I came across this article in the NY Times book review & thought I'd pass it along. The comment criticizing Ethnic Studies was disturbing but I think it's a common opinion within academia and of importance to those of us who are advocates for Ethnic Studies to see how others are speaking out against it. -Patricia
By RACHEL DONADIO / NY Times
Published: September 16, 2007
Twenty years ago, when Reagan and Gorbachev were negotiating the end of the cold war and college cost far less than it does today, a book arrived like a shot across the bow of academia: “The Closing of the American Mind,” by Allan Bloom, a larger-than-life political philosophy professor at the University of Chicago. Subtitled “How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students,” it spent more than a year on the best-seller list, and today there are more than 1.2 million copies in print. Saul Bellow, who had urged his brilliant and highly idiosyncratic friend to write the book in the first place, wrote the introduction. (Bellow later cast Bloom as the main character in “Ravelstein.”)
Bloom’s book was full of bold claims: that abandoning the Western canon had dumbed down universities, while the “relativism” that had replaced it had “extinguished the real motive of education, the search for a good life”; that rock music “ruins the imagination of young people”; that America had produced no significant contributions to intellectual life since the 1950s; and that many earlier contributions were just watered-down versions of Heidegger, Nietzsche, Weber, Freud and other Continental thinkers. For Bloom, things had gone wrong in the ’60s, when universities took on “the imperative to promote equality, stamp out racism, sexism and elitism (the peculiar crimes of our democratic society), as well as war,” he wrote, because they thought such attempts at social change “possessed a moral truth superior to any the university could provide.”
“The Closing of the American Mind” hit the scene at a time when universities were embroiled in the so-called canon wars, in which traditionalists in favor of centering the curriculum on classic works of literature faced off against multiculturalists who wanted to include more works by women and members of minorities. In early 1988, students at Stanford held a rally with Jesse Jackson, where they shouted, “Hey hey, ho ho, Western culture’s got to go,” to protest a required Western civilization course. (The faculty quickly voted to replace it with a requirement including more works by women and minorities.) Bloom’s book shared space at the top of the best-seller list with E. D. Hirsch’s “Cultural Literacy” (1987), which argued that progressive education had left Americans without a grasp of basic knowledge. It also inspired further conservative attacks against the university, including Roger Kimball’s “Tenured Radicals” (1990) and Dinesh D’Souza’s “Illiberal Education” (1991).
Although it had great popular appeal, “The Closing of the American Mind” did not go over well among academics. Bloom’s detractors criticized everything from his interpretation of the Greeks to his views on youth culture and feminism, which he saw as corrosive influences. “The amazing thing about Allan Bloom’s book was not just its prodigious commercial success ... but the depth of the hostility and even hatred that it inspired among a large number of professors,” John Searle, the Berkeley philosophy professor and former proponent of the ’60s radical Free Speech Movement wrote in The New York Review of Books in 1990. Searle also noted a “certain irony” that the Western canon, from Socrates to Marx, which had once been seen as “liberating,” was now seen as “oppressive.” “Precisely by inculcating a critical attitude,” Searle wrote, “the ‘canon’ served to demythologize the conventional pieties of the American bourgeoisie and provided the student with a perspective from which to critically analyze American culture and institutions. ... The texts once served an unmasking function; now we are told that it is the texts which must be unmasked.”
Today it’s generally agreed that the multiculturalists won the canon wars. Reading lists were broadened to include more works by women and minority writers, and most scholars consider that a positive development. Yet 20 years later, there’s a more complicated sense of the costs and benefits of those transformations. Here, the lines aren’t drawn between right and left in the traditional political sense, but between those who defend the idea of a distinct body of knowledge and texts that students should master and those who focus more on modes of inquiry and interpretation. However polarizing Bloom may have been, many of the issues he raised still resonate — especially when it comes to the place of the humanities on campus and in the culture.
Debates over what an educated person should know go back to the 19th century in America, when teaching any literature beyond the Greek and Roman classics was still controversial. But today, there’s widespread concern that the humanities are losing ground — as well as intellectual cachet, students and financing — to the hard sciences on the one hand and business on the other. A 2006 report on higher education commissioned by Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, which raised hackles with its proposal to introduce No Child Left Behind-style standards testing in universities, hardly mentioned the humanities. At the same time, several state legislatures have debated an “academic bill of rights” that would provide a grievance procedure against “political discrimination” on campus — a measure proposed by David Horowitz, a Marxist-turned-conservative critical of what he sees as academia’s left-wing bias.
All this reflects what the philosopher Martha Nussbaum today describes as a “loss of respect for the humanities as essential ingredients of democracy.” Nussbaum, who panned Bloom’s book in The New York Review in 1987, teaches at the University of Chicago, which like Columbia has retained a Western-based core curriculum requirement for undergraduates. But on some campuses, “the main area of conflict is trying to make sure that the humanities get adequate funding from the central administration,” Nussbaum wrote in an e-mail message, adding, “Our nation, like most nations of the world, is devaluing the humanities vis-à-vis science and technology, so constant vigilance is required lest these disciplines be cut.” Louis Menand, a Harvard English professor and New Yorker staff writer who serves on Harvard’s curriculum reform committee, concurs: “The big question for humanists is, How do we explain why what we do is important for people who aren’t humanists? That’s been tough, really tough.”
But when college costs run as high as $50,000 a year, it’s harder to ignore questions like “What will this major do for my career prospects?” While humanities departments thrive at elite institutions (at Yale, for example, history has long been the most popular major, with English usually beating out economics for second place), the high cost of college today exacerbates a utilitarian strain that’s always made it hard for the liberal arts to make a case for themselves in practical-minded America. According to the Department of Education, in the 2003-4 school year, only 1.6 percent of America’s 19 million undergraduates majored in English and 1.3 percent in history, compared with 20 percent in business, 16 percent in health, 9 percent in education and 6 percent in computer science.
Not all academics object to raising market questions. For Alan Wolfe, a political science professor at Boston College and the director of its Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life, “the introduction of economic criteria into the university is a good thing.” During the canon wars of the late ’80s, he said, scholars had an “imperious” idea that “if we want to argue about the curriculum we’re free to do that.” But now, most realize “we have obligations to the students and the parents and the taxpayers.”
According to Stanley Fish, a law professor at Florida International University and an occasional New York Times columnist, the conservative critique of academia connects to an economic one. “The message the neoconservatives were putting out, that universities are hotbeds of atheism, sexual promiscuity, corrosive relativism and a host of suspect philosophies being imported from France and Germany, actually took quite strongly with the intended audience,” said Fish, who was embroiled in these debates as chairman of Duke’s theory-oriented English department from the mid-’80s to the early ’90s. “It’s easier for a state legislature to cut university funding when there is an unflattering view” of academia, he said.
But Fish thinks humanities professors bear some blame for their diminished standing. He’s at work on a new book, “Save the World on Your Own Time,” which argues that academics should teach, not proselytize. In his view, “the invasion of political agendas” into the classroom in the ’60s and ’70s was “extremely dangerous,” since it meant classrooms could become battlegrounds for political demagoguery.
The invasion of politics has been particularly notable in the literature curriculum. On campus today, the emphasis is very much on studying literature through the lens of “identity” — ethnic, gender, class. There has also been a decided shift toward works of the present and the recent past. In 1965, the authors most frequently assigned in English classes were Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, Dryden, Pope and T. S. Eliot, according to a survey by the National Association of Scholars, an organization committed to preserving “the Western intellectual heritage.” In 1998, they were Shakespeare, Chaucer, Jane Austen, Milton, Virginia Woolf and Toni Morrison. The most-assigned living authors were Morrison, Alice Walker, Maxine Hong Kingston, Salman Rushdie, Thomas Pynchon and Philip Roth. (Roth himself may not be so pleased with the company. His forthcoming “Exit Ghost” includes a character’s rant about a library display: “They had Gertrude Stein in the exhibit but not Ernest Hemingway. They had Edna St. Vincent Millay but not William Carlos Williams or Wallace Stevens or Robert Lowell,” the character says. “Just nonsense. It started in the colleges and now it’s everywhere. Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison and Toni Morrison, but not Faulkner.”)
But many scholars see these changes as part of a necessary evolution. To Michael Bérubé, an English professor at Pennsylvania State University and the author of “What’s Liberal About the Liberal Arts?” (2006), the changes have been particularly beneficial in American literature, which has seen the most canon revision in part because it never had a very stable canon to begin with. “The old guard had very little to offer in the way of serious intellectual argument against the reading and teaching of ... Olaudah Equiano or Djuna Barnes or Zora Neale Hurston, so the canon of the past two or three centuries got itself revised in fairly short order,” he wrote in an e-mail message. “Only the Department of Surly Curmudgeons still disputes that we’re dealing with a usefully expanded field.”
Reading lists, though, are a zero-sum game: for every writer added, another is dropped. One can debate the changing fortunes of writers on the literary stock market, but it’s clear that today the emphasis is on the recent past — at the expense, some argue, of historical perspective. As Alan Wolfe puts it, “Everyone’s read ‘Things Fall Apart’ ” — Chinua Achebe’s novel about postcolonial Nigeria — “but few people have read the Yeats poem that the title comes from.”
For John Guillory, an English professor at New York University and the author of “Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation” (1993), “The major fact that the discipline is confronting today is global English, which is a cultural corollary of economic globalization.” At the same time, postcolonial Anglophone culture is only half a century old. “I’m often impressed by this scholarship, but I’m also concerned that this new field seems to be so disconnected from the history of literature and scholarship that goes before it,” Guillory said. “I see too many scholars in the field who know very little about anything before the 20th century, and that concerns me.”
Elaine Showalter, a feminist literary scholar and a former president of the Modern Language Association, who retired from Princeton in 2003, today urges a reconsideration of some of the changes made in past decades. “This period of discovery and recovery (for example, of women writers) has been stimulating, exciting and renewing,” Showalter wrote in an e-mail message. “But now it’s time for a period of evaluation and consolidation.”
To some, another question is how to get students to read critically in the first place. “What does it profit progressives to get minority writers like Walker and Black Elk into the syllabus if many students need the Cliffs Notes to gain an articulate grasp of either?” asked Gerald Graff, an English professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago who has written on the canon wars.
The historian Tony Judt, a self-described “old leftist” and the director of the Remarque Institute at N.Y.U., which examines Europe and European-American relations, said undergraduates often arrive unprepared from high school and seeking courses “in what we might have thought of as the old-fashioned approach” — broad surveys. But many young professors aren’t interested in teaching outside their narrow specialties, nor are they generally prepared to do so. And colleges are loath to reinstate the core curriculums they abandoned in the ’60s. “Because we lack cultural self-confidence, we’ve lacked the ability to say, ‘This is a good book and should be taught, this isn’t and shouldn’t,’ ” said Judt, who was dean of the humanities at N.Y.U. in the early ’90s.
Judt also denounces the balkanization created by interdisciplinary ethnic studies programs. Multiculturalism “created lots and lots of microconstituencies, which universities didn’t have the courage to oppose,” he said. “It’s much more like a supermarket — kids can take pretty much any courses they like: Jewish kids take Jewish studies, gay students gay studies, black students African-American studies. You no longer have a university, but a series of identity constituencies all studying themselves.”
Some say this kind of identity-based thinking is at odds with the true purpose of education — something canon traditionalists can misunderstand as badly as their multiculturalist opponents. “What Americans yearn for in literature is self-recognition,” said Mark Lilla, a professor of political philosophy and religion who just left the University of Chicago for Columbia. “That’s where the conservatives went wrong. The case for the canon itself isn’t a case for book camp and becoming a citizen in the West.” Wrestling with difficult, often inaccessible works is “the most alienating experience possible,” he continued. “When you read Toni Morrison, there’s no alienation. It affirms your Americanism.”
Bloom believed education should be transformative — that it should remove students from the confines of their own backgrounds to engage with books that open up new realms of meaning. “He told students that they had come to the university to learn something, and this meant that they must rid themselves of the opinions of their parents,” Bellow wrote of Ravelstein/Bloom in his novel. “He was going to direct them to a higher life, full of variety and diversity, governed by rationality — anything but the arid kind.” In “The Closing of the American Mind,” Bloom himself wrote that a liberal education should provide a student with “four years of freedom” — “a space between the intellectual wasteland he has left behind and the inevitable dreary professional training that awaits him after the baccalaureate.” Whether students today see college as a time of freedom or a compulsory phase of credentialing is an open question. From Bloom’s perspective, “the importance of these years for an American cannot be overestimated. They are civilization’s only chance to get to him.”
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
UTPA, STC seeing drop in remedial students
Daniel Perry / The Monitor
September 15, 2007
McALLEN — The number of students taking remedial courses at the University of Texas – Pan American this fall has decreased from this time last year.
South Texas College’s remedial figure should be finalized Monday, but President Shirley A. Reed anticipated the number lower than last fall’s 4,708 students out of 18,460 students in remedial courses.
English, reading and mathematics remedial classes are covered by financial aid and are included on transcripts at both institutions. But, they do not count toward degrees at either campus.
Depending on with what students have difficulty, both campuses can prevent them from signing up for classes like history, college algebra and English, which heavily emphasize the remedial subject areas.
UTPA counted 1,355 students — mostly freshmen — taking remedial subjects this fall. The university’s student enrollment on Wednesday stood at 17,418 students. The remedial figure is a drop from the fall 2006 total of 1,496 students.
Richard Treviño, the university’s director for student support services, credits the drop to increasing the minimum ACT score for admission. For fall 2005, the university required an ACT score of 15; that number will rise for every two years until fall 2011 to top out at 18.
Many students are in remedial courses because there is a disconnect between the state required Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills and college placement tests, like the THEA and Accuplacer, Treviño said.
“Once you go above and beyond TAKS requirements, then you are getting in the college-level type of preparation,” he said. “But, we will always have remediation until we align a test that measures high school preparedness and college equality all in one.”
A lot of the students entering STC have other challenges, Reed said: They might be older than the average incoming freshman or not taken mathematics courses in recent years.
“All of that contributes and I personally just don’t think it’s fair to criticize students because they are not ready for college,” she said. “It’s based on a (college readiness) test and we are at the mercy of the validity of that test.”
STC student Giselle Medina, 19, of McAllen is taking a remedial reading course this semester. The pharmacy technician major said being in the remedial program has helped her adapt to college-level work.
“A lot of the stuff you learn in high school is just to pass that,” Medina said about TAKS.
Reed said some students do not realize the importance of Accuplacer, which the college has converted to using because it provides quicker results for staff and students. STC has started four-hour review sessions for students to attend before they take Accuplacer. The college had used the THEA in the past.
STC has also gathered area business, government, education and economic development leaders the last two years to discuss the need to work together for college readiness. Reed said the gatherings were held to change the environment of blame she sensed people in these subject areas laid down when it came to high school graduates making the college transition.
Daniel Perry covers education and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4454.
September 15, 2007
McALLEN — The number of students taking remedial courses at the University of Texas – Pan American this fall has decreased from this time last year.
South Texas College’s remedial figure should be finalized Monday, but President Shirley A. Reed anticipated the number lower than last fall’s 4,708 students out of 18,460 students in remedial courses.
English, reading and mathematics remedial classes are covered by financial aid and are included on transcripts at both institutions. But, they do not count toward degrees at either campus.
Depending on with what students have difficulty, both campuses can prevent them from signing up for classes like history, college algebra and English, which heavily emphasize the remedial subject areas.
UTPA counted 1,355 students — mostly freshmen — taking remedial subjects this fall. The university’s student enrollment on Wednesday stood at 17,418 students. The remedial figure is a drop from the fall 2006 total of 1,496 students.
Richard Treviño, the university’s director for student support services, credits the drop to increasing the minimum ACT score for admission. For fall 2005, the university required an ACT score of 15; that number will rise for every two years until fall 2011 to top out at 18.
Many students are in remedial courses because there is a disconnect between the state required Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills and college placement tests, like the THEA and Accuplacer, Treviño said.
“Once you go above and beyond TAKS requirements, then you are getting in the college-level type of preparation,” he said. “But, we will always have remediation until we align a test that measures high school preparedness and college equality all in one.”
A lot of the students entering STC have other challenges, Reed said: They might be older than the average incoming freshman or not taken mathematics courses in recent years.
“All of that contributes and I personally just don’t think it’s fair to criticize students because they are not ready for college,” she said. “It’s based on a (college readiness) test and we are at the mercy of the validity of that test.”
STC student Giselle Medina, 19, of McAllen is taking a remedial reading course this semester. The pharmacy technician major said being in the remedial program has helped her adapt to college-level work.
“A lot of the stuff you learn in high school is just to pass that,” Medina said about TAKS.
Reed said some students do not realize the importance of Accuplacer, which the college has converted to using because it provides quicker results for staff and students. STC has started four-hour review sessions for students to attend before they take Accuplacer. The college had used the THEA in the past.
STC has also gathered area business, government, education and economic development leaders the last two years to discuss the need to work together for college readiness. Reed said the gatherings were held to change the environment of blame she sensed people in these subject areas laid down when it came to high school graduates making the college transition.
Daniel Perry covers education and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4454.
Monday, September 17, 2007
A way to drop back in school
Texas is now paying up if districts will allow young adults another chance to get a diploma
By JENNIFER RADCLIFFE / Houston Chronicle
September 14, 2007
A sweeping reform designed to curb Texas' high dropout rate could give students at some high schools an extra five years to earn their diplomas.
Under the new law, school districts that enroll students who were older than 21, but younger than 26 as of Sept. 1 can collect an average of $30 per student, per day. That funding level previously applied only for students under 21.
"There are a lot of kids that leave, for good or bad reason, during their teenage years and then realize as young adults that they really need that diploma," said Rep. Scott Hochberg, D-Houston, who sponsored the legislation in this year's session. "It's really all about the person who wants to come back to school."
Some national research indicates that up to 45 percent of the Houston school district's students fail to graduate from high school in four years.
The law means that Texas now has the highest upper age limit among states that specifically cap the age of traditional public school students.
Most states set the limit at 22. Washington, D.C., and Vermont don't cap students' ages and a few other states don't address upper age limits in their laws, according to the Education Commission of the States. The commission is a Denver-based nonprofit group.
"Bless their hearts for making accommodations for students to come back," Kathy Christie, a vice president with the commission, said of Texas lawmakers.
The law doesn't obligate districts to enroll older students. Nor does it affect the cutoff age for special-education students, who are eligible for service until age 22.
Districts that choose to enroll older students are not required to continue serving those who become discipline problems. And the law requires them to keep older students who have been out of school for three or more years separate from students who are 18 or younger.
Helps older immigrants
Officials with the Houston Independent School District said they are thrilled about the change, which was designed to help students such as the older immigrants who attend Liberty High School, formerly called the Newcomers Charter School.
The HISD board of trustees adopted a policy Thursday allowing the district to take advantage of the law. The district already was footing the bill for some older students to get their diplomas.
"We'll be able to expand the scope of the folks we're able to serve," Liberty High principal Monico Rivas said. "I think it's going to have a significant impact on helping members of the community continue to reach their goals."
Eighteen of Liberty High's nearly 200 students are at least 22, including Abraham Velasquez, who will be 23 when he graduates in May.
Velasquez, who sells fertilizer by day, said he's grateful to have the chance to attend night classes.
"High school diplomas are very important," said Velasquez, who quit school to work as a 14-year-old in Guatemala. "Without that, you can't do anything. You don't have many chances to have a better job."
'This is a big chance'
Once he has his diploma, he said, he hopes to study to be a nurse, or maybe even a doctor.
"It's not easy, but this is a big chance that they're giving us," said Velasquez, who attends classes on Saturdays and from 5 p.m. to at least 10 p.m. on weekdays.
Alief school district officials said they are enrolling some older students in a new night-school program that began this year. Students are selected on the basis of their desire and past academic performance.
"We have some 21-year-olds who are like ninth-graders," said Rodney Johnson, principal of the S.O.A.R. Evening High School program.
"A kid that is a dropout is not necessarily not intelligent. Life challenges happen to everyone; they just happen to these kids sooner. We have to remove the barriers."
Starting out small
Galena Park is creating a TAKS tutorial program for older students who still haven't passed the exit-level exam, but officials there don't yet plan a full-fledged high school program, said Elizabeth Lalor, director of research, district compliance and special projects.
"We're trying to start small and see how it goes," she said.
Lalor said the district probably will need to enroll at least six students in each of its four classes to cover the cost of the certified teachers. That doesn't include the expense of the utilities and security needed to keep the campuses open late.
"Some districts might not be biting on this tortilla right now," Lalor said. "It's a tough job. It's not a moneymaker, by any means. It's an opportunity."
$1.7 million estimated cost
State officials said there's no way to know how many districts or students will take advantage of the law.
Last year, when districts had to cover the cost, Texas enrolled 259 non-special-education students age 21 and older.
Under the new law, officials say, those numbers could grow exponentially. They have estimated that the change will cost Texas about $1.7 million a year.
"It's a win for the districts because they can recover more students and it provides funding," Texas Education Agency spokeswoman DeEtta Culbertson said. "It's a win for the students, who will, hopefully, take advantage of this and complete their diplomas."
BY THE NUMBERS
$30 - The amount school districts can now collect, per day, for students older than 21 but younger than 26
22 - The age limit most states set for students
18 - Number of Liberty High's nearly 200 students who are at least 22
$1.7 million - Estimated cost, per year, for Texas under new law
jennifer.radcliffe@chron.com
By JENNIFER RADCLIFFE / Houston Chronicle
September 14, 2007
A sweeping reform designed to curb Texas' high dropout rate could give students at some high schools an extra five years to earn their diplomas.
Under the new law, school districts that enroll students who were older than 21, but younger than 26 as of Sept. 1 can collect an average of $30 per student, per day. That funding level previously applied only for students under 21.
"There are a lot of kids that leave, for good or bad reason, during their teenage years and then realize as young adults that they really need that diploma," said Rep. Scott Hochberg, D-Houston, who sponsored the legislation in this year's session. "It's really all about the person who wants to come back to school."
Some national research indicates that up to 45 percent of the Houston school district's students fail to graduate from high school in four years.
The law means that Texas now has the highest upper age limit among states that specifically cap the age of traditional public school students.
Most states set the limit at 22. Washington, D.C., and Vermont don't cap students' ages and a few other states don't address upper age limits in their laws, according to the Education Commission of the States. The commission is a Denver-based nonprofit group.
"Bless their hearts for making accommodations for students to come back," Kathy Christie, a vice president with the commission, said of Texas lawmakers.
The law doesn't obligate districts to enroll older students. Nor does it affect the cutoff age for special-education students, who are eligible for service until age 22.
Districts that choose to enroll older students are not required to continue serving those who become discipline problems. And the law requires them to keep older students who have been out of school for three or more years separate from students who are 18 or younger.
Helps older immigrants
Officials with the Houston Independent School District said they are thrilled about the change, which was designed to help students such as the older immigrants who attend Liberty High School, formerly called the Newcomers Charter School.
The HISD board of trustees adopted a policy Thursday allowing the district to take advantage of the law. The district already was footing the bill for some older students to get their diplomas.
"We'll be able to expand the scope of the folks we're able to serve," Liberty High principal Monico Rivas said. "I think it's going to have a significant impact on helping members of the community continue to reach their goals."
Eighteen of Liberty High's nearly 200 students are at least 22, including Abraham Velasquez, who will be 23 when he graduates in May.
Velasquez, who sells fertilizer by day, said he's grateful to have the chance to attend night classes.
"High school diplomas are very important," said Velasquez, who quit school to work as a 14-year-old in Guatemala. "Without that, you can't do anything. You don't have many chances to have a better job."
'This is a big chance'
Once he has his diploma, he said, he hopes to study to be a nurse, or maybe even a doctor.
"It's not easy, but this is a big chance that they're giving us," said Velasquez, who attends classes on Saturdays and from 5 p.m. to at least 10 p.m. on weekdays.
Alief school district officials said they are enrolling some older students in a new night-school program that began this year. Students are selected on the basis of their desire and past academic performance.
"We have some 21-year-olds who are like ninth-graders," said Rodney Johnson, principal of the S.O.A.R. Evening High School program.
"A kid that is a dropout is not necessarily not intelligent. Life challenges happen to everyone; they just happen to these kids sooner. We have to remove the barriers."
Starting out small
Galena Park is creating a TAKS tutorial program for older students who still haven't passed the exit-level exam, but officials there don't yet plan a full-fledged high school program, said Elizabeth Lalor, director of research, district compliance and special projects.
"We're trying to start small and see how it goes," she said.
Lalor said the district probably will need to enroll at least six students in each of its four classes to cover the cost of the certified teachers. That doesn't include the expense of the utilities and security needed to keep the campuses open late.
"Some districts might not be biting on this tortilla right now," Lalor said. "It's a tough job. It's not a moneymaker, by any means. It's an opportunity."
$1.7 million estimated cost
State officials said there's no way to know how many districts or students will take advantage of the law.
Last year, when districts had to cover the cost, Texas enrolled 259 non-special-education students age 21 and older.
Under the new law, officials say, those numbers could grow exponentially. They have estimated that the change will cost Texas about $1.7 million a year.
"It's a win for the districts because they can recover more students and it provides funding," Texas Education Agency spokeswoman DeEtta Culbertson said. "It's a win for the students, who will, hopefully, take advantage of this and complete their diplomas."
BY THE NUMBERS
$30 - The amount school districts can now collect, per day, for students older than 21 but younger than 26
22 - The age limit most states set for students
18 - Number of Liberty High's nearly 200 students who are at least 22
$1.7 million - Estimated cost, per year, for Texas under new law
jennifer.radcliffe@chron.com
Dumped over an Op-Ed
Erwin Chemerinsky, unhired as UC Irvine's founding law school dean, says his
ordeal is a lesson in academic freedom.
By Erwin Chemerinsky / Los Angeles Times
September 14, 2007
After so many years of commenting on the news, it is strange to be the news.
But, in a sense, this story isn't really about me, it's about academic freedom
in our deeply polarized times.
As has been widely reported, on Aug. 16 I was asked to be the founding dean of
the new law school at the University of California at Irvine. After a couple of
weeks of negotiations, I formally accepted the position and signed a contract
on Sept. 4. It always was understood that the job was contingent on approval of
the University of California Board of Regents, and it was to be on the agenda
for the regents' meetings on Sept. 18-20. I was tremendously excited about the
possibility of being part of starting a new law school at an excellent
university.
On Tuesday, Sept. 11, however, the chancellor at UC Irvine, Michael V. Drake,
withdrew the offer. He told me that I had proved to be "too politically
controversial." Those, by the way, were the exact words that he said I could
use to describe the reason for the decision. He told me that he had not
expected the extent of opposition that would develop.
What was it about my views that was too controversial? Only one example was
mentioned: an Op-Ed article I wrote on these pages criticizing a proposed
regulation by then-Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales to shorten the time death row
prisoners have to file their habeas corpus petitions. There are more than 275
individuals on death row in California without lawyers for their post-
conviction proceedings. The effect of the new rule would be that many
individuals, including innocent ones, would not get the chance to have their
cases reviewed in federal court.
The Op-Ed article was written and published before I was offered the position
as dean. More important, the whole point of academic freedom is that
professors -- and, yes, even deans -- should be able to speak out on important
issues. It would never have occurred to me that arguing against a proposed
federal regulation on behalf of those on death row would be deemed
objectionable. On the ideological spectrum, it is not radical.
Some people, in speaking to me, have compared this to McCarthyism, but in an
important way that analogy is not apt. I did not lose my job. I am a tenured
law professor at a terrific university, and I can continue to teach and write
and handle legal appeals, as I have for the last 28 years. I have received
nothing but support over this from my university president, provost, dean and
colleagues. During the McCarthy era, some faculty members lost their jobs for
what they wrote and said.
A key lesson learned from those tragic times is that academic freedom matters.
Tenure has many costs, but it exists so that academics will feel free to
express themselves without fear of reprisal. It is based on the idea that
everyone benefits from the free exchange of ideas. Without academic freedom,
the reality is that many faculty members would be chilled and timid in
expressing their views, and the discussion that is essential for the
advancement of thought would be lost.
This is not a liberal or conservative proposition. I said to Chancellor Drake
that if I were conservative and my appointment had been blocked by liberals,
the right would be justifiably outraged that "political correctness" had done
me in. The truth is that a person's politics should play no role in the
decision to hire them for a faculty or administrative position. All that
matters is that the individual be committed to creating an institution where
all viewpoints will be respected and flourish. That is what academic freedom is
all about.
My concern is that the message from this episode, especially for my more junior
colleagues who may aspire to be deans someday or, for that matter, judges, is
that if you speak out -- liberal or conservative -- you may lose your chance at
a position that you really want.
That's why I decided to answer questions about what happened and to accept the
invitation to write this article. Chancellor Drake initially asked that I
simply say that we had mutually agreed to end my prospective deanship. I
refused and said that all I wanted was that the truth be told. We live in such
ideologically polarized times. It is important for those on both sides of the
ideological spectrum to realize that their common commitment to academic
freedom is far more important than blocking a particular faculty or dean
candidate based on ideology.
What now? I have enormous fondness for the many wonderful people I met at UC
Irvine, and I hope they find a terrific dean and create a great law school -- a
school that, like all schools, should be committed to a rich diversity of ideas
and views.
Erwin Chemerinsky is a professor of law and political science at Duke
University.
ordeal is a lesson in academic freedom.
By Erwin Chemerinsky / Los Angeles Times
September 14, 2007
After so many years of commenting on the news, it is strange to be the news.
But, in a sense, this story isn't really about me, it's about academic freedom
in our deeply polarized times.
As has been widely reported, on Aug. 16 I was asked to be the founding dean of
the new law school at the University of California at Irvine. After a couple of
weeks of negotiations, I formally accepted the position and signed a contract
on Sept. 4. It always was understood that the job was contingent on approval of
the University of California Board of Regents, and it was to be on the agenda
for the regents' meetings on Sept. 18-20. I was tremendously excited about the
possibility of being part of starting a new law school at an excellent
university.
On Tuesday, Sept. 11, however, the chancellor at UC Irvine, Michael V. Drake,
withdrew the offer. He told me that I had proved to be "too politically
controversial." Those, by the way, were the exact words that he said I could
use to describe the reason for the decision. He told me that he had not
expected the extent of opposition that would develop.
What was it about my views that was too controversial? Only one example was
mentioned: an Op-Ed article I wrote on these pages criticizing a proposed
regulation by then-Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales to shorten the time death row
prisoners have to file their habeas corpus petitions. There are more than 275
individuals on death row in California without lawyers for their post-
conviction proceedings. The effect of the new rule would be that many
individuals, including innocent ones, would not get the chance to have their
cases reviewed in federal court.
The Op-Ed article was written and published before I was offered the position
as dean. More important, the whole point of academic freedom is that
professors -- and, yes, even deans -- should be able to speak out on important
issues. It would never have occurred to me that arguing against a proposed
federal regulation on behalf of those on death row would be deemed
objectionable. On the ideological spectrum, it is not radical.
Some people, in speaking to me, have compared this to McCarthyism, but in an
important way that analogy is not apt. I did not lose my job. I am a tenured
law professor at a terrific university, and I can continue to teach and write
and handle legal appeals, as I have for the last 28 years. I have received
nothing but support over this from my university president, provost, dean and
colleagues. During the McCarthy era, some faculty members lost their jobs for
what they wrote and said.
A key lesson learned from those tragic times is that academic freedom matters.
Tenure has many costs, but it exists so that academics will feel free to
express themselves without fear of reprisal. It is based on the idea that
everyone benefits from the free exchange of ideas. Without academic freedom,
the reality is that many faculty members would be chilled and timid in
expressing their views, and the discussion that is essential for the
advancement of thought would be lost.
This is not a liberal or conservative proposition. I said to Chancellor Drake
that if I were conservative and my appointment had been blocked by liberals,
the right would be justifiably outraged that "political correctness" had done
me in. The truth is that a person's politics should play no role in the
decision to hire them for a faculty or administrative position. All that
matters is that the individual be committed to creating an institution where
all viewpoints will be respected and flourish. That is what academic freedom is
all about.
My concern is that the message from this episode, especially for my more junior
colleagues who may aspire to be deans someday or, for that matter, judges, is
that if you speak out -- liberal or conservative -- you may lose your chance at
a position that you really want.
That's why I decided to answer questions about what happened and to accept the
invitation to write this article. Chancellor Drake initially asked that I
simply say that we had mutually agreed to end my prospective deanship. I
refused and said that all I wanted was that the truth be told. We live in such
ideologically polarized times. It is important for those on both sides of the
ideological spectrum to realize that their common commitment to academic
freedom is far more important than blocking a particular faculty or dean
candidate based on ideology.
What now? I have enormous fondness for the many wonderful people I met at UC
Irvine, and I hope they find a terrific dean and create a great law school -- a
school that, like all schools, should be committed to a rich diversity of ideas
and views.
Erwin Chemerinsky is a professor of law and political science at Duke
University.
Austin moves forward with teacher performance pay plan
Nine schools selected to be in pilot group this year.
By Raven L. Hill / AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Friday, September 14, 2007
Earnings will be tied to learning at nine Austin schools this year.
Principals and teachers at six elementary schools, two middle schools and Lanier High School will have an opportunity to earn performance bonuses as part of the school district's strategic compensation plan
The compensation plan will include high-achieving campuses with high teacher retention rates as well as those that struggle to raise student performance and keep staff so officials can compare the plan's effect, if any, on student achievement.
As in some other school systems, Austin officials hope to use the bonuses as a way to recruit, retain and reward quality educators.
Officials started looking at performance pay three years ago, laying the groundwork for the $4.3 million plan launching this fall. Twenty campuses will be eligible to participate in the 2008-09 school year, and all campuses will be eligible in 2012.
"We're trying to see if paying teachers results in changed behavior not only on the part of teachers, but also in the way that the district supports teachers," said Louis Malfaro, president of Education Austin, which represents more than 4,000 teachers and staff members.
The plan excludes assistant principals and instructional coaches this year, which has caused some grumbling.
However, district officials think that crafting their plan alongside area teacher groups, earmarking funds to ensure its long-term sustainability and phasing it in slowly will ensure its success.
Under the plan, teachers and principals at high-needs schools can earn the largest stipends. Teacher stipends at those campuses range from $8,400 to $13,400, and principals can earn up to $15,500.
Novice teachers at those campuses will also receive full-time mentors, who can earn up to $5,000.
Teachers at each school will develop their own student learning objectives, two goals for the semester or school year, such as improving the scores of 85 percent of students by two or more levels on an Advanced Placement test. By meeting their goals, teachers can earn up to $1,500.
This will allow teachers to be recognized in ways that go unnoticed under federal and state accountability systems, district officials said.
State achievement tests will be used as schoolwide growth measures, but the learning objectives will be closely tied to classroom instruction.
With greater emphasis on high-stakes testing, Malfaro said, many teachers have wondered how they can reclaim their classrooms. "Part of the promise of strategic compensation is focusing on the training, support and professional development," he said.
Jon David Saucedo, a bilingual third-grade teacher at Sims Elementary School, a pilot campus, said he expects other staff to be included later. Incentives are needed at schools like Sims, he said.
"Although they are great kids, they have different needs, and it can be difficult to serve that every day. But we don't use that as an excuse."
Collins Van Nort, a sixth-grade teacher at Barton Hills Elementary, a pilot campus, said that he likes certain aspects of the plan, such as the retention bonuses, but that it is lacking in other ways.
"It's not a good substitute for an across-the-board pay increase," said Van Nort, who has worked in the district for 25 years. "I don't like the competitive aspect of it, (the implication) that we need to be like the business world and have incentives for performance. I think everyone is working to their fullest at this point."
rhill@statesman.com; 445-3620
Strategic compensation plan highlights
Nine Austin schools, five of them high-needs campuses, will be in the pilot group this year:
Barton Hills, Hart, Menchaca, Rodriguez, Sims and Sunset Valley elementary schools
Dobie and O. Henry middle schools
Lanier High School
At a high-needs school, teachers can earn $8,400 to $13,400 in bonuses. Principals can earn $6,000 to $15,500. At other campuses, the bonuses are up to $7,000 for teachers and $11,000 for principals.
Retention: A retention stipend will be phased in next school year at high-needs campuses. Teachers can earn $1,000 to $3,000 depending on their years of experience, and up to $6,000 in future years. Principals can receive $3,000.
Mentoring: Novice teachers will receive a part-time or full-time mentor, who can earn up to $5,000.
Teachers can receive up to $400 in stipends if they pursue National Board Certification. Educators who mentor teachers through the certification process will receive a $1,000 stipend.
State achievement tests: Teachers can receive up to $4,000 if math and reading objectives are met on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills. Principals can earn up to $8,000.
Classroom learning objectives: Teachers can earn up to $3,000 depending on the campus and the number of objectives met.
By Raven L. Hill / AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Friday, September 14, 2007
Earnings will be tied to learning at nine Austin schools this year.
Principals and teachers at six elementary schools, two middle schools and Lanier High School will have an opportunity to earn performance bonuses as part of the school district's strategic compensation plan
The compensation plan will include high-achieving campuses with high teacher retention rates as well as those that struggle to raise student performance and keep staff so officials can compare the plan's effect, if any, on student achievement.
As in some other school systems, Austin officials hope to use the bonuses as a way to recruit, retain and reward quality educators.
Officials started looking at performance pay three years ago, laying the groundwork for the $4.3 million plan launching this fall. Twenty campuses will be eligible to participate in the 2008-09 school year, and all campuses will be eligible in 2012.
"We're trying to see if paying teachers results in changed behavior not only on the part of teachers, but also in the way that the district supports teachers," said Louis Malfaro, president of Education Austin, which represents more than 4,000 teachers and staff members.
The plan excludes assistant principals and instructional coaches this year, which has caused some grumbling.
However, district officials think that crafting their plan alongside area teacher groups, earmarking funds to ensure its long-term sustainability and phasing it in slowly will ensure its success.
Under the plan, teachers and principals at high-needs schools can earn the largest stipends. Teacher stipends at those campuses range from $8,400 to $13,400, and principals can earn up to $15,500.
Novice teachers at those campuses will also receive full-time mentors, who can earn up to $5,000.
Teachers at each school will develop their own student learning objectives, two goals for the semester or school year, such as improving the scores of 85 percent of students by two or more levels on an Advanced Placement test. By meeting their goals, teachers can earn up to $1,500.
This will allow teachers to be recognized in ways that go unnoticed under federal and state accountability systems, district officials said.
State achievement tests will be used as schoolwide growth measures, but the learning objectives will be closely tied to classroom instruction.
With greater emphasis on high-stakes testing, Malfaro said, many teachers have wondered how they can reclaim their classrooms. "Part of the promise of strategic compensation is focusing on the training, support and professional development," he said.
Jon David Saucedo, a bilingual third-grade teacher at Sims Elementary School, a pilot campus, said he expects other staff to be included later. Incentives are needed at schools like Sims, he said.
"Although they are great kids, they have different needs, and it can be difficult to serve that every day. But we don't use that as an excuse."
Collins Van Nort, a sixth-grade teacher at Barton Hills Elementary, a pilot campus, said that he likes certain aspects of the plan, such as the retention bonuses, but that it is lacking in other ways.
"It's not a good substitute for an across-the-board pay increase," said Van Nort, who has worked in the district for 25 years. "I don't like the competitive aspect of it, (the implication) that we need to be like the business world and have incentives for performance. I think everyone is working to their fullest at this point."
rhill@statesman.com; 445-3620
Strategic compensation plan highlights
Nine Austin schools, five of them high-needs campuses, will be in the pilot group this year:
Barton Hills, Hart, Menchaca, Rodriguez, Sims and Sunset Valley elementary schools
Dobie and O. Henry middle schools
Lanier High School
At a high-needs school, teachers can earn $8,400 to $13,400 in bonuses. Principals can earn $6,000 to $15,500. At other campuses, the bonuses are up to $7,000 for teachers and $11,000 for principals.
Retention: A retention stipend will be phased in next school year at high-needs campuses. Teachers can earn $1,000 to $3,000 depending on their years of experience, and up to $6,000 in future years. Principals can receive $3,000.
Mentoring: Novice teachers will receive a part-time or full-time mentor, who can earn up to $5,000.
Teachers can receive up to $400 in stipends if they pursue National Board Certification. Educators who mentor teachers through the certification process will receive a $1,000 stipend.
State achievement tests: Teachers can receive up to $4,000 if math and reading objectives are met on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills. Principals can earn up to $8,000.
Classroom learning objectives: Teachers can earn up to $3,000 depending on the campus and the number of objectives met.
The Postsecondary Picture for Minority Students (and Men)
Inside Higher Ed
September 13, 2007
The newest report from the National Center for Education Statistics is, as its title (”Status and Trends in the Education of Racial and Ethnic Minorities“) suggests, designed to provide a comprehensive look at how members of minority groups are faring in the American educational system, from top to bottom. But while the data it offers on that subject are decidedly mixed — showing significant progress over time for all groups, but wide gaps remaining in access to and success in college — the report’s most provocative (and potentially troubling) numbers may be about gender, not race.
Most of the data in the report from the Education Department’s statistical arm have been released in earlier or narrower reports. But by bringing together reams of statistics over 30 years on the full gamut of educational measures, from pre-primary enrollment of 3- to 5-year-olds to median incomes for adults over 25, the study aims to provide a broad-based look at “the educational progress and challenges that racial and ethnic minorities face in the United States.”
Progress and challenges are both evident; virtually every category contains good news and bad news. In the higher education realm, for instance, the report shows that where black, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander and American Indian/Alaska Native students made up 17 percent of college undergraduates in 1976, their share of that total had risen to 32 percent by 2004. And each of those groups saw their raw numbers at least double over that time, with some groups showing significantly greater proportional increases, as seen in the table below:
Black
1976: 943,355
2004: 1,918,465
%Change: 103%
Hispanic
1976: 352,893
2004: 1,666,859
%Change: 372%
Asian/Pacific Islander
1976: 169,291
2004: 949,882
%Change: 461%
American Indian/Alaska Native
1976: 69,729
2004: 160,318
%Change: 130%
Representation in graduate education changed along roughly the same lines, the study finds, with minority group members making up 25 percent of the graduate school population in 2004, up from 11 percent in 1976.
In addition, the proportion of all 18- to 24-year-old Americans who were enrolled in college rose sharply for all racial groups between 1980 and 2004, in most cases increasing by at least 50 percent.
But those positive developments aside, the research shows that members of underrepresented minority groups badly lag their white and Asian peers in college going. By 2004, 60.3 percent of Asian/Pacific Islander 18- to 24-year-olds were enrolled in college, as were 41.7 of white Americans in that age group. The numbers were lower for other groups: 31.8 for black Americans, 24.7 for Hispanics, and 24.4 percent for American Indian/Alaska Natives.
Similarly, the proportion of degrees awarded to most racial minority groups fell well short of their representation in the population. Slightly less than 10 percent of all college degrees awarded by U.S. degree-granting institutions in 2003-4 — and 9.3 percent of bachelor’s degrees, and 6 percent of doctorates — went to African-Americans, who make up 12 percent of the population. Hispanics fared worse, earning 7.3 of all degrees, 6.8 percent of baccalaureate degrees, and 3.4 percent of doctorates, despite making up 14 percent of the U.S. populace.
Concerning as those numbers might be to advocates for minority education, the most striking data in the report are probably those related to the educational outcomes of men, of all races and ethnicities.
By virtually every measure used in the report, male students have fallen far behind their female counterparts. That development isn’t new, but the federal report lays out the situation starkly. For instance, the study finds that the gender gap in undergraduate enrollments expanded generally and for all races between 1976 and 2004, as seen in the table below:
The Gender Gap in Undergraduate Enrollments, 1976 to 2004
Proportion of undergraduates who were male, 1976
All 52.0%
White 52.4%
Black 45.7%
Hispanic 54.3%
Asian/
Pacific Islander 53.8%
American Indian/
Alaska Native 49.9%
Proportion of Undergraduates Who Were Male, 2004
All 42.9%
White 44.1%
Black 35.7%
Hispanic 41.4%
Asian/
Pacific Islander 46.2%
American Indian/
Alaska Native 39.1%
% Difference Between Female and Male Enrollment, 2004
All 14.2%
White 11.8%
Black 28.6%
Hispanic 17.1%
Asian/
Pacific Islander 7.5%
American Indian/
Alaska Native 21.8%
Similarly, the proportion of male 18- to 24-year-olds enrolled in college in 2004 had fallen to 34.7 percent, compared to 41.2 percent for women. Six to 10 percent gaps existed for all racial groups, too, with the exception of Asian/Pacific Islanders; for them, men were more likely to be enrolled in college by a 63 to 58 percent margin.
Women are also outperforming men as degree recipients, as seen in the table below:
Degrees Conferred by Gender and Race, 2003-4
Demographic Group / All degrees
White men / 818,690
White women / 1,121,646
Black men / 87,728
Black women / 184,183
Hispanic men / 78,775
Hispanic women / 122,784
Asian/Pacific Islander men / 75,435
Asian/Pacific Islander women / 93,335
American Indian/Alaska Native men / 8,476
American Indian/Alaska Native women / 14,255
September 13, 2007
The newest report from the National Center for Education Statistics is, as its title (”Status and Trends in the Education of Racial and Ethnic Minorities“) suggests, designed to provide a comprehensive look at how members of minority groups are faring in the American educational system, from top to bottom. But while the data it offers on that subject are decidedly mixed — showing significant progress over time for all groups, but wide gaps remaining in access to and success in college — the report’s most provocative (and potentially troubling) numbers may be about gender, not race.
Most of the data in the report from the Education Department’s statistical arm have been released in earlier or narrower reports. But by bringing together reams of statistics over 30 years on the full gamut of educational measures, from pre-primary enrollment of 3- to 5-year-olds to median incomes for adults over 25, the study aims to provide a broad-based look at “the educational progress and challenges that racial and ethnic minorities face in the United States.”
Progress and challenges are both evident; virtually every category contains good news and bad news. In the higher education realm, for instance, the report shows that where black, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander and American Indian/Alaska Native students made up 17 percent of college undergraduates in 1976, their share of that total had risen to 32 percent by 2004. And each of those groups saw their raw numbers at least double over that time, with some groups showing significantly greater proportional increases, as seen in the table below:
Black
1976: 943,355
2004: 1,918,465
%Change: 103%
Hispanic
1976: 352,893
2004: 1,666,859
%Change: 372%
Asian/Pacific Islander
1976: 169,291
2004: 949,882
%Change: 461%
American Indian/Alaska Native
1976: 69,729
2004: 160,318
%Change: 130%
Representation in graduate education changed along roughly the same lines, the study finds, with minority group members making up 25 percent of the graduate school population in 2004, up from 11 percent in 1976.
In addition, the proportion of all 18- to 24-year-old Americans who were enrolled in college rose sharply for all racial groups between 1980 and 2004, in most cases increasing by at least 50 percent.
But those positive developments aside, the research shows that members of underrepresented minority groups badly lag their white and Asian peers in college going. By 2004, 60.3 percent of Asian/Pacific Islander 18- to 24-year-olds were enrolled in college, as were 41.7 of white Americans in that age group. The numbers were lower for other groups: 31.8 for black Americans, 24.7 for Hispanics, and 24.4 percent for American Indian/Alaska Natives.
Similarly, the proportion of degrees awarded to most racial minority groups fell well short of their representation in the population. Slightly less than 10 percent of all college degrees awarded by U.S. degree-granting institutions in 2003-4 — and 9.3 percent of bachelor’s degrees, and 6 percent of doctorates — went to African-Americans, who make up 12 percent of the population. Hispanics fared worse, earning 7.3 of all degrees, 6.8 percent of baccalaureate degrees, and 3.4 percent of doctorates, despite making up 14 percent of the U.S. populace.
Concerning as those numbers might be to advocates for minority education, the most striking data in the report are probably those related to the educational outcomes of men, of all races and ethnicities.
By virtually every measure used in the report, male students have fallen far behind their female counterparts. That development isn’t new, but the federal report lays out the situation starkly. For instance, the study finds that the gender gap in undergraduate enrollments expanded generally and for all races between 1976 and 2004, as seen in the table below:
The Gender Gap in Undergraduate Enrollments, 1976 to 2004
Proportion of undergraduates who were male, 1976
All 52.0%
White 52.4%
Black 45.7%
Hispanic 54.3%
Asian/
Pacific Islander 53.8%
American Indian/
Alaska Native 49.9%
Proportion of Undergraduates Who Were Male, 2004
All 42.9%
White 44.1%
Black 35.7%
Hispanic 41.4%
Asian/
Pacific Islander 46.2%
American Indian/
Alaska Native 39.1%
% Difference Between Female and Male Enrollment, 2004
All 14.2%
White 11.8%
Black 28.6%
Hispanic 17.1%
Asian/
Pacific Islander 7.5%
American Indian/
Alaska Native 21.8%
Similarly, the proportion of male 18- to 24-year-olds enrolled in college in 2004 had fallen to 34.7 percent, compared to 41.2 percent for women. Six to 10 percent gaps existed for all racial groups, too, with the exception of Asian/Pacific Islanders; for them, men were more likely to be enrolled in college by a 63 to 58 percent margin.
Women are also outperforming men as degree recipients, as seen in the table below:
Degrees Conferred by Gender and Race, 2003-4
Demographic Group / All degrees
White men / 818,690
White women / 1,121,646
Black men / 87,728
Black women / 184,183
Hispanic men / 78,775
Hispanic women / 122,784
Asian/Pacific Islander men / 75,435
Asian/Pacific Islander women / 93,335
American Indian/Alaska Native men / 8,476
American Indian/Alaska Native women / 14,255
An Interview with Delia Stafford: About Alternative Certification
September 11, 2007
Education News
An Interview with Delia Stafford: About Alternative Certification
In the past, teachers have generally arrived at the schools after four years of a liberal arts education, with some pedagogy courses, and a major and perhaps minor or endorsement area. These teachers have typically been 22 or 23 year old largely developmentally late adolescents who were fresh out of college. This approach to procuring teachers had been in place for many years until a teacher shortage struck America, and many school systems were forced to re-think how to procure teachers and began examining the "alternative certification" route. This paradigm shift was spearheaded by Delia Stafford who implemented a Texas state department mandate, an entirely new approach that provided a new type of teacher that was uniquely suited to work in the urban schools with at-risk students in the Houston Independent School District. She was assigned as Director of Alternative Certification by then Superintendent Dr.Billy Reagan. Coupled with Martin Haberman's Star Teacher interview, her efforts were successful and later recognized by the first President Bush. She was awarded the "Commendation for Meritorious Service Award" by Dr. Rod Paige.Her efforts have increased exponentially the number of alternatively certified teachers for thousands of schools across the nation. Her combination of careful selection and district based on-site training has made this paradigm shift of alternative certification possible. Her courage, persistence and insight have challenged the decades old approach to teacher training and certification. Currently, she heads the Haberman Educational Foundation. Inc. and in the last thirty years she has touched the lives of more children, teachers, principals and schools in her work than any other leading pedagogist in America. In this interview, she responds to questions about the domain of alternative certification, it's history and importance, and reflects on her challenge to the status quo in American education.
1) In a sense, alternative certification has "challenged the status quo". In terms of teacher certification, why do you feel it important to "challenge the status quo"?
Over the decades we learned from experience that a teaching certificate did not predict how an individual would perform in the classroom. And it still doesn't. So challenging the status quo via alternative certification, simply put, was an initiative to solve a teacher shortage at the time, by developing programs with little or no input from the universities; minimal amounts coursework, while matching mature adults with master teachers mentoring individuals who were engaged in on the job training. That is the way it began and certainly not without the nay sayers. But today, we may have to challenge the altcert. routes since at least half reside in the universities. Should we say, not much has changed, but everything has changed.
2) Over the years, what have you learned about alternative certification?
I know first hand that altcert. programs must be carefully crafted, using discretion in selecting individuals to teach in order to ensure that the children do not become victims of a system of teacher training. In the beginning, all programs in Texas were constantly scrutinized, especially in the area of selection, training, testing; today there are few regulations to ensure quality.
That goes for traditional programs as well. I can say truthfully, that as a pioneer in alternative certification having produced quality teachers, I do feel some disappointment in the lack of "quality control"for the programs. The only criteria that I know exist now for all programs, is that all alternative and traditionally certified teachers must pass the required test for a teaching certificate; there are classes provided to help them pass the test. Not so in the beginning. For now however, "anything goes"as long as it has the name alternative certification connected. Some programs are good, some not so good. What separates may be a fine line of what is best for the children. Accountability for student learning should be the criteria for earning a teaching certificate both at the traditional and alternative certification levels.
3) Why should school systems be looking at alternative certification, and particularly older teachers with more maturity?
In my mind, maturity is the ability to control our impulses, to think beyond the moment, and consider how our words and our actions will affect others and ourselves before we act. In schools, especially urban districts, maturity is not an option if we intend to make a difference for students. Alternative certification candidates lean towards maturity, with few exceptions. However maturity doesn't necessarily come with age. There are many 23 year olds from our traditional education programs who are very mature and can do the job.
4) What do you see as the some of the main causes of the teacher shortage?
There is no teacher shortage; there is a shortage of teachers willing to teach in large urban districts. Most young graduates from our traditional teacher education programs know they can't do it and they do the districts and the children a favor and never apply. That is not an indictment, it is just a fact. Perhaps experience over a period of years would better qualify them to teach in urban areas, if they choose to do so.
5) Do you find that older more mature teachers do not burn out as rapidly as younger teachers?
I am sure they feel the heat of the beauocracy, but they are generally are more interested in teaching the children than bothering with the politics of the local district. There are many causes for burnout, one of which is the mundane requirements sent down by central office. Good and great teachers handle the paperwork, attend meetings and then get back to the business of teaching, always keeping in mind that the clients in every school district are the children and youth being served.
6) Are teachers who go through alternative certification programs just as well prepared to deal with the wide diversity of special education students that seems to constantly be growing?
I would say absolutely, yes. Alternative certification programs can and do specifically prepare teachers for that population of students. As director of the HISD alternative certification program and time progressed, we teamed with the universities to develop programs for the emotionally disturbed and autistic, severe and profoundly handicapped, diagnosticians, resource teachers. The program work very well then and to my knowledge, the programs continue today.
7) Why do you think we will continue to have to explore the realm of alternative certification?
That is just what we do in education. The concept of alternative certification and its' success is not going away. Alternative Certification Programs that once were "just New Jersey and Texas" have now spread to almost every state. The programs are needed, or they wouldn't be operational in so many sites across the states. There is always a call for more research. We have been accused of not having enough research on alternative certification teachers. I would say 20 plus years of success may be research enough. When we begin focusing the research on student achievement as the ultimate goal for traditional and alternative certification, the research issue will be moot. This goes for traditional and alternative certification.
8) Are there school systems or states that seem to prefer alternative certification and teachers who have gone that route?
Texas and California probably have the most programs, and they are thriving.
It would be a guess on my part to say which states prefer one over the other since all states have both traditional and alternative certification teacher education programs.
9) What challenges are faced by those teachers who certify through alternative methods?
In the beginning, they were faced the ire of the traditional university teacher education programs, mentors who did not want to be bothered, and in general were viewed as a"group of those who went through a shortcut or back door to teaching".They faced the same challenges that every other teacher had and more because they were required to do so much more because of the training program requirements.
Today, alternative certification interns are viewed by their peers and administrators as individuals who really have a desire to teach and want what is best for students. Individual trainees that I worked with and for, always had the childrens'best interest in the forefront. We selected the candidates very carefully. The Texas Education Agency, now the Texas State Board for Educator Certification, introduced the new alternative certification directors to Dr. Haberman. He taught us his Star Teacher Selection Interview. We selected Haberman Star Teacher candidates, many of whom, were selected by their peers for the school districts teacher of the year award.
10) In your experience, are alternatively certified teachers more concerned about classroom management, or curricular issues?
Probably both, which is the reason programs must be carefully crafted to ensure that the students do not become the victims of teacher training programs. The candidates need to be given ample time to learn the craft of teaching because most know the content. I would never advocate "learning to teach at the children's' expense".The focus should be this; does the person understand the value and need for engaging students in professional relationships and finding interesting activities to make learning the primary goal. If the relationships with students are not apparent or present, neither content nor management procedures will work.Programs should select candidates early and provide ample lead time fortraining. No practicing on the students!
11) Are alternatively certified teachers better prepared to cope with parents, principals and the beauracacy?
If they are mature adults and have the children's interest first ,they can they be successful in the school community and its' systems approach. Dealing with parents, principals and other teachers is part of the job. Problems are an expected part of the job. All good teachers know what is expected and are not afraid to inquire if they have problems in any area of the profession.
12) What tools and skills have you developed over the years in terms of working with and training alternatively certified teachers?
One memory stands out. Those selected individuals for our program were so willing to learn and be successful, so as school educators training potential classroom teachers, we tried to be patient, caring trainers, because we knew the challenges they would be facing in our schools.We knew it was not going to be easy. We were always extremely supportive, and tried to ensure that were trained and ready to teach so that they could experience success early in their career. We were very strict however, in observations and on-going development of the interns. We held each potential teacher to a very high standard. They had to be better in order to survive, especially when the programs first evolved.
13) What programs have you been involved with over the years, and what have you learned about them?
I was involved with the first school-based teacher education program in the states for ten years. Teach for America had their first co-hortas a part of the Houston ISD alternative certification program and Troops to Teachers participate in altcert programs as well. Today we have Transition to Teaching programs. They all appear to survive and produce teachers, and since the movement is nearing two decades, like anything else, some are good, some not so good. There are training programs providing teachers that are not alternative certification programs. They are simply teacher training organizations. Alternative Certification hasbecome "bandwagon" approach to teaching. Jump on!
14) A bit of history lesson here. When did the alternative certification movement begin and who was at the forefront?
It began in the early eighties in New Jersey under the leadership of Dr. Leo Klagholtz, who later became Commissioner of Education in that state. Texas was next, and the language was crafted for alternative certification by Ross Perot with the state department in Texas and implemented in Houston Independent School District by then Superintendent Dr.Billy Reagan. During the first year of the program, 6000 individuals applied for the program. Four-hundred-fifty were selected, and I feel safe in saying about two hundred sixty survived.Today, about fifteen hundred or more a year are hired via the alternative certification program. Retention rates are very good. Today,Texas alone has twenty-eight programs across the state, including school based, university programs and education service centers that serve school districts. To those who said it wouldn't work, I would say,"never underestimate the power of an idea from those who seek solutions to better the lives of children".
15) What question have I neglected to ask?
You didn't ask about when and where the National Association of Alternative Certification was chartered.
That happened April 1991, when the Texas Alternative Certification Association, composed of the Directors of Alternative Certification and alternative certification intern members, there were five directorsby then, decided to host the first national conference. We invited every state department of education and others who were involved in the research the first programs. I was naive enough to invite then Vice President Al Gore to speak; he didn't speak or respond, but the conference was a success! Dr. Martin Haberman, Distinguished Professor UWM, and Dr. C.Emily Feistritzer, Bill Smith, U.S. Department of Education were the main speakers for the500 participants gathered at South Padre Island for the first annual conference. At that conference , The Houston Independent School District Alternative Certification Program won the "Trail Blazer Award".
At the second annual national conference April 1992, we gave President Bush his teaching certificate from the state of Texas. He wanted to teach when he returned from the arm services andliving in Midland, Texas. He wasn't allowed a teaching positionbecause he didn't have a teaching certificate. The Texas directors of alternative certification requested and received from Texas State Department of Education a teaching certificate for President Bush.He sent Dr. Charles E.M. Cobb,his Senior Policy Advisor, to speak to the conferees and bring the certificate back to Washington DC.
I have a picture of President Bush in the oval office looking at his Texas teaching certificate and a note thanking me for getting him his teaching certificate. This coming year 2008, in Atlanta, the association will hold its' Annual Conference. I will be there. I have attended every conference, to date, and in Washington D.C.2007, I was honored asFounder of the National Association of Alternative Certification.
Delia Stafford is the President and CEO of the Haberman Educational Foundation, Houston, Texas. http://www.habermanfoundation.org
Education News
An Interview with Delia Stafford: About Alternative Certification
In the past, teachers have generally arrived at the schools after four years of a liberal arts education, with some pedagogy courses, and a major and perhaps minor or endorsement area. These teachers have typically been 22 or 23 year old largely developmentally late adolescents who were fresh out of college. This approach to procuring teachers had been in place for many years until a teacher shortage struck America, and many school systems were forced to re-think how to procure teachers and began examining the "alternative certification" route. This paradigm shift was spearheaded by Delia Stafford who implemented a Texas state department mandate, an entirely new approach that provided a new type of teacher that was uniquely suited to work in the urban schools with at-risk students in the Houston Independent School District. She was assigned as Director of Alternative Certification by then Superintendent Dr.Billy Reagan. Coupled with Martin Haberman's Star Teacher interview, her efforts were successful and later recognized by the first President Bush. She was awarded the "Commendation for Meritorious Service Award" by Dr. Rod Paige.Her efforts have increased exponentially the number of alternatively certified teachers for thousands of schools across the nation. Her combination of careful selection and district based on-site training has made this paradigm shift of alternative certification possible. Her courage, persistence and insight have challenged the decades old approach to teacher training and certification. Currently, she heads the Haberman Educational Foundation. Inc. and in the last thirty years she has touched the lives of more children, teachers, principals and schools in her work than any other leading pedagogist in America. In this interview, she responds to questions about the domain of alternative certification, it's history and importance, and reflects on her challenge to the status quo in American education.
1) In a sense, alternative certification has "challenged the status quo". In terms of teacher certification, why do you feel it important to "challenge the status quo"?
Over the decades we learned from experience that a teaching certificate did not predict how an individual would perform in the classroom. And it still doesn't. So challenging the status quo via alternative certification, simply put, was an initiative to solve a teacher shortage at the time, by developing programs with little or no input from the universities; minimal amounts coursework, while matching mature adults with master teachers mentoring individuals who were engaged in on the job training. That is the way it began and certainly not without the nay sayers. But today, we may have to challenge the altcert. routes since at least half reside in the universities. Should we say, not much has changed, but everything has changed.
2) Over the years, what have you learned about alternative certification?
I know first hand that altcert. programs must be carefully crafted, using discretion in selecting individuals to teach in order to ensure that the children do not become victims of a system of teacher training. In the beginning, all programs in Texas were constantly scrutinized, especially in the area of selection, training, testing; today there are few regulations to ensure quality.
That goes for traditional programs as well. I can say truthfully, that as a pioneer in alternative certification having produced quality teachers, I do feel some disappointment in the lack of "quality control"for the programs. The only criteria that I know exist now for all programs, is that all alternative and traditionally certified teachers must pass the required test for a teaching certificate; there are classes provided to help them pass the test. Not so in the beginning. For now however, "anything goes"as long as it has the name alternative certification connected. Some programs are good, some not so good. What separates may be a fine line of what is best for the children. Accountability for student learning should be the criteria for earning a teaching certificate both at the traditional and alternative certification levels.
3) Why should school systems be looking at alternative certification, and particularly older teachers with more maturity?
In my mind, maturity is the ability to control our impulses, to think beyond the moment, and consider how our words and our actions will affect others and ourselves before we act. In schools, especially urban districts, maturity is not an option if we intend to make a difference for students. Alternative certification candidates lean towards maturity, with few exceptions. However maturity doesn't necessarily come with age. There are many 23 year olds from our traditional education programs who are very mature and can do the job.
4) What do you see as the some of the main causes of the teacher shortage?
There is no teacher shortage; there is a shortage of teachers willing to teach in large urban districts. Most young graduates from our traditional teacher education programs know they can't do it and they do the districts and the children a favor and never apply. That is not an indictment, it is just a fact. Perhaps experience over a period of years would better qualify them to teach in urban areas, if they choose to do so.
5) Do you find that older more mature teachers do not burn out as rapidly as younger teachers?
I am sure they feel the heat of the beauocracy, but they are generally are more interested in teaching the children than bothering with the politics of the local district. There are many causes for burnout, one of which is the mundane requirements sent down by central office. Good and great teachers handle the paperwork, attend meetings and then get back to the business of teaching, always keeping in mind that the clients in every school district are the children and youth being served.
6) Are teachers who go through alternative certification programs just as well prepared to deal with the wide diversity of special education students that seems to constantly be growing?
I would say absolutely, yes. Alternative certification programs can and do specifically prepare teachers for that population of students. As director of the HISD alternative certification program and time progressed, we teamed with the universities to develop programs for the emotionally disturbed and autistic, severe and profoundly handicapped, diagnosticians, resource teachers. The program work very well then and to my knowledge, the programs continue today.
7) Why do you think we will continue to have to explore the realm of alternative certification?
That is just what we do in education. The concept of alternative certification and its' success is not going away. Alternative Certification Programs that once were "just New Jersey and Texas" have now spread to almost every state. The programs are needed, or they wouldn't be operational in so many sites across the states. There is always a call for more research. We have been accused of not having enough research on alternative certification teachers. I would say 20 plus years of success may be research enough. When we begin focusing the research on student achievement as the ultimate goal for traditional and alternative certification, the research issue will be moot. This goes for traditional and alternative certification.
8) Are there school systems or states that seem to prefer alternative certification and teachers who have gone that route?
Texas and California probably have the most programs, and they are thriving.
It would be a guess on my part to say which states prefer one over the other since all states have both traditional and alternative certification teacher education programs.
9) What challenges are faced by those teachers who certify through alternative methods?
In the beginning, they were faced the ire of the traditional university teacher education programs, mentors who did not want to be bothered, and in general were viewed as a"group of those who went through a shortcut or back door to teaching".They faced the same challenges that every other teacher had and more because they were required to do so much more because of the training program requirements.
Today, alternative certification interns are viewed by their peers and administrators as individuals who really have a desire to teach and want what is best for students. Individual trainees that I worked with and for, always had the childrens'best interest in the forefront. We selected the candidates very carefully. The Texas Education Agency, now the Texas State Board for Educator Certification, introduced the new alternative certification directors to Dr. Haberman. He taught us his Star Teacher Selection Interview. We selected Haberman Star Teacher candidates, many of whom, were selected by their peers for the school districts teacher of the year award.
10) In your experience, are alternatively certified teachers more concerned about classroom management, or curricular issues?
Probably both, which is the reason programs must be carefully crafted to ensure that the students do not become the victims of teacher training programs. The candidates need to be given ample time to learn the craft of teaching because most know the content. I would never advocate "learning to teach at the children's' expense".The focus should be this; does the person understand the value and need for engaging students in professional relationships and finding interesting activities to make learning the primary goal. If the relationships with students are not apparent or present, neither content nor management procedures will work.Programs should select candidates early and provide ample lead time fortraining. No practicing on the students!
11) Are alternatively certified teachers better prepared to cope with parents, principals and the beauracacy?
If they are mature adults and have the children's interest first ,they can they be successful in the school community and its' systems approach. Dealing with parents, principals and other teachers is part of the job. Problems are an expected part of the job. All good teachers know what is expected and are not afraid to inquire if they have problems in any area of the profession.
12) What tools and skills have you developed over the years in terms of working with and training alternatively certified teachers?
One memory stands out. Those selected individuals for our program were so willing to learn and be successful, so as school educators training potential classroom teachers, we tried to be patient, caring trainers, because we knew the challenges they would be facing in our schools.We knew it was not going to be easy. We were always extremely supportive, and tried to ensure that were trained and ready to teach so that they could experience success early in their career. We were very strict however, in observations and on-going development of the interns. We held each potential teacher to a very high standard. They had to be better in order to survive, especially when the programs first evolved.
13) What programs have you been involved with over the years, and what have you learned about them?
I was involved with the first school-based teacher education program in the states for ten years. Teach for America had their first co-hortas a part of the Houston ISD alternative certification program and Troops to Teachers participate in altcert programs as well. Today we have Transition to Teaching programs. They all appear to survive and produce teachers, and since the movement is nearing two decades, like anything else, some are good, some not so good. There are training programs providing teachers that are not alternative certification programs. They are simply teacher training organizations. Alternative Certification hasbecome "bandwagon" approach to teaching. Jump on!
14) A bit of history lesson here. When did the alternative certification movement begin and who was at the forefront?
It began in the early eighties in New Jersey under the leadership of Dr. Leo Klagholtz, who later became Commissioner of Education in that state. Texas was next, and the language was crafted for alternative certification by Ross Perot with the state department in Texas and implemented in Houston Independent School District by then Superintendent Dr.Billy Reagan. During the first year of the program, 6000 individuals applied for the program. Four-hundred-fifty were selected, and I feel safe in saying about two hundred sixty survived.Today, about fifteen hundred or more a year are hired via the alternative certification program. Retention rates are very good. Today,Texas alone has twenty-eight programs across the state, including school based, university programs and education service centers that serve school districts. To those who said it wouldn't work, I would say,"never underestimate the power of an idea from those who seek solutions to better the lives of children".
15) What question have I neglected to ask?
You didn't ask about when and where the National Association of Alternative Certification was chartered.
That happened April 1991, when the Texas Alternative Certification Association, composed of the Directors of Alternative Certification and alternative certification intern members, there were five directorsby then, decided to host the first national conference. We invited every state department of education and others who were involved in the research the first programs. I was naive enough to invite then Vice President Al Gore to speak; he didn't speak or respond, but the conference was a success! Dr. Martin Haberman, Distinguished Professor UWM, and Dr. C.Emily Feistritzer, Bill Smith, U.S. Department of Education were the main speakers for the500 participants gathered at South Padre Island for the first annual conference. At that conference , The Houston Independent School District Alternative Certification Program won the "Trail Blazer Award".
At the second annual national conference April 1992, we gave President Bush his teaching certificate from the state of Texas. He wanted to teach when he returned from the arm services andliving in Midland, Texas. He wasn't allowed a teaching positionbecause he didn't have a teaching certificate. The Texas directors of alternative certification requested and received from Texas State Department of Education a teaching certificate for President Bush.He sent Dr. Charles E.M. Cobb,his Senior Policy Advisor, to speak to the conferees and bring the certificate back to Washington DC.
I have a picture of President Bush in the oval office looking at his Texas teaching certificate and a note thanking me for getting him his teaching certificate. This coming year 2008, in Atlanta, the association will hold its' Annual Conference. I will be there. I have attended every conference, to date, and in Washington D.C.2007, I was honored asFounder of the National Association of Alternative Certification.
Delia Stafford is the President and CEO of the Haberman Educational Foundation, Houston, Texas. http://www.habermanfoundation.org
Thursday, September 13, 2007
AAUP Newsletter: Freedom in the Classroom
The following is from a forwarded email from the American Association of University Professors. All links to mentioned articles are included.-Patricia
The intellectual independence and integrity of higher education’s classroom faculty have been under attack for some time—by the press, by conservative commentators, and by politicians. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) is convinced that it is time take back the classroom on behalf of academic freedom. In a clear and carefully reasoned historic new report, we counter these attacks and lay out the principles of responsible college pedagogy. The full report, Freedom in the Classroom, is available in the September–October issue of Academe , our journal of record, and online.
The report differentiates instruction from indoctrination. It addresses demands for “balance” in the classroom and offers a very specific and limited disciplinary rationale for the relevance of balance. It argues forcefully that college instructors have the right—and, some would argue, the responsibility—to challenge their students’ most cherished beliefs.
The report also takes up the most controversial issue, politics in the classroom, and offers an analysis for your consideration. We adapt an example from a 2007 New York Times column: “Might not a teacher of nineteenth-century American literature, taking up Moby Dick , a subject having nothing to do with the presidency, ask the class to consider whether any parallel between President George W. Bush and Captain Ahab could be pursued for insight into Melville’s novel? Might not an instructor of classical philosophy, teaching Aristotle’s views of moral virtue, present President Bill Clinton’s conduct as a case study for student discussion?”
No matter what the discipline, no matter what subject matter or historical period a course description defines, we suggest, the field of contemporary culture and politics is available for comparison, analogy, and contrast. To say this is to reaffirm the life of the mind, to assert that in human culture anything may potentially be connected to anything else.
See Michael Bérubé’s essay "Why the AAUP’s New Statement ‘Freedom in the Classroom’ Matters" online in the September 11 issue of Inside Higher Ed.
The intellectual independence and integrity of higher education’s classroom faculty have been under attack for some time—by the press, by conservative commentators, and by politicians. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) is convinced that it is time take back the classroom on behalf of academic freedom. In a clear and carefully reasoned historic new report, we counter these attacks and lay out the principles of responsible college pedagogy. The full report, Freedom in the Classroom, is available in the September–October issue of Academe , our journal of record, and online.
The report differentiates instruction from indoctrination. It addresses demands for “balance” in the classroom and offers a very specific and limited disciplinary rationale for the relevance of balance. It argues forcefully that college instructors have the right—and, some would argue, the responsibility—to challenge their students’ most cherished beliefs.
The report also takes up the most controversial issue, politics in the classroom, and offers an analysis for your consideration. We adapt an example from a 2007 New York Times column: “Might not a teacher of nineteenth-century American literature, taking up Moby Dick , a subject having nothing to do with the presidency, ask the class to consider whether any parallel between President George W. Bush and Captain Ahab could be pursued for insight into Melville’s novel? Might not an instructor of classical philosophy, teaching Aristotle’s views of moral virtue, present President Bill Clinton’s conduct as a case study for student discussion?”
No matter what the discipline, no matter what subject matter or historical period a course description defines, we suggest, the field of contemporary culture and politics is available for comparison, analogy, and contrast. To say this is to reaffirm the life of the mind, to assert that in human culture anything may potentially be connected to anything else.
See Michael Bérubé’s essay "Why the AAUP’s New Statement ‘Freedom in the Classroom’ Matters" online in the September 11 issue of Inside Higher Ed.
Mass. Tells Districts Not to Rush Changes in Student-Assignment Plans
By Catherine Gewertz / Ed Week
September 13, 2007
Massachusetts is examining all 22 of its school districts’ state-approved desegregation plans, and a multidistrict desegregation program, to see if they are legally viable in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that restricts the ways districts may use race to achieve diversity in school enrollments.
The Bay State is urging districts not to rush into changing their student-assignment plans for this school year, but to hold their course until the state’s attorney general, its education department, and the governor’s office complete their joint review.
For the rest of this story click here
September 13, 2007
Massachusetts is examining all 22 of its school districts’ state-approved desegregation plans, and a multidistrict desegregation program, to see if they are legally viable in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that restricts the ways districts may use race to achieve diversity in school enrollments.
The Bay State is urging districts not to rush into changing their student-assignment plans for this school year, but to hold their course until the state’s attorney general, its education department, and the governor’s office complete their joint review.
For the rest of this story click here
Proposed NCLB Rule on 'Salary Comparability' Draws Scrutiny
By Bess Keller / Ed Week
September 12, 2007
A draft provision for the No Child Left Behind Act that would provide more money to schools with the least experienced teachers at the expense of schools with more senior ones is likely to face stiff opposition if the proposed change becomes part of the bill that goes before Congress.
Organizations representing teachers, state legislatures, and district administrators have already voiced opposition, saying such a policy would be a poor way to address the so-called teacher gap.
For the rest of this article click here
September 12, 2007
A draft provision for the No Child Left Behind Act that would provide more money to schools with the least experienced teachers at the expense of schools with more senior ones is likely to face stiff opposition if the proposed change becomes part of the bill that goes before Congress.
Organizations representing teachers, state legislatures, and district administrators have already voiced opposition, saying such a policy would be a poor way to address the so-called teacher gap.
For the rest of this article click here
Education Panel Chairman Spars With Union Over Merit Pay for Teachers
By The Associated Press
September 22, 2007
The head of the nation's largest teacher's union and a top House Democrat had a testy exchange Monday over the inclusion of merit pay in an updated version of the No Child Left Behind education law.
California Rep. George Miller, chairman of the House education committee, criticized National Education Association President Reg Weaver for rejecting the merit-pay proposal.
For the rest of the story click here
September 22, 2007
The head of the nation's largest teacher's union and a top House Democrat had a testy exchange Monday over the inclusion of merit pay in an updated version of the No Child Left Behind education law.
California Rep. George Miller, chairman of the House education committee, criticized National Education Association President Reg Weaver for rejecting the merit-pay proposal.
For the rest of the story click here
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Schools changing to meet students' interests
Daniel Perry / The Monitor
September 11, 2007
The challenge looms as large as the steel school initials at the front of their campuses: changing the high school atmosphere to provide more courses tailored to students’ interests and providing additional information for teachers to do their jobs.
Six high schools in the Pharr-San Juan-Alamo, Weslaco and Zapata school districts are doing this with the help of the Region One Education Service Center in Edinburg and nationwide education organizations. The schools started last month their first year of the High School Redesign Project, which breaks up student bodies, teachers and counselors into small learning communities geared toward specific topics. The districts planned for a year before launching the project.
The McAllen school district is also in the planning stage and will implement it at its three high schools and Lamar Academy for the 2008-09 school year.
The idea is to have 18 high schools revamped in a five-year period. The money to do this will come from the U.S. Department of Education, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Texas Education Agency. Also partnering in the effort are the Institute for School Excellence and the Institute for Reform and Research in Education, both national entities providing project research and guidance.
Leaders at the districts said they hope redesigned schools can improve student completion rates, lower drop-out rates and improve academic performance.
In the PSJA district, PSJA North High School had the lowest completion rate among its three high schools with 78.2 percent. But, PSJA High School had the largest number of dropouts with 93 students. Both figures are from 2006, according to the state education agency.
In the Weslaco district, Weslaco East High School had the highest number of dropouts with 27 and the lowest completion rate with 91.5 percent for 2006, according to the education agency.
The participating high schools must still abide by state education guidelines and have students pass required standardized tests to graduate. The number of learning communities is contingent on the size of campuses and the range of student interests. Zapata High School only has three communities for law, criminal justice and government; health sciences and business and engineering and technology.
PSJA Memorial High School has eight communities in subjects ranging from performing arts to legal professions and public service. Some new courses in music theory, medical microbiology, sociology and courts and criminal procedures were added to give students more themed courses to take in their junior and seniors years.
“That area of interest can hopefully be articulated in their senior year when you are looking at dual enrollment, concurrent enrollment, project-based learning,” said Claudia Rodriguez, Region One’s administrator for the division of instructional support. “I think the intent is more to go that route and the schools, like in PSJA, creating some classes you can see in college. We applaud their efforts.”
PSJA Memorial junior Francisco Gonzalez, 16, is in the business and technology community. Some of his classes this year include introductory computer maintenance, geometry and orchestra. He is looking forward to learning about Web design and software repairs this year.
“They (teachers) do get you ready for what you will be used to in college, but now, I don’t really feel like they are doing that,” Gonzalez said.
Dalila Garcia, PSJA Memorial’s school improvement facilitator, said staff is still tweaking some student schedules because of some classes either having not enough or too many students. She said staff will start thinking about the next school year’s scheduling in November.
PSJA Memorial junior Dulce Gonzalez, 16, is in the health science track and is taking orchestra, second-year Spanish, medical microbiology and third-year English. She is not related to Francisco Gonzalez.
“I thought we were going to stay in one wing and not see our friends,” she said.
PSJA North has also dealt with scheduling issues the first few days of school.
”From my perspective, we didn’t put enough time and effort in the planning stage,” said Barbara Mahan, an English dual credit teacher at the school. “I’m not saying it can’t work, but it was sort of my perception we needed another year to plan.”
Weslaco East added Advanced Placement physics and debate courses this year along with block scheduling. Principal Sue Peterson said more courses will be added in upcoming years along with opportunities for students to graduate with professional certifications. The school already offers a nursing assistant certification.
“What has made it work is the extreme amount of teamwork and support by everyone,” Peterson said.
The school has not had to add mathematics and science classes because there were already enough for students to take for each year of high school. This year’s freshmen class is the first to be required by the state to take and pass four years of mathematics and science courses.
The traditional homeroom and advisory periods at the participating schools are being transformed into advocacy time for teachers and small groups of students, depending on the campus size, that will meet weekly. The teachers will keep these advocacy students for the duration of their high school careers.
PSJA North is expected to begin advocacy periods each Wednesday starting this week. The high school had not had regular homeroom-style classes the last few years, school staff said.
Advocacy time will also be an opportunity to study student progress, with academic and behavioral profiles being compiled for each student. The profiles detail absences, test score information, grades and other information and can be accessed online by teachers.
“You want to build relationships,” said Alban Benavides, a junior and senior American history and psychology teacher at PSJA North. “You want to know what you’ve got.”
September 11, 2007
The challenge looms as large as the steel school initials at the front of their campuses: changing the high school atmosphere to provide more courses tailored to students’ interests and providing additional information for teachers to do their jobs.
Six high schools in the Pharr-San Juan-Alamo, Weslaco and Zapata school districts are doing this with the help of the Region One Education Service Center in Edinburg and nationwide education organizations. The schools started last month their first year of the High School Redesign Project, which breaks up student bodies, teachers and counselors into small learning communities geared toward specific topics. The districts planned for a year before launching the project.
The McAllen school district is also in the planning stage and will implement it at its three high schools and Lamar Academy for the 2008-09 school year.
The idea is to have 18 high schools revamped in a five-year period. The money to do this will come from the U.S. Department of Education, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Texas Education Agency. Also partnering in the effort are the Institute for School Excellence and the Institute for Reform and Research in Education, both national entities providing project research and guidance.
Leaders at the districts said they hope redesigned schools can improve student completion rates, lower drop-out rates and improve academic performance.
In the PSJA district, PSJA North High School had the lowest completion rate among its three high schools with 78.2 percent. But, PSJA High School had the largest number of dropouts with 93 students. Both figures are from 2006, according to the state education agency.
In the Weslaco district, Weslaco East High School had the highest number of dropouts with 27 and the lowest completion rate with 91.5 percent for 2006, according to the education agency.
The participating high schools must still abide by state education guidelines and have students pass required standardized tests to graduate. The number of learning communities is contingent on the size of campuses and the range of student interests. Zapata High School only has three communities for law, criminal justice and government; health sciences and business and engineering and technology.
PSJA Memorial High School has eight communities in subjects ranging from performing arts to legal professions and public service. Some new courses in music theory, medical microbiology, sociology and courts and criminal procedures were added to give students more themed courses to take in their junior and seniors years.
“That area of interest can hopefully be articulated in their senior year when you are looking at dual enrollment, concurrent enrollment, project-based learning,” said Claudia Rodriguez, Region One’s administrator for the division of instructional support. “I think the intent is more to go that route and the schools, like in PSJA, creating some classes you can see in college. We applaud their efforts.”
PSJA Memorial junior Francisco Gonzalez, 16, is in the business and technology community. Some of his classes this year include introductory computer maintenance, geometry and orchestra. He is looking forward to learning about Web design and software repairs this year.
“They (teachers) do get you ready for what you will be used to in college, but now, I don’t really feel like they are doing that,” Gonzalez said.
Dalila Garcia, PSJA Memorial’s school improvement facilitator, said staff is still tweaking some student schedules because of some classes either having not enough or too many students. She said staff will start thinking about the next school year’s scheduling in November.
PSJA Memorial junior Dulce Gonzalez, 16, is in the health science track and is taking orchestra, second-year Spanish, medical microbiology and third-year English. She is not related to Francisco Gonzalez.
“I thought we were going to stay in one wing and not see our friends,” she said.
PSJA North has also dealt with scheduling issues the first few days of school.
”From my perspective, we didn’t put enough time and effort in the planning stage,” said Barbara Mahan, an English dual credit teacher at the school. “I’m not saying it can’t work, but it was sort of my perception we needed another year to plan.”
Weslaco East added Advanced Placement physics and debate courses this year along with block scheduling. Principal Sue Peterson said more courses will be added in upcoming years along with opportunities for students to graduate with professional certifications. The school already offers a nursing assistant certification.
“What has made it work is the extreme amount of teamwork and support by everyone,” Peterson said.
The school has not had to add mathematics and science classes because there were already enough for students to take for each year of high school. This year’s freshmen class is the first to be required by the state to take and pass four years of mathematics and science courses.
The traditional homeroom and advisory periods at the participating schools are being transformed into advocacy time for teachers and small groups of students, depending on the campus size, that will meet weekly. The teachers will keep these advocacy students for the duration of their high school careers.
PSJA North is expected to begin advocacy periods each Wednesday starting this week. The high school had not had regular homeroom-style classes the last few years, school staff said.
Advocacy time will also be an opportunity to study student progress, with academic and behavioral profiles being compiled for each student. The profiles detail absences, test score information, grades and other information and can be accessed online by teachers.
“You want to build relationships,” said Alban Benavides, a junior and senior American history and psychology teacher at PSJA North. “You want to know what you’ve got.”
Kindergartners learning both Spanish and English
By Carolyn G. Schatz, Staff Writer
September 12, 2007
The earlier you start, the easier it is to learn a second language. And you don't have to be afraid of monsters.
The kindergartners in Brenda De La Vega's class eagerly took in that lesson one morning last week as they listened to their teacher read "Luna, Lunita Lunera," the story of a little girl who's afraid to go to school until she realizes that no monsters live there.
De La Vega read the story in Spanish as murmurs of "Monster! Monster!" and "Monstruo! Monstruo!" rippled among her rapt listeners.
As De La Vega asked her class in English what they liked best, little hands shot up.
"I liked when she was crying," said one. "I liked when she was going to school," said another - both in English.
Par for the course, De La Vega had read the same story in English - "Moony Luna" - to her class last week.
And so, the kindergartners at Ruth Grimes Elementary School in Bloomington are getting a head start by learning two languages at once - English and Spanish.
Thirty-nine percent of the school's students are native English speakers.
Most of them are Spanish speakers, though students at the school also speak Indonesian, Arabic, Filipino, Vietnamese and Punjabi.
t is the first year that a school in the Colton Joint Unified School District is offering a dual-immersion program.
But it is not as difficult as it sounds. The kids in De La Vega's class made it look easy, as they sat huddled at their tables, drawing colorful fish and learning their numbers and letters - core principles that are the same in both languages.
"Uno, dos - and how many is that?" asked Adela Guillen Coke as she stood over a student's shoulder, interspersing the two languages in a perfect blend. Guillen Coke is a teacher on assignment who coordinates the program.
The mix of Spanish and English flowed effortlessly throughout the day's lesson plan, with the students unhesitatingly responsive - no matter which language they spoke. Both Spanish and English were welcomed warmly.
The goal of the program, said Bertha Arreguin, director of language support services for the district, is for students to become completely bilingual and biliterate.
The way to achieve that is to start them in both languages in kindergarten and build from there.
Ruth Grimes is using a 90-10 program, in which two of the five kindergarten classes are being taught in 90 percent Spanish and 10 percent English.
Next year, the program at Ruth Grimes will be expanded to the first grade, and students will be learning 80 percent Spanish and 20 percent English.
Each year, a new grade level will be added at Ruth Grimes - with 10 percent more English and 10 percent less Spanish taught - so that by the fourth or fifth grades, students will be learning equally in English and Spanish.
"By sixth grade, we want them to be ready to continue on through middle school and high school," Arreguin said.
Parents must make at least a six-year commitment to the program, she said, to make it work.
Pulling them out is a no-no. Parents are required to sign a waiver, promising to keep their child in the dual-immersion program through the fifth grade.
The parental role is key, and language classes will be offered to parents, beginning in October, Arreguin said.
"The need to know two languages is increasing," she said.
"All you have to do is look throughout the world. In almost every country besides the USA, children study or know more than one language."
"It's unheard of in Europe not to know three languages," said Guillen Coke.
The 4- and 5-year-olds at Ruth Grimes are actually doing double the learning.
All of the curriculum in the dual-immersion classes is aligned with state standards.
But while it may seem that those who speak solely English when they enter class may seem to be at a disadvantage by being taught primarily in Spanish - all students in the kindergarten class learn to read in Spanish - research shows otherwise.
Both English- and Spanish-speaking children benefit, administrators say.
The principles for learning to read are the same in both languages, Guillen Coke said.
Research shows that learning another language aids critical thinking, and even improves test scores, Arreguin said.
"Research shows that students in bilingual programs can develop academic skills on a par with or superior to the skills of comparison groups of their peers educated in English-only classrooms," she said.
Moreover, there is no danger in immersing English speakers in another language, because they are not at risk of losing English, Arreguin said.
"Two-way immersion programs are not replacing English with another language," she said, "but providing students the opportunity to acquire a second language at an early age."
The second language is acquired while retaining the first language.
And the best time to learn another language is when children start to speak, up until about age 10, Arreguin said.
It's not just the parents of English learners who want to enroll their children in dual-immersion classes.
The greatest demand comes from high-income professionals who appreciate the advantages of knowing another language in a global economy, Arreguin said.
Amy Norris said she wanted her son, Alexander, 4, to participate in the Ruth Grimes program "because it's good for him to learn a second language. ... Students who take a second language tend to do better throughout their academic career."
The small class size and more individualized instruction are also attractive, she said.
Norris, a full-time nursing student at San Bernardino Valley College, said she only regrets that her 8-year-old is "too old" for the program. But depending on how Alexander performs, she'll be gladly enrolling her 1-year-old when the time comes.
There are no monsters, after all, in Ruth Grimes' kindergarten class.
September 12, 2007
The earlier you start, the easier it is to learn a second language. And you don't have to be afraid of monsters.
The kindergartners in Brenda De La Vega's class eagerly took in that lesson one morning last week as they listened to their teacher read "Luna, Lunita Lunera," the story of a little girl who's afraid to go to school until she realizes that no monsters live there.
De La Vega read the story in Spanish as murmurs of "Monster! Monster!" and "Monstruo! Monstruo!" rippled among her rapt listeners.
As De La Vega asked her class in English what they liked best, little hands shot up.
"I liked when she was crying," said one. "I liked when she was going to school," said another - both in English.
Par for the course, De La Vega had read the same story in English - "Moony Luna" - to her class last week.
And so, the kindergartners at Ruth Grimes Elementary School in Bloomington are getting a head start by learning two languages at once - English and Spanish.
Thirty-nine percent of the school's students are native English speakers.
Most of them are Spanish speakers, though students at the school also speak Indonesian, Arabic, Filipino, Vietnamese and Punjabi.
t is the first year that a school in the Colton Joint Unified School District is offering a dual-immersion program.
But it is not as difficult as it sounds. The kids in De La Vega's class made it look easy, as they sat huddled at their tables, drawing colorful fish and learning their numbers and letters - core principles that are the same in both languages.
"Uno, dos - and how many is that?" asked Adela Guillen Coke as she stood over a student's shoulder, interspersing the two languages in a perfect blend. Guillen Coke is a teacher on assignment who coordinates the program.
The mix of Spanish and English flowed effortlessly throughout the day's lesson plan, with the students unhesitatingly responsive - no matter which language they spoke. Both Spanish and English were welcomed warmly.
The goal of the program, said Bertha Arreguin, director of language support services for the district, is for students to become completely bilingual and biliterate.
The way to achieve that is to start them in both languages in kindergarten and build from there.
Ruth Grimes is using a 90-10 program, in which two of the five kindergarten classes are being taught in 90 percent Spanish and 10 percent English.
Next year, the program at Ruth Grimes will be expanded to the first grade, and students will be learning 80 percent Spanish and 20 percent English.
Each year, a new grade level will be added at Ruth Grimes - with 10 percent more English and 10 percent less Spanish taught - so that by the fourth or fifth grades, students will be learning equally in English and Spanish.
"By sixth grade, we want them to be ready to continue on through middle school and high school," Arreguin said.
Parents must make at least a six-year commitment to the program, she said, to make it work.
Pulling them out is a no-no. Parents are required to sign a waiver, promising to keep their child in the dual-immersion program through the fifth grade.
The parental role is key, and language classes will be offered to parents, beginning in October, Arreguin said.
"The need to know two languages is increasing," she said.
"All you have to do is look throughout the world. In almost every country besides the USA, children study or know more than one language."
"It's unheard of in Europe not to know three languages," said Guillen Coke.
The 4- and 5-year-olds at Ruth Grimes are actually doing double the learning.
All of the curriculum in the dual-immersion classes is aligned with state standards.
But while it may seem that those who speak solely English when they enter class may seem to be at a disadvantage by being taught primarily in Spanish - all students in the kindergarten class learn to read in Spanish - research shows otherwise.
Both English- and Spanish-speaking children benefit, administrators say.
The principles for learning to read are the same in both languages, Guillen Coke said.
Research shows that learning another language aids critical thinking, and even improves test scores, Arreguin said.
"Research shows that students in bilingual programs can develop academic skills on a par with or superior to the skills of comparison groups of their peers educated in English-only classrooms," she said.
Moreover, there is no danger in immersing English speakers in another language, because they are not at risk of losing English, Arreguin said.
"Two-way immersion programs are not replacing English with another language," she said, "but providing students the opportunity to acquire a second language at an early age."
The second language is acquired while retaining the first language.
And the best time to learn another language is when children start to speak, up until about age 10, Arreguin said.
It's not just the parents of English learners who want to enroll their children in dual-immersion classes.
The greatest demand comes from high-income professionals who appreciate the advantages of knowing another language in a global economy, Arreguin said.
Amy Norris said she wanted her son, Alexander, 4, to participate in the Ruth Grimes program "because it's good for him to learn a second language. ... Students who take a second language tend to do better throughout their academic career."
The small class size and more individualized instruction are also attractive, she said.
Norris, a full-time nursing student at San Bernardino Valley College, said she only regrets that her 8-year-old is "too old" for the program. But depending on how Alexander performs, she'll be gladly enrolling her 1-year-old when the time comes.
There are no monsters, after all, in Ruth Grimes' kindergarten class.
Teachers and Rights Groups Oppose Education Measure
By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO / NY Times
September 11, 2007
WASHINGTON, Sept. 10 — The draft House bill to renew the federal No Child Left Behind law came under sharp attack on Monday from civil rights groups and the nation’s largest teachers unions, the latest sign of how difficult it may be for Congress to pass the law this fall.
At a marathon hearing of the House Education Committee, legislators heard from an array of civil rights groups, including the Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights, the National Urban League, the Center for American Progress and Achieve Inc., a group that works with states to raise academic standards.
All protested that a proposal in the bill for a pilot program that would allow districts to devise their own measures of student progress, rather than using statewide tests, would gut the law’s intent of demanding that schools teach all children, regardless of poverty, race or other factors, to the same standard.
Dianne M. Piché, executive director of the Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights, said the bill had “the potential to set back accountability by years, if not decades,” and would lead to lower standards for children in urban and high poverty schools.
“It strikes me as not unlike allowing my teenage son and his friends to score their own driver’s license tests,” Ms. Piché said, adding, “We’ll have one set of standards for the Bronx and one for Westchester County, one for Baltimore and one for Bethesda.”
Representative George Miller, Democrat of California, who is chairman of the committee, countered that district tests would have to be approved by the federal Education Department, which he said would safeguard against any watering down of standards.
The law, a signature initiative of the Bush administration that passed in 2001 with bipartisan support, requires schools to test all students annually in reading and math in grades three to eight and to show all students progressing toward 100 percent proficiency regardless of background. Schools in high poverty areas that fail to show sufficient gains face potentially harsh penalties, including possible closing.
The proposals for changing the law, which has so far tagged 10,000 high poverty schools for state and district intervention, move away from relying solely on test scores in math and reading as a gauge of school progress. They would allow schools to include test results in other subjects, as well as indicators like attendance, promotion, performance in advanced placement courses and graduation rates to demonstrate academic strength.
The draft has also come under criticism from Education Secretary Margaret Spellings and Congressional Republicans.
Mr. Miller said he was not discouraged by the opposition, and indeed, many witnesses praised the proposals as offering much-needed flexibility to the law.
“I think we’re doing well,” Mr. Miller said after the hearing. “It’s not easy, but that’s not a surprise.”
Leaders of the teachers’ unions — Reg Weaver, president of the National Education Association, and Toni Cortese, executive vice president of the American Federation of Teachers — told the committee that they would not support the bill in its current form and that they objected to a proposal to count student test scores in granting pay bonuses.
Mr. Weaver’s testimony produced the sharpest exchange of the day, when Mr. Miller accused the unions of reneging on an earlier agreement to support the measure when it was incorporated into a 2005 bill proposed by Democrats and that was never adopted by Congress, which was then controlled by Republicans.
But Mr. Weaver and Ms. Cortese disputed that account, saying that while they supported the 2005 bill over all, they had expressed concerns about any provisions that would mandate test scores be included in determining pay.
September 11, 2007
WASHINGTON, Sept. 10 — The draft House bill to renew the federal No Child Left Behind law came under sharp attack on Monday from civil rights groups and the nation’s largest teachers unions, the latest sign of how difficult it may be for Congress to pass the law this fall.
At a marathon hearing of the House Education Committee, legislators heard from an array of civil rights groups, including the Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights, the National Urban League, the Center for American Progress and Achieve Inc., a group that works with states to raise academic standards.
All protested that a proposal in the bill for a pilot program that would allow districts to devise their own measures of student progress, rather than using statewide tests, would gut the law’s intent of demanding that schools teach all children, regardless of poverty, race or other factors, to the same standard.
Dianne M. Piché, executive director of the Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights, said the bill had “the potential to set back accountability by years, if not decades,” and would lead to lower standards for children in urban and high poverty schools.
“It strikes me as not unlike allowing my teenage son and his friends to score their own driver’s license tests,” Ms. Piché said, adding, “We’ll have one set of standards for the Bronx and one for Westchester County, one for Baltimore and one for Bethesda.”
Representative George Miller, Democrat of California, who is chairman of the committee, countered that district tests would have to be approved by the federal Education Department, which he said would safeguard against any watering down of standards.
The law, a signature initiative of the Bush administration that passed in 2001 with bipartisan support, requires schools to test all students annually in reading and math in grades three to eight and to show all students progressing toward 100 percent proficiency regardless of background. Schools in high poverty areas that fail to show sufficient gains face potentially harsh penalties, including possible closing.
The proposals for changing the law, which has so far tagged 10,000 high poverty schools for state and district intervention, move away from relying solely on test scores in math and reading as a gauge of school progress. They would allow schools to include test results in other subjects, as well as indicators like attendance, promotion, performance in advanced placement courses and graduation rates to demonstrate academic strength.
The draft has also come under criticism from Education Secretary Margaret Spellings and Congressional Republicans.
Mr. Miller said he was not discouraged by the opposition, and indeed, many witnesses praised the proposals as offering much-needed flexibility to the law.
“I think we’re doing well,” Mr. Miller said after the hearing. “It’s not easy, but that’s not a surprise.”
Leaders of the teachers’ unions — Reg Weaver, president of the National Education Association, and Toni Cortese, executive vice president of the American Federation of Teachers — told the committee that they would not support the bill in its current form and that they objected to a proposal to count student test scores in granting pay bonuses.
Mr. Weaver’s testimony produced the sharpest exchange of the day, when Mr. Miller accused the unions of reneging on an earlier agreement to support the measure when it was incorporated into a 2005 bill proposed by Democrats and that was never adopted by Congress, which was then controlled by Republicans.
But Mr. Weaver and Ms. Cortese disputed that account, saying that while they supported the 2005 bill over all, they had expressed concerns about any provisions that would mandate test scores be included in determining pay.
Why I am Fasting: An Explanation to My Friends
As the U.S considers the re-authorization of NCLB, this is an important read. -Angela
by JONATHAN KOZOL
Why I am Fasting: An Explanation to My Friends
Posted September 10, 2007 | 09:58 AM (EST)
The Huffington Post -- September 11, 2007
This morning, I am entering the 67th day of a partial fast that I began early in the summer as my personal act of protest at the vicious damage being done to inner-city children by the federal education law No Child Left Behind, a racially punitive piece of legislation that Congress will either renew, abolish, or, as thousands of teachers pray, radically revise in the weeks immediately ahead.
The poisonous essence of this law lies in the mania of obsessive testing it has forced upon our nation's schools and, in the case of underfunded, overcrowded inner-city schools, the miserable drill-and-kill curriculum of robotic "teaching to the test" it has imposed on teachers, the best of whom are fleeing from these schools because they know that this debased curriculum would never have been tolerated in the good suburban schools that they, themselves, attended.
The justification for this law was the presumptuous and ignorant determination by the White House that our urban schools are, for the most part, staffed by mediocre drones who will suddenly become terrific teachers if we place a sword of terror just above their heads and threaten them with penalties if they do not pump their students' scores by using proto-military methods of instruction -- scripted texts and hand-held timers -- that will rescue them from doing any thinking of their own. There are some mediocre teachers in our schools (there are mediocre lawyers, mediocre senators, and mediocre presidents as well), but hopelessly dull and unimaginative teachers do not suddenly turn into classroom wizards under a regimen that transforms their classrooms into test-prep factories.
The real effect of No Child Left Behind is to drive away the tens of thousands of exciting and high-spirited, superbly educated teachers whom our urban districts struggle to attract into these schools. There are more remarkable young teachers like this coming into inner-city education than at any time I've seen in more than 40 years. The challenge isn't to recruit them; it's to keep them. But 50 percent of the glowing young idealists I have been recruiting from the nation's most respected colleges and universities are throwing up their hands and giving up their jobs within three years.
When I ask them why they've grown demoralized, they routinely tell me it's the feeling of continual anxiety, the sense of being in a kind of "state of siege," as well as the pressure to conform to teaching methods that drain every bit of joy out of the hours that their children spend with them in school.
"I didn't study all these years," a highly principled and effective first-grade teacher told me -- she had studied literature and anthropology in college while also having been immersed in education courses -- "in order to turn black babies into mindless little robots, denied the normal breadth of learning, all the arts and sciences, all the joy in reading literary classics, all the spontaneity and power to ask interesting questions, that kids are getting in the middle-class white systems."
At a moment when black and Hispanic students are more segregated than at any time since 1968 (in the typical inner-city school I visit, out of an enrollment that may range from 800 to 4,000 students, there are seldom more than five or six white children), NCLB adds yet another factor of division between children of minorities and those in the mainstream of society. In good suburban classrooms, children master the essential skills not from terror but from exhilaration, inspired in them by their teachers, in the act of learning in itself. They're also given critical capacities that they will need if they're to succeed in college and to function as discerning citizens who have the power to interrogate reality. They learn to ask the questions that will shape the nation's future, while inner-city kids are being trained to give prescripted answers and to acquiesce in their subordinate position in society.
In the wake of the calamitous Supreme Court ruling in the end of June that prohibited not only state-enforced but even voluntary programs of school integration, No Child Left Behind -- unless it is dramatically transformed -- will drive an even deeper wedge between two utterly divided sectors of American society. This, then, is the reason I've been fasting, taking only small amounts of mostly liquid foods each day, and, when I have stomach pains, other forms of nourishment at times, a stipulation that my doctor has insisted on in order to avert the risk of doing longterm damage to my heart. Twenty-nine pounds lighter than I was when I began, I've been dreaming about big delicious dinners.
Still, I feel an obligation to those many teachers who have told me, not as an accusation but respectfully, that it was one of my books that diverted them from easier, more lucrative careers and brought them into teaching in the first place. Some call me in the evenings, on the verge of tears, to tell me of the maddening frustration that they feel at being forced to teach in ways that make them hate themselves.
I don't want them to quit their jobs. I give them whatever good survival strategies I can. I tell them that the best defense is to be extremely good at what they do: Deliver the skills! Don't let your classroom grow chaotic! A teacher who can keep a reasonable sense of calm within her room, particularly in a school in which disorder has been common, renders herself almost inexpendable.
At the same time, I always recommend a healthy dose of sly irreverence and a sense of playful and ironical detachment from the criticisms of those clipboard bureaucrats who come around to check on them. (Teachers call them "the curriculum cops" or "NCLB overseers.") I urge them to develop mischievous and inventive ways to convince these gloomy-looking people that whatever they are teaching at that moment, no matter how delectably subversive it may be, is, in fact, directly geared to one of those little chunks of amputated knowledge, known as "state proficiencies," they are supposed to be "delivering" at that specific minute of the day.
But I've also felt the obligation to bring this battle to its source in Washington. I've tried very hard to convince a number of the more enlightened Democrats who serve on the Senate education panel to introduce amendments that will drastically reduce our government's reliance upon standardized exams in judgment of a child, school, or teacher, and attribute greater weight to factors that are not so simple-mindedly reducible to numbers.
Sophisticated as opposed to low-grade methods of assessment would not only tell us whether little Oscar or Shaniqua started out their essays with "a topic sentence" but would also tell us whether they wrote something with the slightest hint of authenticity and charm or simply stamped out insincere placebos. (A child gets no credit for originality or authenticity under No Child Left Behind. Sincerity gets no rewards. Endearing stylistic eccentricity, needless to say, is not rewarded either. That which can't be measured is not valued by the technocrats of uniformity who have designed this miserable piece of legislation.)
On a separate battlefront, I've also tried to win support for an amendment to the law that will take advantage of one of the loop-holes in the recent segregation ruling, an opening that Justice Kennedy has offered us by his insistence that criteria that are not race-specific may be used in order to advance diversity in public schools.
There is a provision in No Child Left Behind that permits a child in a chronically low-performing school to transfer to a more successful school. Up to now, it hasn't worked because there aren't enough successful schools in inner-city districts to which kids can transfer. The Democrats, I've argued, have the opportunity to make this option workable if they are sufficiently audacious to require states to authorize a child's right to transfer across district lines, and provide financial means to make this possible, so that children trapped in truly hopeless schools could, if their parents so desired, go to school in one of the high-spending suburbs that are often a mere 20-minute ride from their front door.
I was surprised that none of the senators with whom I spoke rejected this proposal as too controversial or politically unthinkable. More than one made clear that they enjoyed the notion of helping to "improve" a flawed provision that the White House had included in the law for reasons that most certainly were not intended to enable inner-city kids to go to beautiful suburban schools with 16 or 18 children in a room, instead of 29, or 35, or 40, as in many urban systems.
It was, however, on the testing issue that I received the most explicitly unqualified and positive response. Several of the senators made a lot of time available to think aloud about the ways in which to get rid of that sense of siege so many teachers had described and to be certain that we do not keep on driving out these talented young people from our schools.
The only member of the Democratic leadership I have been unable to get through to is the influential chairman of the education panel, Senator Ted Kennedy, who, one of his colleagues told me flatly, will ultimately "call the shots" on this decision. I've asked the senator three times if he'll talk with me. Each time, I have run into a cold stone wall. This has disappointed me, and startled me, because the senator has been a friend to me in years gone by and has asked for my ideas on education on a number of occasions in the decades since I was a youthful teacher and he was a youthful politician.
Senator Kennedy is, of course, a very busy man and has many other issues of importance he must deal with. But it's also possible, aides to other senators suggest, that he does not wish to contemplate dramatic changes in the law because he co-sponsored the initial bill in a deal with the Republicans. He is also renowned as a gifted builder of consensus in the legislative process. Lending his support to either of the two proposals I have made would almost surely guarantee a knockdown battle with conservative Republicans and, perhaps, with some of the Democratic neoliberals as well.
Still, Senator Kennedy has displayed a genuine nobility of vision in defense of elemental fair play for low-income children many times before. Is it possible that he may rise to the occasion once again? If he does, I may finally listen to the worries of my friends and decide it's time to bring this episode of fasting to an end. If not, I'll keep slogging on. It's a tiny price to pay compared to what so many of our children and their teachers have to go through every single day.
by JONATHAN KOZOL
Why I am Fasting: An Explanation to My Friends
Posted September 10, 2007 | 09:58 AM (EST)
The Huffington Post -- September 11, 2007
This morning, I am entering the 67th day of a partial fast that I began early in the summer as my personal act of protest at the vicious damage being done to inner-city children by the federal education law No Child Left Behind, a racially punitive piece of legislation that Congress will either renew, abolish, or, as thousands of teachers pray, radically revise in the weeks immediately ahead.
The poisonous essence of this law lies in the mania of obsessive testing it has forced upon our nation's schools and, in the case of underfunded, overcrowded inner-city schools, the miserable drill-and-kill curriculum of robotic "teaching to the test" it has imposed on teachers, the best of whom are fleeing from these schools because they know that this debased curriculum would never have been tolerated in the good suburban schools that they, themselves, attended.
The justification for this law was the presumptuous and ignorant determination by the White House that our urban schools are, for the most part, staffed by mediocre drones who will suddenly become terrific teachers if we place a sword of terror just above their heads and threaten them with penalties if they do not pump their students' scores by using proto-military methods of instruction -- scripted texts and hand-held timers -- that will rescue them from doing any thinking of their own. There are some mediocre teachers in our schools (there are mediocre lawyers, mediocre senators, and mediocre presidents as well), but hopelessly dull and unimaginative teachers do not suddenly turn into classroom wizards under a regimen that transforms their classrooms into test-prep factories.
The real effect of No Child Left Behind is to drive away the tens of thousands of exciting and high-spirited, superbly educated teachers whom our urban districts struggle to attract into these schools. There are more remarkable young teachers like this coming into inner-city education than at any time I've seen in more than 40 years. The challenge isn't to recruit them; it's to keep them. But 50 percent of the glowing young idealists I have been recruiting from the nation's most respected colleges and universities are throwing up their hands and giving up their jobs within three years.
When I ask them why they've grown demoralized, they routinely tell me it's the feeling of continual anxiety, the sense of being in a kind of "state of siege," as well as the pressure to conform to teaching methods that drain every bit of joy out of the hours that their children spend with them in school.
"I didn't study all these years," a highly principled and effective first-grade teacher told me -- she had studied literature and anthropology in college while also having been immersed in education courses -- "in order to turn black babies into mindless little robots, denied the normal breadth of learning, all the arts and sciences, all the joy in reading literary classics, all the spontaneity and power to ask interesting questions, that kids are getting in the middle-class white systems."
At a moment when black and Hispanic students are more segregated than at any time since 1968 (in the typical inner-city school I visit, out of an enrollment that may range from 800 to 4,000 students, there are seldom more than five or six white children), NCLB adds yet another factor of division between children of minorities and those in the mainstream of society. In good suburban classrooms, children master the essential skills not from terror but from exhilaration, inspired in them by their teachers, in the act of learning in itself. They're also given critical capacities that they will need if they're to succeed in college and to function as discerning citizens who have the power to interrogate reality. They learn to ask the questions that will shape the nation's future, while inner-city kids are being trained to give prescripted answers and to acquiesce in their subordinate position in society.
In the wake of the calamitous Supreme Court ruling in the end of June that prohibited not only state-enforced but even voluntary programs of school integration, No Child Left Behind -- unless it is dramatically transformed -- will drive an even deeper wedge between two utterly divided sectors of American society. This, then, is the reason I've been fasting, taking only small amounts of mostly liquid foods each day, and, when I have stomach pains, other forms of nourishment at times, a stipulation that my doctor has insisted on in order to avert the risk of doing longterm damage to my heart. Twenty-nine pounds lighter than I was when I began, I've been dreaming about big delicious dinners.
Still, I feel an obligation to those many teachers who have told me, not as an accusation but respectfully, that it was one of my books that diverted them from easier, more lucrative careers and brought them into teaching in the first place. Some call me in the evenings, on the verge of tears, to tell me of the maddening frustration that they feel at being forced to teach in ways that make them hate themselves.
I don't want them to quit their jobs. I give them whatever good survival strategies I can. I tell them that the best defense is to be extremely good at what they do: Deliver the skills! Don't let your classroom grow chaotic! A teacher who can keep a reasonable sense of calm within her room, particularly in a school in which disorder has been common, renders herself almost inexpendable.
At the same time, I always recommend a healthy dose of sly irreverence and a sense of playful and ironical detachment from the criticisms of those clipboard bureaucrats who come around to check on them. (Teachers call them "the curriculum cops" or "NCLB overseers.") I urge them to develop mischievous and inventive ways to convince these gloomy-looking people that whatever they are teaching at that moment, no matter how delectably subversive it may be, is, in fact, directly geared to one of those little chunks of amputated knowledge, known as "state proficiencies," they are supposed to be "delivering" at that specific minute of the day.
But I've also felt the obligation to bring this battle to its source in Washington. I've tried very hard to convince a number of the more enlightened Democrats who serve on the Senate education panel to introduce amendments that will drastically reduce our government's reliance upon standardized exams in judgment of a child, school, or teacher, and attribute greater weight to factors that are not so simple-mindedly reducible to numbers.
Sophisticated as opposed to low-grade methods of assessment would not only tell us whether little Oscar or Shaniqua started out their essays with "a topic sentence" but would also tell us whether they wrote something with the slightest hint of authenticity and charm or simply stamped out insincere placebos. (A child gets no credit for originality or authenticity under No Child Left Behind. Sincerity gets no rewards. Endearing stylistic eccentricity, needless to say, is not rewarded either. That which can't be measured is not valued by the technocrats of uniformity who have designed this miserable piece of legislation.)
On a separate battlefront, I've also tried to win support for an amendment to the law that will take advantage of one of the loop-holes in the recent segregation ruling, an opening that Justice Kennedy has offered us by his insistence that criteria that are not race-specific may be used in order to advance diversity in public schools.
There is a provision in No Child Left Behind that permits a child in a chronically low-performing school to transfer to a more successful school. Up to now, it hasn't worked because there aren't enough successful schools in inner-city districts to which kids can transfer. The Democrats, I've argued, have the opportunity to make this option workable if they are sufficiently audacious to require states to authorize a child's right to transfer across district lines, and provide financial means to make this possible, so that children trapped in truly hopeless schools could, if their parents so desired, go to school in one of the high-spending suburbs that are often a mere 20-minute ride from their front door.
I was surprised that none of the senators with whom I spoke rejected this proposal as too controversial or politically unthinkable. More than one made clear that they enjoyed the notion of helping to "improve" a flawed provision that the White House had included in the law for reasons that most certainly were not intended to enable inner-city kids to go to beautiful suburban schools with 16 or 18 children in a room, instead of 29, or 35, or 40, as in many urban systems.
It was, however, on the testing issue that I received the most explicitly unqualified and positive response. Several of the senators made a lot of time available to think aloud about the ways in which to get rid of that sense of siege so many teachers had described and to be certain that we do not keep on driving out these talented young people from our schools.
The only member of the Democratic leadership I have been unable to get through to is the influential chairman of the education panel, Senator Ted Kennedy, who, one of his colleagues told me flatly, will ultimately "call the shots" on this decision. I've asked the senator three times if he'll talk with me. Each time, I have run into a cold stone wall. This has disappointed me, and startled me, because the senator has been a friend to me in years gone by and has asked for my ideas on education on a number of occasions in the decades since I was a youthful teacher and he was a youthful politician.
Senator Kennedy is, of course, a very busy man and has many other issues of importance he must deal with. But it's also possible, aides to other senators suggest, that he does not wish to contemplate dramatic changes in the law because he co-sponsored the initial bill in a deal with the Republicans. He is also renowned as a gifted builder of consensus in the legislative process. Lending his support to either of the two proposals I have made would almost surely guarantee a knockdown battle with conservative Republicans and, perhaps, with some of the Democratic neoliberals as well.
Still, Senator Kennedy has displayed a genuine nobility of vision in defense of elemental fair play for low-income children many times before. Is it possible that he may rise to the occasion once again? If he does, I may finally listen to the worries of my friends and decide it's time to bring this episode of fasting to an end. If not, I'll keep slogging on. It's a tiny price to pay compared to what so many of our children and their teachers have to go through every single day.
NCLB Reauthorization DATABASE
Here's a useful site for reading up on the recommendation summaries for the NCLB reauthorization. -Patricia
Who's saying what about NCLB Reauthorization?
The intense interest in No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and the upcoming reauthorization have prompted several national organizations to offer recommendations for improving the far-reaching federal law. To better inform the national debate on NCLB reauthorization, ECS collected and analyzed these recommendations and created a one-stop source that allows you to easily find out who’s saying what about revising the law.
Click here to go to site
Who's saying what about NCLB Reauthorization?
The intense interest in No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and the upcoming reauthorization have prompted several national organizations to offer recommendations for improving the far-reaching federal law. To better inform the national debate on NCLB reauthorization, ECS collected and analyzed these recommendations and created a one-stop source that allows you to easily find out who’s saying what about revising the law.
Click here to go to site
Schools aim to meet standards
By Israel Saenz (Contact)
Sunday, September 9, 2007 / Caller Times
CORPUS CHRISTI — As Moody High School instructor Michelle Donahue gave stern graphing instructions using a classroom overhead during the first week of school, Laura Estrada knelt by the desk of one student, troubleshooting his difficulties understanding the lesson.
The math students weren't seeing double -- they had two teachers. It's an image that will be much more common this year in CCISD schools.
Starting this academic year, administrators answered the district's failure to meet federal progress standards with several strategies to decrease the number of students taking alternate standardized tests.
One of those is the co-teaching model, now conducted at 38 of the district's 62 schools. The model will involve a regular instructor and a co-teacher who will supplement math or reading lessons by helping students one-on-one during the class.
At Moody, the only Corpus Christi Independent School District high school to meet federal standards this year, Estrada said the co-teaching model will help keep more students learning at their grade level and keep some from being classified as special-education students. The school missed federal standards for the 2005-06 academic year.
Along with cutting down the student-instructor ratio in the classroom, the co-teaching model is meant for one instructor to act as an in-class tutor, so children leave the class understanding the lesson and avoid falling behind.
"We work off each other," Estrada said. "We both work with students, monitor them and assess them."
The district missed federal Adequate Yearly Progress standards, which rate schools based on students' performance on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, for the second consecutive year based on reading scores at the special-education level. The district's emphasis will be on how it tests the approximately 4,380 special-education students, Superintendent Scott Elliff reported to district school board members last month.
The district's TAKS scores are rated at the federal level with the annual Adequate Yearly Progress report and at the state level when the Texas Education Agency releases preliminary TAKS scores. The state rated the district academically acceptable when test scores were released early last month, exposing a rift in how the two levels of accountability measure success.
Special-education students make up about 11 percent of the district's nearly 39,000 students this year -- but the district's goal is to not exceed the 3 percent federal cap of students taking alternative assessment exams. Federal guidelines classify students beyond that 3 percent mark as failures.
Last year 1,900 of the district's students -- 5 percent of the district's population last spring -- took the State Developed Alternative Assessment II instead of the TAKS.
The district's second consecutive failure to meet federal standards puts it under the first stage of sanctions that require implementation of a districtwide strategy to improve performance in failing areas. The co-teaching model, along with progress exams for all students in October, January and March, are part of the strategy.
The co-teaching model was introduced during the 2004-05 academic year with only a handful of volunteer campuses taking part, said Special Education Director Jacquelene Turner. Turner said 16 campuses took part in the 2006-07 academic year.
Turner said that to date, 255 district instructors have been trained in the co-teaching model. It has not involved hiring extra personnel, Elliff said.
In addition to the co-teaching model, Elliff said district schools will be required to conduct benchmark testing to check students' progress throughout the year.
"In the new world of high-stakes testing, it's a challenge for teachers to know the strengths of all students," Elliff said. "But the truth is it really gets down to teachers having support on campus."
Twelve percent, or 149, of the state's school districts did not meet federal standards this year.
"We see quite a few schools and districts that missed AYP because of special-education students," said Suzanne Marchman, Texas Education Agency spokeswoman. "At this point, the state is at the mercy of federal rules."
Federal progress standards are set under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.
Special-education students -- usually first classified as such in middle and elementary school levels -- can be students with disabilities ranging from dyslexia, speech and hearing problems to severe mental disorders. They are individually reviewed each year to assess whether they must remain in that classification.
Special-education students are not required to take alternative tests, but Elliff said the district has started to review schools' procedures for identifying students as special-education students.
"We are carefully analyzing how many campuses are being referred for special education and what steps are done before students are referred," Elliff said.
Special education
The Corpus Christi Independent School District missed federal progress test standards because of the number of special-education students who took alternative tests or failed tests. Preliminary numbers of special-education high school students in the district, as of Aug. 27
292
Carroll High School
303
King High School
324
Moody High School
254
Miller High School
307
Ray High School
Source: Corpus Christi Independent School District
Sunday, September 9, 2007 / Caller Times
CORPUS CHRISTI — As Moody High School instructor Michelle Donahue gave stern graphing instructions using a classroom overhead during the first week of school, Laura Estrada knelt by the desk of one student, troubleshooting his difficulties understanding the lesson.
The math students weren't seeing double -- they had two teachers. It's an image that will be much more common this year in CCISD schools.
Starting this academic year, administrators answered the district's failure to meet federal progress standards with several strategies to decrease the number of students taking alternate standardized tests.
One of those is the co-teaching model, now conducted at 38 of the district's 62 schools. The model will involve a regular instructor and a co-teacher who will supplement math or reading lessons by helping students one-on-one during the class.
At Moody, the only Corpus Christi Independent School District high school to meet federal standards this year, Estrada said the co-teaching model will help keep more students learning at their grade level and keep some from being classified as special-education students. The school missed federal standards for the 2005-06 academic year.
Along with cutting down the student-instructor ratio in the classroom, the co-teaching model is meant for one instructor to act as an in-class tutor, so children leave the class understanding the lesson and avoid falling behind.
"We work off each other," Estrada said. "We both work with students, monitor them and assess them."
The district missed federal Adequate Yearly Progress standards, which rate schools based on students' performance on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, for the second consecutive year based on reading scores at the special-education level. The district's emphasis will be on how it tests the approximately 4,380 special-education students, Superintendent Scott Elliff reported to district school board members last month.
The district's TAKS scores are rated at the federal level with the annual Adequate Yearly Progress report and at the state level when the Texas Education Agency releases preliminary TAKS scores. The state rated the district academically acceptable when test scores were released early last month, exposing a rift in how the two levels of accountability measure success.
Special-education students make up about 11 percent of the district's nearly 39,000 students this year -- but the district's goal is to not exceed the 3 percent federal cap of students taking alternative assessment exams. Federal guidelines classify students beyond that 3 percent mark as failures.
Last year 1,900 of the district's students -- 5 percent of the district's population last spring -- took the State Developed Alternative Assessment II instead of the TAKS.
The district's second consecutive failure to meet federal standards puts it under the first stage of sanctions that require implementation of a districtwide strategy to improve performance in failing areas. The co-teaching model, along with progress exams for all students in October, January and March, are part of the strategy.
The co-teaching model was introduced during the 2004-05 academic year with only a handful of volunteer campuses taking part, said Special Education Director Jacquelene Turner. Turner said 16 campuses took part in the 2006-07 academic year.
Turner said that to date, 255 district instructors have been trained in the co-teaching model. It has not involved hiring extra personnel, Elliff said.
In addition to the co-teaching model, Elliff said district schools will be required to conduct benchmark testing to check students' progress throughout the year.
"In the new world of high-stakes testing, it's a challenge for teachers to know the strengths of all students," Elliff said. "But the truth is it really gets down to teachers having support on campus."
Twelve percent, or 149, of the state's school districts did not meet federal standards this year.
"We see quite a few schools and districts that missed AYP because of special-education students," said Suzanne Marchman, Texas Education Agency spokeswoman. "At this point, the state is at the mercy of federal rules."
Federal progress standards are set under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.
Special-education students -- usually first classified as such in middle and elementary school levels -- can be students with disabilities ranging from dyslexia, speech and hearing problems to severe mental disorders. They are individually reviewed each year to assess whether they must remain in that classification.
Special-education students are not required to take alternative tests, but Elliff said the district has started to review schools' procedures for identifying students as special-education students.
"We are carefully analyzing how many campuses are being referred for special education and what steps are done before students are referred," Elliff said.
Special education
The Corpus Christi Independent School District missed federal progress test standards because of the number of special-education students who took alternative tests or failed tests. Preliminary numbers of special-education high school students in the district, as of Aug. 27
292
Carroll High School
303
King High School
324
Moody High School
254
Miller High School
307
Ray High School
Source: Corpus Christi Independent School District
State's exemplary schools not judged on all criteria
Campuses with less racial, socio-economic diversity judged on fewer criteria
September 9, 2007
By KATHERINE LEAL UNMUTH / The Dallas Morning News
The Divide Independent School District fits comfortably into a two-room schoolhouse.
Its 13 students make up the smallest district in the state. According to the Texas school accountability system, it is also one of the best – one of just 19 rated exemplary.
Three years into the TAKS system and more than five years into the federal No Child Left Behind law, those rewarded with the best performance remain a largely homogeneous group.
The state's exemplary districts tend to be small and rural, like Divide, or wealthy and suburban, like the four in North Texas: Southlake Carroll, Highland Park, Lovejoy and Sunnyvale.
That leaves some questioning whether school ratings have more to do with a district's demographics than the quality of its teaching.
The ratings system uses 36 accountability measures, the majority tied to performance on the TAKS exams. But most exemplary districts are judged on 10 or fewer measures because they don't have enough poor and minority students to count toward their rating. Both groups tend to score lower than their white and wealthier counterparts.
Divide's small size means that it had to perform well in only three subjects last school year. Highland Park had the distinction of having no poor students.
Overall, of the students attending exemplary districts last year, 5 percent were poor and 88 percent were white. Most exemplary districts have only several hundred students. And rarely do they have any with limited English skills.
In contrast, 55 percent of Texas public school students were poor and 36 percent were white. The largest student group is Hispanic.
Education officials now recognize that taking a snapshot in time of children at a certain grade level does not fully reflect how well school districts are educating children – especially those who are most vulnerable.
On both the state and federal level, educators are examining ways to rework the accountability system to measure whether a child's performance is improving from year to year. Texas legislators recently approved putting such a growth model into place by 2009.
"How do we acknowledge districts that do a really good job of advancing students, particularly disadvantaged students?" said Sandy Kress, a former education policy adviser to President Bush who helped design the state and federal accountability systems. "That is something that we probably as a state and a country need to keep working on in terms of refinements in our accountability system."
How it works
Mr. Kress was a Dallas school board trustee when he first pushed to examine the test scores of poor and minority students. Breaking out those scores exposed the achievement gap.
In 1992, the test-based accountability system was born in Texas. It served as the model for No Child Left Behind, which was signed into law in 2002.
The legislation forced schools to be accountable for the performance of disadvantaged children and increase their efforts to help them, instead of ignore them.
But many question how much progress has been made.
"The whole point of the education reforms was to change that situation and create a system where demography would not be destiny," said Michael Petrilli, vice president for national programs at the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. "But we clearly haven't reached that day yet."
His group, which focuses on education reform, found Texas was one of only five states to show progress in the scores of poor children.
Under the Texas accountability system, districts are judged on the performance of children in math, reading, writing, science and social studies. In each subject, they are also rated on the subgroup performance of poor, black, Hispanic and white children.
Each year, the standards are raised. This year, 90 percent of students in each subgroup had to pass for the district to become exemplary. Poor scores by just a few students in one category can lower a district's entire rating.
Some parents and educators have complained that the system makes it much more difficult for diverse districts to earn high ratings because they have more hurdles to overcome.
The disparity between Divide and Dallas school districts is telling. Divide's 19 students last school year were rated on three measures – reading, writing and math scores for all students. Dallas, which last year had 159,144 students, 84 percent of whom are poor and 95 percent of whom are minority, was rated on all 36 measures.
Don Van Slyke, who follows education in Irving, argues school districts should be judged against those with similar demographics.
"Is the TEA comparing apples and oranges? No, it is more like grapes and watermelons," he wrote.
Some fear changes to the system could mean less focus on educating poor and minority children.
Texas Education Agency associate commissioner Criss Cloudt said similar complaints were made under the earlier TAAS tests. But she said expectations should not be lowered just because the higher ratings are difficult to earn.
"We had a lot of superintendents across the state saying it is absolutely impossible," she said. "Years later, we had a number of large districts recognized. I have no reason to think that something similar won't happen with the current [TAKS] system."
Exemplary districts
The top-rated districts tend to have similar traits.
Most are not rated on the performance of poor and minority children or on tougher subject areas such as science.
"We're a small, predominantly German Catholic community," said Dennis Holt, superintendent of Lindsay ISD, which had 512 students last school year. "We are small enough where the numbers don't come into play. We don't have all the different subgroups."
Some other patterns emerge:
• Only three of the 19 exemplary districts serve more than 1,000 students, according to enrollment data from last school year. All are in North Texas – Carroll, Highland Park and Lovejoy.
• Only six of the 19 districts are rated on the performance of poor children in any subject. Only five are rated on the performance of black or Hispanic students in any subject. Three are not rated on science scores.
• Only seven districts are rated at the high school level, where some of the highest failure rates occur on TAKS.
• The exemplary district with the highest number of measures to meet? Carroll, at 19.
While a number of individual schools with lots of poor and minority students have earned exemplary ratings from the state, the top tier is often more difficult to achieve on a districtwide level.
Southlake's Carroll ISD became the largest district to earn an exemplary rating this year after focusing intensely on math and science scores. The district had been recognized the previous year.
The exemplary rating is "a benchmark people use to tell the quality of our schools," superintendent David Faltys said. "But we try to address the TAKS, then move on to higher-level thinking as quickly as we can because that's what our community expects."
In tiny Divide, superintendent and teacher Bill Bacon said he believes his small classes mean children are less likely to be overlooked. But his exemplary district still has challenges.
With only two classrooms, he must teach to third- through sixth-graders and handle ESL and special education
"Sometimes, you just kind of feel like one of those guys on The Ed Sullivan Show trying to spin plates and keep all of them moving," he said. "If I have a child that doesn't pass, I still get rated on that. I almost have to have 100 percent passing to thrive."
Richardson's success
This year, TEA officials singled out Richardson schools as some of the best in the state when they held onto their recognized rating. Many districts, including Carrollton-Farmers Branch, Frisco and Plano, dropped this year from recognized to academically acceptable in part because standards were raised.
Richardson ISD was the largest diverse district to earn the recognized rating. With nearly half of its students last year economically disadvantaged – 16,797 – and with a majority of its students being minority, the district more closely reflects Texas schoolchildren than any exemplary district.
"You've got to look at who they have to work with," said Chrys Dougherty, the director of research for the National Center for Educational Accountability. "It's a whole lot harder for them. In a Highland Park, you would expect them to be exemplary even if the school system isn't adding any value to the kids."
Richardson superintendent David Simmons said his district's success involved including frequently analyzing test data to determine instruction and providing teacher training and mentoring.
"The more student populations you serve and the more subject areas tested, the more opportunities you have not to meet the standards," Dr. Simmons said. "Larger districts with large percentages of economically disadvantaged and limited English-proficient children have greater challenges. That's the reality we operate in."
Looking ahead
Increasing discontent with the accountability system is prompting policy experts and legislators to look at alternatives.
Earlier this year, legislators did away with longstanding exit exams required to graduate in Texas. In that same law, they created a committee to examine the current accountability system.
The goal is also to align it better with national standards. For example, Richardson is recognized this year under the Texas system, but it failed to make adequate yearly progress under the federal program.
The committee will also focus on developing a growth model to measure how much progress children make in a year.
"The accountability system is going to have to change," said state Sen. Florence Shapiro, who authored the legislation. "I think schools will be much more willing to be held accountable for the growth of the student as a result of the instruction that was provided by that school rather than factors that are beyond their control."
Dr. Dougherty said a growth model would better gauge whether districts are advancing children.
Instead of looking at "this year's third-graders versus last year," he said, "they're talking about looking at this year's third-graders and then looking at [them] next year in fourth grade – did they move up?"
A number of states are moving forward with pilot programs to measure growth. Dr. Cloudt said Texas will begin piloting several models next month.
Richardson's Dr. Simmons said looking at students' growth is more "labor intensive," but it is possible.
"We're still perfecting that," he said. "It's an evolving process."
September 9, 2007
By KATHERINE LEAL UNMUTH / The Dallas Morning News
The Divide Independent School District fits comfortably into a two-room schoolhouse.
Its 13 students make up the smallest district in the state. According to the Texas school accountability system, it is also one of the best – one of just 19 rated exemplary.
Three years into the TAKS system and more than five years into the federal No Child Left Behind law, those rewarded with the best performance remain a largely homogeneous group.
The state's exemplary districts tend to be small and rural, like Divide, or wealthy and suburban, like the four in North Texas: Southlake Carroll, Highland Park, Lovejoy and Sunnyvale.
That leaves some questioning whether school ratings have more to do with a district's demographics than the quality of its teaching.
The ratings system uses 36 accountability measures, the majority tied to performance on the TAKS exams. But most exemplary districts are judged on 10 or fewer measures because they don't have enough poor and minority students to count toward their rating. Both groups tend to score lower than their white and wealthier counterparts.
Divide's small size means that it had to perform well in only three subjects last school year. Highland Park had the distinction of having no poor students.
Overall, of the students attending exemplary districts last year, 5 percent were poor and 88 percent were white. Most exemplary districts have only several hundred students. And rarely do they have any with limited English skills.
In contrast, 55 percent of Texas public school students were poor and 36 percent were white. The largest student group is Hispanic.
Education officials now recognize that taking a snapshot in time of children at a certain grade level does not fully reflect how well school districts are educating children – especially those who are most vulnerable.
On both the state and federal level, educators are examining ways to rework the accountability system to measure whether a child's performance is improving from year to year. Texas legislators recently approved putting such a growth model into place by 2009.
"How do we acknowledge districts that do a really good job of advancing students, particularly disadvantaged students?" said Sandy Kress, a former education policy adviser to President Bush who helped design the state and federal accountability systems. "That is something that we probably as a state and a country need to keep working on in terms of refinements in our accountability system."
How it works
Mr. Kress was a Dallas school board trustee when he first pushed to examine the test scores of poor and minority students. Breaking out those scores exposed the achievement gap.
In 1992, the test-based accountability system was born in Texas. It served as the model for No Child Left Behind, which was signed into law in 2002.
The legislation forced schools to be accountable for the performance of disadvantaged children and increase their efforts to help them, instead of ignore them.
But many question how much progress has been made.
"The whole point of the education reforms was to change that situation and create a system where demography would not be destiny," said Michael Petrilli, vice president for national programs at the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. "But we clearly haven't reached that day yet."
His group, which focuses on education reform, found Texas was one of only five states to show progress in the scores of poor children.
Under the Texas accountability system, districts are judged on the performance of children in math, reading, writing, science and social studies. In each subject, they are also rated on the subgroup performance of poor, black, Hispanic and white children.
Each year, the standards are raised. This year, 90 percent of students in each subgroup had to pass for the district to become exemplary. Poor scores by just a few students in one category can lower a district's entire rating.
Some parents and educators have complained that the system makes it much more difficult for diverse districts to earn high ratings because they have more hurdles to overcome.
The disparity between Divide and Dallas school districts is telling. Divide's 19 students last school year were rated on three measures – reading, writing and math scores for all students. Dallas, which last year had 159,144 students, 84 percent of whom are poor and 95 percent of whom are minority, was rated on all 36 measures.
Don Van Slyke, who follows education in Irving, argues school districts should be judged against those with similar demographics.
"Is the TEA comparing apples and oranges? No, it is more like grapes and watermelons," he wrote.
Some fear changes to the system could mean less focus on educating poor and minority children.
Texas Education Agency associate commissioner Criss Cloudt said similar complaints were made under the earlier TAAS tests. But she said expectations should not be lowered just because the higher ratings are difficult to earn.
"We had a lot of superintendents across the state saying it is absolutely impossible," she said. "Years later, we had a number of large districts recognized. I have no reason to think that something similar won't happen with the current [TAKS] system."
Exemplary districts
The top-rated districts tend to have similar traits.
Most are not rated on the performance of poor and minority children or on tougher subject areas such as science.
"We're a small, predominantly German Catholic community," said Dennis Holt, superintendent of Lindsay ISD, which had 512 students last school year. "We are small enough where the numbers don't come into play. We don't have all the different subgroups."
Some other patterns emerge:
• Only three of the 19 exemplary districts serve more than 1,000 students, according to enrollment data from last school year. All are in North Texas – Carroll, Highland Park and Lovejoy.
• Only six of the 19 districts are rated on the performance of poor children in any subject. Only five are rated on the performance of black or Hispanic students in any subject. Three are not rated on science scores.
• Only seven districts are rated at the high school level, where some of the highest failure rates occur on TAKS.
• The exemplary district with the highest number of measures to meet? Carroll, at 19.
While a number of individual schools with lots of poor and minority students have earned exemplary ratings from the state, the top tier is often more difficult to achieve on a districtwide level.
Southlake's Carroll ISD became the largest district to earn an exemplary rating this year after focusing intensely on math and science scores. The district had been recognized the previous year.
The exemplary rating is "a benchmark people use to tell the quality of our schools," superintendent David Faltys said. "But we try to address the TAKS, then move on to higher-level thinking as quickly as we can because that's what our community expects."
In tiny Divide, superintendent and teacher Bill Bacon said he believes his small classes mean children are less likely to be overlooked. But his exemplary district still has challenges.
With only two classrooms, he must teach to third- through sixth-graders and handle ESL and special education
"Sometimes, you just kind of feel like one of those guys on The Ed Sullivan Show trying to spin plates and keep all of them moving," he said. "If I have a child that doesn't pass, I still get rated on that. I almost have to have 100 percent passing to thrive."
Richardson's success
This year, TEA officials singled out Richardson schools as some of the best in the state when they held onto their recognized rating. Many districts, including Carrollton-Farmers Branch, Frisco and Plano, dropped this year from recognized to academically acceptable in part because standards were raised.
Richardson ISD was the largest diverse district to earn the recognized rating. With nearly half of its students last year economically disadvantaged – 16,797 – and with a majority of its students being minority, the district more closely reflects Texas schoolchildren than any exemplary district.
"You've got to look at who they have to work with," said Chrys Dougherty, the director of research for the National Center for Educational Accountability. "It's a whole lot harder for them. In a Highland Park, you would expect them to be exemplary even if the school system isn't adding any value to the kids."
Richardson superintendent David Simmons said his district's success involved including frequently analyzing test data to determine instruction and providing teacher training and mentoring.
"The more student populations you serve and the more subject areas tested, the more opportunities you have not to meet the standards," Dr. Simmons said. "Larger districts with large percentages of economically disadvantaged and limited English-proficient children have greater challenges. That's the reality we operate in."
Looking ahead
Increasing discontent with the accountability system is prompting policy experts and legislators to look at alternatives.
Earlier this year, legislators did away with longstanding exit exams required to graduate in Texas. In that same law, they created a committee to examine the current accountability system.
The goal is also to align it better with national standards. For example, Richardson is recognized this year under the Texas system, but it failed to make adequate yearly progress under the federal program.
The committee will also focus on developing a growth model to measure how much progress children make in a year.
"The accountability system is going to have to change," said state Sen. Florence Shapiro, who authored the legislation. "I think schools will be much more willing to be held accountable for the growth of the student as a result of the instruction that was provided by that school rather than factors that are beyond their control."
Dr. Dougherty said a growth model would better gauge whether districts are advancing children.
Instead of looking at "this year's third-graders versus last year," he said, "they're talking about looking at this year's third-graders and then looking at [them] next year in fourth grade – did they move up?"
A number of states are moving forward with pilot programs to measure growth. Dr. Cloudt said Texas will begin piloting several models next month.
Richardson's Dr. Simmons said looking at students' growth is more "labor intensive," but it is possible.
"We're still perfecting that," he said. "It's an evolving process."
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