English learners seem to fare better when school leaders and teachers are welcoming and willing to help.
Kama Einhorn, a specialist in teaching techniques and teacher training, says schools need to remember that new English learners, especially those who are anxious and afraid, need “a little shelter from the storm.”
She recommends easing them into learning English with these strategies:
• Pair English learners with English-speaking buddies for such things as school tours, social conversations, and paired learning.
• Give English learners picture dictionaries, and label classroom items in both English and their native languages.
• Teach English-speaking students some basic vocabulary in the English learners’ home language, and incorporate classroom learning about the English learners’ culture and community into daily lessons.
• Provide translators for parents at school meetings and during home visits.
• Involve English learners by making lessons challenging but achievable.
• Correct language errors in a helpful, nonthreatening manner.
Remembering the Lithuanian boys in the rural New York school, perhaps the first and best thing schools and communities can do is take their English learners under widespread wings.
Susan Black, an ASBJ contributing editor, is an education research consultant in Hammondsport, N.Y.
Selected references
Einhorn, Kama. “Welcoming Second-language Learners: Terrific Techniques to Ease Students from Every Nation into the School Year.” Instructor, September 2002, pp. 54-55.
Gutierrez, Kris, and others. “Sounding American: The Consequences of New Reforms on English Language Learners.” Reading Research Quarterly, July-September 2002, pp. 328-345.
Klein, Steven, and others. “Language Minorities and Their Educational and Labor Market Indicators -- Recent Trends.” National Center for Education Statistics, June 2004.
Lake, Vickie, and N. Eleni Pappamihiel. “Effective Practices and Principles to Support English Language Learners in the Early Childhood Classroom.” Childhood Education, Summer 2003, pp. 200-2003.
Resnick, Lauren, editor. “English Language Learners: Boosting Academic Achievement.” Research Points: Essential Information for Education Policy.” American Educational Research Association, Winter 2004.
Thomas, Wayne, and Virginia Collier. “A National Study of School Effectiveness for Language Minority Students’ Long-Term Academic Achievement.” Center for Research on Education, Diversity, and Excellence, 2002.
© 2005, NSBA
http://www.asbj.com/current/research.html
by Susan Black / American School Board Journal
After the breakup of the Soviet Union, three teenage Lithuanian boys from different families landed in a small school in rural upstate New York. Their parents, hoping to provide them with the proverbial “better life,” remained in their homeland and put the boys in the hands of the school and foster families.
The three spoke very little English -- they could count to 10 and recite only a handful of words and phrases. They showed up with nothing but tattered copies of Lithuanian-English dictionaries and an unstoppable drive to succeed in academics and sports.
“Everyone in the school and community -- teachers, kids, townspeople -- took the boys under their wing,” the superintendent recalled. “Maybe we were inexperienced and a little naive, but we believed we could put a plan together to help them succeed.”
He was right. A first-grade teacher used picture books and phonics to teach the boys basic English, and other teachers chipped in, constructing vocabulary lists with pictures that corresponded to chapters in their high school textbooks. Some students became buddy-readers for classroom lessons and homework assignments, and still others volunteered to tutor the boys after school.
“It was something to see,” the then-counselor remarked. “These boys, each over six feet tall, practiced long shots on the basketball court, but during time-outs they sat on the bench studying their first-grade books.”
How did things turn out? In high school the boys earned GPAs over 3.5 and passed Regents exams with scores of 92 and above. In college they earned graduate degrees in computer science and business administration. Two went on to play professional basketball in Europe.
Learning English well
Will the 5.5 million English-language learners now enrolled in the nation’s schools have similar opportunities?
Or will their English remain rudimentary, increasing the chance that they’ll languish at the bottom of their class and drop out?
Not just learning English, but learning English well, makes all the difference, says Steven Klein in a 2004 report on language minorities for the National Center for Education Statistics. It’s a distinction that’s increasingly important, thanks to the No Child Left Behind Act’s requirement that schools show adequate yearly progress for their English-language learners, as well as their other students.
And, as Klein and his colleagues report, the distinction is crucial for students:
• English-language learners are more likely to finish high school if they speak English “very well.” Students who say they speak English “not well” or “not at all” are more likely to drop out.
• Spanish-speaking students who do not speak English well are more likely to repeat grades and drop out.
• English learners who speak English “very well” enroll in college at about the same rate as native English-speaking students. Students who have difficulty speaking English are far less likely to try college.
• For Spanish-speaking students, 31 percent who speak English very well sign up for college, but only 6 percent of those who speak little English enroll.
The time factor
But learning English well takes time. The American Educational Research Association (AERA) says students who begin school speaking little or no English can gain reading and spelling skills equal to those of native English speakers in two years -- if they receive “skilled, explicit instruction” in phonics and the recognition of spoken sounds, as well as frequent in-class assessments and daily practice reading in English.
In Philadelphia, kindergarten children from low-income Asian families who received systematic reading instruction and individual tutoring read at close to grade level by the end of first grade. And in Canada, nearly 1,000 non-English-speaking kindergartners who had intensive lessons on word identification, spelling, and reading comprehension achieved on par with their classmates by the time they reached second grade.
Kindergartners who grow up speaking English have a repertoire of 5,000-7,000 words, but many English learners know only a handful of English words. Having these students memorize new words, a common strategy, has minimal effect. Instead, AERA recommends teaching words in context, especially through conversations, stories, science experiments, and other vocabulary-building activities.
English learners also need lessons in English grammar and word order, which are likely to be different from the linguistic structure of their native language. English learners of all ages benefit from the same kind of beginning reading instruction that works for English-speaking children -- but they need more of it, and they need immediate intervention to correct pronunciation and other errors. (For more on literacy, see “Reaching the Older Reader,” April.)
Becoming proficient
Many schools give English-language learners a scant one year to become proficient. But researchers such as Florida State University’s Vickie Lake and N. Eleni Pappamihiel say that’s unrealistic.
English learners can master social English -- or basic interpersonal communication skills, often referred to as “playground English” -- in a year or two. But Lake and Pappamihiel say it takes five to eight years to learn academic English, or cognitive academic language proficiency. And this is the English students need to read textbooks, pass tests, and otherwise excel in school.
Appearances can be deceiving, Lake and Pappamihiel caution, noting that many English learners quickly learn to communicate such things as favorite games and foods. But learning textbook words, such as “ecosystem” and “equation,” takes much more time. They recommend that teachers use visual and contextual clues, such as pictures and labels, to speed up these students’ learning during classroom lessons.
The federal government recently acknowledged it takes more time than previously thought for non-native speakers to learn English.
In February 2004, former Education Secretary Rod Paige introduced a new policy that “adds flexibility” to NCLB’s testing requirements for language-minority students. Schools had been required to test English learners in math and reading during their first year of learning English; now schools have “a little extra time” -- an additional one-year transition period -- to help students learn English.
What works and what doesn’t
But the question remains -- what’s the best way to teach English to English learners?
Some states have allowed voters to decide. California, for instance, passed Proposition 227 in 1998, followed by a student accountability mandate in 1999, requiring that English learners be taught and tested through English-only programs instead of bilingual programs. And Arizona passed Proposition 203 in November 2000, requiring public schools to conduct all instruction in English and placing English learners in “an intensive one-year English immersion program to teach them the language as quickly as possible.”
But some researchers say the English-only approach shortchanges English learners in the long run.
A five-year study by the Center for Research on Education, Diversity, and Excellence examined 200,000 K-12 Spanish-speaking students’ achievement in a number of urban and rural school sites from Maine to Oregon.
Wayne Thomas and Virginia Collier, the project’s principal investigators, reviewed English learners’ scores on standardized tests and found:
• Students in English-only immersion classes showed large decreases in reading and math achievement by fifth grade, compared with students in bilingual classes or classes in English as a second language. Most dropouts came from the immersion group, and those who remained in school through 11th grade fell to the 25th percentile on standardized reading tests.
• English learners who were given ESL content classes for two or three years, followed by immersion in English, improved their academic performance.
• English learners assigned to separate remedial programs remained deficient in overall achievement. Students in language-enrichment programs gained higher proficiency in English than those in remedial programs.
• Students with no proficiency in English who were placed in short-term programs of one to three years achieved far less than those in four-year programs. Four years was found to be the minimum required to raise English learners to grade-level performance.
• English learners schooled entirely in English initially outperformed those schooled bilingually when tested in English, but by the secondary grades, bilingually schooled English learners had higher achievement.
UCLA researcher Kris Gutierrez reached similar conclusions. In a 2002 study of English learners attending California schools, Gutierrez and her colleagues found that, contrary to public opinion, English-only programs “predict a very dismal future” for large numbers of elementary-age students.
School programs that are “subtractive” -- that is, they take away English learners’ native language and use English only for classroom learning and tests -- generally produce negative results, Gutierrez reported. Students are far more likely to master English and have higher achievement when schools use an “additive” approach -- that is, when they are allowed to use their native language while they’re learning English.
A 1974 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court supports that approach. In Lau v. Nichols, the Court found that Chinese students were excluded from educational opportunities, even though they had received the same instruction and materials as English-speaking classmates. The court decided that the Chinese students’ inadequate English left them unable to learn in an equal, fair, or developmentally appropriate manner.
Easing into English
All things considered, English learners seem to fare better when school leaders and teachers are welcoming and willing to help.
Kama Einhorn, a specialist in teaching techniques and teacher training, says schools need to remember that new English learners, especially those who are anxious and afraid, need “a little shelter from the storm.”
She recommends easing them into learning English with these strategies:
• Pair English learners with English-speaking buddies for such things as school tours, social conversations, and paired learning.
• Give English learners picture dictionaries, and label classroom items in both English and their native languages.
• Teach English-speaking students some basic vocabulary in the English learners’ home language, and incorporate classroom learning about the English learners’ culture and community into daily lessons.
• Provide translators for parents at school meetings and during home visits.
• Involve English learners by making lessons challenging but achievable.
• Correct language errors in a helpful, nonthreatening manner.
Remembering the Lithuanian boys in the rural New York school, perhaps the first and best thing schools and communities can do is take their English learners under widespread wings.
Susan Black, an ASBJ contributing editor, is an education research consultant in Hammondsport, N.Y.
Selected references
Einhorn, Kama. “Welcoming Second-language Learners: Terrific Techniques to Ease Students from Every Nation into the School Year.” Instructor, September 2002, pp. 54-55.
Gutierrez, Kris, and others. “Sounding American: The Consequences of New Reforms on English Language Learners.” Reading Research Quarterly, July-September 2002, pp. 328-345.
Klein, Steven, and others. “Language Minorities and Their Educational and Labor Market Indicators -- Recent Trends.” National Center for Education Statistics, June 2004.
Lake, Vickie, and N. Eleni Pappamihiel. “Effective Practices and Principles to Support English Language Learners in the Early Childhood Classroom.” Childhood Education, Summer 2003, pp. 200-2003.
Resnick, Lauren, editor. “English Language Learners: Boosting Academic Achievement.” Research Points: Essential Information for Education Policy.” American Educational Research Association, Winter 2004.
Thomas, Wayne, and Virginia Collier. “A National Study of School Effectiveness for Language Minority Students’ Long-Term Academic Achievement.” Center for Research on Education, Diversity, and Excellence, 2002.
© 2005, NSBA
http://www.asbj.com/current/research.html
OAKLAND: Walkout has schools, city at the ready
Article Last Updated: 5/15/2005 02:49 AM
Walkout has schools, city at the ready
Downtown rally to protest No Child Left Behind on Tuesday
By Alex Katz, STAFF WRITER
Inside Bay Area
OAKLAND — City school hallways may be a lot less crowded Tuesday when local activists, union leaders and others are expected to encourage students to walk out of class and attend a "Take Back Our Schools" rally in downtown Oakland.
The event, not sanctioned by the school district, is designed to teach students about what organizers say are threats to public education on the 51st anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, which officially abolished segregation in public schools.
In past years, school walk-outs have been common during the spring months in Oakland.
But Tuesday's event, planned by both adults and teenagers, is not a walkout, organizer Michael Siegel said.
"I am not organizing a walkout," Siegel said. "I am organizing a conference on Brown v. Board of Education."
Students who come to the event will hear about the federal No Child Left Behind Act and why the district should ignore the law mandating controversial changes at schools that repeatedly fail to raise test scores, organizers said.
Organizers also plan to demand more funding for California schools and a return of "local control" to the Oakland school district, now run by the state after a massive financial collapse two years ago.
Those issues are relatedto the Brown case because they fit "under the rubric of equal education for all," said Siegel, son of school board member Dan Siegel.
Other school board members didn't buy that explanation.
"This is being organized by adults who are using students as political props," school board member Kerry Hamill said. "I want students to be getting the standards during instruction time. I don't want them getting indoctrinated with somebody else's political view. I just can't say enough bad things about it."
Oakland schools State Administrator Randolph Ward has told campuses that the event is not an authorized field trip.
Official field trips must be approved by school principals. On Friday, the principals of Bret Harte Middle School and Oakland Technical High School said they had received no field trip requests from teachers.
An unsanctioned field trip "becomes a tremendous liability if anything was to happen," Oakland Tech Principal Sheilagh Andujar said.
Ward said he hopes students won't be used for political purposes Tuesday.
"I've seen examples of it in the past and I hope it doesn't continue to be tolerated in the community," he said.
A walkout organized to protest the start of the Iraq war in 2003 turned chaotic when hundreds of students left class.
Students at a protest downtown blocked traffic and smacked passing cars, and bottles were thrown from the crowd toward police. Others stormed a BART station and threw rocks at trains.
By all accounts, a number of students have used past walkouts as an opportunity to ditch school.
Siegel said planners of this week's event have worked to avoid similar problems. About 20 people have been trained as "peace keepers" to make sure there are no conflicts during the event, and teachers will instruct students about the issues of the day in class, he said.
"This is fundamental," Siegel said. "If you go to school every day, it makes sense to take a day to reflect on ... the forces that are affecting your education."
http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_2736691
Walkout has schools, city at the ready
Downtown rally to protest No Child Left Behind on Tuesday
By Alex Katz, STAFF WRITER
Inside Bay Area
OAKLAND — City school hallways may be a lot less crowded Tuesday when local activists, union leaders and others are expected to encourage students to walk out of class and attend a "Take Back Our Schools" rally in downtown Oakland.
The event, not sanctioned by the school district, is designed to teach students about what organizers say are threats to public education on the 51st anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, which officially abolished segregation in public schools.
In past years, school walk-outs have been common during the spring months in Oakland.
But Tuesday's event, planned by both adults and teenagers, is not a walkout, organizer Michael Siegel said.
"I am not organizing a walkout," Siegel said. "I am organizing a conference on Brown v. Board of Education."
Students who come to the event will hear about the federal No Child Left Behind Act and why the district should ignore the law mandating controversial changes at schools that repeatedly fail to raise test scores, organizers said.
Organizers also plan to demand more funding for California schools and a return of "local control" to the Oakland school district, now run by the state after a massive financial collapse two years ago.
Those issues are relatedto the Brown case because they fit "under the rubric of equal education for all," said Siegel, son of school board member Dan Siegel.
Other school board members didn't buy that explanation.
"This is being organized by adults who are using students as political props," school board member Kerry Hamill said. "I want students to be getting the standards during instruction time. I don't want them getting indoctrinated with somebody else's political view. I just can't say enough bad things about it."
Oakland schools State Administrator Randolph Ward has told campuses that the event is not an authorized field trip.
Official field trips must be approved by school principals. On Friday, the principals of Bret Harte Middle School and Oakland Technical High School said they had received no field trip requests from teachers.
An unsanctioned field trip "becomes a tremendous liability if anything was to happen," Oakland Tech Principal Sheilagh Andujar said.
Ward said he hopes students won't be used for political purposes Tuesday.
"I've seen examples of it in the past and I hope it doesn't continue to be tolerated in the community," he said.
A walkout organized to protest the start of the Iraq war in 2003 turned chaotic when hundreds of students left class.
Students at a protest downtown blocked traffic and smacked passing cars, and bottles were thrown from the crowd toward police. Others stormed a BART station and threw rocks at trains.
By all accounts, a number of students have used past walkouts as an opportunity to ditch school.
Siegel said planners of this week's event have worked to avoid similar problems. About 20 people have been trained as "peace keepers" to make sure there are no conflicts during the event, and teachers will instruct students about the issues of the day in class, he said.
"This is fundamental," Siegel said. "If you go to school every day, it makes sense to take a day to reflect on ... the forces that are affecting your education."
http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_2736691
If it hasn't passed by now, there's always next session
Friday, May 13, 2005
By CHRISTY HOPPE / The Dallas Morning News
AUSTIN – A few minutes after midnight, the sharp bang of a gavel became the death knell for about 5,000 bills.
It was the deadline for a bill to pass the full House, and it became the clear line between the survivors and (according to their authors) the ideas that were ahead of their time.
The big-ticket items – the $138 billion budget, property tax cuts, school changes, Child Protective Services – had cleared the major hurdles and will continue the sweaty struggle that is the last two weeks of the Legislature's session.
But weary lawmakers Friday were tucking away hundreds of others, like forlorn fans, saying: Just wait till next session.
Bang! Down went a bill to let home-schoolers to attend some public school classes.
Bang! A bill to allow a university student to serve on the board of regents, gone – unless someone can attach it to a Senate bill.
Bang! No clarification of how to measure a knife to determine if the blade is illegally long.
OK, so some bills are more lamentable than others. But not to their authors.
"All these members are disappointed when they don't get their bills up," said House Speaker Tom Craddick. "But ... all the major legislation was passed."
Thus far, the House and Senate have passed a combined 2,340 bills. In 2003, they passed 4,724 new laws, a mark they're unlikely to reach this time. From here on out, everything is an uphill race against the clock.
"This process was meant to be difficult, and I have no problem with that," said Rep. Brian McCall, R-Plano. "Except on my bills."
E-mail choppe@dallasnews.com
LEGISLATURE '05: WHERE THINGS STAND
Deadlines designed to prevent a last-minute legislative free-for-all are looming over Texas lawmakers. The first major one passed late Thursday, when any bill originating in the House had to pass that chamber to become law. Here's where some major legislation stands with the ultimate deadline – the May 30 end of the session – just a little over two weeks away:
TAXES AND SPENDING
$138 billion budget: House and Senate members are meeting this weekend to negotiate a compromise on the one bill they are constitutionally required to pass.
Status: Alive
Limit property appraisal increases to 5% annually: A major defeat for Gov. Rick Perry.
Status: Dead
Gambling initiatives to allow slot machines, casinos and electronic bingo: Social conservatives overcame an expensive lobbying effort.
Status: Dead
Lower the limit on how much local government revenue can increase, and allow voters to rescind the increase: Local governments are fiercely fighting this effort.
Status: Alive
Cut property taxes by raising sales and business taxes: A key to the school-finance fight; can lawmakers reach a deal in time?
Status: Alive
SCHOOLS
Ban on "sexually suggestive" cheerleading: The Senate has no appetite for it.
Status: Dead
EDUCATION
Revamp school finance, raise teacher salaries, start school later, and create a merit pay system: A court order and political chaos could hang in the balance.
Status: Alive
Allow home-schoolers to participate in public school activities: Time ran out for Rep. Brian McCall, R-Plano.
Status: Dead
Give public money to students in low-performing schools for private school tuition: Vouchers, always a contentious issue, are a priority for conservatives.
Status: Critical condition
Restrict the use of the "top 10 percent" rule for automatic college admissions: The House and Senate must reach a deal.
Status: Alive
SOCIAL ISSUES
Ban gay marriage and civil unions through a constitutional amendment: After a bruising fight in the House, no senator has picked up the amendment as a sponsor.
Status: Critical condition
Allow a legal defense for marijuana if used for chronic medical conditions
Status: Dead
Mandate parental consent, instead of notification, for minors to have an abortion
Status: Critical condition
Allow pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions that end a pregnancy
Status: Dead
LAW AND ORDER
Compensation for wrongly convicted
Status: Alive
How to comply with a Supreme Court ruling on the execution of the mentally retarded
Status: Dead
Create the offense of life without parole in capital murder cases: The U.S. Supreme Court gave life to the issue by barring execution of killers younger than 18.
Status: Alive
GOVERNING THEMSELVES
Shut down use of corporate money and late stealth attack ads
Status: Dead
Mandate lawmakers votes on most matters be recorded
Status: Critical condition
YOUR POCKETBOOK
Let Texans order cheaper drugs from Canadian pharmacies
Status: Dead
Make the Texas Residential Construction Commission more consumer friendly: New homebuyers have complained, but developers won this round.
Status: Dead
BUSINESS ISSUES
Ban on Internet hunting by prohibiting for-profit use of camera-mounted rifle
Status: Alive
Worker's compensation reform
Status: Alive
SOCIAL SERVICES
Hire more investigators while privatizing parts of child and adult protective services: Budgetary issues are hanging up a deal on this issue, designated an "emergency" by Gov. Rick Perry.
Status: Alive
Christy Hoppe
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/legislature/stories/051405dntexdeadalive.a5bc07bd.html
By CHRISTY HOPPE / The Dallas Morning News
AUSTIN – A few minutes after midnight, the sharp bang of a gavel became the death knell for about 5,000 bills.
It was the deadline for a bill to pass the full House, and it became the clear line between the survivors and (according to their authors) the ideas that were ahead of their time.
The big-ticket items – the $138 billion budget, property tax cuts, school changes, Child Protective Services – had cleared the major hurdles and will continue the sweaty struggle that is the last two weeks of the Legislature's session.
But weary lawmakers Friday were tucking away hundreds of others, like forlorn fans, saying: Just wait till next session.
Bang! Down went a bill to let home-schoolers to attend some public school classes.
Bang! A bill to allow a university student to serve on the board of regents, gone – unless someone can attach it to a Senate bill.
Bang! No clarification of how to measure a knife to determine if the blade is illegally long.
OK, so some bills are more lamentable than others. But not to their authors.
"All these members are disappointed when they don't get their bills up," said House Speaker Tom Craddick. "But ... all the major legislation was passed."
Thus far, the House and Senate have passed a combined 2,340 bills. In 2003, they passed 4,724 new laws, a mark they're unlikely to reach this time. From here on out, everything is an uphill race against the clock.
"This process was meant to be difficult, and I have no problem with that," said Rep. Brian McCall, R-Plano. "Except on my bills."
E-mail choppe@dallasnews.com
LEGISLATURE '05: WHERE THINGS STAND
Deadlines designed to prevent a last-minute legislative free-for-all are looming over Texas lawmakers. The first major one passed late Thursday, when any bill originating in the House had to pass that chamber to become law. Here's where some major legislation stands with the ultimate deadline – the May 30 end of the session – just a little over two weeks away:
TAXES AND SPENDING
$138 billion budget: House and Senate members are meeting this weekend to negotiate a compromise on the one bill they are constitutionally required to pass.
Status: Alive
Limit property appraisal increases to 5% annually: A major defeat for Gov. Rick Perry.
Status: Dead
Gambling initiatives to allow slot machines, casinos and electronic bingo: Social conservatives overcame an expensive lobbying effort.
Status: Dead
Lower the limit on how much local government revenue can increase, and allow voters to rescind the increase: Local governments are fiercely fighting this effort.
Status: Alive
Cut property taxes by raising sales and business taxes: A key to the school-finance fight; can lawmakers reach a deal in time?
Status: Alive
SCHOOLS
Ban on "sexually suggestive" cheerleading: The Senate has no appetite for it.
Status: Dead
EDUCATION
Revamp school finance, raise teacher salaries, start school later, and create a merit pay system: A court order and political chaos could hang in the balance.
Status: Alive
Allow home-schoolers to participate in public school activities: Time ran out for Rep. Brian McCall, R-Plano.
Status: Dead
Give public money to students in low-performing schools for private school tuition: Vouchers, always a contentious issue, are a priority for conservatives.
Status: Critical condition
Restrict the use of the "top 10 percent" rule for automatic college admissions: The House and Senate must reach a deal.
Status: Alive
SOCIAL ISSUES
Ban gay marriage and civil unions through a constitutional amendment: After a bruising fight in the House, no senator has picked up the amendment as a sponsor.
Status: Critical condition
Allow a legal defense for marijuana if used for chronic medical conditions
Status: Dead
Mandate parental consent, instead of notification, for minors to have an abortion
Status: Critical condition
Allow pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions that end a pregnancy
Status: Dead
LAW AND ORDER
Compensation for wrongly convicted
Status: Alive
How to comply with a Supreme Court ruling on the execution of the mentally retarded
Status: Dead
Create the offense of life without parole in capital murder cases: The U.S. Supreme Court gave life to the issue by barring execution of killers younger than 18.
Status: Alive
GOVERNING THEMSELVES
Shut down use of corporate money and late stealth attack ads
Status: Dead
Mandate lawmakers votes on most matters be recorded
Status: Critical condition
YOUR POCKETBOOK
Let Texans order cheaper drugs from Canadian pharmacies
Status: Dead
Make the Texas Residential Construction Commission more consumer friendly: New homebuyers have complained, but developers won this round.
Status: Dead
BUSINESS ISSUES
Ban on Internet hunting by prohibiting for-profit use of camera-mounted rifle
Status: Alive
Worker's compensation reform
Status: Alive
SOCIAL SERVICES
Hire more investigators while privatizing parts of child and adult protective services: Budgetary issues are hanging up a deal on this issue, designated an "emergency" by Gov. Rick Perry.
Status: Alive
Christy Hoppe
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/legislature/stories/051405dntexdeadalive.a5bc07bd.html
Recruiters Over Teachers and Students
May 16, 2005
Recruiters Over Teachers and Students
How Many Schools Left Behind?
By JESSIE MULDOON
THE NO Child Left Behind Act is the Bush administration's deeply flawed legislation that claims to be the solution to the many problems of public education. Signed into law in January 2002, it won bipartisan support--most notably, from liberal Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy.
NCLB promised to close the achievement gap between middle-class suburban students and those at under-funded inner-city or rural schools. Bush and others spoke of accountability and equity, but the critics of NCLB saw through the rhetoric for what the law really is--an attempt to privatize education and transfer the responsibility and cost of educating our children from the federal government to individual and often impoverished school districts.
NCLB is built around the use of standardized tests--with the promise that gaps in testing will be gone by 2014. Progress toward this goal is to be measured by Average Yearly Progress (AYP) scores, with sanctions imposed on schools that don't make the annual goals.
The law promises parents that their children will be taught by "highly qualified" teachers and allows them to request a transfer to a different school. The law opens the door to vouchers and charter schools, threatens to privatize services currently provided by unionized public school employees and welcomes faith-based groups into school programs. But the real centerpiece of NCLB is standardized testing.
* * *
THE NATIONAL Education Association (NEA)--the country's largest teachers union--has filed a lawsuit against NCLB, charging that due to under-funding, the law forces states and school districts to comply with impossible demands. School districts are required to implement curriculum, structure and restructure programs, and hire or lay off employees.
Since 2002, shortfalls in federal funding for NCLB are estimated at $27 billion. Ultimately, state governments have made up the difference, putting a further strain on their budgets. This burden has caused a quiet rebellion against the law. The state governments of Michigan, Texas and Vermont are protesting the law and participating in the lawsuit.
However, teachers have a joke about this question: "Republicans won't fund No Child Left Behind, and Democrats say they will. We don't know which is worse." The point underlying the joke is that there's no reason to believe that NCLB, even fully funded, would really improve the educational system.
For one thing, NCLB's overemphasis on testing forces teachers to "teach to the test"--by focusing mainly on areas covered in the standardized tests. Currently, math and reading are the most-tested areas--so social studies and science, and even more so, art and music, are shoved to the side.
Most education experts believe that an educational program has to be balanced. Cutting the arts or history to make way for test prep will likely improve a student's test scores--as will eliminating libraries so that a school can buy required test prep materials or replacing a literature class with a one-size-fits-all scripted reading curriculum. But this does little for students beyond helping them "bubble in" answer sheets.
What does testing really tell us? Crudely, it shows little more than how well a student takes a test and how well a teacher prepared their class for the test.
In fact, testing is big business. Testing companies--especially the ones that also publish textbooks--make huge profits from the tests and supplementary materials that schools are often forced to purchase. According to the article "Testing Companies Mine for Gold" from Rethinking Schools, the two largest testing companies, Harcourt and McGraw-Hill, are billion-dollar giants.
In the same article points out another profitable element of the testing industry: scoring. The General Accounting Office report on NCLB estimates that it costs approximately $7 to score a test with open-ended questions, compared to $1 each for scoring tests with all multiple-choice questions. It is no surprise, then, that under-funded school districts opt for the cheaper, but less meaningful, multiple-choice tests.
* * *
WHAT HAPPENS when a school "fails"? If a school falls short of its AYP goals two years in a row, it becomes a "Program Improvement" (PI) school. PI schools become subject to a complicated, high-pressure timeline in which they are set up to fail. By law, if PI schools don't make satisfactory progress--as measured by NCLB--at the end of four years, they face major restructuring.
PI schools are supposed to be entitled to extra resources to help them catch up. Do they get those resources? Not likely--hastening the school's restructuring.
In Oakland, Calif., by December 2004, the district was gripped by the fear of restructuring under NCLB. In the midst of heated and controversial contract negotiations with the teachers union, the state-appointed district administrator--pointing directly to language in NCLB--announced that 13 "Year Four" schools would be converted into charter schools.
Becoming a charter school is one of the NCLB options for a "Year Four" school--along with reconstitution, when the entire staff of a school is transferred, and a new staff is brought in. In many cases, charter schools are non-union, and sometimes even run by for-profit companies.
The most famous charter school corporation is Edison Schools, which was affiliated to Gap Corp. Edison was touted as the solution to the problems in public education when it took over several elementary schools in San Francisco in the late 1990s. But within a couple years, the schools were faring no better, and many suffered from massive teacher turnover.
In Oakland, the state administrator tried to play a clever shell game. Most of the 13 schools on the list to become charters were to be governed by a new company launched and staffed by...the Oakland Unified School District itself!
The school district described these schools as "internal charters"--something that the California Teachers Association says is illegal and needs to be negotiated through the regular bargaining process. This is precisely what school administrators are trying to avoid.
Activists partly backed the district off its drive to charterize. Currently, five of the original 13 schools will not become charters. Teachers were able to prove that they could meet the requirements to restructure by extending the school day (optional, with pay) and reducing class sizes. This was a small but significant victory.
Nationally, the NEA's lawsuit is drawing attention to the flaws in NCLB. It is highlighting what school districts have had to cut--arts, music, extended-year programs--in order to comply with the law. Fighting against these harsher elements of the law calls NCLB into question as a whole.
Some educators are working to reform the law. But tying funding to scores, punishing teachers and students in the most difficult districts and privatizing public education are not things that can be reformed--nor is the Bush administration likely to let go of these provisions easily.
Pushing for reforms may put a dent in No Child Left Behind, but ultimately, the law has to be scrapped.
Full funding of quality education should be a top priority. Money should flow into the schools until every child has what they need, until every teacher has all the resources and space they need, and until every school is renovated or rebuilt into a safe, asbestos-free learning environment.
Why doesn't this happen? The politicians say, "You can't just throw money at the problem." Instead, they blame the teachers, scapegoat students and parents, and test, test, test. In fact, the U.S. government has always been willing to throw money at the Pentagon, and corporations and the wealthy in the form of tax breaks. But when it comes to education, health care and other services that impact our human and civil rights, they say no. We shouldn't stand for it.
How the law aids military recruiters
ONE LITTLE- known provision of NCLB requires high schools to turn over names, phone numbers and addresses of all students to the military, or risk losing NCLB funding. Parents have the right to opt out, and many school districts have organized to educate students and families of their rights.
In Montclair, N.J., schools tell parents about the requirement as soon as their child enters 9th grade and follow up with letters home and reminders. The school district reports that at last count, 92 percent of families had requested that their child's information not be sent to the military. At many high schools in the Bay Area, teachers have organized similar opt-out campaigns.
With the military regularly falling short of its recruitment goals, this NCLB provision is becoming even more important to the Bush administration. The movement to kick recruiters off campuses is a natural ally to the teachers' unions and parent organizations opposing No Child Left Behind.
Jessie Muldoon is a teacher in Oakland and member of the Oakland Education Association.
http://www.counterpunch.org/muldoon05162005.html
Recruiters Over Teachers and Students
How Many Schools Left Behind?
By JESSIE MULDOON
THE NO Child Left Behind Act is the Bush administration's deeply flawed legislation that claims to be the solution to the many problems of public education. Signed into law in January 2002, it won bipartisan support--most notably, from liberal Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy.
NCLB promised to close the achievement gap between middle-class suburban students and those at under-funded inner-city or rural schools. Bush and others spoke of accountability and equity, but the critics of NCLB saw through the rhetoric for what the law really is--an attempt to privatize education and transfer the responsibility and cost of educating our children from the federal government to individual and often impoverished school districts.
NCLB is built around the use of standardized tests--with the promise that gaps in testing will be gone by 2014. Progress toward this goal is to be measured by Average Yearly Progress (AYP) scores, with sanctions imposed on schools that don't make the annual goals.
The law promises parents that their children will be taught by "highly qualified" teachers and allows them to request a transfer to a different school. The law opens the door to vouchers and charter schools, threatens to privatize services currently provided by unionized public school employees and welcomes faith-based groups into school programs. But the real centerpiece of NCLB is standardized testing.
* * *
THE NATIONAL Education Association (NEA)--the country's largest teachers union--has filed a lawsuit against NCLB, charging that due to under-funding, the law forces states and school districts to comply with impossible demands. School districts are required to implement curriculum, structure and restructure programs, and hire or lay off employees.
Since 2002, shortfalls in federal funding for NCLB are estimated at $27 billion. Ultimately, state governments have made up the difference, putting a further strain on their budgets. This burden has caused a quiet rebellion against the law. The state governments of Michigan, Texas and Vermont are protesting the law and participating in the lawsuit.
However, teachers have a joke about this question: "Republicans won't fund No Child Left Behind, and Democrats say they will. We don't know which is worse." The point underlying the joke is that there's no reason to believe that NCLB, even fully funded, would really improve the educational system.
For one thing, NCLB's overemphasis on testing forces teachers to "teach to the test"--by focusing mainly on areas covered in the standardized tests. Currently, math and reading are the most-tested areas--so social studies and science, and even more so, art and music, are shoved to the side.
Most education experts believe that an educational program has to be balanced. Cutting the arts or history to make way for test prep will likely improve a student's test scores--as will eliminating libraries so that a school can buy required test prep materials or replacing a literature class with a one-size-fits-all scripted reading curriculum. But this does little for students beyond helping them "bubble in" answer sheets.
What does testing really tell us? Crudely, it shows little more than how well a student takes a test and how well a teacher prepared their class for the test.
In fact, testing is big business. Testing companies--especially the ones that also publish textbooks--make huge profits from the tests and supplementary materials that schools are often forced to purchase. According to the article "Testing Companies Mine for Gold" from Rethinking Schools, the two largest testing companies, Harcourt and McGraw-Hill, are billion-dollar giants.
In the same article points out another profitable element of the testing industry: scoring. The General Accounting Office report on NCLB estimates that it costs approximately $7 to score a test with open-ended questions, compared to $1 each for scoring tests with all multiple-choice questions. It is no surprise, then, that under-funded school districts opt for the cheaper, but less meaningful, multiple-choice tests.
* * *
WHAT HAPPENS when a school "fails"? If a school falls short of its AYP goals two years in a row, it becomes a "Program Improvement" (PI) school. PI schools become subject to a complicated, high-pressure timeline in which they are set up to fail. By law, if PI schools don't make satisfactory progress--as measured by NCLB--at the end of four years, they face major restructuring.
PI schools are supposed to be entitled to extra resources to help them catch up. Do they get those resources? Not likely--hastening the school's restructuring.
In Oakland, Calif., by December 2004, the district was gripped by the fear of restructuring under NCLB. In the midst of heated and controversial contract negotiations with the teachers union, the state-appointed district administrator--pointing directly to language in NCLB--announced that 13 "Year Four" schools would be converted into charter schools.
Becoming a charter school is one of the NCLB options for a "Year Four" school--along with reconstitution, when the entire staff of a school is transferred, and a new staff is brought in. In many cases, charter schools are non-union, and sometimes even run by for-profit companies.
The most famous charter school corporation is Edison Schools, which was affiliated to Gap Corp. Edison was touted as the solution to the problems in public education when it took over several elementary schools in San Francisco in the late 1990s. But within a couple years, the schools were faring no better, and many suffered from massive teacher turnover.
In Oakland, the state administrator tried to play a clever shell game. Most of the 13 schools on the list to become charters were to be governed by a new company launched and staffed by...the Oakland Unified School District itself!
The school district described these schools as "internal charters"--something that the California Teachers Association says is illegal and needs to be negotiated through the regular bargaining process. This is precisely what school administrators are trying to avoid.
Activists partly backed the district off its drive to charterize. Currently, five of the original 13 schools will not become charters. Teachers were able to prove that they could meet the requirements to restructure by extending the school day (optional, with pay) and reducing class sizes. This was a small but significant victory.
Nationally, the NEA's lawsuit is drawing attention to the flaws in NCLB. It is highlighting what school districts have had to cut--arts, music, extended-year programs--in order to comply with the law. Fighting against these harsher elements of the law calls NCLB into question as a whole.
Some educators are working to reform the law. But tying funding to scores, punishing teachers and students in the most difficult districts and privatizing public education are not things that can be reformed--nor is the Bush administration likely to let go of these provisions easily.
Pushing for reforms may put a dent in No Child Left Behind, but ultimately, the law has to be scrapped.
Full funding of quality education should be a top priority. Money should flow into the schools until every child has what they need, until every teacher has all the resources and space they need, and until every school is renovated or rebuilt into a safe, asbestos-free learning environment.
Why doesn't this happen? The politicians say, "You can't just throw money at the problem." Instead, they blame the teachers, scapegoat students and parents, and test, test, test. In fact, the U.S. government has always been willing to throw money at the Pentagon, and corporations and the wealthy in the form of tax breaks. But when it comes to education, health care and other services that impact our human and civil rights, they say no. We shouldn't stand for it.
How the law aids military recruiters
ONE LITTLE- known provision of NCLB requires high schools to turn over names, phone numbers and addresses of all students to the military, or risk losing NCLB funding. Parents have the right to opt out, and many school districts have organized to educate students and families of their rights.
In Montclair, N.J., schools tell parents about the requirement as soon as their child enters 9th grade and follow up with letters home and reminders. The school district reports that at last count, 92 percent of families had requested that their child's information not be sent to the military. At many high schools in the Bay Area, teachers have organized similar opt-out campaigns.
With the military regularly falling short of its recruitment goals, this NCLB provision is becoming even more important to the Bush administration. The movement to kick recruiters off campuses is a natural ally to the teachers' unions and parent organizations opposing No Child Left Behind.
Jessie Muldoon is a teacher in Oakland and member of the Oakland Education Association.
http://www.counterpunch.org/muldoon05162005.html
Sunday, May 15, 2005
FALLING SHORT: PROBLEMS IN TEXAS HIGHER EDUCATION
This report proves my point that if even an ounce of the Texas Miracle were true, that it would show up in improved preparation for higher education of which ACT, SAT, college enrollment, and degree of required remedial instruction are indicators. This is very tragic though not surprising. -Angela
High schools failing college students
Kelly West/AMERICAN-STATESMAN
By Ralph K.M. Haurwitz, Laura Heinauer
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, May 15, 2005
Third in an occasional series
It's a Friday morning, and students are filing into Room 122 at the Austin Community College campus on Rio Grande Street. Some of them have tattoos. All of them carry backpacks. It's an unremarkable scene except for one thing:
These college students are here to learn high school math. On this day, instructor Don Lavigne will explain how to calculate the volume of a cylinder. For Corey Ferguson, one of the students, mastering the basics of algebra and geometry is at once satisfying and a tad embarrassing.
"I hate carrying this book around," Ferguson said. " I always try to make sure the cover is hidden, but sometimes you get some 16-year-old kid who sees it, and I just want to be, like, 'Yeah, I don't know fractions, dude.' "
He's not alone in needing remedial education, also known as developmental education.
Half of the students entering public colleges and universities in the state are ill-prepared for college-level work in math, reading or writing and must therefore take at least one remedial course, according to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. Ninety percent of the students in higher education in Texas attend public universities and community colleges.
Underpreparation for college is a problem throughout the nation, but Texas faces a special challenge because of its shifting demographics.
Texas' challenges
College enrollment is rising in Texas among those who historically have not attended in great numbers and who often have weaker academic backgrounds, including Hispanics, blacks and low-income students. Even more such students — especially Hispanics, the fastest-growing population group in the state — will have to enroll if Texas hopes to educate its citizens on a par with other states.
And so, the demand for remedial education is likely to increase.
But the harsh reality is that academic success eludes most students taking such courses. Just 16 percent of underprepared students in Texas earn a certificate, a two-year degree or a four-year degree within six years of enrolling, compared with 47 percent of college-ready students.
Improving the success rates for developmental education will take time, money and a multifaceted approach. Among other things, scholars recommend more tutoring by faculty members and fellow students, creation of formal study groups, more frequent academic advising sessions, better preparation in middle school and high school, and intensive study sessions between high school and college to shore up areas of weakness.
Going the wrong way
In some ways, Texas is heading in the wrong direction. A survey by the coordinating board found that colleges have reduced the frequency and amount of advising they provide in recent years. In 2003, the state Legislature cut the two-year budget for developmental education by $12 million, to $173 million, even as the demand for such education was increasing. Lawmakers have not finalized a budget for the next two years, but developmental education is expected to remain flat or rise modestly.
Perhaps the most urgent need is for wider recognition of the problem, especially among college officials. The coordinating board found that a third of public colleges listed developmental education as a minor or nonexistent part of their strategic plans.
Raymund Paredes, the commissioner of higher education, says a survival-of-the-fittest approach to developmental education students is simply unacceptable.
"We can't practice what constitutes a kind of academic Darwinism," Paredes said. "We've got to help these students. We should make a commitment as educators that we are going to do everything we can to ensure the academic success of the students we admit. Right now, we're not anywhere close to that."
Paredes plans to convene a summit of sorts on developmental education in the fall, to explain the urgency to college presidents and other campus officials.
ACC officials say developmental education is a high priority on their campuses. About 8,000 of the nearly 30,000 students are involved in remedial studies. One sign of ACC's focus on the developmental mission: Sixty-eight percent of entering students who need remedial courses return the following semester, compared with 65 percent of students who did not receive remediation.
Study groups needed
On the other hand, ACC falls short in using study groups led by a student who has already taken the course to reinforce what students are learning in class. That would be a worthwhile initiative, said Kathleen Christensen, ACC's associate vice president of student services and retention, but study group leaders must be paid, and there isn't money in the budget to do so.
It's not unusual at ACC for a remedial math class to start out with 18 students and wind up with a dozen, the rest having dropped out because of difficulty with the material, distractions at home or pressures resulting from full- or part-time employment. Some students must take a remedial course two or even three times before they pas — a heavy toll in time, money and frustration. Such courses do not count toward a two-year or four-year degree.
"A lot of students have a bitter taste in their mouth about developmental education to start with," Lavigne said. "You take a test, you're told you have to go to basic math — how is that going to make you feel?"
On the recent Friday, five of the original 18 students showed up on time for his class. A few more drifted in as Lavigne reviewed formulas for measuring the volume of boxes, cylinders and spheres. His low-key manner and patient explanations seemed to put students at ease.
"I always thought math was interesting, but I didn't understand it," said Liz Ruggles, a journalism major. "Now I'm getting it."
Anne Praderas, who teaches developmental math at ACC's Northridge campus, said her students often need guidance to improve their study skills.
"Teaching this, it's not so much that you have to be a brilliant mathematician," Praderas said. "You need to be a good teacher. You have to be able to communicate clearly. You have to explain things three different ways."
Students lack skills
In many cases, students taking remedial courses don't lack ability; they lack skills. Sometimes, they've simply forgotten material they learned years ago.
June Reynolds, 40, who is working on an accounting degree, signed up for college-level business math but realized on the first day of class that she wasn't prepared for it. So she switched to a developmental course in elementary algebra.
"I haven't had algebra since high school," Reynolds said. "Luckily, I have an A in the course."
Others have only recently graduated from high school. Alli Crews, who is pursuing a degree in sociology, said math is something she has struggled with since grade school. She said she has probably been taught the same basic principles of algebra six times, but they never seemed to stick. When she found out she would have to take remedial math in college, she was not surprised.
"In the beginning I felt like, 'God, I'm so stupid. I should know this at this point in my life, and I just suck at it,' " she said. "Now I'm starting to figure out that I just wasn't taught right."
Debbie Graves Ratcliffe, a spokeswoman for the Texas Education Agency, acknowledged that the coordinating board's findings about the number of students in need of remedial education were troubling, especially because many of these students are just coming out of high school.
Ratcliffe said educators are aware that some classes, such as introductory algebra, are difficult for many students. Increasing class times for algebra and turning it into a two-year course haven't seemed to help, she said. It's too early to tell if the newest strategy — to start teaching basic principles of algebra while students are in elementary school — will succeed.
Several other changes aimed at improving high school education are just beginning. This year's senior class is the first that had to pass the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills test in order to receive diplomas. Those results, Ratcliffe said, should better help educators identify problem areas and develop strategies for improvement.
High school tougher
The state's course requirements for high school students also are beginning to get tougher. This year's high school freshman were the first in Texas who will be required to take an advanced algebra course and an upper-level physics course to graduate.
"After several years of improvement at the lower grade levels, I think the focus is finally beginning to shift to the upper grades," Ratcliffe said, noting how in the last several months, President Bush and U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings have advocated expanding the accountability changes in the No Child Left Behind Act to the nation's high schools.
It's a cause championed in the private sector as well. Microsoft co-founder and chairman Bill Gates, who has contributed more than $2 billion to education since 1999, made headlines earlier this year when he said he was "appalled" by the state of high schools in the country.
Gates' focus is on creating small "learning communities" in high schools to promote stronger relationships between students and teachers.
In Texas, Gates' foundationhelped pay for a multimillion-dollar high school redesign and restructuring program launched this year at numerous high schools rated academically unacceptable, including Johnston in the Austin school district.
"Most high schools in Texas won't graduate a single student who will get an engineering degree in a decade," said Geoffrey Orsak, dean of engineering at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. "People who walk the halls of the state Capitol don't realize how broadly uneducated the state is.
"Neither higher education nor public education wants to take ownership of these students who have graduated from high school but are not prepared for college. Both need to take ownership."
rhaurwitz@statesman.com; 445-3604
lheinauer@statesman.com; 445-3694
Find this article at:
http://www.statesman.com/metrostate/content/metro/stories/05/15highed.html
High schools failing college students
Kelly West/AMERICAN-STATESMAN
By Ralph K.M. Haurwitz, Laura Heinauer
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, May 15, 2005
Third in an occasional series
It's a Friday morning, and students are filing into Room 122 at the Austin Community College campus on Rio Grande Street. Some of them have tattoos. All of them carry backpacks. It's an unremarkable scene except for one thing:
These college students are here to learn high school math. On this day, instructor Don Lavigne will explain how to calculate the volume of a cylinder. For Corey Ferguson, one of the students, mastering the basics of algebra and geometry is at once satisfying and a tad embarrassing.
"I hate carrying this book around," Ferguson said. " I always try to make sure the cover is hidden, but sometimes you get some 16-year-old kid who sees it, and I just want to be, like, 'Yeah, I don't know fractions, dude.' "
He's not alone in needing remedial education, also known as developmental education.
Half of the students entering public colleges and universities in the state are ill-prepared for college-level work in math, reading or writing and must therefore take at least one remedial course, according to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. Ninety percent of the students in higher education in Texas attend public universities and community colleges.
Underpreparation for college is a problem throughout the nation, but Texas faces a special challenge because of its shifting demographics.
Texas' challenges
College enrollment is rising in Texas among those who historically have not attended in great numbers and who often have weaker academic backgrounds, including Hispanics, blacks and low-income students. Even more such students — especially Hispanics, the fastest-growing population group in the state — will have to enroll if Texas hopes to educate its citizens on a par with other states.
And so, the demand for remedial education is likely to increase.
But the harsh reality is that academic success eludes most students taking such courses. Just 16 percent of underprepared students in Texas earn a certificate, a two-year degree or a four-year degree within six years of enrolling, compared with 47 percent of college-ready students.
Improving the success rates for developmental education will take time, money and a multifaceted approach. Among other things, scholars recommend more tutoring by faculty members and fellow students, creation of formal study groups, more frequent academic advising sessions, better preparation in middle school and high school, and intensive study sessions between high school and college to shore up areas of weakness.
Going the wrong way
In some ways, Texas is heading in the wrong direction. A survey by the coordinating board found that colleges have reduced the frequency and amount of advising they provide in recent years. In 2003, the state Legislature cut the two-year budget for developmental education by $12 million, to $173 million, even as the demand for such education was increasing. Lawmakers have not finalized a budget for the next two years, but developmental education is expected to remain flat or rise modestly.
Perhaps the most urgent need is for wider recognition of the problem, especially among college officials. The coordinating board found that a third of public colleges listed developmental education as a minor or nonexistent part of their strategic plans.
Raymund Paredes, the commissioner of higher education, says a survival-of-the-fittest approach to developmental education students is simply unacceptable.
"We can't practice what constitutes a kind of academic Darwinism," Paredes said. "We've got to help these students. We should make a commitment as educators that we are going to do everything we can to ensure the academic success of the students we admit. Right now, we're not anywhere close to that."
Paredes plans to convene a summit of sorts on developmental education in the fall, to explain the urgency to college presidents and other campus officials.
ACC officials say developmental education is a high priority on their campuses. About 8,000 of the nearly 30,000 students are involved in remedial studies. One sign of ACC's focus on the developmental mission: Sixty-eight percent of entering students who need remedial courses return the following semester, compared with 65 percent of students who did not receive remediation.
Study groups needed
On the other hand, ACC falls short in using study groups led by a student who has already taken the course to reinforce what students are learning in class. That would be a worthwhile initiative, said Kathleen Christensen, ACC's associate vice president of student services and retention, but study group leaders must be paid, and there isn't money in the budget to do so.
It's not unusual at ACC for a remedial math class to start out with 18 students and wind up with a dozen, the rest having dropped out because of difficulty with the material, distractions at home or pressures resulting from full- or part-time employment. Some students must take a remedial course two or even three times before they pas — a heavy toll in time, money and frustration. Such courses do not count toward a two-year or four-year degree.
"A lot of students have a bitter taste in their mouth about developmental education to start with," Lavigne said. "You take a test, you're told you have to go to basic math — how is that going to make you feel?"
On the recent Friday, five of the original 18 students showed up on time for his class. A few more drifted in as Lavigne reviewed formulas for measuring the volume of boxes, cylinders and spheres. His low-key manner and patient explanations seemed to put students at ease.
"I always thought math was interesting, but I didn't understand it," said Liz Ruggles, a journalism major. "Now I'm getting it."
Anne Praderas, who teaches developmental math at ACC's Northridge campus, said her students often need guidance to improve their study skills.
"Teaching this, it's not so much that you have to be a brilliant mathematician," Praderas said. "You need to be a good teacher. You have to be able to communicate clearly. You have to explain things three different ways."
Students lack skills
In many cases, students taking remedial courses don't lack ability; they lack skills. Sometimes, they've simply forgotten material they learned years ago.
June Reynolds, 40, who is working on an accounting degree, signed up for college-level business math but realized on the first day of class that she wasn't prepared for it. So she switched to a developmental course in elementary algebra.
"I haven't had algebra since high school," Reynolds said. "Luckily, I have an A in the course."
Others have only recently graduated from high school. Alli Crews, who is pursuing a degree in sociology, said math is something she has struggled with since grade school. She said she has probably been taught the same basic principles of algebra six times, but they never seemed to stick. When she found out she would have to take remedial math in college, she was not surprised.
"In the beginning I felt like, 'God, I'm so stupid. I should know this at this point in my life, and I just suck at it,' " she said. "Now I'm starting to figure out that I just wasn't taught right."
Debbie Graves Ratcliffe, a spokeswoman for the Texas Education Agency, acknowledged that the coordinating board's findings about the number of students in need of remedial education were troubling, especially because many of these students are just coming out of high school.
Ratcliffe said educators are aware that some classes, such as introductory algebra, are difficult for many students. Increasing class times for algebra and turning it into a two-year course haven't seemed to help, she said. It's too early to tell if the newest strategy — to start teaching basic principles of algebra while students are in elementary school — will succeed.
Several other changes aimed at improving high school education are just beginning. This year's senior class is the first that had to pass the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills test in order to receive diplomas. Those results, Ratcliffe said, should better help educators identify problem areas and develop strategies for improvement.
High school tougher
The state's course requirements for high school students also are beginning to get tougher. This year's high school freshman were the first in Texas who will be required to take an advanced algebra course and an upper-level physics course to graduate.
"After several years of improvement at the lower grade levels, I think the focus is finally beginning to shift to the upper grades," Ratcliffe said, noting how in the last several months, President Bush and U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings have advocated expanding the accountability changes in the No Child Left Behind Act to the nation's high schools.
It's a cause championed in the private sector as well. Microsoft co-founder and chairman Bill Gates, who has contributed more than $2 billion to education since 1999, made headlines earlier this year when he said he was "appalled" by the state of high schools in the country.
Gates' focus is on creating small "learning communities" in high schools to promote stronger relationships between students and teachers.
In Texas, Gates' foundationhelped pay for a multimillion-dollar high school redesign and restructuring program launched this year at numerous high schools rated academically unacceptable, including Johnston in the Austin school district.
"Most high schools in Texas won't graduate a single student who will get an engineering degree in a decade," said Geoffrey Orsak, dean of engineering at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. "People who walk the halls of the state Capitol don't realize how broadly uneducated the state is.
"Neither higher education nor public education wants to take ownership of these students who have graduated from high school but are not prepared for college. Both need to take ownership."
rhaurwitz@statesman.com; 445-3604
lheinauer@statesman.com; 445-3694
Find this article at:
http://www.statesman.com/metrostate/content/metro/stories/05/15highed.html
Saturday, May 14, 2005
California—State Campaign for Quality Education
For my California colleagues, also take note of a boycott in Oakland, California (posted on my blog last week). I unfortunately do not have the news link to this story.
There’s also another California effort (not related to the Oakland protest, it appears), called the State Campaign for Quality Education. They’re calling for the application of multiple criteria assessment of their state’s exit exam (AB1531). They’re located at the following website.
State Campaign for Quality Education
There’s also another California effort (not related to the Oakland protest, it appears), called the State Campaign for Quality Education. They’re calling for the application of multiple criteria assessment of their state’s exit exam (AB1531). They’re located at the following website.
State Campaign for Quality Education
Te$t Market, by Emily Pyle, TEXAS OBSERVER
This is an extremely worthwhile piece that ALL should read. -Angela
http://www.mollyivins.com/showArticle.asp?ArticleID=1947
Feature: 5/13/2005
Te$t Market
High-stakes tests aren't good for students, teachers, or schools. So who are they good for?
BY EMILY PYLE / TEXAS OBSERVER
The committee hearing in the basement of the Texas Capitol on February 28 offered a glimpse of what the next phase of public school reform in this country might look like. The House Public Education Committee heard testimony on House Bill 2, an omnibus school finance and reform package. If the bill passes and Texas continues to serve as a national blueprint for school reform, the rest of the country should brace for more tests, with more riding on those tests than ever. The new legislation would inject additional “accountability” into public education, this time by expanding standardized testing in high schools, and tying funding, including teacher salaries, to performance on state exams. Those proposals aren’t popular in many quarters. Eighteen people representing teachers, administrators, parents, and public school advocates testified against the bill. They asked for fewer testing mandates and more public school funding. The critics of the bill are part of a growing movement against the Texas education model, enshrined in the landmark federal law No Child Left Behind. Opponents say the current focus on testing degrades education and drains resources from the neediest schools.
Only one witness testified in favor of the bill. There was a small stir as Sandy Kress came to the microphone; in gatherings like this, he is something of a celebrity. Ten years ago, public school accountability was a vague, unenforceable ideal from free market enthusiasts who wanted to see schools run more like businesses. Kress, a Dallas lawyer, was serving what would be his last, tumultuous term as president of the Dallas school board. Fellow board members were calling the newspaper to denounce him as a racist and a bully. The fortunes of the reform movement and of Kress have risen together. He is one of the principal designers of No Child Left Behind, and has used his knowledge and connections to earn millions as a high-powered lobbyist for test publishers.
Despite the lack of an endorsement from any major Texas education group, passage of HB 2 out of the committee was a foregone conclusion. Accountability, with its powerful allies, seems unstoppable. Its supporters are free market reformers who say test scores bring a needed dose of reality to lazy educational bureaucracies. Others are education reformers who believe that the best hope for poor and minority students lies in the public humiliation of their “low-performing” schools. And a select few enrich themselves supplying the demand public school reform has created for tests, and the tools it takes to pass them. Kress appears to be all of the above.
“A decade earlier, Texas was going backwards,” Kress told the committee. “Graduation rates were going down. Our minority youngsters were going nowhere.” Now, he insisted, because of accountability, schools are better. The committee should go further, and faster—more tests, shorter deadlines, tougher standards. It was a radically different perspective than that voiced by other witnesses. Of course, unlike other witnesses, Kress was not lobbying on behalf of schools, teachers, or students, but a coalition of business interests who have pushed their version of school reform in Texas for more than a decade.
Kress can be an appealing witness—unusually alert and impassioned, with a voice that readily conveys sincerity in the faintest of Dallas inflections. He champions cash incentives for teachers who improve student test scores, but says they should be used primarily to draw talented teachers into the poorest schools. (Business groups use incentives as a means to side-step blanket pay raises, teachers’ groups say.)
Kress plays up the interests of poor and minority students, while soft-pedaling the need for increased funding. Business leaders have thrown themselves foursquare against more money. “I think the business community feels we ought to spend more and more on education,” Kress told the committee. “I think some would be willing to pay more. But I think they all feel very deeply that if they’re going to pay more, they want to see results, they want to see efficiency, they want to see accountability.” HB 2, with its emphasis on test scores and its marginal increases in funding, seemed to be exactly what business leaders wanted. Kress closed with, “Keep up the good work.”
Eleven days later, the Texas House of Representatives approved HB 2, and though the Senate has tinkered with the bill’s financing, the testing provisions remain intact. If it seems peculiar that a system so good for business and so hard on public schools should also be packaged as the best answer for “disadvantaged” students, that’s the genius of Sandy Kress. From his days in Dallas to his tenure in the Bush administration, Kress has pushed accountability as the final solution for poor and minority kids stuck in under-performing public schools. Since returning to Austin and high-profile lobbying firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld in 2002, Kress has been teaching businesses to turn a profit helping schools meet the mandates of No Child Left Behind. In the process, he’s made about $4 million in lobbying contracts, in large part from companies that profit from provisions of the law he helped to design. Kress says his clients share his vision of schools where unequivocal standards make educating every student no longer optional.
“When I take on a client, I try to take on people who seem committed to the same goals I have,” says Kress, who agreed to answer interview questions by e-mail. “I expect to be judged by the same standard by which I judge others—has this work contributed to improved educational results for students, particularly disadvantaged students?”
It’s a question that’s still very much up for debate.
In Dallas in the late eighties, Kress was an anomalous figure, a prominent lawyer involved in local Democratic politics—he was elected to chair the Dallas County Democratic Party in 1986—with strong connections in the local, mainly Republican, business community. “Sandy had close ties to business in Dallas,” says Rene Castilla, former president of the Dallas Independent School District’s board of trustees. “They listened to each other.”
It was during Castilla’s term as board president that Kress first began to dabble in school board politics. At the time, Dallas business leaders were worried about the abysmal standardized test scores in the city’s predominantly black schools. “Dallas had a pretty poor reputation for the performance of its schools,” Castilla says. “That didn’t sit well with business. A business community wants to attract new business to the area, and there’s two questions people ask before relocating—housing and schools.”
Accountability was an idea then making the rounds among business leaders. Both George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton tried to implement national standards for American education, but attempts to enforce the new rules met with complex partisan opposition and by the early nineties the movement had stalled. Business leaders began to suggest the solution was to treat failing schools like failing corporations: Establish clear-cut standards, monitor whether they were met, and either reward the successful or punish the failures. “Just as businesses are results-oriented, so schools must also be,” Lou Gerstner, then CEO of IBM, wrote in his book Reinventing Education in 1994. “Results are not achieved by bureaucratic regulation. They are achieved by meeting customer requirements by rewards for success and penalties for failure. Market discipline is the key, the ultimate form of accountability.”
Kress presented accountability to the school board in 1990 as a way to simultaneously raise test scores and win the support of business. To a school board then trying to float a hefty bond issue against business opposition, that sounded like a good deal. The board tapped Kress to head a commission that would shape an accountability system for the district. After months of study, the commission proposed a system that rated schools by their test scores, with schools that showed the most improvement getting cash awards of $5,000 to $10,000. Perhaps most importantly, the system would force schools to disaggregate test scores, keeping administrators from disguising low scores for poor, black, or Latino students by averaging them into the general population. The board unanimously approved the commission’s proposals in 1991. The next year, Kress was elected to the school board with the overwhelming support of influential business leaders, including Texas Rangers owner George W. Bush. “Sandy believed minority kids deserved better than they were getting,” says Castilla, who lost the board presidency to Kress in 1994. “He was very hard-working, very zealous about making a difference.”
However, black school board members saw accountability as an attempt to undermine the city’s 1974 desegregation order, which allotted extra money and resources to Dallas’s historically neglected black schools. Kress did torpedo several key components of the desegregation order, heading efforts that slashed more than $15 million from bond proposals for a magnet school in a mostly black part of town. He also sought to limit the money spent on “learning centers” meant to reverse the city’s busing policy by bringing black students back into their own neighborhoods. As board president, Kress brought a hardball style of politics to what had been a sleepy municipal body; black board members accused him of meeting in secret with favored board members and manipulating the board’s committee system to dilute the minority vote. Secretly taped conversations alleged to be between Kress and fellow board member and political ally Dan Peavy supported the accusations. Peavy used racial slurs when describing plans to curb the influence of black board members. Kress’s identity on the tapes was never confirmed, but soon after they came to light in 1995, he announced he would not run for another term as board president. “I have no idea what the next challenge will be,” he told reporters at a press conference in January 1996. “But I am sure there will be one.”
He didn’t have long to wait. A year later, Kress moved to Austin, where he already had friends. In 1993, he had worked with Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock on the first draft of the Texas accountability system, which introduced the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills test. He had briefed George W. Bush on education policy during his 1994 run against incumbent Ann Richards. Once in Austin, Kress helped Gov. Bush lobby for pet reforms like ending social promotion. As a paid consultant for the Governor’s Business Council, Kress traveled across the state pushing Bush’s education agenda. He also served as a board member of the Texas Business and Education Coalition, and a lobbyist for TBEC’s lobbying arm, Texans for Education. By 1998, Kress was working for Akin Gump. Through the firm, Kress held lobbying contracts for McGraw-Hill, the textbook publishing company that had long-standing personal ties to the Bush family. Kress was one of the architects of the Governor’s Reading Initiative, which eventually landed McGraw-Hill the lion’s share of the Texas textbook market.
In 2000, Kress helped Bush craft the education platform that became the centerpiece of “compassionate conservativism” and stumped for Bush’s plan throughout the campaign, telling the story of the “Texas miracle”—rising test scores, happy urban school kids, a bright new future—again and again. When Bush finally secured his victory, he took Kress along with him to Washington, D.C. Once inside the Beltway, Kress played key roles in crafting and passing No Child Left Behind. Officially still a Democrat, he was instrumental in putting together the bipartisan push behind the bill, pulling Democratic lawmakers Ted Kennedy, George Miller, and John Boehner into the president’s court. The law that took shape required states to test every student in the third through eighth grades and once in high school, and publicize the scores. By 2014, all students, including those in special education and those with limited English skills, would have to pass the exam. To that end, the states would establish “adequate yearly progress” or AYP standards. Schools that receive Title I funding—federal aid for schools with high numbers of poor, minority, and at-risk students—would be penalized if they failed to meet the standards for three years running.
Kress continued to promise that high-stakes testing would save poor and minority students by drawing attention to their low scores. Some credit Kress as the original coiner of Bush’s “soft bigotry of low expectations”—the catch-phrase now used to lob a subtle accusation of racism and class-ism at anyone who protests that testing mandates are unfair to those same disadvantaged kids.
he General Accounting Office predicts states will spend between $1.9 and $5.3 billion a year meeting the testing requirement of the law. But that’s only a fraction of the law’s costs; other provisions are even more expensive—and, to the suddenly burgeoning education industry, even more lucrative.
No Child Left Behind requires states to produce “interpretive, descriptive, and diagnostic reports… that allow parents, teachers, and principals to understand and address the specific academic needs of students.” Since few pretend that a standardized test given once a year can do anything so sophisticated, schools are finding they need separate “formative testing programs” to meet the requirement. The formative testing model, according to the test publisher NCS Pearson, is to “teach, assess, report, diagnose, and prescribe.” Pearson, with other publishers, offers a full range of products for every step of the process.
Schools with high numbers of low-scoring students have three years to raise their scores before penalties kick in, and those are also expensive. The so-called “choice” provision, with its passing resemblance to vouchers, has attracted media attention, but has proved unpopular so far. The provision allows students at low-performing campuses to transfer to one of their district’s better performing schools, but only about 1 percent of eligible students made the transfer last year, according to data kept by the U.S. Department of Education. Instead, parents are taking advantage of another provision that requires low-performing schools to provide free after-school tutoring services, using a state-approved, “research-based” tutoring program.
The law also demands a highly qualified teacher in every classroom by the end of the 2006 school year. Though the definition of “highly qualified” is vague, with states setting their own standards of quality, the requirement has opened up a new market in materials geared toward teachers. Most major publishers now offer professional development products and services, some of which provide general training in pedagogy, but many of which merely train teachers to use another of the publisher’s classroom products.
In a time of growing budget crises, few states—let alone districts and schools—have the time or the money to develop the programs that No Child Left Behind makes mandatory, or all but mandatory. That’s where business, and Sandy Kress, come in.
Bush signed No Child Left Behind into law in January 2002. Five months later, Kress registered with the U.S. Secretary of the Senate as a lobbyist for NCS Pearson. Kress specializes in helping his clients tailor themselves to the requirements of No Child Left Behind, something Pearson has done with startling success. A publishing conglomerate that owns The Financial Times and Penguin Books, Pearson had been a bit player in the education market, concentrating on the scoring of standardized tests. In 2000, however, Pearson acquired National Computer Systems, the company that held the contract for designing and scoring the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills. Since then, Pearson has built an accountability empire of sorts, becoming the third-largest testing company in the country, behind CTB McGraw-Hill and Harcourt Educational Measurement.
NCS Pearson publishes software systems that allow teachers to create, administer, and score “diagnostic” tests that purport to show how well students are learning by demonstrating in part how prepared they are for state tests. Subsidiary Pearson Educational Measurement holds test design contracts in states with large testing programs, like Florida and Texas. Pearson Education, another subsidiary, publishes reading, math, science, art, and music curricula for grades K-12. Other subsidiaries offer online testing, data management services, and professional training for teachers, including an online master’s degree program. The company claims to have at least one product placed in 50,000 schools nationwide.
Another of Kress’s clients, Educational Testing Services, Inc., also made a sudden market surge in the wake of No Child Left Behind. A non-profit best known as the publisher of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), ETS stayed clear of the commercial testing business for nearly 50 years. Beginning with the spin-off of for-profit subsidiary K-12 Works in 2000, however, ETS has aggressively pursued state testing contracts. The company now holds contracts with New Jersey, Indiana, and the plum of the state testing market, California. ETS also offers a professional development program for teachers and one of the few tests so far available to certify teaching aides.
Another Kress client, Kaplan, Inc., which formerly specialized in prepping students for college entrance exams, now offers a variety of test-related services. These include prep courses tailored to the standardized tests in 13 states and the District of Columbia, “Intervention” programs targeting low-scoring students with skill-drilling software, and professional development courses in which, for roughly $1,000 an hour, Kaplan specialists give teachers tips on how to coach their students to pass the test.
Kress also lobbies for HOSTS Learning, which publishes online testing tools and an associated line of curricular materials and for Kumon North America, a rising star in the brand-new after-school tutoring market. Other clients include Community Education Partners, a for-profit school management company that runs alternative campuses for students with disciplinary problems, as well as companies that help schools and districts collect, manage, and report the volume of data required by No Child Left Behind.
There’s a lot of money in what’s coming to be known as the assessment market, but most of it is going to the handful of companies, like Pearson, who have successfully built up assessment empires. “The top four or five players in the textbook market are also top players in the testing market,” says Mark Jackson, a senior analyst with Eduventures, a firm which tracks trends in the commercial education market. As the focus on testing intensifies, the test prep materials these companies offer are becoming the standard curriculum, especially in poor schools, where the scores are often lowest, and the pressure to raise them most extreme. “It’s a zero-sum game of financing,” Jackson says. “What fits into the testing model gets bought, and what doesn’t, doesn’t.”
But what’s been a boon for a handful of publishers has been a disaster for education, critics say. As pressure to raise scores intensifies, teachers and principals at low-performing schools have found creative ways to raise scores—from encouraging low-scoring students to drop out of school before Test Day to simply erasing and rewriting students’ testing sheets. The most common resort, however, is to drill the reading and math skills covered by the test, to the detriment of other, untested subjects. As an ever-greater percentage of class time goes into test preparation, more money flows to the companies that publish test prep material.
The schools under the most pressure are those that educate large populations of poor, minority, and limited-English students. Ninety-nine percent of the kids in the Laredo Independent School District are Latino; ninety-five percent of them come from families below the poverty level. The district’s test scores are consistently low. “These are kids who often don’t speak English, kids without the kinds of experiences that kids elsewhere may have,” says Laredo ISD superintendent Sylvia Bruni. “They come from homes without books. Some don’t have televisions.” They are, in fact, the disadvantaged kids for whom Sandy Kress has been pitching accountability for nearly 15 years.
Laredo’s third-grade teachers spent the equivalent of one day a week administering either the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills test itself or diagnostic “formative assessment” tests this school year, a district-wide testing inventory found. The inventory didn’t count time spent on test prep, which Bruni says is “almost constant”—extended school days, Saturday test prep classes, and a portion of every class, in every subject, every day. Since individual schools purchase most of their test prep materials themselves, Bruni doesn’t have a district-wide figure on how much money is spent. But she says it’s a large percentage of resources that the district—one of the poorest in the state—can ill afford. “The district spends money, the campuses spend money, the teachers spend money,” Bruni says. “It’s a lot.”
Laredo administrators have decided to cut back on practice tests in future years, but the decision is a hard one. Test prep isn’t education, Bruni says, and the time and money spent on it mean that other, more sophisticated curriculum must be dumped. The district is under increasing pressure to raise scores, however. Two of Laredo’s three high schools failed to make adequate yearly progress in 2004, and progress requirements will climb each year. Without extensive drilling, more students will fail the test and the sanctions of No Child Left Behind will kick in. Earlier this year, Laredo ISD joined the National Education Agency’s lawsuit against the Department of Education, challenging the law. “You can’t seem to break the stranglehold,” Bruni says. “The temptation is just to drill. It isn’t meaningful for the kids, but teachers know that the scores will go up.”
If tests are over-emphasized, Kress says, teachers and principals themselves are at fault. “Why do administrators allow test prep materials to dominate the curriculum in schools that serve the poor?” he asks. “Damn it, they’re the ones in charge.” Despite protests from districts like Laredo, Kress is pushing for higher stakes, tougher standards, and swifter retribution against schools that don’t make the grade. Kress was the head cheerleader for proposals from the Governor’s Business Council that wound up in HB 2: requiring a passing score on high school exit exams for course credit (and thus graduation), reducing the deadline for improvement from three years to two, and allowing private companies to take over consistently low-performing schools.
He has also used his position on the Texas Education Commissioners’ Accountability Advisory Committee to push the Texas Education Agency to toughen its accountability rating system. At an advisory committee meeting in March, Kress laid out a proposal under which the percentage of students who must pass the test before a school is rated “acceptable” would jump by 10 points. Rates would then climb five points a year until 2010, when 100 percent of students must pass the reading exam before a school will be considered acceptable. When other committee members called for a more gradual and realistic stepping-up of the rating system, Kress lost his temper. “He threw a tantrum,” says one fellow committee member. “He had a very ideological perspective, and others were trying to introduce some realism. He seemed to be trying to shout us into doing what he wanted. He’s a charming, agreeable, persuasive guy, but in front of an audience he’s not trying to charm, he’s a bully.”
Accountability’s supporters continue to push testing as the surest, fastest solution for the poor kids in weak schools. That a handful of companies are making a killing off accountability, they say, is incidental—just another example of the beauty of the free market system. But a mounting body of evidence suggests the “Texas miracle” Sandy Kress used to sell accountability to the country is a sham. Critics point to Texas’ rising dropout rates and flagging scores on college entrance exams as signs that test-prep-centered teaching is taking its toll on kids—especially those who are black, Latino, or poor.
Almost two out of five Texas high school students never earn a high school diploma, according to a report released this year by the Intercultural Development Research Association, which has tracked Texas dropout rates since 1986. IDRA’s report showed that in 2004, 36 percent of students who were freshman in 2001 were gone by last spring’s graduation ceremonies. That number is down slightly from previous years, but still higher than it was 20 years ago. Attrition rates are highest among minorities, the IDRA report shows, and the gap is growing. In 1986, 27 percent of Anglo students left school without graduating. Last year, Anglo students’ attrition was down to 22 percent, while rates for black students had climbed from 34 to 44 percent, and for Latinos from 45 to 49 percent. The report estimates dropouts have cost the state $500 billion over the past two decades in lost productivity and in the costs of social services, courts, and jails.
Dr. Albert Cortez, director of IDRA’s Institute of Policy and Leadership, is quick to point out that Texas’ dropout trouble predates high-stakes testing. But the tests, far from being a solution, have become part of the problem, he says. Narrowed curriculum bores and daunts some students into dropping out. Students who don’t think they’ll pass the high school test—a requirement for graduation—may stop going to school. Other researchers, including Dr. Angela Valenzuela of the University of Texas and Rice education professor Linda McNeil, say administrators under pressure to raise test scores may push potentially low-scoring students to drop out before the exam.
Despite the emphasis accountability supporters put on “narrowing the achievement gap,” state scores on college entrance exams show minority students losing ground since the tests were instituted. Fewer Texas high school students are taking the SAT and ACT now than 10 years ago, data from the Texas Education Agency shows, and on average they are scoring worse. The average score on the SATs for Latino students has fallen 17 points since 1996. The average score of black students has also drifted down, from 852 in 1996 to 843 in 2003. Only Anglo students show slight improvement, from 1043 to 1051.
Sandy Kress knows the data on high schools isn’t good. His solution is more tests. The gains tests bring in elementary and middle schools are lost in high school, Kress says, because high schools aren’t held accountable. Here in Texas, Kress has agitated to extend standardized testing to high schools. “We still are not where we need to be in terms of college-going rates, particularly for poor and minority kids,” Kress says. “That’s what this secondary school focus is all about. We still have some schools that perform pitifully without consequence.” And if the teaching curriculum has narrowed to suit the demands of the test, Kress says the answer is to test more. “This will make some testing critics cringe, but one thing the accountability system can do with the narrowness problem is have more subjects tested,” he says.
Testing critics do indeed cringe when they imagine what history, science, and art will look like broken down into manageable, multiple-choice, worksheet-length bites. Worse, a recent report by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice suggests No Child Left Behind is exporting Texas-style testing scandals to the rest of the country: In New York, school administrators have been accused of pushing thousands of low-scoring students into high school equivalency programs, where, although they never earn diplomas, they don’t count as dropouts. In North Carolina, eight out of ten elementary school teachers say they spend more than 20 percent of class time preparing for tests. Reports of cheating by principals and teachers have surfaced in more than 20 states.
Bush’s proposed education budget for 2006 echoes Texas’ planned expansion of testing. The bulk of the president’s High School Initiative is $1.24 billion in “research-based interventions” for students at risk of failing the new tests. Few districts have such interventional programs; even fewer know how to go about designing and implementing them. Luckily, most test-publishers already offer their own versions. The jury is still out on whether the tests are good for kids, and whether more tests will be better. But they will be very, very good for business. And, of course, they’ll be good for Sandy Kress.
Emily Pyle is a freelance reporter based in Austin.
http://www.mollyivins.com/showArticle.asp?ArticleID=1947
Feature: 5/13/2005
Te$t Market
High-stakes tests aren't good for students, teachers, or schools. So who are they good for?
BY EMILY PYLE / TEXAS OBSERVER
The committee hearing in the basement of the Texas Capitol on February 28 offered a glimpse of what the next phase of public school reform in this country might look like. The House Public Education Committee heard testimony on House Bill 2, an omnibus school finance and reform package. If the bill passes and Texas continues to serve as a national blueprint for school reform, the rest of the country should brace for more tests, with more riding on those tests than ever. The new legislation would inject additional “accountability” into public education, this time by expanding standardized testing in high schools, and tying funding, including teacher salaries, to performance on state exams. Those proposals aren’t popular in many quarters. Eighteen people representing teachers, administrators, parents, and public school advocates testified against the bill. They asked for fewer testing mandates and more public school funding. The critics of the bill are part of a growing movement against the Texas education model, enshrined in the landmark federal law No Child Left Behind. Opponents say the current focus on testing degrades education and drains resources from the neediest schools.
Only one witness testified in favor of the bill. There was a small stir as Sandy Kress came to the microphone; in gatherings like this, he is something of a celebrity. Ten years ago, public school accountability was a vague, unenforceable ideal from free market enthusiasts who wanted to see schools run more like businesses. Kress, a Dallas lawyer, was serving what would be his last, tumultuous term as president of the Dallas school board. Fellow board members were calling the newspaper to denounce him as a racist and a bully. The fortunes of the reform movement and of Kress have risen together. He is one of the principal designers of No Child Left Behind, and has used his knowledge and connections to earn millions as a high-powered lobbyist for test publishers.
Despite the lack of an endorsement from any major Texas education group, passage of HB 2 out of the committee was a foregone conclusion. Accountability, with its powerful allies, seems unstoppable. Its supporters are free market reformers who say test scores bring a needed dose of reality to lazy educational bureaucracies. Others are education reformers who believe that the best hope for poor and minority students lies in the public humiliation of their “low-performing” schools. And a select few enrich themselves supplying the demand public school reform has created for tests, and the tools it takes to pass them. Kress appears to be all of the above.
“A decade earlier, Texas was going backwards,” Kress told the committee. “Graduation rates were going down. Our minority youngsters were going nowhere.” Now, he insisted, because of accountability, schools are better. The committee should go further, and faster—more tests, shorter deadlines, tougher standards. It was a radically different perspective than that voiced by other witnesses. Of course, unlike other witnesses, Kress was not lobbying on behalf of schools, teachers, or students, but a coalition of business interests who have pushed their version of school reform in Texas for more than a decade.
Kress can be an appealing witness—unusually alert and impassioned, with a voice that readily conveys sincerity in the faintest of Dallas inflections. He champions cash incentives for teachers who improve student test scores, but says they should be used primarily to draw talented teachers into the poorest schools. (Business groups use incentives as a means to side-step blanket pay raises, teachers’ groups say.)
Kress plays up the interests of poor and minority students, while soft-pedaling the need for increased funding. Business leaders have thrown themselves foursquare against more money. “I think the business community feels we ought to spend more and more on education,” Kress told the committee. “I think some would be willing to pay more. But I think they all feel very deeply that if they’re going to pay more, they want to see results, they want to see efficiency, they want to see accountability.” HB 2, with its emphasis on test scores and its marginal increases in funding, seemed to be exactly what business leaders wanted. Kress closed with, “Keep up the good work.”
Eleven days later, the Texas House of Representatives approved HB 2, and though the Senate has tinkered with the bill’s financing, the testing provisions remain intact. If it seems peculiar that a system so good for business and so hard on public schools should also be packaged as the best answer for “disadvantaged” students, that’s the genius of Sandy Kress. From his days in Dallas to his tenure in the Bush administration, Kress has pushed accountability as the final solution for poor and minority kids stuck in under-performing public schools. Since returning to Austin and high-profile lobbying firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld in 2002, Kress has been teaching businesses to turn a profit helping schools meet the mandates of No Child Left Behind. In the process, he’s made about $4 million in lobbying contracts, in large part from companies that profit from provisions of the law he helped to design. Kress says his clients share his vision of schools where unequivocal standards make educating every student no longer optional.
“When I take on a client, I try to take on people who seem committed to the same goals I have,” says Kress, who agreed to answer interview questions by e-mail. “I expect to be judged by the same standard by which I judge others—has this work contributed to improved educational results for students, particularly disadvantaged students?”
It’s a question that’s still very much up for debate.
In Dallas in the late eighties, Kress was an anomalous figure, a prominent lawyer involved in local Democratic politics—he was elected to chair the Dallas County Democratic Party in 1986—with strong connections in the local, mainly Republican, business community. “Sandy had close ties to business in Dallas,” says Rene Castilla, former president of the Dallas Independent School District’s board of trustees. “They listened to each other.”
It was during Castilla’s term as board president that Kress first began to dabble in school board politics. At the time, Dallas business leaders were worried about the abysmal standardized test scores in the city’s predominantly black schools. “Dallas had a pretty poor reputation for the performance of its schools,” Castilla says. “That didn’t sit well with business. A business community wants to attract new business to the area, and there’s two questions people ask before relocating—housing and schools.”
Accountability was an idea then making the rounds among business leaders. Both George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton tried to implement national standards for American education, but attempts to enforce the new rules met with complex partisan opposition and by the early nineties the movement had stalled. Business leaders began to suggest the solution was to treat failing schools like failing corporations: Establish clear-cut standards, monitor whether they were met, and either reward the successful or punish the failures. “Just as businesses are results-oriented, so schools must also be,” Lou Gerstner, then CEO of IBM, wrote in his book Reinventing Education in 1994. “Results are not achieved by bureaucratic regulation. They are achieved by meeting customer requirements by rewards for success and penalties for failure. Market discipline is the key, the ultimate form of accountability.”
Kress presented accountability to the school board in 1990 as a way to simultaneously raise test scores and win the support of business. To a school board then trying to float a hefty bond issue against business opposition, that sounded like a good deal. The board tapped Kress to head a commission that would shape an accountability system for the district. After months of study, the commission proposed a system that rated schools by their test scores, with schools that showed the most improvement getting cash awards of $5,000 to $10,000. Perhaps most importantly, the system would force schools to disaggregate test scores, keeping administrators from disguising low scores for poor, black, or Latino students by averaging them into the general population. The board unanimously approved the commission’s proposals in 1991. The next year, Kress was elected to the school board with the overwhelming support of influential business leaders, including Texas Rangers owner George W. Bush. “Sandy believed minority kids deserved better than they were getting,” says Castilla, who lost the board presidency to Kress in 1994. “He was very hard-working, very zealous about making a difference.”
However, black school board members saw accountability as an attempt to undermine the city’s 1974 desegregation order, which allotted extra money and resources to Dallas’s historically neglected black schools. Kress did torpedo several key components of the desegregation order, heading efforts that slashed more than $15 million from bond proposals for a magnet school in a mostly black part of town. He also sought to limit the money spent on “learning centers” meant to reverse the city’s busing policy by bringing black students back into their own neighborhoods. As board president, Kress brought a hardball style of politics to what had been a sleepy municipal body; black board members accused him of meeting in secret with favored board members and manipulating the board’s committee system to dilute the minority vote. Secretly taped conversations alleged to be between Kress and fellow board member and political ally Dan Peavy supported the accusations. Peavy used racial slurs when describing plans to curb the influence of black board members. Kress’s identity on the tapes was never confirmed, but soon after they came to light in 1995, he announced he would not run for another term as board president. “I have no idea what the next challenge will be,” he told reporters at a press conference in January 1996. “But I am sure there will be one.”
He didn’t have long to wait. A year later, Kress moved to Austin, where he already had friends. In 1993, he had worked with Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock on the first draft of the Texas accountability system, which introduced the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills test. He had briefed George W. Bush on education policy during his 1994 run against incumbent Ann Richards. Once in Austin, Kress helped Gov. Bush lobby for pet reforms like ending social promotion. As a paid consultant for the Governor’s Business Council, Kress traveled across the state pushing Bush’s education agenda. He also served as a board member of the Texas Business and Education Coalition, and a lobbyist for TBEC’s lobbying arm, Texans for Education. By 1998, Kress was working for Akin Gump. Through the firm, Kress held lobbying contracts for McGraw-Hill, the textbook publishing company that had long-standing personal ties to the Bush family. Kress was one of the architects of the Governor’s Reading Initiative, which eventually landed McGraw-Hill the lion’s share of the Texas textbook market.
In 2000, Kress helped Bush craft the education platform that became the centerpiece of “compassionate conservativism” and stumped for Bush’s plan throughout the campaign, telling the story of the “Texas miracle”—rising test scores, happy urban school kids, a bright new future—again and again. When Bush finally secured his victory, he took Kress along with him to Washington, D.C. Once inside the Beltway, Kress played key roles in crafting and passing No Child Left Behind. Officially still a Democrat, he was instrumental in putting together the bipartisan push behind the bill, pulling Democratic lawmakers Ted Kennedy, George Miller, and John Boehner into the president’s court. The law that took shape required states to test every student in the third through eighth grades and once in high school, and publicize the scores. By 2014, all students, including those in special education and those with limited English skills, would have to pass the exam. To that end, the states would establish “adequate yearly progress” or AYP standards. Schools that receive Title I funding—federal aid for schools with high numbers of poor, minority, and at-risk students—would be penalized if they failed to meet the standards for three years running.
Kress continued to promise that high-stakes testing would save poor and minority students by drawing attention to their low scores. Some credit Kress as the original coiner of Bush’s “soft bigotry of low expectations”—the catch-phrase now used to lob a subtle accusation of racism and class-ism at anyone who protests that testing mandates are unfair to those same disadvantaged kids.
he General Accounting Office predicts states will spend between $1.9 and $5.3 billion a year meeting the testing requirement of the law. But that’s only a fraction of the law’s costs; other provisions are even more expensive—and, to the suddenly burgeoning education industry, even more lucrative.
No Child Left Behind requires states to produce “interpretive, descriptive, and diagnostic reports… that allow parents, teachers, and principals to understand and address the specific academic needs of students.” Since few pretend that a standardized test given once a year can do anything so sophisticated, schools are finding they need separate “formative testing programs” to meet the requirement. The formative testing model, according to the test publisher NCS Pearson, is to “teach, assess, report, diagnose, and prescribe.” Pearson, with other publishers, offers a full range of products for every step of the process.
Schools with high numbers of low-scoring students have three years to raise their scores before penalties kick in, and those are also expensive. The so-called “choice” provision, with its passing resemblance to vouchers, has attracted media attention, but has proved unpopular so far. The provision allows students at low-performing campuses to transfer to one of their district’s better performing schools, but only about 1 percent of eligible students made the transfer last year, according to data kept by the U.S. Department of Education. Instead, parents are taking advantage of another provision that requires low-performing schools to provide free after-school tutoring services, using a state-approved, “research-based” tutoring program.
The law also demands a highly qualified teacher in every classroom by the end of the 2006 school year. Though the definition of “highly qualified” is vague, with states setting their own standards of quality, the requirement has opened up a new market in materials geared toward teachers. Most major publishers now offer professional development products and services, some of which provide general training in pedagogy, but many of which merely train teachers to use another of the publisher’s classroom products.
In a time of growing budget crises, few states—let alone districts and schools—have the time or the money to develop the programs that No Child Left Behind makes mandatory, or all but mandatory. That’s where business, and Sandy Kress, come in.
Bush signed No Child Left Behind into law in January 2002. Five months later, Kress registered with the U.S. Secretary of the Senate as a lobbyist for NCS Pearson. Kress specializes in helping his clients tailor themselves to the requirements of No Child Left Behind, something Pearson has done with startling success. A publishing conglomerate that owns The Financial Times and Penguin Books, Pearson had been a bit player in the education market, concentrating on the scoring of standardized tests. In 2000, however, Pearson acquired National Computer Systems, the company that held the contract for designing and scoring the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills. Since then, Pearson has built an accountability empire of sorts, becoming the third-largest testing company in the country, behind CTB McGraw-Hill and Harcourt Educational Measurement.
NCS Pearson publishes software systems that allow teachers to create, administer, and score “diagnostic” tests that purport to show how well students are learning by demonstrating in part how prepared they are for state tests. Subsidiary Pearson Educational Measurement holds test design contracts in states with large testing programs, like Florida and Texas. Pearson Education, another subsidiary, publishes reading, math, science, art, and music curricula for grades K-12. Other subsidiaries offer online testing, data management services, and professional training for teachers, including an online master’s degree program. The company claims to have at least one product placed in 50,000 schools nationwide.
Another of Kress’s clients, Educational Testing Services, Inc., also made a sudden market surge in the wake of No Child Left Behind. A non-profit best known as the publisher of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), ETS stayed clear of the commercial testing business for nearly 50 years. Beginning with the spin-off of for-profit subsidiary K-12 Works in 2000, however, ETS has aggressively pursued state testing contracts. The company now holds contracts with New Jersey, Indiana, and the plum of the state testing market, California. ETS also offers a professional development program for teachers and one of the few tests so far available to certify teaching aides.
Another Kress client, Kaplan, Inc., which formerly specialized in prepping students for college entrance exams, now offers a variety of test-related services. These include prep courses tailored to the standardized tests in 13 states and the District of Columbia, “Intervention” programs targeting low-scoring students with skill-drilling software, and professional development courses in which, for roughly $1,000 an hour, Kaplan specialists give teachers tips on how to coach their students to pass the test.
Kress also lobbies for HOSTS Learning, which publishes online testing tools and an associated line of curricular materials and for Kumon North America, a rising star in the brand-new after-school tutoring market. Other clients include Community Education Partners, a for-profit school management company that runs alternative campuses for students with disciplinary problems, as well as companies that help schools and districts collect, manage, and report the volume of data required by No Child Left Behind.
There’s a lot of money in what’s coming to be known as the assessment market, but most of it is going to the handful of companies, like Pearson, who have successfully built up assessment empires. “The top four or five players in the textbook market are also top players in the testing market,” says Mark Jackson, a senior analyst with Eduventures, a firm which tracks trends in the commercial education market. As the focus on testing intensifies, the test prep materials these companies offer are becoming the standard curriculum, especially in poor schools, where the scores are often lowest, and the pressure to raise them most extreme. “It’s a zero-sum game of financing,” Jackson says. “What fits into the testing model gets bought, and what doesn’t, doesn’t.”
But what’s been a boon for a handful of publishers has been a disaster for education, critics say. As pressure to raise scores intensifies, teachers and principals at low-performing schools have found creative ways to raise scores—from encouraging low-scoring students to drop out of school before Test Day to simply erasing and rewriting students’ testing sheets. The most common resort, however, is to drill the reading and math skills covered by the test, to the detriment of other, untested subjects. As an ever-greater percentage of class time goes into test preparation, more money flows to the companies that publish test prep material.
The schools under the most pressure are those that educate large populations of poor, minority, and limited-English students. Ninety-nine percent of the kids in the Laredo Independent School District are Latino; ninety-five percent of them come from families below the poverty level. The district’s test scores are consistently low. “These are kids who often don’t speak English, kids without the kinds of experiences that kids elsewhere may have,” says Laredo ISD superintendent Sylvia Bruni. “They come from homes without books. Some don’t have televisions.” They are, in fact, the disadvantaged kids for whom Sandy Kress has been pitching accountability for nearly 15 years.
Laredo’s third-grade teachers spent the equivalent of one day a week administering either the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills test itself or diagnostic “formative assessment” tests this school year, a district-wide testing inventory found. The inventory didn’t count time spent on test prep, which Bruni says is “almost constant”—extended school days, Saturday test prep classes, and a portion of every class, in every subject, every day. Since individual schools purchase most of their test prep materials themselves, Bruni doesn’t have a district-wide figure on how much money is spent. But she says it’s a large percentage of resources that the district—one of the poorest in the state—can ill afford. “The district spends money, the campuses spend money, the teachers spend money,” Bruni says. “It’s a lot.”
Laredo administrators have decided to cut back on practice tests in future years, but the decision is a hard one. Test prep isn’t education, Bruni says, and the time and money spent on it mean that other, more sophisticated curriculum must be dumped. The district is under increasing pressure to raise scores, however. Two of Laredo’s three high schools failed to make adequate yearly progress in 2004, and progress requirements will climb each year. Without extensive drilling, more students will fail the test and the sanctions of No Child Left Behind will kick in. Earlier this year, Laredo ISD joined the National Education Agency’s lawsuit against the Department of Education, challenging the law. “You can’t seem to break the stranglehold,” Bruni says. “The temptation is just to drill. It isn’t meaningful for the kids, but teachers know that the scores will go up.”
If tests are over-emphasized, Kress says, teachers and principals themselves are at fault. “Why do administrators allow test prep materials to dominate the curriculum in schools that serve the poor?” he asks. “Damn it, they’re the ones in charge.” Despite protests from districts like Laredo, Kress is pushing for higher stakes, tougher standards, and swifter retribution against schools that don’t make the grade. Kress was the head cheerleader for proposals from the Governor’s Business Council that wound up in HB 2: requiring a passing score on high school exit exams for course credit (and thus graduation), reducing the deadline for improvement from three years to two, and allowing private companies to take over consistently low-performing schools.
He has also used his position on the Texas Education Commissioners’ Accountability Advisory Committee to push the Texas Education Agency to toughen its accountability rating system. At an advisory committee meeting in March, Kress laid out a proposal under which the percentage of students who must pass the test before a school is rated “acceptable” would jump by 10 points. Rates would then climb five points a year until 2010, when 100 percent of students must pass the reading exam before a school will be considered acceptable. When other committee members called for a more gradual and realistic stepping-up of the rating system, Kress lost his temper. “He threw a tantrum,” says one fellow committee member. “He had a very ideological perspective, and others were trying to introduce some realism. He seemed to be trying to shout us into doing what he wanted. He’s a charming, agreeable, persuasive guy, but in front of an audience he’s not trying to charm, he’s a bully.”
Accountability’s supporters continue to push testing as the surest, fastest solution for the poor kids in weak schools. That a handful of companies are making a killing off accountability, they say, is incidental—just another example of the beauty of the free market system. But a mounting body of evidence suggests the “Texas miracle” Sandy Kress used to sell accountability to the country is a sham. Critics point to Texas’ rising dropout rates and flagging scores on college entrance exams as signs that test-prep-centered teaching is taking its toll on kids—especially those who are black, Latino, or poor.
Almost two out of five Texas high school students never earn a high school diploma, according to a report released this year by the Intercultural Development Research Association, which has tracked Texas dropout rates since 1986. IDRA’s report showed that in 2004, 36 percent of students who were freshman in 2001 were gone by last spring’s graduation ceremonies. That number is down slightly from previous years, but still higher than it was 20 years ago. Attrition rates are highest among minorities, the IDRA report shows, and the gap is growing. In 1986, 27 percent of Anglo students left school without graduating. Last year, Anglo students’ attrition was down to 22 percent, while rates for black students had climbed from 34 to 44 percent, and for Latinos from 45 to 49 percent. The report estimates dropouts have cost the state $500 billion over the past two decades in lost productivity and in the costs of social services, courts, and jails.
Dr. Albert Cortez, director of IDRA’s Institute of Policy and Leadership, is quick to point out that Texas’ dropout trouble predates high-stakes testing. But the tests, far from being a solution, have become part of the problem, he says. Narrowed curriculum bores and daunts some students into dropping out. Students who don’t think they’ll pass the high school test—a requirement for graduation—may stop going to school. Other researchers, including Dr. Angela Valenzuela of the University of Texas and Rice education professor Linda McNeil, say administrators under pressure to raise test scores may push potentially low-scoring students to drop out before the exam.
Despite the emphasis accountability supporters put on “narrowing the achievement gap,” state scores on college entrance exams show minority students losing ground since the tests were instituted. Fewer Texas high school students are taking the SAT and ACT now than 10 years ago, data from the Texas Education Agency shows, and on average they are scoring worse. The average score on the SATs for Latino students has fallen 17 points since 1996. The average score of black students has also drifted down, from 852 in 1996 to 843 in 2003. Only Anglo students show slight improvement, from 1043 to 1051.
Sandy Kress knows the data on high schools isn’t good. His solution is more tests. The gains tests bring in elementary and middle schools are lost in high school, Kress says, because high schools aren’t held accountable. Here in Texas, Kress has agitated to extend standardized testing to high schools. “We still are not where we need to be in terms of college-going rates, particularly for poor and minority kids,” Kress says. “That’s what this secondary school focus is all about. We still have some schools that perform pitifully without consequence.” And if the teaching curriculum has narrowed to suit the demands of the test, Kress says the answer is to test more. “This will make some testing critics cringe, but one thing the accountability system can do with the narrowness problem is have more subjects tested,” he says.
Testing critics do indeed cringe when they imagine what history, science, and art will look like broken down into manageable, multiple-choice, worksheet-length bites. Worse, a recent report by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice suggests No Child Left Behind is exporting Texas-style testing scandals to the rest of the country: In New York, school administrators have been accused of pushing thousands of low-scoring students into high school equivalency programs, where, although they never earn diplomas, they don’t count as dropouts. In North Carolina, eight out of ten elementary school teachers say they spend more than 20 percent of class time preparing for tests. Reports of cheating by principals and teachers have surfaced in more than 20 states.
Bush’s proposed education budget for 2006 echoes Texas’ planned expansion of testing. The bulk of the president’s High School Initiative is $1.24 billion in “research-based interventions” for students at risk of failing the new tests. Few districts have such interventional programs; even fewer know how to go about designing and implementing them. Luckily, most test-publishers already offer their own versions. The jury is still out on whether the tests are good for kids, and whether more tests will be better. But they will be very, very good for business. And, of course, they’ll be good for Sandy Kress.
Emily Pyle is a freelance reporter based in Austin.
Legislative leaders trade jabs over school finance measures.
In today's Quorum Report, OLIVEIRA COMMENTS ON LACK OF MINORITIES ON HB2
Public Education vice-chair questions, "Who is going to believe..."
"Minority children make up 60 percent of the students in our public school system, so obviously we have a great stake in any changes made to the school finance system," said Rep. René O. Oliveira, D-Brownsville and Vice-Chairman of the House Committee on Public Education. "Denying minority House members a seat on the education bill conference committee eliminates any voice those children need. Politically, the lack of minorities greatly undermines the credibility of the committee and the legislation. Who is going to believe that the bill is as helpful as it can be to minorities, when minorities had no input in its development?"
No Democrats in the House voted for HB2. http://www.quorumreport.com/ -Angela
79th LEGISLATURE
Craddick and Dewhurst tussle over taxes
Legislative leaders trade jabs over school finance measures.
By W. Gardner Selby
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Saturday, May 14, 2005
House Speaker Tom Craddick and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst sniped over differences between House and Senate renditions of tax measures Friday, perhaps signaling that pending negotiations could turn personal and prickly.
Craddick appointed 10 Republican negotiators, including one woman, to tussle with Senate colleagues over House Bill 2, a school reform plan, and HB 3, the multibillion-dollar proposal intended to cut school property taxes by raising sales and tobacco taxes, among other sources of funding.
Asked why no Democrats or non-Anglos made it to the negotiation squads, Craddick said he chose individuals who voted for the proposals after House debate.
Dewhurst, asked if diversity would play into his awaited choice of negotiators, said it would.
"They're going to stack up" differently, Dewhurst said. "Diversity is important."
Craddick, answering reporters' questions, earlier questioned the Senate's decision to put what he termed $4 billion in additional education spending into its version of the tax plan.
He insisted such spending doesn't fit with the topic of HB 3 — "financing public schools in this state and reducing school property taxes," as he described it — though he didn't say precisely why.
He said House leaders have told the Senate as much 50 times.
"You can raise a jillion dollars if you want to raise it in the bill, but it all has to go to property tax reduction," Craddick said. "We've said that all along."
Dewhurst disagreed, saying some $3.2 billion slated for public schools in the proposal will come largely from accounting adjustments and other non-tax elements. Of Craddick, he said, "You know, it's Friday the 13th, anything can happen. Or rather, someone could say anything."
If things blow up on the tax and school measures, Dewhurst said, "It's not going to be the Senate's fault."
Craddick named Rep. Kent Grusendorf of Arlington to lead House negotiators on HB 2. Others named to that conference panel: Reps. Dianne Delisi of Temple, Bill Keffer of Dallas, Dan Branch of Dallas and Rob Eissler of The Woodlands.
The speaker named Rep. Jim Keffer, R-Eastland, to lead House negotiators on HB 3. Keffer will be joined by Reps. Warren Chisum of Pampa, John Otto of Dayton, David Swinford of Amarillo and Charlie Geren of Fort Worth.
Dewhurst has not yet named Senate negotiators.
Find this article at:
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/shared/tx/legislature/stories/05/14dewhurst.html
Public Education vice-chair questions, "Who is going to believe..."
"Minority children make up 60 percent of the students in our public school system, so obviously we have a great stake in any changes made to the school finance system," said Rep. René O. Oliveira, D-Brownsville and Vice-Chairman of the House Committee on Public Education. "Denying minority House members a seat on the education bill conference committee eliminates any voice those children need. Politically, the lack of minorities greatly undermines the credibility of the committee and the legislation. Who is going to believe that the bill is as helpful as it can be to minorities, when minorities had no input in its development?"
No Democrats in the House voted for HB2. http://www.quorumreport.com/ -Angela
79th LEGISLATURE
Craddick and Dewhurst tussle over taxes
Legislative leaders trade jabs over school finance measures.
By W. Gardner Selby
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Saturday, May 14, 2005
House Speaker Tom Craddick and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst sniped over differences between House and Senate renditions of tax measures Friday, perhaps signaling that pending negotiations could turn personal and prickly.
Craddick appointed 10 Republican negotiators, including one woman, to tussle with Senate colleagues over House Bill 2, a school reform plan, and HB 3, the multibillion-dollar proposal intended to cut school property taxes by raising sales and tobacco taxes, among other sources of funding.
Asked why no Democrats or non-Anglos made it to the negotiation squads, Craddick said he chose individuals who voted for the proposals after House debate.
Dewhurst, asked if diversity would play into his awaited choice of negotiators, said it would.
"They're going to stack up" differently, Dewhurst said. "Diversity is important."
Craddick, answering reporters' questions, earlier questioned the Senate's decision to put what he termed $4 billion in additional education spending into its version of the tax plan.
He insisted such spending doesn't fit with the topic of HB 3 — "financing public schools in this state and reducing school property taxes," as he described it — though he didn't say precisely why.
He said House leaders have told the Senate as much 50 times.
"You can raise a jillion dollars if you want to raise it in the bill, but it all has to go to property tax reduction," Craddick said. "We've said that all along."
Dewhurst disagreed, saying some $3.2 billion slated for public schools in the proposal will come largely from accounting adjustments and other non-tax elements. Of Craddick, he said, "You know, it's Friday the 13th, anything can happen. Or rather, someone could say anything."
If things blow up on the tax and school measures, Dewhurst said, "It's not going to be the Senate's fault."
Craddick named Rep. Kent Grusendorf of Arlington to lead House negotiators on HB 2. Others named to that conference panel: Reps. Dianne Delisi of Temple, Bill Keffer of Dallas, Dan Branch of Dallas and Rob Eissler of The Woodlands.
The speaker named Rep. Jim Keffer, R-Eastland, to lead House negotiators on HB 3. Keffer will be joined by Reps. Warren Chisum of Pampa, John Otto of Dayton, David Swinford of Amarillo and Charlie Geren of Fort Worth.
Dewhurst has not yet named Senate negotiators.
Find this article at:
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/shared/tx/legislature/stories/05/14dewhurst.html
Senate's top 10 tweak is best
EDITORIAL BOARD / Austin Am-Statesman
Saturday, May 14, 2005
Texas needs a fair college admissions law that attracts the state's brightest and best students from across its vast geographic areas. It should be an admissions law that promotes ethnic and racial diversity and gives students who tackle tougher courses an advantage over those who opt for easy ones.
The Texas Senate found a way to do just that — it took a good law and made it better. Not so the Texas House of Representatives, whose members took a narrow approach that would erode years of progress in populating universities with smart, talented kids of all races and income levels. The Senate plan establishes a level playing field for all students, while the House plan gives an unfair advantage to students in affluent suburban districts.
Under the House plan, public colleges and universities would fill no more than 50 percent of their freshman classes with students who graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school class. Currently, there is no limit. The change would permit colleges and universities to admit other students using criteria besides grade point average, — such as SAT scores or a particular talent — over students who make the best grades and work the hardest.
Both the House and Senate plans would require students to take the advanced high school curriculum to be eligible for top 10 percent admissions. The Senate plan also includes incentives for students who take advanced placement or magnet courses, giving extra points to increase their chances for admission under the top 10 percent law.
The House policy does speak to concerns raised by University of Texas at Austin administrators who have complained that their freshman seats are increasingly being filled with top 10 percent students. We don't see the problem there. Top 10 percent students typically have the highest SAT scores, work the hardest to get ahead, are more likely to possess special talents and have overcome economic and social obstacles to rise to the top of their class.
Who can be more deserving that that?
According to UT figures, students who gain admission under the top 10 percent rule stay in college in greater numbers and graduate faster than non-top 10 percent students. In short, they outperform their non-top 10 percent peers. Why not reward those students? Again we ask, who else is more deserving?
It's worth noting the words of Texas Higher Education Commissioner Raymund Paredes, who cautioned that imposing a cap on the number of students admitted to UT under the top 10 percent law could erode racial and ethnic diversity on that campus for a few years.
But the top 10 percent law has done more than enhance diversity; it has given every high school student an incentive to work hard and get good grades. Cutting it back would dampen students' motivation.
All that makes for a clear choice: the Senate plan is the best for Texas.
http://www.statesman.com/opinion/content/editorial/05/14top10_edit.html
Saturday, May 14, 2005
Texas needs a fair college admissions law that attracts the state's brightest and best students from across its vast geographic areas. It should be an admissions law that promotes ethnic and racial diversity and gives students who tackle tougher courses an advantage over those who opt for easy ones.
The Texas Senate found a way to do just that — it took a good law and made it better. Not so the Texas House of Representatives, whose members took a narrow approach that would erode years of progress in populating universities with smart, talented kids of all races and income levels. The Senate plan establishes a level playing field for all students, while the House plan gives an unfair advantage to students in affluent suburban districts.
Under the House plan, public colleges and universities would fill no more than 50 percent of their freshman classes with students who graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school class. Currently, there is no limit. The change would permit colleges and universities to admit other students using criteria besides grade point average, — such as SAT scores or a particular talent — over students who make the best grades and work the hardest.
Both the House and Senate plans would require students to take the advanced high school curriculum to be eligible for top 10 percent admissions. The Senate plan also includes incentives for students who take advanced placement or magnet courses, giving extra points to increase their chances for admission under the top 10 percent law.
The House policy does speak to concerns raised by University of Texas at Austin administrators who have complained that their freshman seats are increasingly being filled with top 10 percent students. We don't see the problem there. Top 10 percent students typically have the highest SAT scores, work the hardest to get ahead, are more likely to possess special talents and have overcome economic and social obstacles to rise to the top of their class.
Who can be more deserving that that?
According to UT figures, students who gain admission under the top 10 percent rule stay in college in greater numbers and graduate faster than non-top 10 percent students. In short, they outperform their non-top 10 percent peers. Why not reward those students? Again we ask, who else is more deserving?
It's worth noting the words of Texas Higher Education Commissioner Raymund Paredes, who cautioned that imposing a cap on the number of students admitted to UT under the top 10 percent law could erode racial and ethnic diversity on that campus for a few years.
But the top 10 percent law has done more than enhance diversity; it has given every high school student an incentive to work hard and get good grades. Cutting it back would dampen students' motivation.
All that makes for a clear choice: the Senate plan is the best for Texas.
http://www.statesman.com/opinion/content/editorial/05/14top10_edit.html
Revolving Door: RISD Must Establish Clear Boundaries
Jim Nelson is a former attorney and Commissioner of Education. -Angela
12:10 AM CDT on Friday, May 13, 2005
Richardson schools Superintendent Jim Nelson said last week that he could fade the heat from any conflict-of-interest complaints involving his district and his former employer.
Here's some heat.
The month after Mr. Nelson took his job in Richardson last summer, the district began obtaining state-bought reading materials sold by his former company.
By the end of January, RISD paid nearly $400,000 of its own money in several separate transactions for additional materials from that company, Voyager Expanded Learning.
Aside: Mr. Nelson's wife was, and still is, employed by Voyager Expanded Learning, as is former RISD Superintendent Vernon Johnson.
As outlined in an article by Dallas Morning News reporter Kristine Hughes, Mr. Nelson says the RISD-Voyager deals were legal, completed with the knowledge of the board and yielded him no financial gain. He maintains the district got the best reading program available for struggling students.
None of that does anything to stop our queasiness in watching the revolving door between the private and public sectors – especially while the Texas Legislature is entertaining various privatization ideas for public schools.
Mr. Nelson has one of the most prominent names in Texas public education, having served two governors as education commissioner. He left that job three years ago to become a vice president at Voyager, an ambitious Dallas-based supplier of education materials with a reputation of cultivating political connections.
A high-profile statewide job typically sharpens sensitivity about maintaining an unassailable record of handling public dollars. If Mr. Nelson's sensitivity meter needs recalibrating, his school board would be wise to do the job to protect the public trust. RISD could at least insulate Mr. Nelson from decisions involving Voyager. It's notable that the nearly $400,000 in purchases occurred without formal board approval.
This editorial page has criticized well-salaried superintendents for paid consulting agreements in which they dispense advice to major suppliers of education products.
The Voyager case falls in the same category of offensiveness. The issue is not lawbreaking. It is ensuring absolute confidence in the men and women responsible for spending taxpayers' money to run Texas' public schools.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/editorials/stories/051305dnedirichardson.a02f4f44.html
12:10 AM CDT on Friday, May 13, 2005
Richardson schools Superintendent Jim Nelson said last week that he could fade the heat from any conflict-of-interest complaints involving his district and his former employer.
Here's some heat.
The month after Mr. Nelson took his job in Richardson last summer, the district began obtaining state-bought reading materials sold by his former company.
By the end of January, RISD paid nearly $400,000 of its own money in several separate transactions for additional materials from that company, Voyager Expanded Learning.
Aside: Mr. Nelson's wife was, and still is, employed by Voyager Expanded Learning, as is former RISD Superintendent Vernon Johnson.
As outlined in an article by Dallas Morning News reporter Kristine Hughes, Mr. Nelson says the RISD-Voyager deals were legal, completed with the knowledge of the board and yielded him no financial gain. He maintains the district got the best reading program available for struggling students.
None of that does anything to stop our queasiness in watching the revolving door between the private and public sectors – especially while the Texas Legislature is entertaining various privatization ideas for public schools.
Mr. Nelson has one of the most prominent names in Texas public education, having served two governors as education commissioner. He left that job three years ago to become a vice president at Voyager, an ambitious Dallas-based supplier of education materials with a reputation of cultivating political connections.
A high-profile statewide job typically sharpens sensitivity about maintaining an unassailable record of handling public dollars. If Mr. Nelson's sensitivity meter needs recalibrating, his school board would be wise to do the job to protect the public trust. RISD could at least insulate Mr. Nelson from decisions involving Voyager. It's notable that the nearly $400,000 in purchases occurred without formal board approval.
This editorial page has criticized well-salaried superintendents for paid consulting agreements in which they dispense advice to major suppliers of education products.
The Voyager case falls in the same category of offensiveness. The issue is not lawbreaking. It is ensuring absolute confidence in the men and women responsible for spending taxpayers' money to run Texas' public schools.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/editorials/stories/051305dnedirichardson.a02f4f44.html
“The Near Impossibility of Testing for Teacher Quality"
Professor David Berliner has another piece out titled, "The Near Impossibility of Testing for Teacher Quality"
It appears in the May/June edition of the Journal of Teacher Education.
It appears in the May/June edition of the Journal of Teacher Education.
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Houston ISD Mixes Business, Education
This is really interesting. The Houston Idependent School District IS a business now, selling a whole range of things. See their Doing Business with HISD Website for more specific information.
The Houston Independent School District is even more of a business now, selling a whole range of things, even "virtual" schooling (also termed “virtual vouchers” by opponents) delivered over the Internet for home-schoolers. I wonder what the district’s position is on the virtual voucher bill making its way through the legislature right now. H.B. 1445, the virtual schools bill is being heard in the House this PM (Wednesday). If it passes, more than 300,000 home-school and private school students will become eligible for taxpayer dollars in order to fund approved virtual school course offered via CD or DVD, that is, on-line via the Internet.
Yes, the question is correct. Who does profit from all of this? And how can a business count on serving the needs of all children adequately when those interests collide with the “bottom line,” or with that which is profitable?
Though I honestly don’t know the district’s position on this, a look at who’s pushing this legislation right now might provide some insights. Last session, former Secretary of Education Bill Bennett was on hand lobbying for this as his curriculum software company, K12, Inc., was going to profit directly.
-Angela
District sells products to aid budget, but do the children profit?
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
By BRUCE NICHOLS / The Dallas Morning News
HOUSTON – School districts around the country have sold exclusive rights to soft drink companies, put paid ads on buses and even let advertisers pipe music into hallways – all part of the new rage of running public education like a business.
But few have gone so far as to sell products and services to outside buyers.
One big exception: the Houston Independent School District. It dipped its toe into the marketing waters a decade ago and is now selling nine HISD-brand products and services to other districts, including Dallas.
"School districts are clearly taking lessons from the private sector," said Charles Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, a coalition of the 65 largest districts in the nation. But "nobody has been as aggressive for as long as Houston."
At a recent Austin meeting of school business officials, Houston ISD fit right in with the sellers of buses, janitorial supplies and gym equipment. Standing under a large HISD logo, the district's retired chief financial officer, Leonard Sturm, handed out brochures and answered questions about curriculum software, construction services and other wares the district sells inside and outside Texas.
Some question whether becoming more like a business detracts from a school district's core purpose of educating children – especially in Houston, where the school system has suffered embarrassing scandals involving cheating on standardized tests and under-reporting of dropout rates.
But Mr. Sturm – rehired as a consultant to lead the sales push – said the effort is a response to the rising pressures of tighter budgets, topped-out tax revenues, ratcheted-up performance demands and a political environment that favors private-sector solutions.
"Everybody that was coming to look at us was saying you guys need to treat the district more like a business," Mr. Sturm said. "That's really the origin of what we're doing."
He's had some success. Sales totaled $12.5 million in 2003-04, the last complete year for which figures are available. Nearly $1.7 million of that was net gain that could help defray operating costs. It's a drop in the bucket when you look at the district's $1.2 billion budget, but it's a start, he says.
The upside: Taxpayers, theoretically, save every time HISD sells something to another district. HISD recovers some of its operating costs. And customers save through the buying power of the nation's seventh largest district, with more than 200,000 students.
Detractors' concerns
But some see big downsides.
"It's a bad thing because what it does is it creates an organization whose focus is further and further removed from actual teaching and learning of children," said Alex Molnar, director of the Education Policy Studies Laboratory at Arizona State University. He also decries the drift toward turning schools into businesses, the "erosion of the idea of public education as a public good instead of a market-driven commodity."
Mr. Sturm says HISD's main mission, education, will always come first. The district's a long way from becoming a business, he says.
With its recent problems, why would anyone buy anything stamped with the HISD brand.
"It's not like HISD is a shining star for management," chuckled Gayle Fallon, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers.
Mr. Sturm says HISD's problems haven't hurt his efforts because the district's products are "state of the art. I believe strongly in HISD's products and services."
The main problem, he says, is that he's doing something new for most districts.
"We're breaking down barriers as we do this, and that's why we haven't grown as fast as I'd like to go," he said. "It's a mindset thing."
Although Dallas hasn't made the leap, other districts are considering it.
"We're not marketing like HISD at the moment, but we're thinking about it," said Ruben Rojas, director of revenue enhancement for the Los Angeles Unified School District in California.
There appear to be no comprehensive statistics on the phenomenon, but Charlotte, N.C., schools sold a curriculum to a private company and collect royalties. Round Rock, Texas, ISD markets construction services. And Texas' 20 regional education service centers have long offered districts cooperative buying and other services for a fee.
Still, no program appears as far along as Houston's. HISD started selling its services in the mid-1990s, helping other districts collect Medicaid for the nursing support given special education students. Most districts are too small to do it themselves, but with HISD's help, 193 are collecting it.
Over time, the Houston district's stable of brands has grown. It now includes professional development training, printing, construction services and lighting retrofits. HISD also sells access to its list of minority-owned vendors to help others meet diversity goals.
Mr. Sturm opened what may be the first marketing office of its kind in 2002, concentrating on selling employee benefits management services and a curriculum package. He's looking into marketing other products, including "virtual" schooling delivered over the Internet to enrich smaller districts' programs or educate home-schoolers.
Mr. Sturm is paid a commission on his sales. His contract caps his income at $9,500 a month, but the ceiling will rise if sales take off, said HISD chief financial officer Melinda Garrett.
"You've got to have somebody who knows how to open doors," she said. "Leonard knows everybody."
Mr. Sturm has sold HISD products and services to districts as far away as Charleston, S.C., and St. Louis, though most customers are in Texas.
DISD is a customer
Since 2002, Dallas ISD has bought the benefits management services Houston sells in tandem with an HISD contractor, Mercer Human Resources Consulting. Mercer does the work and gets most of the money. HISD makes the deals and gets $2 per employee per month. This year's deal is for nearly $5 million.
"If it wasn't them, it would be somebody else," said Charles Fridia, DISD division executive for business operations, benefits and compensation. "We don't have the resources internally to deal with Web site and benefits management. We'd have to have a larger staff."
A key to HISD's sales is a state law allowing special agreements between districts. Through such an agreement, a district can get a product or service without spending its own time and money to take bids. It satisfies bid laws by using Houston's low-bidder.
Because the law also applies to cities and counties, it has resulted in some interesting linkups.
Collin County government hired HISD's contractor for a flooring job. Grand Prairie bought some roof repair. Edinburg, in the Rio Grande Valley, had some work done at the airport.
Cities and counties find this "job order construction" service through the BuyBoard, a statewide purchasing cooperative run by the Texas Association of School Boards, which posts the availability of HISD's low bidder to do work elsewhere through interlocal agreement.
It hasn't been all smooth sailing.
HISD's partnership with Mercer has led to lawsuits alleging illegal practices in the sale of employee insurance. And people familiar with the matter say the Texas Department of Insurance is investigating. HISD and its contractors say their operations are legal and above board.
The dustup hasn't slowed Houston's sales effort. The district would like to market other products the same way it markets job order construction, through a single statewide source. One candidate: its curriculum software, known as CLEAR. The district would stand a better chance of recovering the $17 million development cost if it could persuade the Texas Education Agency to sell CLEAR statewide.
"We're having discussions about that," Ms. Garrett said.
Don McAdams, an education consultant and former Houston school board member, said he hopes HISD's marketing effort keeps growing because it improves efficiency and saves money.
"This has been a very valuable revenue stream for HISD," he said.
It makes sense all the way around, Dr. McAdams argued. "Why should anyone have to reinvent the wheel when they can buy from Houston? If Houston can sell it, recoup the cost of development, why shouldn't they?"
E-mail bnichols@dallasnews.com
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/051105dntexhoustonisd.9659a9d8.html
The Houston Independent School District is even more of a business now, selling a whole range of things, even "virtual" schooling (also termed “virtual vouchers” by opponents) delivered over the Internet for home-schoolers. I wonder what the district’s position is on the virtual voucher bill making its way through the legislature right now. H.B. 1445, the virtual schools bill is being heard in the House this PM (Wednesday). If it passes, more than 300,000 home-school and private school students will become eligible for taxpayer dollars in order to fund approved virtual school course offered via CD or DVD, that is, on-line via the Internet.
Yes, the question is correct. Who does profit from all of this? And how can a business count on serving the needs of all children adequately when those interests collide with the “bottom line,” or with that which is profitable?
Though I honestly don’t know the district’s position on this, a look at who’s pushing this legislation right now might provide some insights. Last session, former Secretary of Education Bill Bennett was on hand lobbying for this as his curriculum software company, K12, Inc., was going to profit directly.
-Angela
District sells products to aid budget, but do the children profit?
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
By BRUCE NICHOLS / The Dallas Morning News
HOUSTON – School districts around the country have sold exclusive rights to soft drink companies, put paid ads on buses and even let advertisers pipe music into hallways – all part of the new rage of running public education like a business.
But few have gone so far as to sell products and services to outside buyers.
One big exception: the Houston Independent School District. It dipped its toe into the marketing waters a decade ago and is now selling nine HISD-brand products and services to other districts, including Dallas.
"School districts are clearly taking lessons from the private sector," said Charles Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, a coalition of the 65 largest districts in the nation. But "nobody has been as aggressive for as long as Houston."
At a recent Austin meeting of school business officials, Houston ISD fit right in with the sellers of buses, janitorial supplies and gym equipment. Standing under a large HISD logo, the district's retired chief financial officer, Leonard Sturm, handed out brochures and answered questions about curriculum software, construction services and other wares the district sells inside and outside Texas.
Some question whether becoming more like a business detracts from a school district's core purpose of educating children – especially in Houston, where the school system has suffered embarrassing scandals involving cheating on standardized tests and under-reporting of dropout rates.
But Mr. Sturm – rehired as a consultant to lead the sales push – said the effort is a response to the rising pressures of tighter budgets, topped-out tax revenues, ratcheted-up performance demands and a political environment that favors private-sector solutions.
"Everybody that was coming to look at us was saying you guys need to treat the district more like a business," Mr. Sturm said. "That's really the origin of what we're doing."
He's had some success. Sales totaled $12.5 million in 2003-04, the last complete year for which figures are available. Nearly $1.7 million of that was net gain that could help defray operating costs. It's a drop in the bucket when you look at the district's $1.2 billion budget, but it's a start, he says.
The upside: Taxpayers, theoretically, save every time HISD sells something to another district. HISD recovers some of its operating costs. And customers save through the buying power of the nation's seventh largest district, with more than 200,000 students.
Detractors' concerns
But some see big downsides.
"It's a bad thing because what it does is it creates an organization whose focus is further and further removed from actual teaching and learning of children," said Alex Molnar, director of the Education Policy Studies Laboratory at Arizona State University. He also decries the drift toward turning schools into businesses, the "erosion of the idea of public education as a public good instead of a market-driven commodity."
Mr. Sturm says HISD's main mission, education, will always come first. The district's a long way from becoming a business, he says.
With its recent problems, why would anyone buy anything stamped with the HISD brand.
"It's not like HISD is a shining star for management," chuckled Gayle Fallon, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers.
Mr. Sturm says HISD's problems haven't hurt his efforts because the district's products are "state of the art. I believe strongly in HISD's products and services."
The main problem, he says, is that he's doing something new for most districts.
"We're breaking down barriers as we do this, and that's why we haven't grown as fast as I'd like to go," he said. "It's a mindset thing."
Although Dallas hasn't made the leap, other districts are considering it.
"We're not marketing like HISD at the moment, but we're thinking about it," said Ruben Rojas, director of revenue enhancement for the Los Angeles Unified School District in California.
There appear to be no comprehensive statistics on the phenomenon, but Charlotte, N.C., schools sold a curriculum to a private company and collect royalties. Round Rock, Texas, ISD markets construction services. And Texas' 20 regional education service centers have long offered districts cooperative buying and other services for a fee.
Still, no program appears as far along as Houston's. HISD started selling its services in the mid-1990s, helping other districts collect Medicaid for the nursing support given special education students. Most districts are too small to do it themselves, but with HISD's help, 193 are collecting it.
Over time, the Houston district's stable of brands has grown. It now includes professional development training, printing, construction services and lighting retrofits. HISD also sells access to its list of minority-owned vendors to help others meet diversity goals.
Mr. Sturm opened what may be the first marketing office of its kind in 2002, concentrating on selling employee benefits management services and a curriculum package. He's looking into marketing other products, including "virtual" schooling delivered over the Internet to enrich smaller districts' programs or educate home-schoolers.
Mr. Sturm is paid a commission on his sales. His contract caps his income at $9,500 a month, but the ceiling will rise if sales take off, said HISD chief financial officer Melinda Garrett.
"You've got to have somebody who knows how to open doors," she said. "Leonard knows everybody."
Mr. Sturm has sold HISD products and services to districts as far away as Charleston, S.C., and St. Louis, though most customers are in Texas.
DISD is a customer
Since 2002, Dallas ISD has bought the benefits management services Houston sells in tandem with an HISD contractor, Mercer Human Resources Consulting. Mercer does the work and gets most of the money. HISD makes the deals and gets $2 per employee per month. This year's deal is for nearly $5 million.
"If it wasn't them, it would be somebody else," said Charles Fridia, DISD division executive for business operations, benefits and compensation. "We don't have the resources internally to deal with Web site and benefits management. We'd have to have a larger staff."
A key to HISD's sales is a state law allowing special agreements between districts. Through such an agreement, a district can get a product or service without spending its own time and money to take bids. It satisfies bid laws by using Houston's low-bidder.
Because the law also applies to cities and counties, it has resulted in some interesting linkups.
Collin County government hired HISD's contractor for a flooring job. Grand Prairie bought some roof repair. Edinburg, in the Rio Grande Valley, had some work done at the airport.
Cities and counties find this "job order construction" service through the BuyBoard, a statewide purchasing cooperative run by the Texas Association of School Boards, which posts the availability of HISD's low bidder to do work elsewhere through interlocal agreement.
It hasn't been all smooth sailing.
HISD's partnership with Mercer has led to lawsuits alleging illegal practices in the sale of employee insurance. And people familiar with the matter say the Texas Department of Insurance is investigating. HISD and its contractors say their operations are legal and above board.
The dustup hasn't slowed Houston's sales effort. The district would like to market other products the same way it markets job order construction, through a single statewide source. One candidate: its curriculum software, known as CLEAR. The district would stand a better chance of recovering the $17 million development cost if it could persuade the Texas Education Agency to sell CLEAR statewide.
"We're having discussions about that," Ms. Garrett said.
Don McAdams, an education consultant and former Houston school board member, said he hopes HISD's marketing effort keeps growing because it improves efficiency and saves money.
"This has been a very valuable revenue stream for HISD," he said.
It makes sense all the way around, Dr. McAdams argued. "Why should anyone have to reinvent the wheel when they can buy from Houston? If Houston can sell it, recoup the cost of development, why shouldn't they?"
E-mail bnichols@dallasnews.com
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/051105dntexhoustonisd.9659a9d8.html
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)