Displaced seniors can opt out of taking the test, but they'll apparently still have to meet graduation requirements in their home state (though this not well spelled out in this piece). -Angela
Displaced students can skip exit exam
Evacuees may receive diplomas from home state, officials say
12:00 AM CDT on Saturday, September 17, 2005
By KAREN AYRES / The Dallas Morning News
High school seniors who fled here from Louisiana will be able to bypass the Texas exit exam next month and probably will receive diplomas from their home state, state officials said Friday.
Displaced seniors can opt out of taking the test, which is normally required for a Texas high school diploma. It is given in October to seniors who did not pass the test their junior year. Those who do not pass have three more chances throughout the year.
Texas Education Agency spokeswoman DeEtta Culbertson said officials are confident that they can soon find a way for evacuees in the 12th grade to receive diplomas from their Louisiana districts, which would make it unnecessary for them to take the Texas test.
"It's the humanitarian thing to do because these kids, through no fault of their own, got uprooted their senior year," Ms. Culbertson said. "They're in a new state, and we just want to do what is best for the child.
"We don't want to hinder them in any way from receiving a diploma."
TEA Commissioner Shirley Neeley sent a letter to all superintendents on Friday noting that it is up to displaced parents to decide whether they want their 12th-graders to skip the October tests.
However, students in other grade levels will be required to take the statewide TAKS exams when they are given in the winter and spring.
TEA officials are to meet with Louisiana education leaders next week to discuss how to transfer Texas credits and issue Louisiana diplomas to displaced students.
They will also discuss how to administer the Louisiana exit exam to students who have failed sections of that state's mandated test.
More than 40,000 evacuees had registered in Texas schools by Wednesday. It was unknown how many of those students were seniors.
In her letter, Dr. Neeley said any displaced senior who wants a Texas diploma should take the TAKS exam, which is based on Texas curriculum.
As evacuees continue to enroll in Texas schools, many school districts had been waiting for the state to announce the testing policy. School officials had voiced concern that scores from the seniors, as well as the younger students tested, could affect state and national accountability ratings.
Performance in the high school exit exam is not included in the national No Child Left Behind accountability system; however, those results are included in the Texas rating system. Texas officials have said they plan to consider whether any considerations should be made for evacuees' scores.
Reavis Wortham, a spokesman for the Garland school district, which has roughly 370 evacuees enrolled, said Friday that the district is still getting students settled into their new schools.
"We knew the state was going to make a ruling, and we were waiting for that," Mr. Wortham said.
The TEA also extended the opt-out offer to seniors from Mississippi, but Ms. Culbertson said Friday that the agency hasn't discussed arrangements for testing or diplomas with officials from that state.
Parents will be required to notify their child's Texas school district in writing by Sept. 26 if they don't want their child to take the October test.
E-mail kayres@dallasnews.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/DN-
kattestfolo_17met.ART0.North.Edition2.230e5d61.html
Monday, September 19, 2005
Tragedy in Black and White
Krugman points correctly to the race problem in America and how everyday belief systems, however, race- or power-neutral on their face, help perpetuate the racial hierarchy in our nation. While African Americans were indeed disproportionately impacted by what came down in New Orleans, racism against people of color, generally, merits acknowledgement.
For instance, 145,000 Latinos were displaced from Katrina as well. Many of them are, in some sense, even more marginal. Many will not recover from the relief effort similarly due to their undocumented status. This combines with their lack of fluency in the English language to further compromise their current situation. Clearly, this need is what prompted the Mexican military to come to Texas in order to provide relief to the thousands of Mexican nationals who have few options.
So my main point here is that the Black-White construct is a dichotomy that fails to capture the extent and complexity of both racial/ethnic strife and social, political, & economic inequality in our state and nation. Having said this, I am still very pleased that race is actually (back) on the table for discussion. It's hiaitus in public discourse, I believe, is reducible to its eclipsing by such dominant discourses as free markets and individual responsibility.
-Angela
September 19, 2005
Tragedy in Black and White
By PAUL KRUGMAN / NYTimes
By three to one, African-Americans believe that federal aid took so long to arrive in New Orleans in part because the city was poor and black. By an equally large margin, whites disagree.
The truth is that there's no way to know. Maybe President Bush would have been mugging with a guitar the day after the levees broke even if New Orleans had been a mostly white city. Maybe Palm Beach would also have had to wait five days after a hurricane hit before key military units received orders to join rescue operations.
But in a larger sense, the administration's lethally inept response to Hurricane Katrina had a lot to do with race. For race is the biggest reason the United States, uniquely among advanced countries, is ruled by a political movement that is hostile to the idea of helping citizens in need.
Race, after all, was central to the emergence of a Republican majority: essentially, the South switched sides after the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Today, states that had slavery in 1860 are much more likely to vote Republican than states that didn't.
And who can honestly deny that race is a major reason America treats its poor more harshly than any other advanced country? To put it crudely: a middle-class European, thinking about the poor, says to himself, "There but for the grace of God go I." A middle-class American is all too likely to think, perhaps without admitting it to himself, "Why should I be taxed to support those people?"
Above all, race-based hostility to the idea of helping the poor created an environment in which a political movement hostile to government aid in general could flourish.
By all accounts Ronald Reagan, who declared in his Inaugural Address that "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem," wasn't personally racist. But he repeatedly used a bogus tale about a Cadillac-driving Chicago "welfare queen" to bash big government. And he launched his 1980 campaign with a pro-states'-rights speech in Philadelphia, Miss., a small town whose only claim to fame was the 1964 murder of three civil rights workers.
Under George W. Bush - who, like Mr. Reagan, isn't personally racist but relies on the support of racists - the anti-government right has reached a new pinnacle of power. And the incompetent response to Katrina was the direct result of his political philosophy. When an administration doesn't believe in an agency's mission, the agency quickly loses its ability to perform that mission.
By now everyone knows that the Bush administration treated the Federal Emergency Management Agency as a dumping ground for cronies and political hacks, leaving the agency incapable of dealing with disasters. But FEMA's degradation isn't unique. It reflects a more general decline in the competence of government agencies whose job is to help people in need.
For example, housing for Katrina refugees is one of the most urgent problems now facing the nation. The FEMAvilles springing up across the gulf region could all too easily turn into squalid symbols of national failure. But the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which should be a source of expertise in tackling this problem, has been reduced to a hollow shell, with eight of its principal staff positions vacant.
But let me not blame the Bush administration for everything. The sad truth is that the only exceptional thing about the neglect of our fellow citizens we saw after Katrina struck is that for once the consequences of that neglect were visible on national TV.
Consider this: in the United States, unlike any other advanced country, many people fail to receive basic health care because they can't afford it. Lack of health insurance kills many more Americans each year than Katrina and 9/11 combined.
But the health care crisis hasn't had much effect on politics. And one reason is that it isn't yet a crisis among middle-class, white Americans (although it's getting there). Instead, the worst effects are falling on the poor and black, who have third-world levels of infant mortality and life expectancy.
I'd like to believe that Katrina will change everything - that we'll all now realize how important it is to have a government committed to helping those in need, whatever the color of their skin. But I wouldn't bet on it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/19/opinion/19krugman.html?th&emc=th
For instance, 145,000 Latinos were displaced from Katrina as well. Many of them are, in some sense, even more marginal. Many will not recover from the relief effort similarly due to their undocumented status. This combines with their lack of fluency in the English language to further compromise their current situation. Clearly, this need is what prompted the Mexican military to come to Texas in order to provide relief to the thousands of Mexican nationals who have few options.
So my main point here is that the Black-White construct is a dichotomy that fails to capture the extent and complexity of both racial/ethnic strife and social, political, & economic inequality in our state and nation. Having said this, I am still very pleased that race is actually (back) on the table for discussion. It's hiaitus in public discourse, I believe, is reducible to its eclipsing by such dominant discourses as free markets and individual responsibility.
-Angela
September 19, 2005
Tragedy in Black and White
By PAUL KRUGMAN / NYTimes
By three to one, African-Americans believe that federal aid took so long to arrive in New Orleans in part because the city was poor and black. By an equally large margin, whites disagree.
The truth is that there's no way to know. Maybe President Bush would have been mugging with a guitar the day after the levees broke even if New Orleans had been a mostly white city. Maybe Palm Beach would also have had to wait five days after a hurricane hit before key military units received orders to join rescue operations.
But in a larger sense, the administration's lethally inept response to Hurricane Katrina had a lot to do with race. For race is the biggest reason the United States, uniquely among advanced countries, is ruled by a political movement that is hostile to the idea of helping citizens in need.
Race, after all, was central to the emergence of a Republican majority: essentially, the South switched sides after the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Today, states that had slavery in 1860 are much more likely to vote Republican than states that didn't.
And who can honestly deny that race is a major reason America treats its poor more harshly than any other advanced country? To put it crudely: a middle-class European, thinking about the poor, says to himself, "There but for the grace of God go I." A middle-class American is all too likely to think, perhaps without admitting it to himself, "Why should I be taxed to support those people?"
Above all, race-based hostility to the idea of helping the poor created an environment in which a political movement hostile to government aid in general could flourish.
By all accounts Ronald Reagan, who declared in his Inaugural Address that "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem," wasn't personally racist. But he repeatedly used a bogus tale about a Cadillac-driving Chicago "welfare queen" to bash big government. And he launched his 1980 campaign with a pro-states'-rights speech in Philadelphia, Miss., a small town whose only claim to fame was the 1964 murder of three civil rights workers.
Under George W. Bush - who, like Mr. Reagan, isn't personally racist but relies on the support of racists - the anti-government right has reached a new pinnacle of power. And the incompetent response to Katrina was the direct result of his political philosophy. When an administration doesn't believe in an agency's mission, the agency quickly loses its ability to perform that mission.
By now everyone knows that the Bush administration treated the Federal Emergency Management Agency as a dumping ground for cronies and political hacks, leaving the agency incapable of dealing with disasters. But FEMA's degradation isn't unique. It reflects a more general decline in the competence of government agencies whose job is to help people in need.
For example, housing for Katrina refugees is one of the most urgent problems now facing the nation. The FEMAvilles springing up across the gulf region could all too easily turn into squalid symbols of national failure. But the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which should be a source of expertise in tackling this problem, has been reduced to a hollow shell, with eight of its principal staff positions vacant.
But let me not blame the Bush administration for everything. The sad truth is that the only exceptional thing about the neglect of our fellow citizens we saw after Katrina struck is that for once the consequences of that neglect were visible on national TV.
Consider this: in the United States, unlike any other advanced country, many people fail to receive basic health care because they can't afford it. Lack of health insurance kills many more Americans each year than Katrina and 9/11 combined.
But the health care crisis hasn't had much effect on politics. And one reason is that it isn't yet a crisis among middle-class, white Americans (although it's getting there). Instead, the worst effects are falling on the poor and black, who have third-world levels of infant mortality and life expectancy.
I'd like to believe that Katrina will change everything - that we'll all now realize how important it is to have a government committed to helping those in need, whatever the color of their skin. But I wouldn't bet on it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/19/opinion/19krugman.html?th&emc=th
Sunday, September 18, 2005
Paige, top aides now education consultants
Sunday, September 18, 2005 - 12:00 AM
Paige, top aides now education consultants
By Ben Feller
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Rod Paige and his former top aides at the Education Department have organized a consulting group to offer high-dollar advice on policies they helped create and later enforced, including the controversial No Child Left Behind Act.
Paige, who resigned as education secretary 10 months ago, has agreed to be chairman of Chartwell Education Group.
The firm, which has begun soliciting business, is seeking clients ranging from state school chiefs to foreign leaders.
It is not unusual for Washington, D.C., officials to become consultants after leaving government. But this venture involves virtually an entire leadership team from President Bush's first term.
"We're pretty confident that we're heading into a place where there's a void," said John Danielson, Paige's former chief of staff and the new company's chief executive officer.
"You have lobbying firms out there, you have smaller consultancies on specific issues, but you don't have a comprehensive firm in education like this one," Danielson said.
Danielson confirmed details about the company in an interview.
At least three other former Education Department managers have signed up:
• William Hansen, the No. 2 department official under Paige, is known for expertise in higher education. He held several positions at the department, including transition-team director for Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney after their election.
• Susan Sclafani, who was Paige's chief federal adviser on matters of vocational and adult education.
• Ron Tomalis, who had a pivotal role in enforcing the No Child Left Behind law as acting assistant secretary over elementary and secretary education.
Patricia Sullivan, director of the Center on Education Policy, said Paige's team did not have a reputation in office for showing the flexibility many potential clients may want.
At the same time, she said, "they provide access, in terms of relationships with the White House, Capitol Hill and Congress, and access to knowledge of the bureaucracy. I can't think of a person who knows the workings of the Department of Education more than Bill Hansen."
Under Bush's prodding, Congress in 2001 passed the most sweeping federal education law in a generation. It aims to get all children up to par in reading and math by 2014. But states and districts have battled the Education Department over the way the law is enforced.
By law, former senior officers may not engage in business dealings with the agency for at least one year from the date they departed, a restriction that would still apply to Paige and Sclafani. Danielson said the company is not a lobbying firm and will not seek business with the government.
In practice, however, the line between lobbying and consulting is often unclear, said Kent Cooper, co-founder of the PoliticalMoneyLine Web site.
Last week, Ron Peiffer, a Maryland Education Department official, met with company leaders to discuss their services.
"It seemed like a powerful group, very impressive in terms of what they could bring to the table," said Peiffer, deputy superintendent for academic policy in Maryland. "Having the secretary there, and many of these other folks that we've dealt with in various other capacities, it was interesting."
Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?
document_id=2002502811&zsection_id=2002107549&slug=paige18&date=20050918
Paige, top aides now education consultants
By Ben Feller
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Rod Paige and his former top aides at the Education Department have organized a consulting group to offer high-dollar advice on policies they helped create and later enforced, including the controversial No Child Left Behind Act.
Paige, who resigned as education secretary 10 months ago, has agreed to be chairman of Chartwell Education Group.
The firm, which has begun soliciting business, is seeking clients ranging from state school chiefs to foreign leaders.
It is not unusual for Washington, D.C., officials to become consultants after leaving government. But this venture involves virtually an entire leadership team from President Bush's first term.
"We're pretty confident that we're heading into a place where there's a void," said John Danielson, Paige's former chief of staff and the new company's chief executive officer.
"You have lobbying firms out there, you have smaller consultancies on specific issues, but you don't have a comprehensive firm in education like this one," Danielson said.
Danielson confirmed details about the company in an interview.
At least three other former Education Department managers have signed up:
• William Hansen, the No. 2 department official under Paige, is known for expertise in higher education. He held several positions at the department, including transition-team director for Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney after their election.
• Susan Sclafani, who was Paige's chief federal adviser on matters of vocational and adult education.
• Ron Tomalis, who had a pivotal role in enforcing the No Child Left Behind law as acting assistant secretary over elementary and secretary education.
Patricia Sullivan, director of the Center on Education Policy, said Paige's team did not have a reputation in office for showing the flexibility many potential clients may want.
At the same time, she said, "they provide access, in terms of relationships with the White House, Capitol Hill and Congress, and access to knowledge of the bureaucracy. I can't think of a person who knows the workings of the Department of Education more than Bill Hansen."
Under Bush's prodding, Congress in 2001 passed the most sweeping federal education law in a generation. It aims to get all children up to par in reading and math by 2014. But states and districts have battled the Education Department over the way the law is enforced.
By law, former senior officers may not engage in business dealings with the agency for at least one year from the date they departed, a restriction that would still apply to Paige and Sclafani. Danielson said the company is not a lobbying firm and will not seek business with the government.
In practice, however, the line between lobbying and consulting is often unclear, said Kent Cooper, co-founder of the PoliticalMoneyLine Web site.
Last week, Ron Peiffer, a Maryland Education Department official, met with company leaders to discuss their services.
"It seemed like a powerful group, very impressive in terms of what they could bring to the table," said Peiffer, deputy superintendent for academic policy in Maryland. "Having the secretary there, and many of these other folks that we've dealt with in various other capacities, it was interesting."
Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?
document_id=2002502811&zsection_id=2002107549&slug=paige18&date=20050918
Saturday, September 17, 2005
Schools Eye Aid for Extra Load
White House seeking $2.6 billion to pay for displaced students
12:00 AM CDT on Saturday, September 17, 2005
By ROBERT DODGE / The Dallas Morning News
WASHINGTON – Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said Friday that the Bush administration is proposing $2.6 billion to help schools in Texas and elsewhere educate student evacuees from hurricane-ravaged states.
JUDI BOTTONI/AP
Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, who visited a sixth-grade class in Bellaire, Texas, on Friday, said a new plan would pay districts up to $7,500 for each evacuee student.
She said districts would receive money for each evacuee student for 90 percent of the state's average pupil expense, up to $7,500. She said the balance would be covered by the districts and by funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The education funds will be in a disaster assistance package to be approved by Congress.
"This is a very unique situation in many ways," Ms. Spellings said in a teleconference from Houston with reporters.
Federal education officials estimated 372,000 students from Louisiana and Mississippi were displaced by the storm. Texas officials say that 41,000 have already enrolled in the state's schools, and they expect as many as 60,000.
The $7,500-per-student allocation in emergency federal aid would add up to additional funding of more than $300 million for Texas schools.
The announcement drew praise from Texas educators.
"We're thrilled," said Donald Claxton, a spokesman for the Dallas Independent School District. "We certainly were counting on the Bush administration to help us through this time, and it clearly looks like a positive step."
Said Kathy Walt, press secretary for Gov. Rick Perry: "We are hopeful Congress will be encouraged to approve this funding, which will address the extraordinary impact on Texas public schools."
The U.S. Education Department said the funds would pay for things like teacher salaries, transportation, materials and equipment, counseling, tutoring, and special services for students with disabilities.
Ms. Spellings said the funds would be distributed quarterly during the 2005-06 school year so that the money can follow students if they move from one school to another.
In a move that is already stirring controversy, the Bush administration will make $488 million available for reimbursements by check directly to families with children in private schools. Ms. Spellings noted that communities in Louisiana had higher-than-average numbers of students in private schools.
But Reg Weaver, president of the National Education Association, said the reimbursement represented an effort by the Bush administration to advance an ideologically based policy – vouchers for private schools.
"Vouchers do nothing to solve the problems created by Hurricane Katrina," he said. "It is opportunistic and inappropriate to raise the voucher debate at this time."
Ms. Spellings noted that in four severely damaged parishes, 61,000 of about 187,000 students were in private schools. She said the effort was not intended to provoke a voucher debate but to "provide aid for displaced families whether they have been in public or private schools."
The secretary said she also was asking Congress for expanded authority to waive federal education requirements, most notably involving the No Child Left Behind Act. But she reiterated that waivers would be granted on a case-by-case basis and that there would not be an across-the-board lifting of the program's testing and accountability standards.
The Bush administration's package also contains $227 million in assistance for colleges and universities that have accepted students who were previously enrolled in Gulf Coast institutions.
The funds also would be used to help evacuees make payments on student loans and to provide assistance to institutions in storm-damaged areas.
Staff writer Tawnell D. Hobbs in Dallas and Terrence Stutz in Austin contributed to this report.
12:00 AM CDT on Saturday, September 17, 2005
By ROBERT DODGE / The Dallas Morning News
WASHINGTON – Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said Friday that the Bush administration is proposing $2.6 billion to help schools in Texas and elsewhere educate student evacuees from hurricane-ravaged states.
JUDI BOTTONI/AP
Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, who visited a sixth-grade class in Bellaire, Texas, on Friday, said a new plan would pay districts up to $7,500 for each evacuee student.
She said districts would receive money for each evacuee student for 90 percent of the state's average pupil expense, up to $7,500. She said the balance would be covered by the districts and by funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The education funds will be in a disaster assistance package to be approved by Congress.
"This is a very unique situation in many ways," Ms. Spellings said in a teleconference from Houston with reporters.
Federal education officials estimated 372,000 students from Louisiana and Mississippi were displaced by the storm. Texas officials say that 41,000 have already enrolled in the state's schools, and they expect as many as 60,000.
The $7,500-per-student allocation in emergency federal aid would add up to additional funding of more than $300 million for Texas schools.
The announcement drew praise from Texas educators.
"We're thrilled," said Donald Claxton, a spokesman for the Dallas Independent School District. "We certainly were counting on the Bush administration to help us through this time, and it clearly looks like a positive step."
Said Kathy Walt, press secretary for Gov. Rick Perry: "We are hopeful Congress will be encouraged to approve this funding, which will address the extraordinary impact on Texas public schools."
The U.S. Education Department said the funds would pay for things like teacher salaries, transportation, materials and equipment, counseling, tutoring, and special services for students with disabilities.
Ms. Spellings said the funds would be distributed quarterly during the 2005-06 school year so that the money can follow students if they move from one school to another.
In a move that is already stirring controversy, the Bush administration will make $488 million available for reimbursements by check directly to families with children in private schools. Ms. Spellings noted that communities in Louisiana had higher-than-average numbers of students in private schools.
But Reg Weaver, president of the National Education Association, said the reimbursement represented an effort by the Bush administration to advance an ideologically based policy – vouchers for private schools.
"Vouchers do nothing to solve the problems created by Hurricane Katrina," he said. "It is opportunistic and inappropriate to raise the voucher debate at this time."
Ms. Spellings noted that in four severely damaged parishes, 61,000 of about 187,000 students were in private schools. She said the effort was not intended to provoke a voucher debate but to "provide aid for displaced families whether they have been in public or private schools."
The secretary said she also was asking Congress for expanded authority to waive federal education requirements, most notably involving the No Child Left Behind Act. But she reiterated that waivers would be granted on a case-by-case basis and that there would not be an across-the-board lifting of the program's testing and accountability standards.
The Bush administration's package also contains $227 million in assistance for colleges and universities that have accepted students who were previously enrolled in Gulf Coast institutions.
The funds also would be used to help evacuees make payments on student loans and to provide assistance to institutions in storm-damaged areas.
Staff writer Tawnell D. Hobbs in Dallas and Terrence Stutz in Austin contributed to this report.
Friday, September 16, 2005
Schools with evacuees risk academic rankings
"Texas schools welcoming Hurricane Katrina evacuees into their classrooms may be placing their state and federal ratings on the line. " -Angela
Schools with evacuees risk academic rankings
Web Posted: 09/16/2005 12:00 AM CDT
Jenny LaCoste-Caputo
Express-NewsStaff Writer
Texas schools welcoming Hurricane Katrina evacuees into their classrooms may be placing their state and federal ratings on the line.
School leaders in Texas and other states have asked for flexibility under No Child Left Behind, the sweeping public school overhaul that carries sanctions for schools that fail to make adequate yearly progress two years in a row.
But U.S. Department of Education leaders say it's too early to exempt schools from the law's requirements.
Students displaced by Katrina also will be counted in the state's accountability system — for now, Texas Education Secretary Shirley Neeley said.
"It's too early to make that call," she said.
Besides determining a school's ranking, the scores carry high stakes for individual students. Children in third and fifth grades must pass portions of the test in order to promote to the next grade.
Neeley and U.S. Education Department Deputy Secretary Ray Simon met with local superintendents Thursday and visited two schools serving the city's hurricane shelters.
Simon said the education department is reviewing Texas' request for leniency under No Child Left Behind. State officials also have asked for help with funding and flexibility with deadlines for developing individual education plans for students with disabilities, among other services
"We're using common sense," Simon said. "Right now, the important thing is to get the children in school."
Federal education officials said no to a request from Mississippi that adequate yearly progress, or AYP, be waived this year for schools affected by the storm.
"Since the tests in Mississippi on which AYP determinations are made will not be administered until spring 2006, it is premature for us to consider this request at this time," U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings wrote to Hank Bounds, superintendent of education for Mississippi.
During his visit, Simon reassured school leaders that local districts and states wouldn't be left with the monumental tab of educating displaced students.
The price of schooling storm victims in Texas could reach $450 million. About 40,000 displaced students have enrolled in Texas schools, and state officials say that number could grow to as many as 60,000.
Simon said Spellings, a key education adviser to then-Gov. George W. Bush, is developing a plan to ensure sufficient short- and long-term funding. The proposal will be submitted to Congress for consideration.
In the meantime, the Federal Emergency Management Agency can use disaster funds to provide temporary school facilities, as well as transportation to and from schools.
Neeley and Simon spent the day touring Hull Elementary in Northside School District and West Campus High School in South San Antonio School District. They praised the schools' staff and students for welcoming the "Katrina kids."
"Did you hear that?" Neeley asked, after meeting a group of students at Hull. "He said, 'This is my friend from New Orleans,' Isn't that wonderful?"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
jcaputo@express-news.net
Schools with evacuees risk academic rankings
Web Posted: 09/16/2005 12:00 AM CDT
Jenny LaCoste-Caputo
Express-NewsStaff Writer
Texas schools welcoming Hurricane Katrina evacuees into their classrooms may be placing their state and federal ratings on the line.
School leaders in Texas and other states have asked for flexibility under No Child Left Behind, the sweeping public school overhaul that carries sanctions for schools that fail to make adequate yearly progress two years in a row.
But U.S. Department of Education leaders say it's too early to exempt schools from the law's requirements.
Students displaced by Katrina also will be counted in the state's accountability system — for now, Texas Education Secretary Shirley Neeley said.
"It's too early to make that call," she said.
Besides determining a school's ranking, the scores carry high stakes for individual students. Children in third and fifth grades must pass portions of the test in order to promote to the next grade.
Neeley and U.S. Education Department Deputy Secretary Ray Simon met with local superintendents Thursday and visited two schools serving the city's hurricane shelters.
Simon said the education department is reviewing Texas' request for leniency under No Child Left Behind. State officials also have asked for help with funding and flexibility with deadlines for developing individual education plans for students with disabilities, among other services
"We're using common sense," Simon said. "Right now, the important thing is to get the children in school."
Federal education officials said no to a request from Mississippi that adequate yearly progress, or AYP, be waived this year for schools affected by the storm.
"Since the tests in Mississippi on which AYP determinations are made will not be administered until spring 2006, it is premature for us to consider this request at this time," U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings wrote to Hank Bounds, superintendent of education for Mississippi.
During his visit, Simon reassured school leaders that local districts and states wouldn't be left with the monumental tab of educating displaced students.
The price of schooling storm victims in Texas could reach $450 million. About 40,000 displaced students have enrolled in Texas schools, and state officials say that number could grow to as many as 60,000.
Simon said Spellings, a key education adviser to then-Gov. George W. Bush, is developing a plan to ensure sufficient short- and long-term funding. The proposal will be submitted to Congress for consideration.
In the meantime, the Federal Emergency Management Agency can use disaster funds to provide temporary school facilities, as well as transportation to and from schools.
Neeley and Simon spent the day touring Hull Elementary in Northside School District and West Campus High School in South San Antonio School District. They praised the schools' staff and students for welcoming the "Katrina kids."
"Did you hear that?" Neeley asked, after meeting a group of students at Hull. "He said, 'This is my friend from New Orleans,' Isn't that wonderful?"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
jcaputo@express-news.net
Thursday, September 15, 2005
Gulf Coast pupils may face the TAKS test
Texas, Louisiana officials discuss which state's exit exam to use
06:43 AM CDT on Thursday, September 15, 2005
By KAREN AYRES / The Dallas Morning News
High school seniors who fled the Gulf Coast could soon face another hurdle – the Texas high school exit exam.
Education officials said this week that evacuees who enrolled in Texas schools as seniors will have to pass the state tests required to graduate, unless officials come up with another arrangement.
Katrina's Aftermath
Katrina leaves a toxic nightmare
Photos
WFAA-TV (Ch. 8) video
Tarrant mayors gather to discuss hurricane relief
Evacuee family faces tough diagnosis
Mayors to assess Katrina's impact
DiscussLive transcript: Red Cross relief efforts
Special reports
• Surviving on hope
• Hurricane Heroes
• Survivors' stories
Forums
• General
• Shelter options
Resources
• How to help
• Search for a loved one
• Dining donations
• Services and discounts
• Discounted attractions
• Dallas area guide (.pdf)
More coverage
• En español
If the testing is required, potentially thousands of high school seniors from Louisiana and Mississippi would take the tests, which are based on Texas curriculum, as early as next month. If they do not pass the first attempt, they would have three other chances, just as other Texas seniors do.
TEA spokeswoman DeEtta Culbertson said there is no way to waive the state requirement that all students pass the exam to receive a Texas diploma.
"Right now, we have to go by what Texas law says," Ms. Culbertson said. "Unless the law is changed or we can work something out with Louisiana to test the students on their own test, the possibility of them having to take the Texas test is pretty strong."
No final decision yet
Susan Barnes, assistant commissioner for the Texas Education Agency, said Wednesday that her department is working with education officials in Louisiana to reach a final decision on the testing policy. She said the agency hopes to make a decision in the next few days.
"I cannot really give any detail because we don't have anything really solid at this moment," Ms. Barnes said. "We're very aware of the concern. We certainly don't want to add to any of the difficulty the students have coming into our schools."
Ms. Culbertson said many districts have been calling the state to find out whether evacuees' scores, for high schoolers and younger students, could affect their status on federal and state rankings.
"We really don't know how all of this is going to affect us," she said.
State officials have already decided that evacuees at all other grade levels will be required to take the standardized Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, administered in the winter and spring.
However, TEA sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Education to ask for a waiver from requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act, which uses testing data to measure school success. Officials plan to review the Texas system in the new year to address evacuees.
During a visit to Dallas on Wednesday, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education Tom Luce said it's going to take some time to resolve these issues.
"A lot of Louisiana kids want to graduate with a Louisiana diploma," he said. TEA Commissioner Shirley Neeley "is working to see how we might use the exit test from Louisiana to get the Louisiana high school diploma."
By Tuesday, nearly 38,000 evacuees had enrolled in Texas schools. It was not known Wednesday how many of those are high school seniors.
The Texas high school exit exam measures English language arts, social studies, science and math skills based on the state curriculum.
Last year, 91 percent of seniors passed all four required sections in time for graduation.
In Louisiana, students first take the state's graduate exit exam as 10th-graders. They are required to pass English language arts, math and either science or social studies to graduate.
About 95 percent of students passed all required sections by graduation last year, according to Meg Casper, a spokeswoman for the Louisiana Department of Education.
However, records from last spring show many students in the Orleans Parish, one of the areas hardest hit by the hurricane, didn't fare so well. Nearly half of 10th-graders failed the math section and about 40 percent of 11th-graders failed the science and social studies sections.
Ms. Casper said her agency has been more focused on placing students over the past couple weeks and has not made decisions on how testing will be handled.
"All of that is still very much up in the air," she said.
Texas schools will likely have access to students' records from Louisiana in the coming days to get a better handle on evacuees' academic backgrounds.
Ms. Culbertson said the Texas test measures basic skills.
"Most students who have taken high school courses should be able to take the test," she said.
At a disadvantage
Nonetheless, Brad Lancaster, assistant superintendent for learner services in the Allen school district, said the test is clearly based on Texas curriculum that could pose a challenge to a newcomer.
"Regardless of whether they got here by Katrina or otherwise," he said, "that's going to be a tough way to take a test because they haven't been in the system."
Mr. Lancaster said his district, which has more than 130 evacuee students, puts on a "full-court press" with extra tutoring to help seniors who fail parts of TAKS prepare for retests before graduation.
Mr. Lancaster said he wouldn't be surprised if the state waived the requirement.
"There are so many parts of this situation that are so unfair on so many levels," Mr. Lancaster said. "Will a child's interest be served in light of this catastrophe by forcing them to take this state requirement? That's hard to say."
Karla Oliver, a spokeswoman for the Plano school district, which has more than 550 evacuees including 40 seniors, said her district is waiting for answers.
"We are looking for some directives from the state," Ms. Oliver said.
Staff writer Tawnell D. Hobbs contributed to this report.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/education/stories/
091505dnccokattest.173a186f.html
06:43 AM CDT on Thursday, September 15, 2005
By KAREN AYRES / The Dallas Morning News
High school seniors who fled the Gulf Coast could soon face another hurdle – the Texas high school exit exam.
Education officials said this week that evacuees who enrolled in Texas schools as seniors will have to pass the state tests required to graduate, unless officials come up with another arrangement.
Katrina's Aftermath
Katrina leaves a toxic nightmare
Photos
WFAA-TV (Ch. 8) video
Tarrant mayors gather to discuss hurricane relief
Evacuee family faces tough diagnosis
Mayors to assess Katrina's impact
DiscussLive transcript: Red Cross relief efforts
Special reports
• Surviving on hope
• Hurricane Heroes
• Survivors' stories
Forums
• General
• Shelter options
Resources
• How to help
• Search for a loved one
• Dining donations
• Services and discounts
• Discounted attractions
• Dallas area guide (.pdf)
More coverage
• En español
If the testing is required, potentially thousands of high school seniors from Louisiana and Mississippi would take the tests, which are based on Texas curriculum, as early as next month. If they do not pass the first attempt, they would have three other chances, just as other Texas seniors do.
TEA spokeswoman DeEtta Culbertson said there is no way to waive the state requirement that all students pass the exam to receive a Texas diploma.
"Right now, we have to go by what Texas law says," Ms. Culbertson said. "Unless the law is changed or we can work something out with Louisiana to test the students on their own test, the possibility of them having to take the Texas test is pretty strong."
No final decision yet
Susan Barnes, assistant commissioner for the Texas Education Agency, said Wednesday that her department is working with education officials in Louisiana to reach a final decision on the testing policy. She said the agency hopes to make a decision in the next few days.
"I cannot really give any detail because we don't have anything really solid at this moment," Ms. Barnes said. "We're very aware of the concern. We certainly don't want to add to any of the difficulty the students have coming into our schools."
Ms. Culbertson said many districts have been calling the state to find out whether evacuees' scores, for high schoolers and younger students, could affect their status on federal and state rankings.
"We really don't know how all of this is going to affect us," she said.
State officials have already decided that evacuees at all other grade levels will be required to take the standardized Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, administered in the winter and spring.
However, TEA sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Education to ask for a waiver from requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act, which uses testing data to measure school success. Officials plan to review the Texas system in the new year to address evacuees.
During a visit to Dallas on Wednesday, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education Tom Luce said it's going to take some time to resolve these issues.
"A lot of Louisiana kids want to graduate with a Louisiana diploma," he said. TEA Commissioner Shirley Neeley "is working to see how we might use the exit test from Louisiana to get the Louisiana high school diploma."
By Tuesday, nearly 38,000 evacuees had enrolled in Texas schools. It was not known Wednesday how many of those are high school seniors.
The Texas high school exit exam measures English language arts, social studies, science and math skills based on the state curriculum.
Last year, 91 percent of seniors passed all four required sections in time for graduation.
In Louisiana, students first take the state's graduate exit exam as 10th-graders. They are required to pass English language arts, math and either science or social studies to graduate.
About 95 percent of students passed all required sections by graduation last year, according to Meg Casper, a spokeswoman for the Louisiana Department of Education.
However, records from last spring show many students in the Orleans Parish, one of the areas hardest hit by the hurricane, didn't fare so well. Nearly half of 10th-graders failed the math section and about 40 percent of 11th-graders failed the science and social studies sections.
Ms. Casper said her agency has been more focused on placing students over the past couple weeks and has not made decisions on how testing will be handled.
"All of that is still very much up in the air," she said.
Texas schools will likely have access to students' records from Louisiana in the coming days to get a better handle on evacuees' academic backgrounds.
Ms. Culbertson said the Texas test measures basic skills.
"Most students who have taken high school courses should be able to take the test," she said.
At a disadvantage
Nonetheless, Brad Lancaster, assistant superintendent for learner services in the Allen school district, said the test is clearly based on Texas curriculum that could pose a challenge to a newcomer.
"Regardless of whether they got here by Katrina or otherwise," he said, "that's going to be a tough way to take a test because they haven't been in the system."
Mr. Lancaster said his district, which has more than 130 evacuee students, puts on a "full-court press" with extra tutoring to help seniors who fail parts of TAKS prepare for retests before graduation.
Mr. Lancaster said he wouldn't be surprised if the state waived the requirement.
"There are so many parts of this situation that are so unfair on so many levels," Mr. Lancaster said. "Will a child's interest be served in light of this catastrophe by forcing them to take this state requirement? That's hard to say."
Karla Oliver, a spokeswoman for the Plano school district, which has more than 550 evacuees including 40 seniors, said her district is waiting for answers.
"We are looking for some directives from the state," Ms. Oliver said.
Staff writer Tawnell D. Hobbs contributed to this report.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/education/stories/
091505dnccokattest.173a186f.html
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
DPS sues to hold on to Capitol video
This is interesting as it addresses whether the public has a right to see films of alleged behind-the-scenes armtwisting on legislation at the capitol. Interesting to see how the War on Terror is used as a justification for not making such information available to the public even though we all know that such matters can have enormous impact on public policy. Wonder what others think. -Angela
Fight was prompted by the Texas Observer's request for tapes.
By W. Gardner Selby
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
A journalist's request for a videotape thought to show political arm-twisting has prompted the Texas Department of Public Safety to go to court over Capitol security concerns for the second time since 2003.
A lawsuit filed against Attorney General Greg Abbott in Travis County this month suggests that videos taken by Capitol security cameras should not be available to the public.
Abbott had no comment about the lawsuit Tuesday.
Last month, he said DPS should release the tape. Jake Bernstein, executive editor of the Texas Observer, a biweekly journal, had asked for any video taken of the hallway behind the Texas House chamber on May 23.
Legislators that day rejected a proposal to allow select low-income students to attend private schools with state funding amid speculation that voucher proponent James Leininger of San Antonio was secretively leaning on members.
Bernstein said, "We thought we would try to put those rumors to rest by seeing the video."
The DPS says the release of such tapes could weaken security by yielding insight into camera placement and angles and what they do or don't record.
"Events in recent years have shown that the Texas state Capitol is a likely location for terrorist attacks to occur," Sgt. Donnie Weakly said in a statement filed by the agency in its lawsuit against Abbott over a previous request for a tape.
Weakly called the building's security cameras among the Capitol's first lines of defense.
If tapes were available, he said, anyone could "detail and map out the specifications, operating procedures and location" for the cameras.
Weakly said the Capitol fielded four bomb threats in 2003, and officers responded to 16 anthrax scares from 2001 through 2003.
DPS, in its new lawsuit against Abbott, cites exceptions in state laws on disclosure of government records tied to the detection, investigation or prosecution of crime and information relating to the specifications, operating procedures or location of a security system.
Abbott's office advised the DPS on Aug. 26 that it saw no law enforcement reason to bar the release of the tapes.
DPS "has not adequately shown how the submitted video taken from Capitol security cameras relates to the specifications, operating procedures, or location of a security system used to protect public property from an act of terrorism or criminal activity related to terrorism," states the advisory letter from Ramsey Abarca, an assistant attorney general.
Bernstein said: "This has become an issue about what's a public record. It seems to be a no-brainer."
In March, DPS and Abbott agreed to a judgment in the previous dispute. It states that videotapes showing a Capitol hallway in April 2003 are exempt from disclosure. The tapes had been sought by the Republican Party of Texas after a GOP leadership aide said draft maps of judicial and congressional districts vanished from a meeting room in his absence.
Abbott, who initially said the tapes should be available, relented after being told that they were part of an investigation into the items' disappearance, spokesman Tom Kelley said.
Find this article at:
http://www.statesman.com/metrostate/content/metro/stories/09/14DPSTAPE.html
Fight was prompted by the Texas Observer's request for tapes.
By W. Gardner Selby
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
A journalist's request for a videotape thought to show political arm-twisting has prompted the Texas Department of Public Safety to go to court over Capitol security concerns for the second time since 2003.
A lawsuit filed against Attorney General Greg Abbott in Travis County this month suggests that videos taken by Capitol security cameras should not be available to the public.
Abbott had no comment about the lawsuit Tuesday.
Last month, he said DPS should release the tape. Jake Bernstein, executive editor of the Texas Observer, a biweekly journal, had asked for any video taken of the hallway behind the Texas House chamber on May 23.
Legislators that day rejected a proposal to allow select low-income students to attend private schools with state funding amid speculation that voucher proponent James Leininger of San Antonio was secretively leaning on members.
Bernstein said, "We thought we would try to put those rumors to rest by seeing the video."
The DPS says the release of such tapes could weaken security by yielding insight into camera placement and angles and what they do or don't record.
"Events in recent years have shown that the Texas state Capitol is a likely location for terrorist attacks to occur," Sgt. Donnie Weakly said in a statement filed by the agency in its lawsuit against Abbott over a previous request for a tape.
Weakly called the building's security cameras among the Capitol's first lines of defense.
If tapes were available, he said, anyone could "detail and map out the specifications, operating procedures and location" for the cameras.
Weakly said the Capitol fielded four bomb threats in 2003, and officers responded to 16 anthrax scares from 2001 through 2003.
DPS, in its new lawsuit against Abbott, cites exceptions in state laws on disclosure of government records tied to the detection, investigation or prosecution of crime and information relating to the specifications, operating procedures or location of a security system.
Abbott's office advised the DPS on Aug. 26 that it saw no law enforcement reason to bar the release of the tapes.
DPS "has not adequately shown how the submitted video taken from Capitol security cameras relates to the specifications, operating procedures, or location of a security system used to protect public property from an act of terrorism or criminal activity related to terrorism," states the advisory letter from Ramsey Abarca, an assistant attorney general.
Bernstein said: "This has become an issue about what's a public record. It seems to be a no-brainer."
In March, DPS and Abbott agreed to a judgment in the previous dispute. It states that videotapes showing a Capitol hallway in April 2003 are exempt from disclosure. The tapes had been sought by the Republican Party of Texas after a GOP leadership aide said draft maps of judicial and congressional districts vanished from a meeting room in his absence.
Abbott, who initially said the tapes should be available, relented after being told that they were part of an investigation into the items' disappearance, spokesman Tom Kelley said.
Find this article at:
http://www.statesman.com/metrostate/content/metro/stories/09/14DPSTAPE.html
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Schools to get emergency aid
U.S. funds to help with facilities, computers for evacuee students
09:16 AM CDT on Tuesday, September 13, 2005
By TERRENCE STUTZ / The Dallas Morning News
AUSTIN – Federal officials will provide emergency funds to Texas school districts to cover the costs of portable buildings and computers for thousands of Louisiana evacuee students, but reimbursement for other expenses such as additional teachers will have to wait.
Federal Emergency Management Agency officials on Monday notified Texas what expenses associated with the relocation of displaced residents from Louisiana into the state will be covered by billions of dollars in emergency relief funds approved by Congress and the Bush administration.
On the list of eligible expenses for school districts are portable classroom buildings that must be used to handle the influx of as many as 50,000 to 60,000 evacuee students, mental health counselors for those students and new computers. On the other hand, hiring of additional teachers and purchase of textbooks are not eligible at this time.
Texas Education Agency officials, who reported Monday that enrollment of Hurricane Katrina evacuees in the state's public schools has reached 28,000, said they are not concerned about the costs that won't be compensated with the first wave of public assistance funds related to the disaster.
"We're still optimistic that there will be other federal funds made available to cover the costs our school districts are accruing with the influx of new students," said Debbie Ratcliffe, a spokeswoman for the TEA.
Ms. Ratcliffe also said school districts seem to be enrolling all the new students with few hitches. "Districts are doing their best to get kids in class and make them feel comfortable," she said.
In an interview with The Associated Press on Monday, U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said at least 372,000 students in Louisiana and Mississippi have been displaced by Hurricane Katrina – and it is still unclear where the funding will come from to educate those students until they can return home.
In Louisiana, more than 247,000 public and private school students have been displaced, 489 schools have been closed and at least six parishes have destroyed or damaged buildings. In Mississippi, more than 125,000 students have been forced to leave, with 226 schools in 30 districts closed and nearly 30 school campuses destroyed.
Texas Education Commissioner Shirley Neeley has estimated that it could cost up to $450 million to educate 60,000 evacuee students in Texas, based on the current average annual cost of $7,500 per pupil in the public schools.
Ms. Spellings also has indicated she will use her authority to waive parts of the federal No Child Left Behind Law, which requires school districts and campuses to show yearly progress on standardized tests and to employ only teachers that meet certain standards.
E-mail tstutz@dallasnews.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/DN-
katfunds_13tex.ART.State.Edition1.e70b72f.html
09:16 AM CDT on Tuesday, September 13, 2005
By TERRENCE STUTZ / The Dallas Morning News
AUSTIN – Federal officials will provide emergency funds to Texas school districts to cover the costs of portable buildings and computers for thousands of Louisiana evacuee students, but reimbursement for other expenses such as additional teachers will have to wait.
Federal Emergency Management Agency officials on Monday notified Texas what expenses associated with the relocation of displaced residents from Louisiana into the state will be covered by billions of dollars in emergency relief funds approved by Congress and the Bush administration.
On the list of eligible expenses for school districts are portable classroom buildings that must be used to handle the influx of as many as 50,000 to 60,000 evacuee students, mental health counselors for those students and new computers. On the other hand, hiring of additional teachers and purchase of textbooks are not eligible at this time.
Texas Education Agency officials, who reported Monday that enrollment of Hurricane Katrina evacuees in the state's public schools has reached 28,000, said they are not concerned about the costs that won't be compensated with the first wave of public assistance funds related to the disaster.
"We're still optimistic that there will be other federal funds made available to cover the costs our school districts are accruing with the influx of new students," said Debbie Ratcliffe, a spokeswoman for the TEA.
Ms. Ratcliffe also said school districts seem to be enrolling all the new students with few hitches. "Districts are doing their best to get kids in class and make them feel comfortable," she said.
In an interview with The Associated Press on Monday, U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said at least 372,000 students in Louisiana and Mississippi have been displaced by Hurricane Katrina – and it is still unclear where the funding will come from to educate those students until they can return home.
In Louisiana, more than 247,000 public and private school students have been displaced, 489 schools have been closed and at least six parishes have destroyed or damaged buildings. In Mississippi, more than 125,000 students have been forced to leave, with 226 schools in 30 districts closed and nearly 30 school campuses destroyed.
Texas Education Commissioner Shirley Neeley has estimated that it could cost up to $450 million to educate 60,000 evacuee students in Texas, based on the current average annual cost of $7,500 per pupil in the public schools.
Ms. Spellings also has indicated she will use her authority to waive parts of the federal No Child Left Behind Law, which requires school districts and campuses to show yearly progress on standardized tests and to employ only teachers that meet certain standards.
E-mail tstutz@dallasnews.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/DN-
katfunds_13tex.ART.State.Edition1.e70b72f.html
Study: U.S. losing ground in education
by Ben Feller, AP Education Writer | September 13, 2005
WASHINGTON --The United States is losing ground in education, as peers across the globe zoom by with bigger gains in student achievement and school graduations, a study shows.
Among adults age 25 to 34, the U.S. is ninth among industrialized nations in the share of its population that has at least a high school degree. In the same age group, the United States ranks seventh, with Belgium, in the share of people who hold a college degree.
By both measures, the United States was first in the world as recently as 20 years ago, said Barry McGaw, director of education for the Paris-based Organization for Cooperation and Development. The 30-nation organization develops the yearly rankings as a way for countries to evaluate their education systems and determine whether to change their policies.
McGaw said that the United States remains atop the "knowledge economy," one that uses information to produce economic benefits. But, he said, "education's contribution to that economy is weakening, and you ought to be worrying."
The report, released Tuesday, bases its conclusions about achievement mainly on international test scores released last December. They show that compared with their peers in Europe, Asia and elsewhere, 15-year-olds in the United States are below average in applying math skills to real-life tasks.
Top performers included Finland, Korea, the Netherlands, Japan, Canada and Belgium.
A separate international review last year showed U.S. eighth-graders gaining on their peers across the globe in science and math. At the same time, though, fourth-graders here are falling behind others passed as their test scores remain stagnant, that study found.
"We're not just letting down too many of our students; we're (also) not giving our taxpayers the best return on their investments," said Ray Simon, the deputy education secretary, after the release of the international report.
Younger students are making gains, Simon said, but that progress is often lost by the later grades. He said a new push to improve the accuracy of high school graduation data should help steer attention toward students who are at risk of dropping out of education.
McGaw said other measures of achievement -- including how U.S. students do on this country's federal math and reading test -- are fair to consider in rating performance.
Given what the United States spends on education, its relatively low student achievement through high school shows its school system is "clearly inefficient," McGaw said.
In all levels of education, the United States spends $11,152 per student. That's the second highest amount, behind the $11,334 spent by Switzerland.
"The very best schools in the U.S. are extraordinary," McGaw said. "But the big concern in the U.S. is the diversity of quality of institutions -- and the fact that expectations haven't been set high enough."
The Bush administration says the 2002 federal law known as the No Child Left Behind Act is fueling higher achievement among all students -- particularly poor and minority kids -- by holding schools accountable for progress. But the international data, mostly gathered in 2003, are not recent enough to confirm that the law is producing results, McGaw said.
Higher education in the United States remains strong, and the nation continues to hold an advantage in innovation based on research conducted at universities, McGaw said.
The report also underscores that women continue to get paid less than men.
Women in the United States who are 30 to 44 and who hold a university degree -- meaning a bachelor's degree, master's degree, doctorate or medical degree -- make only 62 percent of what similarly qualified men do.
That's a lower rate than in all but three of the 19 countries for which numbers are available. The nations with greater inequity in pay are Germany, New Zealand and Switzerland.
------
On The Net:
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development: http://www.oecd.org
© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2005/09/13/
us_world_position_in_education_slipping/
WASHINGTON --The United States is losing ground in education, as peers across the globe zoom by with bigger gains in student achievement and school graduations, a study shows.
Among adults age 25 to 34, the U.S. is ninth among industrialized nations in the share of its population that has at least a high school degree. In the same age group, the United States ranks seventh, with Belgium, in the share of people who hold a college degree.
By both measures, the United States was first in the world as recently as 20 years ago, said Barry McGaw, director of education for the Paris-based Organization for Cooperation and Development. The 30-nation organization develops the yearly rankings as a way for countries to evaluate their education systems and determine whether to change their policies.
McGaw said that the United States remains atop the "knowledge economy," one that uses information to produce economic benefits. But, he said, "education's contribution to that economy is weakening, and you ought to be worrying."
The report, released Tuesday, bases its conclusions about achievement mainly on international test scores released last December. They show that compared with their peers in Europe, Asia and elsewhere, 15-year-olds in the United States are below average in applying math skills to real-life tasks.
Top performers included Finland, Korea, the Netherlands, Japan, Canada and Belgium.
A separate international review last year showed U.S. eighth-graders gaining on their peers across the globe in science and math. At the same time, though, fourth-graders here are falling behind others passed as their test scores remain stagnant, that study found.
"We're not just letting down too many of our students; we're (also) not giving our taxpayers the best return on their investments," said Ray Simon, the deputy education secretary, after the release of the international report.
Younger students are making gains, Simon said, but that progress is often lost by the later grades. He said a new push to improve the accuracy of high school graduation data should help steer attention toward students who are at risk of dropping out of education.
McGaw said other measures of achievement -- including how U.S. students do on this country's federal math and reading test -- are fair to consider in rating performance.
Given what the United States spends on education, its relatively low student achievement through high school shows its school system is "clearly inefficient," McGaw said.
In all levels of education, the United States spends $11,152 per student. That's the second highest amount, behind the $11,334 spent by Switzerland.
"The very best schools in the U.S. are extraordinary," McGaw said. "But the big concern in the U.S. is the diversity of quality of institutions -- and the fact that expectations haven't been set high enough."
The Bush administration says the 2002 federal law known as the No Child Left Behind Act is fueling higher achievement among all students -- particularly poor and minority kids -- by holding schools accountable for progress. But the international data, mostly gathered in 2003, are not recent enough to confirm that the law is producing results, McGaw said.
Higher education in the United States remains strong, and the nation continues to hold an advantage in innovation based on research conducted at universities, McGaw said.
The report also underscores that women continue to get paid less than men.
Women in the United States who are 30 to 44 and who hold a university degree -- meaning a bachelor's degree, master's degree, doctorate or medical degree -- make only 62 percent of what similarly qualified men do.
That's a lower rate than in all but three of the 19 countries for which numbers are available. The nations with greater inequity in pay are Germany, New Zealand and Switzerland.
------
On The Net:
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development: http://www.oecd.org
© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2005/09/13/
us_world_position_in_education_slipping/
Spellings says 372,000 students displaced by Katrina
Mon, Sep. 12, 2005
by BEN FELLER
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Hurricane Katrina has booted at least 372,000 students from classrooms in Louisiana and Mississippi, and Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said Monday there are no clear answers about who will pay to educate them.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Spellings gave the broadest assessment yet of how the hurricane has affected schools at the start of their year.
In Louisiana, more than 247,000 public and private school students have been displaced. The storm forced 489 schools to close. At least six parishes have destroyed or damaged buildings, she said.
In Mississippi, more than 125,000 students have been forced elsewhere. Some 226 schools in 30 districts are closed. Almost 30 schools have been destroyed.
Spellings declined to estimate how much it will cost states to rebuild school districts or serve displaced students - or how much the federal government will cover.
"I shouldn't be talking about the details that I'm in negotiations with the White House and the (Capitol) Hill on," Spellings said. "As soon as I can talk about it, I want to talk about it."
President Bush has told Spellings to develop a plan to provide aid for the states.
In the interview, Spellings said she will ask Congress for unprecedented authority to ease aspects of a federal law governing the education of homeless children. She already had pledged to consider using her powers to waive parts of the law known as No Child Left Behind, including requirements on yearly testing and teacher quality.
Still, Spellings cautioned: "I obviously don't think this is an opportunity for every state in the country to get 'No Child Left Behind is off this year.' We're just not there yet."
In a letter obtained Monday by The Associated Press, Spellings waived a requirement for Mississippi that normally forces school districts to spend some money to obtain federal aid. That means some of the states can cut or shift spending without penalty.
Spellings denied the state's request to excuse some districts from having to make yearly progress on math and reading tests. Because those tests will not be given until the spring, she said, it is too soon to waive the "linchpin" of federal accountability.
It was Spellings' first response to a state request for help dealing with Katrina. Her department has a request pending from Texas.
School districts nationwide are enrolling displaced students who have friends or family from the Gulf Coast - or children who just have nowhere else to go.
Universities are absorbing tens of thousands of college students stranded by the hurricane. In Louisiana, an estimated 73,000 such students from public and private schools have been displaced and 15 campuses have been closed, Spellings' office said.
"I think the school community has responded very well. Obviously, we're part of that," she said. "We've tried to make this as easy as possible, with all the tools that we have to bring to bear immediately. I'll be accountable for that."
Overall, more than 25 states say they have taken in displaced students.
Texas schools expect an influx of roughly 60,000 students. In a letter to the Education Department, Texas Education Commissioner Shirley Neeley said she expects to spend $7,500 per student this year. That means the price of educating evacuees could be at least $450 million.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has told the state it is eligible to be reimbursed for expenses such as temporary schools and mental health counselors. But the hiring of teachers and buying of books are not eligible expenses for relief aid, a FEMA memo says.
The Houston school system has taken in more than 3,000 students displaced students. If the figure reaches at least 5,000 students, as expected, the district's cost would be about $30 million, said spokesman Terry Abbott.
As for college students, Spellings said the government would not try to take back federal financial aid already given students who been forced to move to other schools for at least a semester. That could amount to hundreds of millions of dollars, out of about $100 billion disbursed annually.
The department is considering what to do about aid distributed to help affected students who opt to take time off or work rather than enrolling at a new school, a spokeswoman said.
---
Associated Press writers April Castro, Suzanne Gamboa and Justin Pope contributed to this report.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/12626093.htm
by BEN FELLER
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Hurricane Katrina has booted at least 372,000 students from classrooms in Louisiana and Mississippi, and Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said Monday there are no clear answers about who will pay to educate them.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Spellings gave the broadest assessment yet of how the hurricane has affected schools at the start of their year.
In Louisiana, more than 247,000 public and private school students have been displaced. The storm forced 489 schools to close. At least six parishes have destroyed or damaged buildings, she said.
In Mississippi, more than 125,000 students have been forced elsewhere. Some 226 schools in 30 districts are closed. Almost 30 schools have been destroyed.
Spellings declined to estimate how much it will cost states to rebuild school districts or serve displaced students - or how much the federal government will cover.
"I shouldn't be talking about the details that I'm in negotiations with the White House and the (Capitol) Hill on," Spellings said. "As soon as I can talk about it, I want to talk about it."
President Bush has told Spellings to develop a plan to provide aid for the states.
In the interview, Spellings said she will ask Congress for unprecedented authority to ease aspects of a federal law governing the education of homeless children. She already had pledged to consider using her powers to waive parts of the law known as No Child Left Behind, including requirements on yearly testing and teacher quality.
Still, Spellings cautioned: "I obviously don't think this is an opportunity for every state in the country to get 'No Child Left Behind is off this year.' We're just not there yet."
In a letter obtained Monday by The Associated Press, Spellings waived a requirement for Mississippi that normally forces school districts to spend some money to obtain federal aid. That means some of the states can cut or shift spending without penalty.
Spellings denied the state's request to excuse some districts from having to make yearly progress on math and reading tests. Because those tests will not be given until the spring, she said, it is too soon to waive the "linchpin" of federal accountability.
It was Spellings' first response to a state request for help dealing with Katrina. Her department has a request pending from Texas.
School districts nationwide are enrolling displaced students who have friends or family from the Gulf Coast - or children who just have nowhere else to go.
Universities are absorbing tens of thousands of college students stranded by the hurricane. In Louisiana, an estimated 73,000 such students from public and private schools have been displaced and 15 campuses have been closed, Spellings' office said.
"I think the school community has responded very well. Obviously, we're part of that," she said. "We've tried to make this as easy as possible, with all the tools that we have to bring to bear immediately. I'll be accountable for that."
Overall, more than 25 states say they have taken in displaced students.
Texas schools expect an influx of roughly 60,000 students. In a letter to the Education Department, Texas Education Commissioner Shirley Neeley said she expects to spend $7,500 per student this year. That means the price of educating evacuees could be at least $450 million.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has told the state it is eligible to be reimbursed for expenses such as temporary schools and mental health counselors. But the hiring of teachers and buying of books are not eligible expenses for relief aid, a FEMA memo says.
The Houston school system has taken in more than 3,000 students displaced students. If the figure reaches at least 5,000 students, as expected, the district's cost would be about $30 million, said spokesman Terry Abbott.
As for college students, Spellings said the government would not try to take back federal financial aid already given students who been forced to move to other schools for at least a semester. That could amount to hundreds of millions of dollars, out of about $100 billion disbursed annually.
The department is considering what to do about aid distributed to help affected students who opt to take time off or work rather than enrolling at a new school, a spokeswoman said.
---
Associated Press writers April Castro, Suzanne Gamboa and Justin Pope contributed to this report.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/12626093.htm
Sunday, September 11, 2005
Money limits test choice, educators say
For once, we get the costs of all of these tests our state administers: "Last school year, the state spent about $61.5 million to administer all its tests. The Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills alone cost $48.3 million.
TPRI and Tejas Lee cost the state about $4 million annually." Scroll to bottom to see more detailed costs. One wonders whether greater levels of reading proficiency would occur if these millions went straight into the classroom rather than into the pockets of the testing companies. To be sure, the plight of the hurricane evacuees will be a boon to the testing companies. Who really profits from this reforms?
-Angela
by L. Lamor Williams
Star-Telegram Staff Writer /September 9, 2005
Educators say the state has been forcing school districts to use a state-funded reading test that doesn't accurately measure student progress or to pay for better exams themselves.
Each year, Texas kindergartners, first- and second-graders take the Texas Primary Reading Inventory or its Spanish cousin, Tejas Lee, which were implemented in the 1999-2000 school year. In 1996, then-Governor George W. Bush established the Texas Reading Initiative, which called for the testing.
The state fully reimburses districts that use the TPRI or Tejas Lee. If a district chooses to administer another state-approved exam, it gets partial reimbursement or no reimbursement from the state. And in some cases, those exams must be given more often than TPRI or Tejas Lee.
Ninety percent of districts in the state use TPRI and Tejas Lee, according to the Texas Education Agency. They include the Arlington, Birdville, Mansfield and Fort Worth school districts.
At a time when districts are already strapped for cash, some say districts have no choice but to go with the fully-funded TPRI.
"They've made it real clear. We're almost under their thumb," said Wally Carter, the Arlington school district's research and testing director.
Bush's challenge to educators when he created the Reading Initiative was that they use scientific, research-based instruction to ensure that all students were reading at or above grade level by the end of third grade. The tests are given three times a year in first and second grades and twice in kindergarten.
"Based on these tests, a teacher can identify which students are struggling and provide them early with intervention," said Linda Limon, director of the Texas Reading Initiative. "We found that a lot of kids fell through the cracks."
Each year, Texas spends millions of dollars on testing.
Last school year, the state spent about $61.5 million to administer all its tests. The Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills alone cost $48.3 million.
TPRI and Tejas Lee cost the state about $4 million annually, TEA curriculum director Monica Martinez said.
Until recently, the state would annually revamp the test. Now, TPRI and Tejas Lee have been retooled so districts can use the same test materials for two years.
The TEA has allocated $4.9 million for the new cycle of two-year test kits, which cover the 2006-07 and 2007-08 school years, Martinez said.
With funding from the state, TPRI is developed by the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. Tejas Lee is developed by the Texas Institute of Measurement Evaluation and Statistics.
Some educators say the tests rely too heavily on phonics, and many preferred the Diagnostic Reading Assessment. The DRA is on the state's approved list of assessments, but a district wouldn't be fully reimbursed for using it. It would cost Arlington $158,877 to buy DRA kits for the district's 762 kindergarten, first- and second-grade teachers.
Sylvia Davies, the Birdville school district's elementary English language arts consultant, said teachers were upset that the state stopped giving the DRA. Curriculum officials in the Fort Worth school district could not be reached for comment.
"There are other tests available that would give teachers a more precise reading level," Davies said. "Maybe someday the state will provide those also."
Limon maintains that the TPRI is a more comprehensive exam.
"Some people love TPRI and some think it takes too much time," Limon said. "But having spoken to people throughout the state, it has a lot more advocates than detractors."
IN THE KNOW
Test costs
In the 2004-05 school year, Texas spent about $61.5 million on testing.
• Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills English, exit level and Texas Assessment of Academic Skills -- $42.1 million
• Spanish version of TAKS -- $6.2 million
• End of course exams -- $400,000
• Texas English Language Performance Assessment -- $900,000
• Reading Proficiency Test in English -- $2.1 million
• State Developed Alternative Assessment II -- $5.8 million
• Texas Primary Reading Inventory and Tejas Lee -- $4 million
SOURCE: Texas Education Agency
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ONLINE:www.tea.state.tx.us/reading
http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/state/12600026.htm
TPRI and Tejas Lee cost the state about $4 million annually." Scroll to bottom to see more detailed costs. One wonders whether greater levels of reading proficiency would occur if these millions went straight into the classroom rather than into the pockets of the testing companies. To be sure, the plight of the hurricane evacuees will be a boon to the testing companies. Who really profits from this reforms?
-Angela
by L. Lamor Williams
Star-Telegram Staff Writer /September 9, 2005
Educators say the state has been forcing school districts to use a state-funded reading test that doesn't accurately measure student progress or to pay for better exams themselves.
Each year, Texas kindergartners, first- and second-graders take the Texas Primary Reading Inventory or its Spanish cousin, Tejas Lee, which were implemented in the 1999-2000 school year. In 1996, then-Governor George W. Bush established the Texas Reading Initiative, which called for the testing.
The state fully reimburses districts that use the TPRI or Tejas Lee. If a district chooses to administer another state-approved exam, it gets partial reimbursement or no reimbursement from the state. And in some cases, those exams must be given more often than TPRI or Tejas Lee.
Ninety percent of districts in the state use TPRI and Tejas Lee, according to the Texas Education Agency. They include the Arlington, Birdville, Mansfield and Fort Worth school districts.
At a time when districts are already strapped for cash, some say districts have no choice but to go with the fully-funded TPRI.
"They've made it real clear. We're almost under their thumb," said Wally Carter, the Arlington school district's research and testing director.
Bush's challenge to educators when he created the Reading Initiative was that they use scientific, research-based instruction to ensure that all students were reading at or above grade level by the end of third grade. The tests are given three times a year in first and second grades and twice in kindergarten.
"Based on these tests, a teacher can identify which students are struggling and provide them early with intervention," said Linda Limon, director of the Texas Reading Initiative. "We found that a lot of kids fell through the cracks."
Each year, Texas spends millions of dollars on testing.
Last school year, the state spent about $61.5 million to administer all its tests. The Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills alone cost $48.3 million.
TPRI and Tejas Lee cost the state about $4 million annually, TEA curriculum director Monica Martinez said.
Until recently, the state would annually revamp the test. Now, TPRI and Tejas Lee have been retooled so districts can use the same test materials for two years.
The TEA has allocated $4.9 million for the new cycle of two-year test kits, which cover the 2006-07 and 2007-08 school years, Martinez said.
With funding from the state, TPRI is developed by the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. Tejas Lee is developed by the Texas Institute of Measurement Evaluation and Statistics.
Some educators say the tests rely too heavily on phonics, and many preferred the Diagnostic Reading Assessment. The DRA is on the state's approved list of assessments, but a district wouldn't be fully reimbursed for using it. It would cost Arlington $158,877 to buy DRA kits for the district's 762 kindergarten, first- and second-grade teachers.
Sylvia Davies, the Birdville school district's elementary English language arts consultant, said teachers were upset that the state stopped giving the DRA. Curriculum officials in the Fort Worth school district could not be reached for comment.
"There are other tests available that would give teachers a more precise reading level," Davies said. "Maybe someday the state will provide those also."
Limon maintains that the TPRI is a more comprehensive exam.
"Some people love TPRI and some think it takes too much time," Limon said. "But having spoken to people throughout the state, it has a lot more advocates than detractors."
IN THE KNOW
Test costs
In the 2004-05 school year, Texas spent about $61.5 million on testing.
• Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills English, exit level and Texas Assessment of Academic Skills -- $42.1 million
• Spanish version of TAKS -- $6.2 million
• End of course exams -- $400,000
• Texas English Language Performance Assessment -- $900,000
• Reading Proficiency Test in English -- $2.1 million
• State Developed Alternative Assessment II -- $5.8 million
• Texas Primary Reading Inventory and Tejas Lee -- $4 million
SOURCE: Texas Education Agency
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ONLINE:www.tea.state.tx.us/reading
http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/state/12600026.htm
Anxious parents send their eager children to school as area educators prepare for the influx of new faces
by JENNIFER RADCLIFFE
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle September 9, 2005
"Is that our bus yet?" the squirming second-grader asked his mother. "I want to go to school now ."
The boy was among 161 children from the Reliant complex to attend Douglass Elementary on Thursday, a southeast Houston school that was reopened specifically for evacuated students. Districtwide, more than 624 from Houston's large shelters enrolled in school by midday Thursday.
More than half of the 18,905 displaced children attending school in Texas are enrolled in Houston-area schools, both public and private, in the neighborhoods of their hotels, houses and shelters.
"That's a huge step forward — just getting them back in school," said Kathy Christie, a vice president with the Education Commission of the States. "Texas deserves a great big pat on the back."
While Hurricane Katrina's youngest survivors need extra care, integrating them into schools with typical Houston students will be key in helping them resume their childhood, Christie said.
"Talking about (Katrina) is good, but talking about Harry Potter is good, too. You need a little bit of both," she said.
Hundreds of these students will stay in Houston schools for months or even years. Officials announced Thursday that St. Bernard Parish will not reopen this year. Orleans Parish leaders are determining when or if they can open. Jefferson Parish may not open until Jan. 19.
HISD Superintendent Abe- lardo Saavedra said his district is prepared to educate as many as 14,000 displaced students. So far, enrollment of Katrina evacuees is about 2,300.
"It's going smoother than I expected," he said. "I'm very encouraged. I'm very proud of our staff."
Children a priority
Winston Harrison, who opted to see his fourth-grade son off to school Thursday morning rather than wait in a long line for disaster assistance, said more Louisiana residents should be focused on sending their children to school.
"The children are more important. The lines are going to drop. I can take care of that later," Harrison said.
Richard Washington was apprehensive about putting his kindergarten daughter on a school bus in a strange city.
"That's my love. That's my shadow. I ain't happy about it, but I don't have a choice," Washington said, just before 5-year-old Elegria boarded the bus with a fuzzy teddy bear.
Jackie Lawson, one of the thousands standing in line for FEMA help, said school would have to wait at least one more day for Alaji, her 10-year-old great nephew. Even though he was registered for class, his family was too busy trying to get much-need housing assistance.
"I think a lot of people have that problem. It's all up in the air," said Lawson, adding that the boy would probably attend school today.
Children sent to Douglass laughed and giggled as they entered school. They were impressed by the yellow lockers and lime green cafeteria walls.
"The children were beautiful. They were all thrilled to death. They wanted to come to school," principal Sue Ann Payne said.
Teacher Zella Markey, a principal of a private school in New Orleans who was hired by HISD, said some of the children were a little anxious at first — a feeling she can relate to.
"They've been venting a little bit about what happened at the Superdome," said Markey, whose kindergarten class was all smiles as they sang The Wheels on the Bus .
As the students attended their first day of class, several hundred other teachers, aides, nurses, bus drivers and other school personnel put in job applications at Houston school district's job fair Thursday afternoon. Some applicants were Louisiana evacuees, while others were retired educators.
Staff writer Cynthia Garza contributed to this report.
jennifer.radcliffe@chron.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ENROLLMENTS
These are the number of evacuated students that area districts say they've enrolled:
• Houston: 2,305
• North Forest: 110
• Humble: 476
• Fort Bend: 1,268
• Spring: 494
• Pasadena: 409
• Katy: 1,089
• Brazosport: 73
• Pearland: 219
• Spring Branch: 231
• Cypress-Fairbanks: 1,148
• Alief: 811
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3346005
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle September 9, 2005
"Is that our bus yet?" the squirming second-grader asked his mother. "I want to go to school now ."
The boy was among 161 children from the Reliant complex to attend Douglass Elementary on Thursday, a southeast Houston school that was reopened specifically for evacuated students. Districtwide, more than 624 from Houston's large shelters enrolled in school by midday Thursday.
More than half of the 18,905 displaced children attending school in Texas are enrolled in Houston-area schools, both public and private, in the neighborhoods of their hotels, houses and shelters.
"That's a huge step forward — just getting them back in school," said Kathy Christie, a vice president with the Education Commission of the States. "Texas deserves a great big pat on the back."
While Hurricane Katrina's youngest survivors need extra care, integrating them into schools with typical Houston students will be key in helping them resume their childhood, Christie said.
"Talking about (Katrina) is good, but talking about Harry Potter is good, too. You need a little bit of both," she said.
Hundreds of these students will stay in Houston schools for months or even years. Officials announced Thursday that St. Bernard Parish will not reopen this year. Orleans Parish leaders are determining when or if they can open. Jefferson Parish may not open until Jan. 19.
HISD Superintendent Abe- lardo Saavedra said his district is prepared to educate as many as 14,000 displaced students. So far, enrollment of Katrina evacuees is about 2,300.
"It's going smoother than I expected," he said. "I'm very encouraged. I'm very proud of our staff."
Children a priority
Winston Harrison, who opted to see his fourth-grade son off to school Thursday morning rather than wait in a long line for disaster assistance, said more Louisiana residents should be focused on sending their children to school.
"The children are more important. The lines are going to drop. I can take care of that later," Harrison said.
Richard Washington was apprehensive about putting his kindergarten daughter on a school bus in a strange city.
"That's my love. That's my shadow. I ain't happy about it, but I don't have a choice," Washington said, just before 5-year-old Elegria boarded the bus with a fuzzy teddy bear.
Jackie Lawson, one of the thousands standing in line for FEMA help, said school would have to wait at least one more day for Alaji, her 10-year-old great nephew. Even though he was registered for class, his family was too busy trying to get much-need housing assistance.
"I think a lot of people have that problem. It's all up in the air," said Lawson, adding that the boy would probably attend school today.
Children sent to Douglass laughed and giggled as they entered school. They were impressed by the yellow lockers and lime green cafeteria walls.
"The children were beautiful. They were all thrilled to death. They wanted to come to school," principal Sue Ann Payne said.
Teacher Zella Markey, a principal of a private school in New Orleans who was hired by HISD, said some of the children were a little anxious at first — a feeling she can relate to.
"They've been venting a little bit about what happened at the Superdome," said Markey, whose kindergarten class was all smiles as they sang The Wheels on the Bus .
As the students attended their first day of class, several hundred other teachers, aides, nurses, bus drivers and other school personnel put in job applications at Houston school district's job fair Thursday afternoon. Some applicants were Louisiana evacuees, while others were retired educators.
Staff writer Cynthia Garza contributed to this report.
jennifer.radcliffe@chron.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ENROLLMENTS
These are the number of evacuated students that area districts say they've enrolled:
• Houston: 2,305
• North Forest: 110
• Humble: 476
• Fort Bend: 1,268
• Spring: 494
• Pasadena: 409
• Katy: 1,089
• Brazosport: 73
• Pearland: 219
• Spring Branch: 231
• Cypress-Fairbanks: 1,148
• Alief: 811
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3346005
Saturday, September 10, 2005
More Texans say they favor sharing the wealth
Sept. 10, 2005, 10:21PM
An income tax, other proposals draw responses along party lines
By CLAY ROBISON
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau
AUSTIN - Although a growing number of Texans believe their local property taxes are too high, most support the controversial law, dubbed "Robin Hood," that requires property wealthy school districts to share tax revenue with poorer schools.
But there are sharp differences between Republicans and Democrats over the share-the-wealth law, the Scripps Howard Texas Poll shows, underscoring one reason for the Legislature's prolonged inability to overhaul the school finance system and cut local school taxes.
During their 2002 election campaigns, Gov. Rick Perry and many Republican legislators vowed to repeal Robin Hood and lower property taxes, which now account for about 60 percent of public school funding.
But lawmakers have failed to accomplish either goal during four sessions over the past two years.
According to the Texas Poll, 65 percent of Texans believe their property taxes are too high, compared with 60 percent in May and 54 percent in February.
'Makes a lot of sense'
But despite the Republican attacks against Robin Hood, 57 percent of the survey's respondents agree that rich districts should share their money with poorer schools. Some 38 percent disagree, and 5 percent don't know, reflecting similar polls earlier this year.
"The vast majority of people, as they study it, say it makes a lot of sense to take the state's wealth, where it is in abundance, and move it to where the children are in abundance," said Wayne Pierce, executive director of the Texas Equity Center, which represents several hundred low- and middle-wealth school districts.
"The vast majority of districts benefit from Robin Hood," he added.
Only 156 of the state's 1,037 school districts must share their local tax money under the law. Many rural districts represented by Republican lawmakers as well as heavily minority, urban and South Texas districts represented by Democrats receive funding from Robin Hood.
But many of the districts that give money are in suburban, heavily Republican areas, which may help explain why most of the opposition to Robin Hood comes from Republicans.
Only 44 percent of Republicans favor the law, while 49 percent oppose it, and 7 percent don't know, according to the survey. Democrats, however, approve of Robin Hood by a 72 percent to 23 percent margin, with 5 percent undecided. Independents support the law, 59 percent to 36 percent, also with 5 percent unsure.
Dick Lavine, a tax policy analyst with the Center for Public Policy Priorities, which advocates for low- and middle-income people, said the Robin Hood law has benefited the entire state because it has promoted equity in school funding.
Perry backs equity
Spokesman Eric Bearse said Perry, despite his opposition to Robin Hood, also supports equity and, despite the Legislature's failure to act, has proposed plans to increase equity by increasing state funding for public schools.
The law, enacted in 1993 in response to a Texas Supreme Court order for more equity in funding between rich and poor districts, was declared unconstitutional by a state district judge last fall.
The judge also declared the funding system inadequate, and the Supreme Court is now reviewing his decision.
There also has been major disagreement among legislators, even among Republican leaders, over what state taxes should be raised to pay for local property tax reductions.
Even on income tax
Although leaders have vowed to find a tax trade-off that is "revenue neutral," 61 percent of the Texas Poll respondents believe their overall taxes will increase if the Legislature ever enacts a new school finance plan.
Some 25 percent of respondents blamed the school finance impasse on lawmakers, 24 percent blamed it on lobbyists and special interest groups and 14 percent blamed the governor.
Only 3 percent specifically blamed House Speaker Tom Craddick and 1 percent blamed Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst. But 17 percent said "all of the above."
Texans, the poll indicates, are about evenly divided on whether the Legislature should enact a state income tax to reduce property taxes and increase education funding. Some 45 percent support an income tax, 47 percent don't and 8 percent are unsure.
But there were significant partisan differences over an income tax. Only 35 percent of Republicans like the idea, and 57 percent oppose it. Democrats support it by 60 percent to 31 percent, and independents are evenly divided at 48 percent.
The telephone poll of 1,000 Texans was conducted Aug. 22-Sept. 3 by the Scripps Research Center. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
clay.robison@chron.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3347283
An income tax, other proposals draw responses along party lines
By CLAY ROBISON
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau
AUSTIN - Although a growing number of Texans believe their local property taxes are too high, most support the controversial law, dubbed "Robin Hood," that requires property wealthy school districts to share tax revenue with poorer schools.
But there are sharp differences between Republicans and Democrats over the share-the-wealth law, the Scripps Howard Texas Poll shows, underscoring one reason for the Legislature's prolonged inability to overhaul the school finance system and cut local school taxes.
During their 2002 election campaigns, Gov. Rick Perry and many Republican legislators vowed to repeal Robin Hood and lower property taxes, which now account for about 60 percent of public school funding.
But lawmakers have failed to accomplish either goal during four sessions over the past two years.
According to the Texas Poll, 65 percent of Texans believe their property taxes are too high, compared with 60 percent in May and 54 percent in February.
'Makes a lot of sense'
But despite the Republican attacks against Robin Hood, 57 percent of the survey's respondents agree that rich districts should share their money with poorer schools. Some 38 percent disagree, and 5 percent don't know, reflecting similar polls earlier this year.
"The vast majority of people, as they study it, say it makes a lot of sense to take the state's wealth, where it is in abundance, and move it to where the children are in abundance," said Wayne Pierce, executive director of the Texas Equity Center, which represents several hundred low- and middle-wealth school districts.
"The vast majority of districts benefit from Robin Hood," he added.
Only 156 of the state's 1,037 school districts must share their local tax money under the law. Many rural districts represented by Republican lawmakers as well as heavily minority, urban and South Texas districts represented by Democrats receive funding from Robin Hood.
But many of the districts that give money are in suburban, heavily Republican areas, which may help explain why most of the opposition to Robin Hood comes from Republicans.
Only 44 percent of Republicans favor the law, while 49 percent oppose it, and 7 percent don't know, according to the survey. Democrats, however, approve of Robin Hood by a 72 percent to 23 percent margin, with 5 percent undecided. Independents support the law, 59 percent to 36 percent, also with 5 percent unsure.
Dick Lavine, a tax policy analyst with the Center for Public Policy Priorities, which advocates for low- and middle-income people, said the Robin Hood law has benefited the entire state because it has promoted equity in school funding.
Perry backs equity
Spokesman Eric Bearse said Perry, despite his opposition to Robin Hood, also supports equity and, despite the Legislature's failure to act, has proposed plans to increase equity by increasing state funding for public schools.
The law, enacted in 1993 in response to a Texas Supreme Court order for more equity in funding between rich and poor districts, was declared unconstitutional by a state district judge last fall.
The judge also declared the funding system inadequate, and the Supreme Court is now reviewing his decision.
There also has been major disagreement among legislators, even among Republican leaders, over what state taxes should be raised to pay for local property tax reductions.
Even on income tax
Although leaders have vowed to find a tax trade-off that is "revenue neutral," 61 percent of the Texas Poll respondents believe their overall taxes will increase if the Legislature ever enacts a new school finance plan.
Some 25 percent of respondents blamed the school finance impasse on lawmakers, 24 percent blamed it on lobbyists and special interest groups and 14 percent blamed the governor.
Only 3 percent specifically blamed House Speaker Tom Craddick and 1 percent blamed Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst. But 17 percent said "all of the above."
Texans, the poll indicates, are about evenly divided on whether the Legislature should enact a state income tax to reduce property taxes and increase education funding. Some 45 percent support an income tax, 47 percent don't and 8 percent are unsure.
But there were significant partisan differences over an income tax. Only 35 percent of Republicans like the idea, and 57 percent oppose it. Democrats support it by 60 percent to 31 percent, and independents are evenly divided at 48 percent.
The telephone poll of 1,000 Texans was conducted Aug. 22-Sept. 3 by the Scripps Research Center. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
clay.robison@chron.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3347283
Thursday, September 08, 2005
Lawmaker calls on school leaders
Former Republican Representative Bob Griggs is right on target. Educators do need to put their hat in the ring for public office at the state level. Read on. -Angela
Run for state office to aid public education, representative says
08:35 AM CDT on Thursday, September 8, 2005
By TERRENCE STUTZ / The Dallas Morning News
AUSTIN – A Republican state representative who parted ways with GOP leaders on school finance is urging local school board members and administrators to run for the Legislature next year and counter the "false" beliefs many lawmakers hold on public education in Texas.
Rep. Bob Griggs of North Richland Hills, said he was "putting out the call" for more educators to run for state office so they can fight the "misguided and damaging efforts to dismantle Texas' educational system" that have surfaced in the Legislature over the last few years.
Mr. Griggs, former superintendent of the Birdville school district in Tarrant County, recently announced he would not seek a third term next year.
In a letter distributed through the education community, the Republican said he has seen firsthand the widely held belief in the Legislature "that established educators are the problem with education and that the system cannot be fixed without wiping the slate clean and starting over from scratch."
"While I continue to fight this battle, it has become apparent there is more than just one retired superintendent can handle without additional reinforcement," he said. "Texas needs you to step up to the duty we all share as community leaders to run for state office."
Dr. Griggs noted that parent groups and political action committees are organizing around the state to back candidates who are more supportive of public schools than many current lawmakers.
"These organizations will prove a valuable resource to assist you in an effort to win election to the Legislature," his letter said.
This year, the former teacher joined Democrats in opposing a GOP-backed school finance bill that he said contained too many mandates and not enough money for school districts. The legislation was universally opposed by school districts and education groups across Texas.
Conservative groups were critical of Mr. Griggs' stance, and he had been expected to face strong primary opposition had he run for a third term in the House.
The school finance and tax swap bills failed in the regular legislative session this year, as well as in two special sessions called by Gov. Rick Perry this summer. House Republican leaders blamed school superintendents and their lobbyists for defeat of the legislation.
E-mail tstutz@dallasnews.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/DN-griggs_08tex.ART.State.Edition1.3785213.html
Run for state office to aid public education, representative says
08:35 AM CDT on Thursday, September 8, 2005
By TERRENCE STUTZ / The Dallas Morning News
AUSTIN – A Republican state representative who parted ways with GOP leaders on school finance is urging local school board members and administrators to run for the Legislature next year and counter the "false" beliefs many lawmakers hold on public education in Texas.
Rep. Bob Griggs of North Richland Hills, said he was "putting out the call" for more educators to run for state office so they can fight the "misguided and damaging efforts to dismantle Texas' educational system" that have surfaced in the Legislature over the last few years.
Mr. Griggs, former superintendent of the Birdville school district in Tarrant County, recently announced he would not seek a third term next year.
In a letter distributed through the education community, the Republican said he has seen firsthand the widely held belief in the Legislature "that established educators are the problem with education and that the system cannot be fixed without wiping the slate clean and starting over from scratch."
"While I continue to fight this battle, it has become apparent there is more than just one retired superintendent can handle without additional reinforcement," he said. "Texas needs you to step up to the duty we all share as community leaders to run for state office."
Dr. Griggs noted that parent groups and political action committees are organizing around the state to back candidates who are more supportive of public schools than many current lawmakers.
"These organizations will prove a valuable resource to assist you in an effort to win election to the Legislature," his letter said.
This year, the former teacher joined Democrats in opposing a GOP-backed school finance bill that he said contained too many mandates and not enough money for school districts. The legislation was universally opposed by school districts and education groups across Texas.
Conservative groups were critical of Mr. Griggs' stance, and he had been expected to face strong primary opposition had he run for a third term in the House.
The school finance and tax swap bills failed in the regular legislative session this year, as well as in two special sessions called by Gov. Rick Perry this summer. House Republican leaders blamed school superintendents and their lobbyists for defeat of the legislation.
E-mail tstutz@dallasnews.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/DN-griggs_08tex.ART.State.Edition1.3785213.html
A chance for youth to return to routine
Sept. 8, 2005, 3:08PM
Carlos Antonio Rios / Chronicle
Teen-age hurricane evacuees get on a bus to Jones High School today at Reliant Center.
A chance for youth to return to routine
Evacuee parents enroll hundreds in HISD, where students will begin classes today
By JENNIFER RADCLIFFE
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle
HURRICANE KATRINA
NOAA
Hurricane Katrina swirls toward the Gulf Coast.
• Complete Chronicle coverage
Katrina news via RSS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
HELP FOR REFUGEES:
• Housing offers • Shelter links
• Food • Look for people
• Web sites devoted to reuniting Katrina families
• Red Cross people search
• Search temp jobs in area
• Evacuee discounts
------------------------------------------------------------------------
HOW YOU CAN HELP:
• LATEST HOUSTON UPDATES
• Where to send donations
• How to help locally
• Houston Mayor's Volunteer Initiatives Program
• Harris County Citizen Corps
• Red Cross volunteer training
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BLOGS:
• Voices of Katrina: Stories from the aftermath
• DomeBlog from the Reliant Astrodome
• In Exile: An evacuee blogs for New Orleans
• Eric Berger's SciGuy
------------------------------------------------------------------------
WEBCAST:
• Live coverage from WDSU-TV in New Orleans
------------------------------------------------------------------------
VIDEO:
• Floodwaters have high bacteria levels 9/8
• Thursday Katrina update 9/8
• Little storm survivors head back to school 9/8
• NO SWAT team goes after sniper 9/7
• Katrina evacuees in Florida seek help 9/7
• Soldiers help coax holdouts 9/7
• Nations await answer to Katrina aid offers 9/7
• Bush, Congress return to Katrina agenda 9/7
• Wednesday Katrina update 9/7
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PHOTO GALLERIES:
Associated Press:
• Latest images
Houston Chronicle:
• Dome City report
• Houston relief effort
• Gulf Coast recovery
• Evacuees settle in Houston
• Evacuations continue in New Orleans
• Mississippi picking up the pieces
• Temporary shelter in Houston
• Evacuees arrive at Astrodome
• Louisiana residents cope
• National Guard relief arrives
Chronicle News Services:
• Gulf Coast aftermath
------------------------------------------------------------------------
INTERACTIVE:
• Victims of Katrina
• New Orleans devastation
• Zoomable satellite image of New Orleans / 8/31
• Hurricane Katrina: Devastation follows storm's path
------------------------------------------------------------------------
IN NEW ORLEANS:
• Nola.com's breaking news blog and Hurricane Center
------------------------------------------------------------------------
GRAPHICS:
• Graphic: Post-Hurricane Biohazards 09/08
• Graphic: Katrina's Economic Impact 09/08
• Graphic: Disasters lead to rise in suicides 09/06
• Graphic: The world comes to U.S. aid 09/06
• Graphic: Timeline of Katrina's aftermath 09/06
• Graphic: Comparing New Orleans, Houston Evacuations
• Satellite Images: New Orleans Before and After Katrina
• Graphic: When levees are breached
• Graphic: Fixing the Levee
• Graphic: Katrina's Aftermath
• Map: Katrina's Path
• Graphic: New Orleans and Storm Surge
Note: Some graphics are oversized and require scrolling
------------------------------------------------------------------------
SPECIAL REPORT:
• The Big One: Is Houston ready?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Video, graphics courtesy Associated Press and KHOU; free Real Player, Flash plug-in and Acrobat Reader may be required.)
Dozens of children lined up outside Reliant Center this morning to board school buses heading for Douglass Elementary and Jones High schools.
They were among the 445 students from the main shelters who registered for school in the Houston Independent School District during Wednesday's big enrollment push.
"Is that our bus yet? I want to go to school now," said Reginald Williams, 7.
Even as the children lined up to board buses, however, hundreds of Hurricane Katrina evacuees, including many school-aged children, lined up to register for debit cards, prompting some to question the priorities of parents who put their children in the line for money instead of the line for school.
"The children are more important," said Winston Harrison, who was taking his young son Winston Jr. to school.
The first day of school comes as a welcome change for many of the parents and children who have spent nearly two weeks fleeing Hurricane Katrina's wake and sleeping in area shelters.
Parents said they don't want their children to fall behind academically.
"All they're doing here is running from one end of the hall to another. Enough is enough," said Reliant Center resident Cynthia Hampton, 56, who signed up nine grandchildren for school Wednesday. "They need new surroundings."
Evacuee enrollment in the state's largest school district is expected to increase this week, as HISD's enrollment push continues through Friday at the Reliant Park complex and the George R. Brown Convention Center.
Children colored pictures as their parents filled out yellow, green and pink forms. Dozens of volunteers, registrars, counselors and health experts were on hand to guide them through the process.
Wednesday's enrollment session brings HISD's count for evacuated students to more than 1,885. District leaders said they have 14,000 available seats.
"We're taking in the equivalent of another school district," HISD trustee Kevin Hoffman said.
Most of the younger students will be sent to Douglass and Ryan elementary schools, which are being reopened today for the Katrina survivors.
Other elementary students could be placed at Dodson, McDade, Frost and Anson Jones, if needed. Middle school students could attend Fleming, Fondren, Black and Holland, while high schoolers may be placed at Jones, Kashmere, Barbara Jordan, Sterling and Scarborough.
District leaders are hoping state and federal governments will help offset the $60 million it could cost to educate as many as 10,000 evacuated students for the entire year. The actual enrollment and cost could be less. Right now, district employees said they are just happy to help.
"Words can't describe how I feel in being able to help our neighbors get back into a normal routine," Hoffman said.
U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said school districts such as Houston can expect some financial aid, but she offered few specifics. "We're trying to figure out ... how best to do that," she said. "We're working on it."
Returning to class is an important step in helping the children put their lives back together, volunteers said.
"The thing is just to put some normalcy in their life," said Cathe Phipps, a Texas Baptist Men volunteer from Dallas. "I have seen children who are very excited about going back to school. They're ready."
Suburban districts in Harris County have taken in roughly 6,900 evacuated students, including 1,148 in Cypress-Fairbanks, 811 in Alief, 404 in Klein and 900 in Katy. Educators said they are trying to make sure the children have the clothes, supplies and emotional support they need. Many students escaped the storm with just the clothes they were wearing.
They've since survived even more trauma.
"We didn't come with anything because we were stuck in an attic," explained Terryanna Durel, a 9-year-old who registered Wednesday. "We got in a boat and went to the Superdome. I didn't like it there. They were raping and killing people. I'm just glad I came out safe."
Terryanna said she misses her friends, bike, television and favorite clothes. But the girl, who hopes to be a nurse, is excited about going to school in Houston.
"New Orleans is a small town. This is like a city right here," she said.
Of course, her view of Houston has been limited to the Reliant Center complex.
"Do they have houses in Houston?" she asked. "Big ones?"
Her little sister quickly added: "Do they have stores?"
Adrian Peters, 17, said it may be hard to keep his mind off what he's been through in the past week and a half.
"I'm going to think about all this for a long time," said Peters, who made his way to the Superdome through deep water.
"I'm ready to start going to school. I'm tired."
Reliant resident Raymond Warner, 17, said he's anxious to see the campus, students and teachers today at Jones High School.
He hopes to try out as a wide receiver on the school's football team.
"It's new. I've never been to Houston before," said Warner, a senior. "Hopefully they'll treat me the same way as everyone else."
After being separated from her three children for a week, 22-year-old Rebecca Soloman said it'll be a little tough to send her 4-year-old daughter, Kariell, off to prekindergarten.
"We didn't know where they were," said Soloman, whose children were rescued by the Coast Guard. "I promise I will never let them split us up again."
Other families found the registration process frustrating.
"I got down here at 7:45 a.m. Now, I have to wait on a phone call," said Veronica Bowman, who moved out of the Astrodome on Tuesday and was having trouble enrolling her three sons. She wasn't sure how she is supposed to transport her children to Longfellow Elementary, the closest school to their new apartment.
"They're just sitting around doing nothing. They need to be in school," she said.
jennifer.radcliffe@chron.com
This article is: http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3344350
Carlos Antonio Rios / Chronicle
Teen-age hurricane evacuees get on a bus to Jones High School today at Reliant Center.
A chance for youth to return to routine
Evacuee parents enroll hundreds in HISD, where students will begin classes today
By JENNIFER RADCLIFFE
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle
HURRICANE KATRINA
NOAA
Hurricane Katrina swirls toward the Gulf Coast.
• Complete Chronicle coverage
Katrina news via RSS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
HELP FOR REFUGEES:
• Housing offers • Shelter links
• Food • Look for people
• Web sites devoted to reuniting Katrina families
• Red Cross people search
• Search temp jobs in area
• Evacuee discounts
------------------------------------------------------------------------
HOW YOU CAN HELP:
• LATEST HOUSTON UPDATES
• Where to send donations
• How to help locally
• Houston Mayor's Volunteer Initiatives Program
• Harris County Citizen Corps
• Red Cross volunteer training
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BLOGS:
• Voices of Katrina: Stories from the aftermath
• DomeBlog from the Reliant Astrodome
• In Exile: An evacuee blogs for New Orleans
• Eric Berger's SciGuy
------------------------------------------------------------------------
WEBCAST:
• Live coverage from WDSU-TV in New Orleans
------------------------------------------------------------------------
VIDEO:
• Floodwaters have high bacteria levels 9/8
• Thursday Katrina update 9/8
• Little storm survivors head back to school 9/8
• NO SWAT team goes after sniper 9/7
• Katrina evacuees in Florida seek help 9/7
• Soldiers help coax holdouts 9/7
• Nations await answer to Katrina aid offers 9/7
• Bush, Congress return to Katrina agenda 9/7
• Wednesday Katrina update 9/7
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PHOTO GALLERIES:
Associated Press:
• Latest images
Houston Chronicle:
• Dome City report
• Houston relief effort
• Gulf Coast recovery
• Evacuees settle in Houston
• Evacuations continue in New Orleans
• Mississippi picking up the pieces
• Temporary shelter in Houston
• Evacuees arrive at Astrodome
• Louisiana residents cope
• National Guard relief arrives
Chronicle News Services:
• Gulf Coast aftermath
------------------------------------------------------------------------
INTERACTIVE:
• Victims of Katrina
• New Orleans devastation
• Zoomable satellite image of New Orleans / 8/31
• Hurricane Katrina: Devastation follows storm's path
------------------------------------------------------------------------
IN NEW ORLEANS:
• Nola.com's breaking news blog and Hurricane Center
------------------------------------------------------------------------
GRAPHICS:
• Graphic: Post-Hurricane Biohazards 09/08
• Graphic: Katrina's Economic Impact 09/08
• Graphic: Disasters lead to rise in suicides 09/06
• Graphic: The world comes to U.S. aid 09/06
• Graphic: Timeline of Katrina's aftermath 09/06
• Graphic: Comparing New Orleans, Houston Evacuations
• Satellite Images: New Orleans Before and After Katrina
• Graphic: When levees are breached
• Graphic: Fixing the Levee
• Graphic: Katrina's Aftermath
• Map: Katrina's Path
• Graphic: New Orleans and Storm Surge
Note: Some graphics are oversized and require scrolling
------------------------------------------------------------------------
SPECIAL REPORT:
• The Big One: Is Houston ready?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Video, graphics courtesy Associated Press and KHOU; free Real Player, Flash plug-in and Acrobat Reader may be required.)
Dozens of children lined up outside Reliant Center this morning to board school buses heading for Douglass Elementary and Jones High schools.
They were among the 445 students from the main shelters who registered for school in the Houston Independent School District during Wednesday's big enrollment push.
"Is that our bus yet? I want to go to school now," said Reginald Williams, 7.
Even as the children lined up to board buses, however, hundreds of Hurricane Katrina evacuees, including many school-aged children, lined up to register for debit cards, prompting some to question the priorities of parents who put their children in the line for money instead of the line for school.
"The children are more important," said Winston Harrison, who was taking his young son Winston Jr. to school.
The first day of school comes as a welcome change for many of the parents and children who have spent nearly two weeks fleeing Hurricane Katrina's wake and sleeping in area shelters.
Parents said they don't want their children to fall behind academically.
"All they're doing here is running from one end of the hall to another. Enough is enough," said Reliant Center resident Cynthia Hampton, 56, who signed up nine grandchildren for school Wednesday. "They need new surroundings."
Evacuee enrollment in the state's largest school district is expected to increase this week, as HISD's enrollment push continues through Friday at the Reliant Park complex and the George R. Brown Convention Center.
Children colored pictures as their parents filled out yellow, green and pink forms. Dozens of volunteers, registrars, counselors and health experts were on hand to guide them through the process.
Wednesday's enrollment session brings HISD's count for evacuated students to more than 1,885. District leaders said they have 14,000 available seats.
"We're taking in the equivalent of another school district," HISD trustee Kevin Hoffman said.
Most of the younger students will be sent to Douglass and Ryan elementary schools, which are being reopened today for the Katrina survivors.
Other elementary students could be placed at Dodson, McDade, Frost and Anson Jones, if needed. Middle school students could attend Fleming, Fondren, Black and Holland, while high schoolers may be placed at Jones, Kashmere, Barbara Jordan, Sterling and Scarborough.
District leaders are hoping state and federal governments will help offset the $60 million it could cost to educate as many as 10,000 evacuated students for the entire year. The actual enrollment and cost could be less. Right now, district employees said they are just happy to help.
"Words can't describe how I feel in being able to help our neighbors get back into a normal routine," Hoffman said.
U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said school districts such as Houston can expect some financial aid, but she offered few specifics. "We're trying to figure out ... how best to do that," she said. "We're working on it."
Returning to class is an important step in helping the children put their lives back together, volunteers said.
"The thing is just to put some normalcy in their life," said Cathe Phipps, a Texas Baptist Men volunteer from Dallas. "I have seen children who are very excited about going back to school. They're ready."
Suburban districts in Harris County have taken in roughly 6,900 evacuated students, including 1,148 in Cypress-Fairbanks, 811 in Alief, 404 in Klein and 900 in Katy. Educators said they are trying to make sure the children have the clothes, supplies and emotional support they need. Many students escaped the storm with just the clothes they were wearing.
They've since survived even more trauma.
"We didn't come with anything because we were stuck in an attic," explained Terryanna Durel, a 9-year-old who registered Wednesday. "We got in a boat and went to the Superdome. I didn't like it there. They were raping and killing people. I'm just glad I came out safe."
Terryanna said she misses her friends, bike, television and favorite clothes. But the girl, who hopes to be a nurse, is excited about going to school in Houston.
"New Orleans is a small town. This is like a city right here," she said.
Of course, her view of Houston has been limited to the Reliant Center complex.
"Do they have houses in Houston?" she asked. "Big ones?"
Her little sister quickly added: "Do they have stores?"
Adrian Peters, 17, said it may be hard to keep his mind off what he's been through in the past week and a half.
"I'm going to think about all this for a long time," said Peters, who made his way to the Superdome through deep water.
"I'm ready to start going to school. I'm tired."
Reliant resident Raymond Warner, 17, said he's anxious to see the campus, students and teachers today at Jones High School.
He hopes to try out as a wide receiver on the school's football team.
"It's new. I've never been to Houston before," said Warner, a senior. "Hopefully they'll treat me the same way as everyone else."
After being separated from her three children for a week, 22-year-old Rebecca Soloman said it'll be a little tough to send her 4-year-old daughter, Kariell, off to prekindergarten.
"We didn't know where they were," said Soloman, whose children were rescued by the Coast Guard. "I promise I will never let them split us up again."
Other families found the registration process frustrating.
"I got down here at 7:45 a.m. Now, I have to wait on a phone call," said Veronica Bowman, who moved out of the Astrodome on Tuesday and was having trouble enrolling her three sons. She wasn't sure how she is supposed to transport her children to Longfellow Elementary, the closest school to their new apartment.
"They're just sitting around doing nothing. They need to be in school," she said.
jennifer.radcliffe@chron.com
This article is: http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3344350
Law to deal second blow to victims of hurricane
I knew when the bankruptcy law passed, that it would collide with the real needs associated with folks who really need options—such a the Katrina victims, AND that it was really serving the interests of the credit card companies. What no one could have predicted though was a collision of this magnitude. -Angela
Sept. 8, 2005, 8:30PM
By LOREN STEFFY
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle
A bad law just keeps getting worse.
The devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is exposing more shortcomings in the federal bankruptcy law that's scheduled to take effect Oct. 17.
The so-called Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act is the love letter that Congress wrote to the credit card industry this spring. It's been widely decried by corporate and personal bankruptcy attorneys alike for making the process more convoluted, expensive and difficult for consumers, companies and even creditors.
Now it may bog down the Katrina recovery effort as well.
"The victims of Hurricane Katrina may face a cruel second blow when they take steps to try to put their lives back together," says Brad Botes, a bankruptcy attorney with the firm Bond & Botes, which has offices in the southeastern U.S., including some of the regions affected by the storm.
With jobs lost, lives uprooted and homes and businesses destroyed, bankruptcies are certain to rise in the coming months.
"The things that force people to file bankruptcy are usually some sort of catastrophic event," says Susan Matthews, a bankruptcy attorney with the Houston office of Adams and Reese. "Having their home wiped out and losing their job would force people to seek bankruptcy protection."
Mostly it's crises
Katrina reminds us that crises, not irresponsibility, are the primary cause of personal bankruptcies.
The new law, though, assumes that most debtors are simply dishonest, that they're looking for a way to shirk their obligations. So beginning next month, in order to file a standard Chapter 7 bankruptcy, debtors will have to show not only that they are broke, but that they've been broke for at least six months. Losing everything in a hurricane apparently won't be enough.
The law also requires additional paperwork such as copies of tax returns, pay stubs, bank statements and other financial records that, thanks to Katrina, may simply no longer exist.
Congress also enacted a provision requiring debtors to undergo credit counseling. In most cases, though, people forced into bankruptcy by a natural disaster don't need counseling, they need relief.
Debtors may be able to get some of these requirements waived, but they would have to petition the court, on an individual basis, which
takes additional time and money.
Waiving provisions
The Consumer Federation of America and the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys on Wednesday called on Congress to delay or waive the more onerous provisions of the new law for victims of natural disasters.
Four U.S. House members, including Houston's Sheila Jackson Lee, said Thursday they plan to introduce legislation that would do just that when Congress reconvenes next week.
"What we need to do here is avoid kicking hurricane victims when they're already down," says Botes, who is an NACBA director.
Even without the changes in the law, evacuees such as those in the Astrodome and other shelters around Texas may have difficulty filing bankruptcy. Residents of Louisiana, for example, can't file a case in Texas. Federal law stipulates that debtors must file in the judicial district where they reside.
(The State Bar of Texas is setting up mobile clinics for evacuees in need of legal advice.)
A second chance
It's an unfortunate consequence of disasters that people succumb to financial hardships they often couldn't imagine. Even if lenders cooperate in delaying payment demands temporarily, some borrowers, having lost both home and employment, may find themselves unable to catch up.
In America, we believe in the second chance. We believe in the idea of picking ourselves up from failure and trying again. It's the basis for our bankruptcy laws, which are unique in the world.
Nowhere is that concept more essential than in those areas digging out from Katrina's devastation.
"It's the only safety net these people have right now, and it needs to be there," Botes says. Along the Gulf Coast, the next few months will be a time of rebuilding, of starting over. It's a time for second chances, not just for the storm victims, but for members of Congress, too.
They have a chance to fix some of the mistakes they legislated in the spring.
Loren Steffy is the Chronicle's business columnist.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/3345871
Sept. 8, 2005, 8:30PM
By LOREN STEFFY
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle
A bad law just keeps getting worse.
The devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is exposing more shortcomings in the federal bankruptcy law that's scheduled to take effect Oct. 17.
The so-called Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act is the love letter that Congress wrote to the credit card industry this spring. It's been widely decried by corporate and personal bankruptcy attorneys alike for making the process more convoluted, expensive and difficult for consumers, companies and even creditors.
Now it may bog down the Katrina recovery effort as well.
"The victims of Hurricane Katrina may face a cruel second blow when they take steps to try to put their lives back together," says Brad Botes, a bankruptcy attorney with the firm Bond & Botes, which has offices in the southeastern U.S., including some of the regions affected by the storm.
With jobs lost, lives uprooted and homes and businesses destroyed, bankruptcies are certain to rise in the coming months.
"The things that force people to file bankruptcy are usually some sort of catastrophic event," says Susan Matthews, a bankruptcy attorney with the Houston office of Adams and Reese. "Having their home wiped out and losing their job would force people to seek bankruptcy protection."
Mostly it's crises
Katrina reminds us that crises, not irresponsibility, are the primary cause of personal bankruptcies.
The new law, though, assumes that most debtors are simply dishonest, that they're looking for a way to shirk their obligations. So beginning next month, in order to file a standard Chapter 7 bankruptcy, debtors will have to show not only that they are broke, but that they've been broke for at least six months. Losing everything in a hurricane apparently won't be enough.
The law also requires additional paperwork such as copies of tax returns, pay stubs, bank statements and other financial records that, thanks to Katrina, may simply no longer exist.
Congress also enacted a provision requiring debtors to undergo credit counseling. In most cases, though, people forced into bankruptcy by a natural disaster don't need counseling, they need relief.
Debtors may be able to get some of these requirements waived, but they would have to petition the court, on an individual basis, which
takes additional time and money.
Waiving provisions
The Consumer Federation of America and the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys on Wednesday called on Congress to delay or waive the more onerous provisions of the new law for victims of natural disasters.
Four U.S. House members, including Houston's Sheila Jackson Lee, said Thursday they plan to introduce legislation that would do just that when Congress reconvenes next week.
"What we need to do here is avoid kicking hurricane victims when they're already down," says Botes, who is an NACBA director.
Even without the changes in the law, evacuees such as those in the Astrodome and other shelters around Texas may have difficulty filing bankruptcy. Residents of Louisiana, for example, can't file a case in Texas. Federal law stipulates that debtors must file in the judicial district where they reside.
(The State Bar of Texas is setting up mobile clinics for evacuees in need of legal advice.)
A second chance
It's an unfortunate consequence of disasters that people succumb to financial hardships they often couldn't imagine. Even if lenders cooperate in delaying payment demands temporarily, some borrowers, having lost both home and employment, may find themselves unable to catch up.
In America, we believe in the second chance. We believe in the idea of picking ourselves up from failure and trying again. It's the basis for our bankruptcy laws, which are unique in the world.
Nowhere is that concept more essential than in those areas digging out from Katrina's devastation.
"It's the only safety net these people have right now, and it needs to be there," Botes says. Along the Gulf Coast, the next few months will be a time of rebuilding, of starting over. It's a time for second chances, not just for the storm victims, but for members of Congress, too.
They have a chance to fix some of the mistakes they legislated in the spring.
Loren Steffy is the Chronicle's business columnist.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/3345871
Assessing displaced students is priority
Thu, Sep. 08, 2005
Assessing displaced students is priority
By Diane Smith
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
Teacher availability, class size and student assessments are the top concerns for North Texas educators as children from the Gulf Coast enter area schools.
"We are going to do whatever is necessary to assist them," said Stephen Waddell, superintendent of the Birdville school district, which had 35 new students as of Wednesday morning.
Getting a sense of the long-term effect on schools isn't easy. Students may be on the move soon after enrolling, leaving shelters for more-permanent homes.
Assessing new students -- to find out where they fit within Texas' curriculum standards -- is also a priority. And educators must determine which students have special needs.
"There are just a whole host of questions," said Francine Holland, deputy executive director of instructional services at the Region XI Education Service Center in Fort Worth.
The center helped area superintendents cope with these issues during a meeting Wednesday. Information is also available on the center's Web site.
About 70 superintendents attended the meeting.
Superintendents received packets that included a provisional enrollment form, a list of shelters and requirements that have been relaxed for students displaced by Hurricane Katrina.
Just days after fleeing Louisiana, many evacuees became Texas' newest students. They've entered suburban, urban and rural schools. While some districts are accommodating dozens of youngsters, others have enrolled only one or two.
Robert Damron, superintendent of Cleburne schools, said school finance reform remains a top concern for districts grappling with tight budgets and should be on the front burner even as new students enroll.
Cleburne schools, which serve 6,500 students, have added 25 Louisiana students.
"We're going to treat them like our kids, but our Legislature needs to treat our kids better," Damron said.
Susan Simpson, superintendent of White Settlement schools, said the district has 12 new students who are staying with families. Simpson said the district can address their needs directly.
"We can literally do one-on-one and work with families," she said.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ONLINE:www.esc11.net
Diane Smith, (817) 390-7675 dianesmith@star-telegram.com
http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/state/12589391.htm
Assessing displaced students is priority
By Diane Smith
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
Teacher availability, class size and student assessments are the top concerns for North Texas educators as children from the Gulf Coast enter area schools.
"We are going to do whatever is necessary to assist them," said Stephen Waddell, superintendent of the Birdville school district, which had 35 new students as of Wednesday morning.
Getting a sense of the long-term effect on schools isn't easy. Students may be on the move soon after enrolling, leaving shelters for more-permanent homes.
Assessing new students -- to find out where they fit within Texas' curriculum standards -- is also a priority. And educators must determine which students have special needs.
"There are just a whole host of questions," said Francine Holland, deputy executive director of instructional services at the Region XI Education Service Center in Fort Worth.
The center helped area superintendents cope with these issues during a meeting Wednesday. Information is also available on the center's Web site.
About 70 superintendents attended the meeting.
Superintendents received packets that included a provisional enrollment form, a list of shelters and requirements that have been relaxed for students displaced by Hurricane Katrina.
Just days after fleeing Louisiana, many evacuees became Texas' newest students. They've entered suburban, urban and rural schools. While some districts are accommodating dozens of youngsters, others have enrolled only one or two.
Robert Damron, superintendent of Cleburne schools, said school finance reform remains a top concern for districts grappling with tight budgets and should be on the front burner even as new students enroll.
Cleburne schools, which serve 6,500 students, have added 25 Louisiana students.
"We're going to treat them like our kids, but our Legislature needs to treat our kids better," Damron said.
Susan Simpson, superintendent of White Settlement schools, said the district has 12 new students who are staying with families. Simpson said the district can address their needs directly.
"We can literally do one-on-one and work with families," she said.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ONLINE:www.esc11.net
Diane Smith, (817) 390-7675 dianesmith@star-telegram.com
http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/state/12589391.htm
America's Best Colleges and the Top Ten Percent
This is a quick and powerful read. -Angela
September 1, 2005
By David Montejano*
This week the US News & World Report (Aug. 29, 2005) released its annual ranking of the country's best colleges. A review of the rankings reveals that the very best colleges have student bodies overwhelmingly comprised of students who graduated in the top ten percent of their high school class. It should come as no surprise that nearly ninety percent (and upwards) of the entering freshmen at the best private universities graduated in the top ten percent of their high school class. But this holds true for the best public universities as well.
Top ten percenters basically made up the entire entering class at the University of California-Berkeley (99%) and the University of California-Los Angeles (97%). In fact, Berkeley and UCLA, with a 25% and 23% admit rate, rejected many top ten percent applicants.
In Texas, where legislators recently considered modifying HB 588 (the “top ten percent” admissions law) because of fears that its flagship universities would be “overrun” by top ten percenters, the national rankings should provide some perspective. The University of Texas-Austin, with only two-thirds (66%) of its freshmen graduating in the top ten percent and with a 51% admit rate, has a fairly relaxed profile compared to much higher ranked universities. Texas A & M University-College Station has even more breathing room: only half (49%) of its entering class were top ten percenters and three-quarters (72%) of all applicants were admitted.
Special Report: America's Best Colleges*
Rank School Freshmen in top 10% of HS class ('04) Acceptance
(admit) rate ('04)
1 Harvard 96% 11%
5 Stanford 87% 13%
17 Rice 86% 22%
20 UC-Berkeley 99% 25%
25 UCLA 97% 23%
27 UNC-Chapel Hill 74% 36%
30 USC 84% 27%
52 UT-Austin 66% 51%
60 TAMU-College Sta. 49% 72%
*U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT (Aug. 29, 2005)
The national rankings make two points very clear:
(1) that the freshmen of the very best universities are overwhelmingly made up of top ten percent students; and (2) that acceptance (admit rates) by the very best universities is extremely competitive.
One final point might be added: universities with top ten percent student bodies can play football. Look at USC, UCLA, and --well, maybe-- Cal (Berkeley).
________________________________________________________________________
*Professor David Montejano is Chair of the Center for Latino Policy Research at the University of California, Berkeley.
September 1, 2005
By David Montejano*
This week the US News & World Report (Aug. 29, 2005) released its annual ranking of the country's best colleges. A review of the rankings reveals that the very best colleges have student bodies overwhelmingly comprised of students who graduated in the top ten percent of their high school class. It should come as no surprise that nearly ninety percent (and upwards) of the entering freshmen at the best private universities graduated in the top ten percent of their high school class. But this holds true for the best public universities as well.
Top ten percenters basically made up the entire entering class at the University of California-Berkeley (99%) and the University of California-Los Angeles (97%). In fact, Berkeley and UCLA, with a 25% and 23% admit rate, rejected many top ten percent applicants.
In Texas, where legislators recently considered modifying HB 588 (the “top ten percent” admissions law) because of fears that its flagship universities would be “overrun” by top ten percenters, the national rankings should provide some perspective. The University of Texas-Austin, with only two-thirds (66%) of its freshmen graduating in the top ten percent and with a 51% admit rate, has a fairly relaxed profile compared to much higher ranked universities. Texas A & M University-College Station has even more breathing room: only half (49%) of its entering class were top ten percenters and three-quarters (72%) of all applicants were admitted.
Special Report: America's Best Colleges*
Rank School Freshmen in top 10% of HS class ('04) Acceptance
(admit) rate ('04)
1 Harvard 96% 11%
5 Stanford 87% 13%
17 Rice 86% 22%
20 UC-Berkeley 99% 25%
25 UCLA 97% 23%
27 UNC-Chapel Hill 74% 36%
30 USC 84% 27%
52 UT-Austin 66% 51%
60 TAMU-College Sta. 49% 72%
*U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT (Aug. 29, 2005)
The national rankings make two points very clear:
(1) that the freshmen of the very best universities are overwhelmingly made up of top ten percent students; and (2) that acceptance (admit rates) by the very best universities is extremely competitive.
One final point might be added: universities with top ten percent student bodies can play football. Look at USC, UCLA, and --well, maybe-- Cal (Berkeley).
________________________________________________________________________
*Professor David Montejano is Chair of the Center for Latino Policy Research at the University of California, Berkeley.
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
Across Nation, Storm Victims Crowd Schools
September 7, 2005
By SAM DILLON
School districts from Maine to Washington State were enrolling thousands of students from New Orleans and other devastated Gulf Coast districts yesterday in what experts said could become the largest student resettlement in the nation's history.
Schools welcoming the displaced students must not only provide classrooms, teachers and textbooks, but under the terms of President Bush's education law must also almost immediately begin to raise their scholastic achievement unless some provisions of that law are waived.
Historians said that those twin challenges surpassed anything that public education had experienced since its creation after the Civil War, including disasters that devastated whole school districts, like the San Francisco earthquake and the Chicago fire.
"In terms of school systems absorbing kids whose lives and homes have been shattered, what we're going to watch over the next weeks is unprecedented in American education," said Jeffrey Mirel, a professor of history and education at the University of Michigan.
The vast resettlement was already under way last week, with schools in Baton Rouge, La., Houston and other cities near the Gulf Coast enrolling some students. Yesterday, officials in cities including San Antonio; Phoenix; Olympia, Wash.; Freeport, Me.; Memphis; Washington; Las Vegas; Salt Lake City; Chicago; Detroit; and Philadelphia reported enrolling students or preparing for their arrival.
The total number of displaced students is not yet known, but it appears to be well above 200,000. In Louisiana, 135,000 public school students and 52,000 private school students have been displaced from Orleans, Jefferson, St. Bernard and Plaquemines Parishes.
President Bush, speaking with reporters at the White House yesterday, thanked the nation's educators "for reaching out and doing their duty," and he said that Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings was working on a plan to help states absorb the educational costs but gave no hint of what kind of assistance might be provided. The Department of Education set up a Web site to coordinate private donations to schools enrolling displaced students.
"They said we could brace for about 500 kids," said Sue Steele, coordinator of homeless student programs for the public schools in Wichita, where buses carrying 1,800 storm victims were expected to arrive yesterday, part of some 7,000 headed for Kansas.
Many students were concentrated in districts along an arc from the Florida Panhandle west through Georgia, Tennessee, Arkansas and Texas.
The Santa Rosa County School District in the Florida Panhandle has enrolled 137 students, said Carol Calfee, a district official.
"And we still have folks coming in," she said. "They're walking through the door and some of them just have nothing, so it's really hard." The local United Way has said it will try to buy school supplies for every displaced student, she said.
The crisis poses new challenges for Ms. Spellings, including financial. The Department of Education's budget this year for homeless student programs is about $61 million, which she said was insufficient.
Ms. Spellings, who has spent her first months in office fighting a backlash by local educators and state lawmakers against the federal law known as No Child Left Behind, is also hearing calls from advocacy groups that she take emergency measures that could be controversial.
The National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers union, asked her on Friday to waive the accountability provisions of the law for schools in the hurricane's path as well as in Texas and other states receiving large numbers of students, a move Ms. Spellings said she was reluctant to take.
Private companies that operate online courses or charter schools are urging her to use emergency powers to authorize them to enroll displaced students at the Houston Astrodome and other shelters across the nation.
Ms. Spellings has invited 40 education groups, including the P.T.A. and teachers unions, to meet at the Department of Education today to discuss disaster recovery efforts. Reg Weaver, president of the N.E.A., which has challenged No Child Left Behind in federal court, said he immediately accepted the invitation.
But in a separate letter, he also asked Ms. Spellings to use her powers to waive provisions of the law, which requires school districts to raise student scores on standardized tests each year by a percentage set by each state, a goal known as making adequate yearly progress.
"Until these children, their teachers, districts and families gain their footing under these extremely difficult circumstances, I encourage you to implement the provisions in N.C.L.B. that deal with the impact of natural disasters on testing and adequate yearly progress," Mr. Weaver's letter said.
Ms. Spellings is consulting with state school superintendents as she considers whether to waive the law's accountability provisions in some cases, said her spokeswoman, Susan Aspey. One consideration is how many displaced students that individual schools or districts enroll; those with higher concentrations may be more likely to receive waivers, Ms. Aspey said.
"There is no one-size-fits-all approach," she said.
Even before the storm, hundreds of schools that had failed to meet the federal law's proficiency requirements for several years, most of which educate the urban poor or non-English speaking immigrants, were facing sanctions that include school closings and the firing of staff. Thousands of others were expected to be placed on academic probation or labeled as low-performing.
Theodore R. Sizer, a visiting professor of history at Harvard, said that unless the law's accountability provisions were waived during the emergency, they would add tensions to the resettlement crisis.
"Imagine you're the principal of a big high school in city X, and your scores are above the state minimums, so you're doing fine with the law, and suddenly you have 300 displaced kids," Mr. Sizer said. "That not only brings crowding but also means that on the next exams your scores could plummet and the federal law will say you run a terrible school."
The Bush administration must also make decisions about another hotly debated issue in public education: charter schools. The National Council of Education Providers, which represents the nation's largest commercial school management companies, has asked the Department of Education to authorize it to enroll students housed at emergency shelters in Internet-based courses offered by its companies.
The National Council's Web site yesterday highlighted its request to the department to establish a "national virtual charter school" that would "serve evacuees wherever they are."
"Once students have access to computers and connectivity - borrowed, donated or shared - companies are standing by to waive state restrictions and log these students on," the Web site said. The restrictions in question include enrollment caps in state laws that apply to charter schools. The National Council wants the federal government to waive those laws during the emergency.
Jeanne Allen, a paid consultant to the National Council who is also president of the Center for Education Reform, a nonprofit organization, said she delivered a draft "Emergency Public Charter School Act" to members of Congress yesterday.
By SAM DILLON
School districts from Maine to Washington State were enrolling thousands of students from New Orleans and other devastated Gulf Coast districts yesterday in what experts said could become the largest student resettlement in the nation's history.
Schools welcoming the displaced students must not only provide classrooms, teachers and textbooks, but under the terms of President Bush's education law must also almost immediately begin to raise their scholastic achievement unless some provisions of that law are waived.
Historians said that those twin challenges surpassed anything that public education had experienced since its creation after the Civil War, including disasters that devastated whole school districts, like the San Francisco earthquake and the Chicago fire.
"In terms of school systems absorbing kids whose lives and homes have been shattered, what we're going to watch over the next weeks is unprecedented in American education," said Jeffrey Mirel, a professor of history and education at the University of Michigan.
The vast resettlement was already under way last week, with schools in Baton Rouge, La., Houston and other cities near the Gulf Coast enrolling some students. Yesterday, officials in cities including San Antonio; Phoenix; Olympia, Wash.; Freeport, Me.; Memphis; Washington; Las Vegas; Salt Lake City; Chicago; Detroit; and Philadelphia reported enrolling students or preparing for their arrival.
The total number of displaced students is not yet known, but it appears to be well above 200,000. In Louisiana, 135,000 public school students and 52,000 private school students have been displaced from Orleans, Jefferson, St. Bernard and Plaquemines Parishes.
President Bush, speaking with reporters at the White House yesterday, thanked the nation's educators "for reaching out and doing their duty," and he said that Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings was working on a plan to help states absorb the educational costs but gave no hint of what kind of assistance might be provided. The Department of Education set up a Web site to coordinate private donations to schools enrolling displaced students.
"They said we could brace for about 500 kids," said Sue Steele, coordinator of homeless student programs for the public schools in Wichita, where buses carrying 1,800 storm victims were expected to arrive yesterday, part of some 7,000 headed for Kansas.
Many students were concentrated in districts along an arc from the Florida Panhandle west through Georgia, Tennessee, Arkansas and Texas.
The Santa Rosa County School District in the Florida Panhandle has enrolled 137 students, said Carol Calfee, a district official.
"And we still have folks coming in," she said. "They're walking through the door and some of them just have nothing, so it's really hard." The local United Way has said it will try to buy school supplies for every displaced student, she said.
The crisis poses new challenges for Ms. Spellings, including financial. The Department of Education's budget this year for homeless student programs is about $61 million, which she said was insufficient.
Ms. Spellings, who has spent her first months in office fighting a backlash by local educators and state lawmakers against the federal law known as No Child Left Behind, is also hearing calls from advocacy groups that she take emergency measures that could be controversial.
The National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers union, asked her on Friday to waive the accountability provisions of the law for schools in the hurricane's path as well as in Texas and other states receiving large numbers of students, a move Ms. Spellings said she was reluctant to take.
Private companies that operate online courses or charter schools are urging her to use emergency powers to authorize them to enroll displaced students at the Houston Astrodome and other shelters across the nation.
Ms. Spellings has invited 40 education groups, including the P.T.A. and teachers unions, to meet at the Department of Education today to discuss disaster recovery efforts. Reg Weaver, president of the N.E.A., which has challenged No Child Left Behind in federal court, said he immediately accepted the invitation.
But in a separate letter, he also asked Ms. Spellings to use her powers to waive provisions of the law, which requires school districts to raise student scores on standardized tests each year by a percentage set by each state, a goal known as making adequate yearly progress.
"Until these children, their teachers, districts and families gain their footing under these extremely difficult circumstances, I encourage you to implement the provisions in N.C.L.B. that deal with the impact of natural disasters on testing and adequate yearly progress," Mr. Weaver's letter said.
Ms. Spellings is consulting with state school superintendents as she considers whether to waive the law's accountability provisions in some cases, said her spokeswoman, Susan Aspey. One consideration is how many displaced students that individual schools or districts enroll; those with higher concentrations may be more likely to receive waivers, Ms. Aspey said.
"There is no one-size-fits-all approach," she said.
Even before the storm, hundreds of schools that had failed to meet the federal law's proficiency requirements for several years, most of which educate the urban poor or non-English speaking immigrants, were facing sanctions that include school closings and the firing of staff. Thousands of others were expected to be placed on academic probation or labeled as low-performing.
Theodore R. Sizer, a visiting professor of history at Harvard, said that unless the law's accountability provisions were waived during the emergency, they would add tensions to the resettlement crisis.
"Imagine you're the principal of a big high school in city X, and your scores are above the state minimums, so you're doing fine with the law, and suddenly you have 300 displaced kids," Mr. Sizer said. "That not only brings crowding but also means that on the next exams your scores could plummet and the federal law will say you run a terrible school."
The Bush administration must also make decisions about another hotly debated issue in public education: charter schools. The National Council of Education Providers, which represents the nation's largest commercial school management companies, has asked the Department of Education to authorize it to enroll students housed at emergency shelters in Internet-based courses offered by its companies.
The National Council's Web site yesterday highlighted its request to the department to establish a "national virtual charter school" that would "serve evacuees wherever they are."
"Once students have access to computers and connectivity - borrowed, donated or shared - companies are standing by to waive state restrictions and log these students on," the Web site said. The restrictions in question include enrollment caps in state laws that apply to charter schools. The National Council wants the federal government to waive those laws during the emergency.
Jeanne Allen, a paid consultant to the National Council who is also president of the Center for Education Reform, a nonprofit organization, said she delivered a draft "Emergency Public Charter School Act" to members of Congress yesterday.
Failing Students, Rising Profits
This is a piece about the for-profit group, Community Education Partners (CEP) and is worth reading. -Angela
by Annette Fuentes
The Nation
>
>Morris Gandy's son was a problem student throughout elementary school,
>playing hooky and acting up. A few days after he began sixth grade in 2002
>at Gillespie Middle School in Philadelphia, he was suspended. Gandy, a
>single parent, beseeched the principal, "What can you do for a problem
>child?" He got no help.
>
>Then a neighbor told him about Community Education Partners (CEP), an
>alternative school for kids like his son. So Gandy enrolled the boy,
>expecting that teachers there would know how to handle him. Instead, the
>situation went from bad to worse. "The teacher said my son shot him in the
>head with a rubber band," Gandy said. "I said, 'What are you going to do
>about it? This is supposed to be a school for troubled kids.'" His son told
>Gandy that all they did was watch movies. He went truant. "They are
>supposed to be the experts on the kids outside the box. They are supposed
>to get them back inside the box," Gandy said. "They couldn't hold his
>interest."
>
>Morris Gandy is what you'd call a dissatisfied CEP customer. CEP, however,
>continues to prosper. Founded ten years ago in Houston, the company entered
>the private-school market at a time when Texas was a roiling caldron of
>Republican politics and Enron-style corporate dealing--and a laboratory for
>education reform. George W. Bush was governor, the mantra was
>accountability for public schools and the tools were high-stakes testing
>and privatization. What emerged from the mix were the so-called Texas
>Miracle, which boosted student achievement; Rod Paige as President Bush's
>Education Secretary; and ultimately Bush's No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law,
>authored by Texas education player Sandy Kress.
>
>The Texas Miracle has since been debunked as so much manipulation of test
>scores and phony graduation rates. Paige, who rode to the White House on
>its falsehoods, is history. And Bush's NCLB is sagging under the weight of
>impossible test goals and unfunded mandates, with even some Republicans now
>criticizing it. But privatization in public education and the credo of
>accountability through testing still chug along.
>
>CEP is one beneficiary. Despite a tarnished history and no independent
>evidence that its student-customers fare better than in regular public
>schools, CEP uses political clout to carve a niche market serving students
>the public schools don't want, and it makes millions in the process. CEP's
>story is a primer on how the politics of education reform serve business
>interests. Its success represents the triumph of free-market ideology over
>sound pedagogy and the fallacy of the accountability-through-testing
>approach to teaching. "It's fair to say they [CEP] have avoided true
>scrutiny," said Carl Shaw, a former Texas state official who evaluated
>CEP's program. "Their modus operandi is political, not educational and not
>scientific."
>
>The CEP Program: Be Here, Be Tested
>
>CEP contracts with public school districts in Houston, Atlanta,
>Philadelphia, Richmond and Orlando, and in the Pinnellas and Bay districts
>in Florida, to run alternative schools for students in grades six through
>twelve who've been suspended for behavioral problems. Most students sent to
>CEP also are academically failing, and the vast majority are
>African-American and Latino. CEP's contract requires that students spend
>120-180 days in the program--far in excess of the typical ten-day
>suspensions public schools impose on misbehaving students. CEP's rationale
>is that it needs time to transform kids' behavior and academic performance,
>but the company also has an obvious financial incentive for a longer
>placement. CEP's per-student charge varies by district, but it's more than
>the districts spend per pupil on regular students. In Orlando CEP gets
>$8,865 per pupil, double the district's own cost. Philadelphia pays CEP
>about $13,000 per pupil--almost twice the district's $7,000 average cost.
>"We charge more. We're a premium product," said Randle Richardson, the CEO
>of CEP. "Anyone can warehouse a child."
>
>CEP renovates abandoned big-box stores or industrial spaces, creating
>sex-segregated "learning communities." The students can't mingle and are
>walked in groups to bathrooms at specific times. Lunch is provided in their
>classrooms. Students may not bring money to school and are screened as if
>going through airport security, shoes and coats off. Teachers take
>attendance with an electronic fingerprint scanner that transmits the
>information back to CEP headquarters for payment. Some critics have called
>CEP schools "soft jails."
>
>CEP boasts that it employs "certified teachers and degreed individuals with
>experience in behavior management, counseling or social services." But CEP
>faces the same shortage of certified teachers the public schools do, and it
>pays lower salaries. In its early Houston days, says Marsha Sonnenberg, a
>Fort Worth educator who consulted for CEP, "they used some people from
>corrections and some they trained. Some had been from the streets
>themselves and rehabbed. Some were a little more like me." Irving Mitchell,
>principal of CEP's Atlanta school from August 2003 to January 2004, said
>his school had few certified teachers and high turnover, so on an average
>day classes were doubled up. "There was very little instruction, because
>you were dealing with fights and staff shortages," Mitchell said.
>Richardson said CEP pays for teacher-certification training when needed,
>and that such classes are brought onsite for his Philadelphia staff.
>
>"Be Here, Behave and Be Learning," is CEP's motto, but it should include
>"Be Tested," because students spend much of their learning time at
>computers with Plato, a self-paced tutorial that tests and assesses
>achievement. CEP uses Plato data to prove its claims of student
>improvement, but assessment experts give Plato mixed reviews, and some
>who've worked with it say cheating is not difficult.
>
>Political Juice
>
>Richardson founded CEP with his college buddy Phil Baggett, CEP's vice
>chairman. Richardson says his inspiration came from his early years as a
>small-town lawyer taking $50 juvenile delinquency cases from the family
>court judge. Then Richardson ran the Tennessee Farmers Home Administration,
>making loans to low-income homeowners. John Danielson, who would become
>Under Secretary of Education to Paige, was also a founder. Initial
>investors included Bill McInnes, formerly of the Hospital Corporation of
>America, and Tom Beasley, founder of the Corrections Corporation of
>America, the private prison company. CEP's early investors put up $65
>million; the company is now backed by Stephens Inc., a Little Rock,
>Arkansas, investment bank, and the Texas Growth Fund, a private equity firm
>created by the Texas legislature with public employee pension funds.
>Richardson says CEP's annual revenues are $70 million.
>
>Richardson bristles at questions about Beasley's role, sensitive to critics
>who've likened CEP schools to juvenile jails. "We had discussions early on
>that we are not going to be correctional," Richardson said. "Tom
>understood. He said, 'I'm an investor. You guys are here to run the
>company.'" But like Beasley, Richardson saw a ripe business opportunity in
>privatizing a public service--one that, like prisons, deals with society's
>messy failures. CEP's first contract was to operate a juvenile detention
>alternative-education program for Harris County, Texas.
>
>Giving CEP entree into the Texas education scene was George Scott, then
>president of the Tax Research Association, a nonprofit education-reform
>group in Houston, and now a senior writer for the online newspaper
>Education News. Scott, who was close to Paige when Paige was Houston
>schools superintendent, helped CEP score its first public school contract,
>with the Houston district. Scott said he told Paige, "Rod, this is it. This
>is privatized accountability at its best." Scott later became a CEP critic,
>though, charging that the company evaded real accountability for a program
>that was educationally flawed and a waste of taxpayer money. "I look back
>on my role with CEP, my dedication and commitment to accountability, and it
>is the greatest professional disgrace in my career," Scott said. "As long
>as the district and the vendor have influence over accountability measures,
>it is corrupt."
>
>Richardson says his background is in government, but it's his Republican
>Party credentials that pay off. Like Tom Beasley before him, Richardson was
>Tennessee's GOP chair--from 1992 to 1995--helping to lead Republicans "out
>of the wilderness and into control of statewide offices," according to one
>news account. Richardson soft-pedals his political ties, calling himself a
>"Howard Baker Republican" and insisting CEP is above the partisan fray. But
>CEP has thrived on the accumulated political juice Richardson and his
>cohorts have squeezed, mostly Republican-flavored, since its founding.
>
>In Texas CEP executives cultivated powerful friends, hiring Houston school
>board member Larry Marshall as a $6,000-a-month consultant and landing an
>endorsement from George Bush Sr. at the opening of CEP's first Houston
>school. "They were putting together the juiciest political team," Scott
>said. "They had powerful people at their beck and call." Political pull
>helped CEP waltz into Florida. Richardson and Baggett contributed to
>Charlie Crist's successful 2000 run for state education commissioner and to
>Governor Jeb Bush's 2002 campaign. In 2001 CEP's Florida lobbyist Juhan
>Mixon helped write a provision in a state appropriations bill that
>earmarked $4.8 million for "Alternative Schools/Public Private
>Partnerships." It was "to serve a minimum of 500 or more disruptive and low
>performing students"--a description tailored to CEP. Mixon also lobbies for
>several Florida school districts, including Bay, which hired CEP.
>
>In Philadelphia CEP found privatization high on the agendas of
>then-Governor Tom Ridge, a Republican, and state politicians. The state
>took control of the bankrupt Philadelphia school district in 2001, and
>state legislators made privatizing schools one of the conditions for the
>bailout. CEP's chief political ally has been Republican State House Speaker
>John Perzel, whose beefy visage graces the company's website along with his
>testimonial. Richardson, Baggett and CEP execs have contributed more than
>$11,000 to Perzel's campaigns. CEP's five-year, $28-million-a-year contract
>with Philadelphia schools was renewed in May 2004 with no debate.
>
>Accountability in Action
>
>CEP is a product of the high-stakes testing and accountability approach to
>education reform, which aims to run public schools like businesses whose
>products are students. Yet holding CEP accountable has been a quixotic
>undertaking because of the fluidity of the student population, the
>malleability of statistics and the company's political savvy. The few
>totally independent evaluations of CEP's effectiveness have rated it
>poorly. Several evaluations were paid for by CEP, like one in 1999 by Bush
>Sr. Education Department appointee Diane Ravitch, whose glowing endorsement
>of CEP's Houston program appears on CEP's website. Others were based on
>testing data completely controlled by CEP.
>
>In Texas CEP's first brush with evaluation was a lesson in the pitfalls of
>accountability and the importance of data control. In 1997 Texas state
>education commissioner Mike Moses hired Carl Shaw, former chair of the
>Texas Education Agency's (TEA) assessment committee and head of Houston's
>testing for fourteen years, to assess CEP's first contract, the juvenile
>detention program. Shaw found limited student progress after six months in
>CEP, and after a year, actual regression. "I could find no evidence that
>there was a strong-enough academic program in place to produce change," he
>said. "One report I wrote for [the Houston Independent School District]
>said few CEP students would be smart enough for prison education. It's
>shocking, and here's a company touted as a leader." Shaw said CEP head
>Richardson was angry at his findings and his refusal to compromise his
>work. "The first reaction I had from Richardson was, 'I am more powerful
>than you,'" Shaw said.
>
>CEP executives turned to Scott, the taxpayers' group president, for backup.
>"They wanted support that his test had gone awry," Scott said. "I told them
>I was 100 percent into Dr. Shaw's approach." Scott says discussions he and
>CEP had been having about a consultancy and shares of founders stock broke
>down because Scott refused to repudiate Shaw. Richardson says CEP raised
>concerns about Shaw's tests having "both positive and negative
>aberrations," and that they couldn't be validated by the TEA. Richardson
>noted that his relationship with Scott soured after the problems with
>Shaw's testing emerged.
>
>Next up was Dr. Tom Kellow, an evaluation specialist for Houston's schools.
>In 1999 Superintendent Paige asked Kellow to evaluate CEP--but he was
>forbidden to visit the school and could only use data CEP provided. Kellow
>learned that CEP's contract stated that it could only be held accountable
>based on its own in-house testing, not the statewide Texas Assessment of
>Academic Skills (TAAS). "What I found is what Carl Shaw found," Kellow
>said. "The longer [students] stayed, the worse their performance." Although
>under NCLB all schools must meet Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) standards
>for specific percentages of students testing at grade level in math and
>reading, the TEA exempts CEP. For both 2003 and 2004, the AYP status of
>CEP's two Houston schools is listed as "Not Evaluated." CEP's school
>profiles on the Houston schools website also reveal that the company evades
>the accountability that public schools face: No TAAS scores are listed and
>no information is provided for either state or district accountability
>measures.
>
>Houston continues to contract with CEP despite those early assessments, but
>Dallas's public school district was more discriminating. Dallas hired CEP
>in 1999, with a five-year, $10 million yearly contract. But after three
>years the district bowed out; its own evaluation of CEP in 2002 recommended
>ending the contract, stating that "the model of education provided by [CEP]
>was untenable from a pedagogical standpoint. The reliance on non-certified
>teachers for the bulk of the student-teacher interaction was useful for the
>company to save money, but was not a design in the best interest of the
>students.... Students who attended Community Education Partners did not do
>very well academically." CEP had refused to provide its budget data, the
>report noted, making it impossible to know just how it was spending the
>district's money.
>
>Dallas's report and a series of critical articles about CEP in the Houston
>Press, an alternative newsweekly, helped New Orleans public schools decide
>against a contract with CEP, according to former school board president
>Cheryl Mills. But Atlanta public schools ignored the negative press and
>evaluations, contracting with CEP four years ago. CEP's Atlanta school was
>the target of community organizing in early 2005 after the Atlanta Voice, a
>black newspaper, ran a series exposing serious inadequacies at the CEP
>school. The articles were based on the accounts of former CEP principal
>Mitchell and of a former teacher. "It became a dump for human waste,"
>Mitchell said. "Accountability is with the Atlanta school board for
>disenfranchising these kids. There was a contract and expectations, and I
>feel they were not met. The statistics show they weren't met."
>
>Atlanta schools deputy superintendent Kathy Augustine called Mitchell
>"disgruntled." She said she was unaware that students could not take books
>home, that there was no homework or that there was a teacher shortage. "I
>think we're improving," Augustine said. "It's a developing relationship.
>Finding leadership is key to that." She said she had no evidence that CEP
>was not living up to its contract. Told that CEP's school had failed to
>meet AYP standards for reading and math in the 2003-04 school year,
>Augustine said, "The AYP piece is different for nontraditional schools
>because children are very fluid." She noted that the school board had voted
>to extend CEP's contract through 2009.
>
>In Philadelphia even supposedly independent evaluations of CEP were
>dependent on company-controlled data. In March Philadelphia released an
>evaluation of CEP's two schools conducted by researchers at Temple
>University. The report surveyed seventy students and seventy parents who
>offered positive reports on CEP's program--a fraction of more than 4,300
>students CEP has served. In evaluating student academic growth, the report
>relied entirely on CEP's own Plato data, which claim astounding gains of
>three to four "grade levels" in reading and math for students who spend 180
>days at CEP--but there's no indication of how many students actually stay
>that long. The school district itself partakes of the statistical spin.
>Paul Socolar, editor of Philadelphia Public School Notebook, an independent
>newspaper, noted that in 2004 the district issued a CEP fact sheet that
>excluded CEP scores on the statewide standardized test for eighth graders,
>which had gone down; in January of this year the district excluded results
>for CEP eleventh graders, which had gone down. "It's a total manipulation
>of data," Socolar said. And as for meeting the AYP standards, CEP's Philly
>schools don't.
>
>CEP's Richardson says the proof of his company's success is that districts
>keep renewing their contracts. The question is how success is defined.
>Public schools have strong incentives to remove the lowest-performing
>students from their classrooms and make them CEP's problem, especially
>since the passage of No Child Left Behind. "CEP was a way to get around
>NCLB," said Mitchell. "If you move these kids from the regular school
>program, you automatically decrease the dropout rate and get a gain on your
>test scores. So you contract those kids out; they're in a separate
>environment, but they aren't counted in the total." For Socolar, CEP is a
>political solution to the public system's failures: "From the beginning,
>the concern that jumped out about CEP is whether putting these students in
>the hands of private companies is a way of putting them out of sight and
>out of mind," he said. While the public schools are hammered by the
>accountability-through-testing mandates of NCLB, CEP skirts the same
>accountability and proves the uselessness of high-stakes testing as an
>education strategy. Judging CEP by its test data only seems to make sense
>because the company and school districts that hire it buy into that
>accountability measure. Test scores, in truth, can never be an end in
>themselves--or proof that children are learning. That's why NCLB is phony
>education reform.
>
>At the end of an interview Richardson asked in almost plaintive tones, "Are
>we the enemy?" Well, yes and no. CEP may be doing a poor job, but it's only
>a symptom of the crumbling national commitment to public education,
>including the public schools' failure to educate huge percentages of mostly
>black and Latino students. Vouchers and other privatizing efforts in
>education have still not gained the momentum that conservatives had hoped
>for. But companies like CEP in the expanding private education industry
>help chip away at the public school infrastructure by targeting a
>market--the "bad students"--that has few advocates. CEP promotes
>privatization in a more quiet, effective way than Chris Whittle's troubled
>Edison schools have. And Richardson's future ambitions reveal an astute
>understanding of the changing nature and needs of today's student
>population: He'd like to run schools for overage students--17- or
>18-year-olds who work or raise families and need flexible programming, the
>students who "don't fit in the box," he says.
>
>As the box holding traditional students shrinks, one challenge facing
>public school educators is how best to serve all students--from high
>achievers to the most disruptive kids like Morris Gandy's son. If the
>public sector abdicates its responsibility to educate all children,
>businessmen like Randle Richardson are ready to step in. >
>
>This article can be found on the web at:
>
>http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050919/fuentes
>
>Visit The Nation http://www.thenation.com/
by Annette Fuentes
The Nation
>
>Morris Gandy's son was a problem student throughout elementary school,
>playing hooky and acting up. A few days after he began sixth grade in 2002
>at Gillespie Middle School in Philadelphia, he was suspended. Gandy, a
>single parent, beseeched the principal, "What can you do for a problem
>child?" He got no help.
>
>Then a neighbor told him about Community Education Partners (CEP), an
>alternative school for kids like his son. So Gandy enrolled the boy,
>expecting that teachers there would know how to handle him. Instead, the
>situation went from bad to worse. "The teacher said my son shot him in the
>head with a rubber band," Gandy said. "I said, 'What are you going to do
>about it? This is supposed to be a school for troubled kids.'" His son told
>Gandy that all they did was watch movies. He went truant. "They are
>supposed to be the experts on the kids outside the box. They are supposed
>to get them back inside the box," Gandy said. "They couldn't hold his
>interest."
>
>Morris Gandy is what you'd call a dissatisfied CEP customer. CEP, however,
>continues to prosper. Founded ten years ago in Houston, the company entered
>the private-school market at a time when Texas was a roiling caldron of
>Republican politics and Enron-style corporate dealing--and a laboratory for
>education reform. George W. Bush was governor, the mantra was
>accountability for public schools and the tools were high-stakes testing
>and privatization. What emerged from the mix were the so-called Texas
>Miracle, which boosted student achievement; Rod Paige as President Bush's
>Education Secretary; and ultimately Bush's No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law,
>authored by Texas education player Sandy Kress.
>
>The Texas Miracle has since been debunked as so much manipulation of test
>scores and phony graduation rates. Paige, who rode to the White House on
>its falsehoods, is history. And Bush's NCLB is sagging under the weight of
>impossible test goals and unfunded mandates, with even some Republicans now
>criticizing it. But privatization in public education and the credo of
>accountability through testing still chug along.
>
>CEP is one beneficiary. Despite a tarnished history and no independent
>evidence that its student-customers fare better than in regular public
>schools, CEP uses political clout to carve a niche market serving students
>the public schools don't want, and it makes millions in the process. CEP's
>story is a primer on how the politics of education reform serve business
>interests. Its success represents the triumph of free-market ideology over
>sound pedagogy and the fallacy of the accountability-through-testing
>approach to teaching. "It's fair to say they [CEP] have avoided true
>scrutiny," said Carl Shaw, a former Texas state official who evaluated
>CEP's program. "Their modus operandi is political, not educational and not
>scientific."
>
>The CEP Program: Be Here, Be Tested
>
>CEP contracts with public school districts in Houston, Atlanta,
>Philadelphia, Richmond and Orlando, and in the Pinnellas and Bay districts
>in Florida, to run alternative schools for students in grades six through
>twelve who've been suspended for behavioral problems. Most students sent to
>CEP also are academically failing, and the vast majority are
>African-American and Latino. CEP's contract requires that students spend
>120-180 days in the program--far in excess of the typical ten-day
>suspensions public schools impose on misbehaving students. CEP's rationale
>is that it needs time to transform kids' behavior and academic performance,
>but the company also has an obvious financial incentive for a longer
>placement. CEP's per-student charge varies by district, but it's more than
>the districts spend per pupil on regular students. In Orlando CEP gets
>$8,865 per pupil, double the district's own cost. Philadelphia pays CEP
>about $13,000 per pupil--almost twice the district's $7,000 average cost.
>"We charge more. We're a premium product," said Randle Richardson, the CEO
>of CEP. "Anyone can warehouse a child."
>
>CEP renovates abandoned big-box stores or industrial spaces, creating
>sex-segregated "learning communities." The students can't mingle and are
>walked in groups to bathrooms at specific times. Lunch is provided in their
>classrooms. Students may not bring money to school and are screened as if
>going through airport security, shoes and coats off. Teachers take
>attendance with an electronic fingerprint scanner that transmits the
>information back to CEP headquarters for payment. Some critics have called
>CEP schools "soft jails."
>
>CEP boasts that it employs "certified teachers and degreed individuals with
>experience in behavior management, counseling or social services." But CEP
>faces the same shortage of certified teachers the public schools do, and it
>pays lower salaries. In its early Houston days, says Marsha Sonnenberg, a
>Fort Worth educator who consulted for CEP, "they used some people from
>corrections and some they trained. Some had been from the streets
>themselves and rehabbed. Some were a little more like me." Irving Mitchell,
>principal of CEP's Atlanta school from August 2003 to January 2004, said
>his school had few certified teachers and high turnover, so on an average
>day classes were doubled up. "There was very little instruction, because
>you were dealing with fights and staff shortages," Mitchell said.
>Richardson said CEP pays for teacher-certification training when needed,
>and that such classes are brought onsite for his Philadelphia staff.
>
>"Be Here, Behave and Be Learning," is CEP's motto, but it should include
>"Be Tested," because students spend much of their learning time at
>computers with Plato, a self-paced tutorial that tests and assesses
>achievement. CEP uses Plato data to prove its claims of student
>improvement, but assessment experts give Plato mixed reviews, and some
>who've worked with it say cheating is not difficult.
>
>Political Juice
>
>Richardson founded CEP with his college buddy Phil Baggett, CEP's vice
>chairman. Richardson says his inspiration came from his early years as a
>small-town lawyer taking $50 juvenile delinquency cases from the family
>court judge. Then Richardson ran the Tennessee Farmers Home Administration,
>making loans to low-income homeowners. John Danielson, who would become
>Under Secretary of Education to Paige, was also a founder. Initial
>investors included Bill McInnes, formerly of the Hospital Corporation of
>America, and Tom Beasley, founder of the Corrections Corporation of
>America, the private prison company. CEP's early investors put up $65
>million; the company is now backed by Stephens Inc., a Little Rock,
>Arkansas, investment bank, and the Texas Growth Fund, a private equity firm
>created by the Texas legislature with public employee pension funds.
>Richardson says CEP's annual revenues are $70 million.
>
>Richardson bristles at questions about Beasley's role, sensitive to critics
>who've likened CEP schools to juvenile jails. "We had discussions early on
>that we are not going to be correctional," Richardson said. "Tom
>understood. He said, 'I'm an investor. You guys are here to run the
>company.'" But like Beasley, Richardson saw a ripe business opportunity in
>privatizing a public service--one that, like prisons, deals with society's
>messy failures. CEP's first contract was to operate a juvenile detention
>alternative-education program for Harris County, Texas.
>
>Giving CEP entree into the Texas education scene was George Scott, then
>president of the Tax Research Association, a nonprofit education-reform
>group in Houston, and now a senior writer for the online newspaper
>Education News. Scott, who was close to Paige when Paige was Houston
>schools superintendent, helped CEP score its first public school contract,
>with the Houston district. Scott said he told Paige, "Rod, this is it. This
>is privatized accountability at its best." Scott later became a CEP critic,
>though, charging that the company evaded real accountability for a program
>that was educationally flawed and a waste of taxpayer money. "I look back
>on my role with CEP, my dedication and commitment to accountability, and it
>is the greatest professional disgrace in my career," Scott said. "As long
>as the district and the vendor have influence over accountability measures,
>it is corrupt."
>
>Richardson says his background is in government, but it's his Republican
>Party credentials that pay off. Like Tom Beasley before him, Richardson was
>Tennessee's GOP chair--from 1992 to 1995--helping to lead Republicans "out
>of the wilderness and into control of statewide offices," according to one
>news account. Richardson soft-pedals his political ties, calling himself a
>"Howard Baker Republican" and insisting CEP is above the partisan fray. But
>CEP has thrived on the accumulated political juice Richardson and his
>cohorts have squeezed, mostly Republican-flavored, since its founding.
>
>In Texas CEP executives cultivated powerful friends, hiring Houston school
>board member Larry Marshall as a $6,000-a-month consultant and landing an
>endorsement from George Bush Sr. at the opening of CEP's first Houston
>school. "They were putting together the juiciest political team," Scott
>said. "They had powerful people at their beck and call." Political pull
>helped CEP waltz into Florida. Richardson and Baggett contributed to
>Charlie Crist's successful 2000 run for state education commissioner and to
>Governor Jeb Bush's 2002 campaign. In 2001 CEP's Florida lobbyist Juhan
>Mixon helped write a provision in a state appropriations bill that
>earmarked $4.8 million for "Alternative Schools/Public Private
>Partnerships." It was "to serve a minimum of 500 or more disruptive and low
>performing students"--a description tailored to CEP. Mixon also lobbies for
>several Florida school districts, including Bay, which hired CEP.
>
>In Philadelphia CEP found privatization high on the agendas of
>then-Governor Tom Ridge, a Republican, and state politicians. The state
>took control of the bankrupt Philadelphia school district in 2001, and
>state legislators made privatizing schools one of the conditions for the
>bailout. CEP's chief political ally has been Republican State House Speaker
>John Perzel, whose beefy visage graces the company's website along with his
>testimonial. Richardson, Baggett and CEP execs have contributed more than
>$11,000 to Perzel's campaigns. CEP's five-year, $28-million-a-year contract
>with Philadelphia schools was renewed in May 2004 with no debate.
>
>Accountability in Action
>
>CEP is a product of the high-stakes testing and accountability approach to
>education reform, which aims to run public schools like businesses whose
>products are students. Yet holding CEP accountable has been a quixotic
>undertaking because of the fluidity of the student population, the
>malleability of statistics and the company's political savvy. The few
>totally independent evaluations of CEP's effectiveness have rated it
>poorly. Several evaluations were paid for by CEP, like one in 1999 by Bush
>Sr. Education Department appointee Diane Ravitch, whose glowing endorsement
>of CEP's Houston program appears on CEP's website. Others were based on
>testing data completely controlled by CEP.
>
>In Texas CEP's first brush with evaluation was a lesson in the pitfalls of
>accountability and the importance of data control. In 1997 Texas state
>education commissioner Mike Moses hired Carl Shaw, former chair of the
>Texas Education Agency's (TEA) assessment committee and head of Houston's
>testing for fourteen years, to assess CEP's first contract, the juvenile
>detention program. Shaw found limited student progress after six months in
>CEP, and after a year, actual regression. "I could find no evidence that
>there was a strong-enough academic program in place to produce change," he
>said. "One report I wrote for [the Houston Independent School District]
>said few CEP students would be smart enough for prison education. It's
>shocking, and here's a company touted as a leader." Shaw said CEP head
>Richardson was angry at his findings and his refusal to compromise his
>work. "The first reaction I had from Richardson was, 'I am more powerful
>than you,'" Shaw said.
>
>CEP executives turned to Scott, the taxpayers' group president, for backup.
>"They wanted support that his test had gone awry," Scott said. "I told them
>I was 100 percent into Dr. Shaw's approach." Scott says discussions he and
>CEP had been having about a consultancy and shares of founders stock broke
>down because Scott refused to repudiate Shaw. Richardson says CEP raised
>concerns about Shaw's tests having "both positive and negative
>aberrations," and that they couldn't be validated by the TEA. Richardson
>noted that his relationship with Scott soured after the problems with
>Shaw's testing emerged.
>
>Next up was Dr. Tom Kellow, an evaluation specialist for Houston's schools.
>In 1999 Superintendent Paige asked Kellow to evaluate CEP--but he was
>forbidden to visit the school and could only use data CEP provided. Kellow
>learned that CEP's contract stated that it could only be held accountable
>based on its own in-house testing, not the statewide Texas Assessment of
>Academic Skills (TAAS). "What I found is what Carl Shaw found," Kellow
>said. "The longer [students] stayed, the worse their performance." Although
>under NCLB all schools must meet Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) standards
>for specific percentages of students testing at grade level in math and
>reading, the TEA exempts CEP. For both 2003 and 2004, the AYP status of
>CEP's two Houston schools is listed as "Not Evaluated." CEP's school
>profiles on the Houston schools website also reveal that the company evades
>the accountability that public schools face: No TAAS scores are listed and
>no information is provided for either state or district accountability
>measures.
>
>Houston continues to contract with CEP despite those early assessments, but
>Dallas's public school district was more discriminating. Dallas hired CEP
>in 1999, with a five-year, $10 million yearly contract. But after three
>years the district bowed out; its own evaluation of CEP in 2002 recommended
>ending the contract, stating that "the model of education provided by [CEP]
>was untenable from a pedagogical standpoint. The reliance on non-certified
>teachers for the bulk of the student-teacher interaction was useful for the
>company to save money, but was not a design in the best interest of the
>students.... Students who attended Community Education Partners did not do
>very well academically." CEP had refused to provide its budget data, the
>report noted, making it impossible to know just how it was spending the
>district's money.
>
>Dallas's report and a series of critical articles about CEP in the Houston
>Press, an alternative newsweekly, helped New Orleans public schools decide
>against a contract with CEP, according to former school board president
>Cheryl Mills. But Atlanta public schools ignored the negative press and
>evaluations, contracting with CEP four years ago. CEP's Atlanta school was
>the target of community organizing in early 2005 after the Atlanta Voice, a
>black newspaper, ran a series exposing serious inadequacies at the CEP
>school. The articles were based on the accounts of former CEP principal
>Mitchell and of a former teacher. "It became a dump for human waste,"
>Mitchell said. "Accountability is with the Atlanta school board for
>disenfranchising these kids. There was a contract and expectations, and I
>feel they were not met. The statistics show they weren't met."
>
>Atlanta schools deputy superintendent Kathy Augustine called Mitchell
>"disgruntled." She said she was unaware that students could not take books
>home, that there was no homework or that there was a teacher shortage. "I
>think we're improving," Augustine said. "It's a developing relationship.
>Finding leadership is key to that." She said she had no evidence that CEP
>was not living up to its contract. Told that CEP's school had failed to
>meet AYP standards for reading and math in the 2003-04 school year,
>Augustine said, "The AYP piece is different for nontraditional schools
>because children are very fluid." She noted that the school board had voted
>to extend CEP's contract through 2009.
>
>In Philadelphia even supposedly independent evaluations of CEP were
>dependent on company-controlled data. In March Philadelphia released an
>evaluation of CEP's two schools conducted by researchers at Temple
>University. The report surveyed seventy students and seventy parents who
>offered positive reports on CEP's program--a fraction of more than 4,300
>students CEP has served. In evaluating student academic growth, the report
>relied entirely on CEP's own Plato data, which claim astounding gains of
>three to four "grade levels" in reading and math for students who spend 180
>days at CEP--but there's no indication of how many students actually stay
>that long. The school district itself partakes of the statistical spin.
>Paul Socolar, editor of Philadelphia Public School Notebook, an independent
>newspaper, noted that in 2004 the district issued a CEP fact sheet that
>excluded CEP scores on the statewide standardized test for eighth graders,
>which had gone down; in January of this year the district excluded results
>for CEP eleventh graders, which had gone down. "It's a total manipulation
>of data," Socolar said. And as for meeting the AYP standards, CEP's Philly
>schools don't.
>
>CEP's Richardson says the proof of his company's success is that districts
>keep renewing their contracts. The question is how success is defined.
>Public schools have strong incentives to remove the lowest-performing
>students from their classrooms and make them CEP's problem, especially
>since the passage of No Child Left Behind. "CEP was a way to get around
>NCLB," said Mitchell. "If you move these kids from the regular school
>program, you automatically decrease the dropout rate and get a gain on your
>test scores. So you contract those kids out; they're in a separate
>environment, but they aren't counted in the total." For Socolar, CEP is a
>political solution to the public system's failures: "From the beginning,
>the concern that jumped out about CEP is whether putting these students in
>the hands of private companies is a way of putting them out of sight and
>out of mind," he said. While the public schools are hammered by the
>accountability-through-testing mandates of NCLB, CEP skirts the same
>accountability and proves the uselessness of high-stakes testing as an
>education strategy. Judging CEP by its test data only seems to make sense
>because the company and school districts that hire it buy into that
>accountability measure. Test scores, in truth, can never be an end in
>themselves--or proof that children are learning. That's why NCLB is phony
>education reform.
>
>At the end of an interview Richardson asked in almost plaintive tones, "Are
>we the enemy?" Well, yes and no. CEP may be doing a poor job, but it's only
>a symptom of the crumbling national commitment to public education,
>including the public schools' failure to educate huge percentages of mostly
>black and Latino students. Vouchers and other privatizing efforts in
>education have still not gained the momentum that conservatives had hoped
>for. But companies like CEP in the expanding private education industry
>help chip away at the public school infrastructure by targeting a
>market--the "bad students"--that has few advocates. CEP promotes
>privatization in a more quiet, effective way than Chris Whittle's troubled
>Edison schools have. And Richardson's future ambitions reveal an astute
>understanding of the changing nature and needs of today's student
>population: He'd like to run schools for overage students--17- or
>18-year-olds who work or raise families and need flexible programming, the
>students who "don't fit in the box," he says.
>
>As the box holding traditional students shrinks, one challenge facing
>public school educators is how best to serve all students--from high
>achievers to the most disruptive kids like Morris Gandy's son. If the
>public sector abdicates its responsibility to educate all children,
>businessmen like Randle Richardson are ready to step in. >
>
>This article can be found on the web at:
>
>http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050919/fuentes
>
>Visit The Nation http://www.thenation.com/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)