SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/351030_schoolreform13.html
Teachers key to school reform
Last updated February 12, 2008 5:12 p.m. PT
MICHAEL HUREAUX AND ROBERT FEMIANO
GUEST COLUMNISTS
The trouble with education, we are told by school reform pundits, is the teachers. Often composed of business and legislative leaders, these "reform" platforms begin by claiming the teacher is the most predictable factor of student success. From this they infer the reverse to be true: If students do not succeed, it is the teacher who needs fixing. One high-profile example of this thinking is the No Child Left Behind Act, which calls for "highly qualified" teachers in every classroom. If a school does not "perform" under NCLB, eventually all teachers can be replaced. The euphemism is "reconstitution."
But the feds are not alone in placing the blame on teachers. Educational consultants argue similarly, including the company recently hired by the Gates Foundation for Seattle Public Schools, McKinsey and Co. In their 2006 Report to Ohio Board of Education, (also funded by Gates) the consultants focused their proposals to "address the single-most important factor affecting student achievement: teacher quality." The teachers' union, the Seattle Education Association, recently voted against participating in the audit.
If teachers are the problem, logical suggestions for fixes include market driven solutions, such as merit pay and demotions. Other remediation might require district training, instructional coaches, teacher-proof curricula and tougher evaluations. These fixes assume teachers are lazy, uncaring and incompetent and ignore the fact that most teachers want the best for their students and are motivated out of concern and professionalism, not fear and money.
What about the role of curriculum? Can its impact on student achievement be minimized?
Teacher wisdom would echo the garbage in, garbage out parlance. For example, if a district mandates a curriculum that is a mile wide and inch deep (as in many exploratory math programs), is it reasonable to expect a thorough understanding? Some curriculums go further and dictate the method of teaching as well as content. More and more districts are adopting scripted programs for reading and math and even science kits. Under such circumstances where a teacher's professional judgment is usurped by the publisher's lesson plan, or a district's pacing guide, it would seem illogical to insist the teacher is the most important catalyst in student achievement.
Teachers long have asserted the most significant factor in helping students is class size. In a classroom of 27 second-graders, some are just learning English, some have special education requirements, some qualify for gifted programs, some have unresolved emotional issues resulting in periodic disruptive behaviors or withdraws, one is homeless and another is awaiting the provision of free eyeglasses. With such a caseload, just how effective can one teacher be in challenging each student to reach his fullest potential?
Contrary to what reformers suggest, there is reliable research in support of the adage "as the twig is bent, so grows the tree." The most important study, the Tennessee STAR project, followed the effect of small classes in the first three grades. The findings suggest small classes (17 pupils) are more effective academically than larger classes (22+) overall with the greatest advantage seen for urban minority students. This 12-year longitudinal study show that the early gains lasted through the high school years. Similarly, a 1999 federal education publication What do we know about class size? notes, "a consensus of research indicates that class size reduction in the early grades leads to higher student achievement."
Gov. Chris Gregoire's recent Washington Learns Commission report also placed emphasis on lowering class size for K-3 grades. In Seattle, the philanthropic funding of the district's "New School" has created Washington Learns class sizes and both test scores and parent demand show it is working. Last month, the SEA passed a motion urging the governor's Funding Review Commission to identify the funding stream to implement the class size reductions in this upcoming biennium, as directed by the 2007 Legislature.
It is time to stop blaming and start trusting teachers. Along with the prescription of Washington Learns for smaller class sizes in the early years of schooling, give us the ability to tailor curriculum to the learner and watch families flock back to public schools.
Michael Hureaux has taught in public and private schools in numerous urban areas. Robert Femiano, Washington State Presidential Math Teacher of Year 2002, has taught in Seattle public elementary schools for 24 years.
© 1998-2008 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Austin poet, activist Salinas dies
What a sad day for both Austin and the greater Activist community. The following is from an email. -Patricia
"A Tender Warrior Fell Today..."
Saludos desde Resistencia Bookstore, Casa de Red Salmon Arts,
It is with great sadness we inform all of our community supporters,
comrades, familia and colegas about the passing of our elder, teacher,
father, chicanindio, and poeta revolutionario raúlrsalinas.
As you may know, for the past couple of years, raúl has been struggling with
his health. We understand that it's difficult for us to let him go, but
since the beginning of the year his health continued to be a major
challenge. Unfortunately, his body just could not take the strain and was
deteriorating at a rapid pace. Even though he has left this realm and it's a
great loss para nuestro pueblo, his spirit is strong and lives on in all of
us.
As his family provides more information, we will share it with everyone. For
now this is just a notification of the passing of our brother. We will
notify you about where you can send condolences, flowers, and cards as we
get more information. An altar has been created in front of the bookstore
on South First St. in Austin, Texas for now. We thank everyone for their
good energy and support and prayers in this time of loss and mourning.
CON RESPECTO Y EN LUCHA,
Rene Valdez
Long-time teacher impacted Austin.
By Omar L. Gallaga
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Austin poet and activist Raúl Salinas has died.
The author and longtime fixture at South Austin's La Resistencia Bookstore wrote several influential books of Chicano poetry, including "East of the Freeway: Reflections de mi Pueblo," and "Un Trip Through the Mind Jail y Otras Excursions."
His most recent book, "raúl salinas and the Jail Machine: Selected Writings of raúl salinas" was published in 2006 by University of Texas Press.
The bespectacled, pony-tailed writer, born in 1934 in San Antonio, aligned himself with the Beat poets and had used stints in prison that began in 1957 on drug-related charges in California, as fodder for his work.
The poet said he was reborn in prison, where he said he got in touch with his "Native spirituality and indigenous self."
He would go on to teach many writing and social activism classes, whether it was at schools such as St. Edwards University or at juvenile detention centers across the country.
Salinas was actively involved in city politics and also played host at La Resistencia, which opened in 1981, to art and spoken-word events. The cultural group he created, Red Salmon Arts, continues to host performances and artist events.
He told the Spanish newspaper ¡ahora sí! in 2005, "This is my world," Salinas says, "I have to navigate it. I've always combined my art, my politics, my spirituality, as part of my total being."
"A Tender Warrior Fell Today..."
Saludos desde Resistencia Bookstore, Casa de Red Salmon Arts,
It is with great sadness we inform all of our community supporters,
comrades, familia and colegas about the passing of our elder, teacher,
father, chicanindio, and poeta revolutionario raúlrsalinas.
As you may know, for the past couple of years, raúl has been struggling with
his health. We understand that it's difficult for us to let him go, but
since the beginning of the year his health continued to be a major
challenge. Unfortunately, his body just could not take the strain and was
deteriorating at a rapid pace. Even though he has left this realm and it's a
great loss para nuestro pueblo, his spirit is strong and lives on in all of
us.
As his family provides more information, we will share it with everyone. For
now this is just a notification of the passing of our brother. We will
notify you about where you can send condolences, flowers, and cards as we
get more information. An altar has been created in front of the bookstore
on South First St. in Austin, Texas for now. We thank everyone for their
good energy and support and prayers in this time of loss and mourning.
CON RESPECTO Y EN LUCHA,
Rene Valdez
Long-time teacher impacted Austin.
By Omar L. Gallaga
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Austin poet and activist Raúl Salinas has died.
The author and longtime fixture at South Austin's La Resistencia Bookstore wrote several influential books of Chicano poetry, including "East of the Freeway: Reflections de mi Pueblo," and "Un Trip Through the Mind Jail y Otras Excursions."
His most recent book, "raúl salinas and the Jail Machine: Selected Writings of raúl salinas" was published in 2006 by University of Texas Press.
The bespectacled, pony-tailed writer, born in 1934 in San Antonio, aligned himself with the Beat poets and had used stints in prison that began in 1957 on drug-related charges in California, as fodder for his work.
The poet said he was reborn in prison, where he said he got in touch with his "Native spirituality and indigenous self."
He would go on to teach many writing and social activism classes, whether it was at schools such as St. Edwards University or at juvenile detention centers across the country.
Salinas was actively involved in city politics and also played host at La Resistencia, which opened in 1981, to art and spoken-word events. The cultural group he created, Red Salmon Arts, continues to host performances and artist events.
He told the Spanish newspaper ¡ahora sí! in 2005, "This is my world," Salinas says, "I have to navigate it. I've always combined my art, my politics, my spirituality, as part of my total being."
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
CRP-MALDEF MANUAL TO HELP LEGALLY PROMOTE DIVERSITY AND AVOID
**NEWS RELEASE**
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 12, 2008
CONTACT: Gary Orfield (310) 267-5562 or Cynthia Valenzuela (213) 629-2512
CRP-MALDEF MANUAL TO HELP LEGALLY PROMOTE DIVERSITY AND AVOID
INCREASING SEGREGATION OF LATINO STUDENTS IN OUR NATION?S PUBLIC SCHOOLS
The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) and
the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles (CRP/PDC) announce
the release of Preserving Integration Options for Latino Children: A
Manual for Educators, Civil Rights Leaders, and the Community. Both
groups plan to help educators and communities find ways to preserve
integration options consistent with the limitations imposed by the
Supreme Court in last June's decision in the cases from Louisville and
Seattle. The Manual outlines the history of segregation and racial
isolation that Latinos have experienced, the legal struggles they have
waged, and the consequences for children and communities. Its goal is
to provide valuable guidance about how school districts and
communities can promote racial diversity and protect educational
opportunities for Latino children in schools nationwide. This
resource is being issued on the heels of the Supreme Court's June 2007
decision in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School
District No. 1(PICS), which limited the ability of school districts to
take race into account in providing options for integrated education.
The Manual addresses the practical questions of what educators, civil
rights leaders, and communities can now do to promote diversity and
address the harms of racial isolation in their schools. The guide
includes:
• The history of educational discrimination in the Latino Community;
• The educational consequences of segregation and racial isolation for Latinos;
• The main issues involved in the Supreme Court's Parents Involved decision;
• How the Supreme Court?s ruling affects schools nationwide, and
• Viable options for promoting diversity and avoiding racial isolation
in K-12 students assignment plans after the Seattle/Louisville cases.
This is a critical time for communities and school districts seeking
to move forward after the Parents Involved decision. The Manual
recommends that communities now under court orders remain under them
until there has been complete and successful compliance with the court
order. School districts under court order to desegregate are not
affected by the PICS decision. For communities not under court
orders, it outlines both what is still clearly authorized and what is
clearly forbidden in terms of race-conscious policy. It also points
out that communities have clear rights to use any factor other than
race or ethnicity in assigning schools, and that some factors, such as
language, could offer substantial benefits. The Manual proposes that
communities consider ways to not only review the options in light of
local conditions but also to think about plausible opportunities using
other criteria. An example cited in the Manual is the dual-immersion
language program that provides both English- and Spanish-speaking
students a fluent knowledge of two languages in integrated classes,
rendering a powerful educational program that incorporates both
diversity and clear educational advantages for all children.
The Manual provides accurate and up-to-date information along with a
step-by-step guide for how schools can strengthen diversity and expand
opportunity for schoolchildren. It was produced with generous support
from the Open Society Institute.
To download the Manual or for additional information, please visit the
CRP/PDF website at www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu or email
crp@ucla.edu.
MALDEF attorneys are available to consult with school
authorities, community members and parents.
Call (213) 629-2512 or visit www.maldef.org.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 12, 2008
CONTACT: Gary Orfield (310) 267-5562 or Cynthia Valenzuela (213) 629-2512
CRP-MALDEF MANUAL TO HELP LEGALLY PROMOTE DIVERSITY AND AVOID
INCREASING SEGREGATION OF LATINO STUDENTS IN OUR NATION?S PUBLIC SCHOOLS
The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) and
the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles (CRP/PDC) announce
the release of Preserving Integration Options for Latino Children: A
Manual for Educators, Civil Rights Leaders, and the Community. Both
groups plan to help educators and communities find ways to preserve
integration options consistent with the limitations imposed by the
Supreme Court in last June's decision in the cases from Louisville and
Seattle. The Manual outlines the history of segregation and racial
isolation that Latinos have experienced, the legal struggles they have
waged, and the consequences for children and communities. Its goal is
to provide valuable guidance about how school districts and
communities can promote racial diversity and protect educational
opportunities for Latino children in schools nationwide. This
resource is being issued on the heels of the Supreme Court's June 2007
decision in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School
District No. 1(PICS), which limited the ability of school districts to
take race into account in providing options for integrated education.
The Manual addresses the practical questions of what educators, civil
rights leaders, and communities can now do to promote diversity and
address the harms of racial isolation in their schools. The guide
includes:
• The history of educational discrimination in the Latino Community;
• The educational consequences of segregation and racial isolation for Latinos;
• The main issues involved in the Supreme Court's Parents Involved decision;
• How the Supreme Court?s ruling affects schools nationwide, and
• Viable options for promoting diversity and avoiding racial isolation
in K-12 students assignment plans after the Seattle/Louisville cases.
This is a critical time for communities and school districts seeking
to move forward after the Parents Involved decision. The Manual
recommends that communities now under court orders remain under them
until there has been complete and successful compliance with the court
order. School districts under court order to desegregate are not
affected by the PICS decision. For communities not under court
orders, it outlines both what is still clearly authorized and what is
clearly forbidden in terms of race-conscious policy. It also points
out that communities have clear rights to use any factor other than
race or ethnicity in assigning schools, and that some factors, such as
language, could offer substantial benefits. The Manual proposes that
communities consider ways to not only review the options in light of
local conditions but also to think about plausible opportunities using
other criteria. An example cited in the Manual is the dual-immersion
language program that provides both English- and Spanish-speaking
students a fluent knowledge of two languages in integrated classes,
rendering a powerful educational program that incorporates both
diversity and clear educational advantages for all children.
The Manual provides accurate and up-to-date information along with a
step-by-step guide for how schools can strengthen diversity and expand
opportunity for schoolchildren. It was produced with generous support
from the Open Society Institute.
To download the Manual or for additional information, please visit the
CRP/PDF website at www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu or email
crp@ucla.edu.
MALDEF attorneys are available to consult with school
authorities, community members and parents.
Call (213) 629-2512 or visit www.maldef.org.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Pride and Prejudice
It's so nice to read pieces like these in these times of rancorous debate over immigration.
-Angela
February 5, 2008
Pride and Prejudice
By Laura Reasoner Jones
It was a crisp cold fall day. At 8:40 a.m., I waited in front of the school on morning bus duty. Eduardo, one of the 5th grade safety patrols, walked down the sidewalk with his clipboard and stopwatch, ready to note the bus arrival times. He stopped in front of me, smiled, and pulled his neon green safety patrol belt out of his jacket. “Look!”
My eyes locked on the gold-colored safety patrol badge on his belt. I was instantly transported back in time 40 years to a high-ceilinged gritty green elementary classroom in Indianapolis, and the memory of my younger brother Mark.
The announcement came over the ceiling PA system on Friday afternoon:
“The gold badge will be worn next week by (long pause) Mark Reasoner.”
Applause from the classrooms and glances my way—he was my brother after all, and he had won it again. In our large K-8 elementary school, two boys (girls were not allowed to be patrols) earned the gold badge every week. They had to show exemplary behavior and responsibility on their patrol posts. To those of us not privileged or male enough to be patrols, it was a big mystery, sort of like a lodge membership.
When Eduardo shyly asked me the next day why I was so impressed by his gold badge, I told him about the memory of my “little brother” and what an honor earning the gold badge had been for him. Eduardo asked, “Did you ever earn the gold badge?”
I tried hard to keep the scorn out of my voice as I said, “Girls were not allowed to be patrols.” I could see the puzzlement in his face — and the questions: You were young? Teachers have brothers? Girls couldn’t be patrols?
I observed Eduardo’s quiet pride as he showed the badge to other teachers, and I took pride in his joy and his shy pleasure. Eduardo came to our school in the 1st grade, fresh from Mexico and didn't speak or understand one word of English. He is now in the 5th grade gifted/talented classroom, the patrol captain, a trombone player, a star Lab Lunch participant and one of the most responsible and friendly children in this school.
Later, I asked my brother Mark what the gold badge meant to him as a child. Now 53 and living in Florida, Mark works in the computer software field doing training as a national consultant. An avid bicyclist, he racks up miles and miles every week on the flat roads of northern Florida. He had much to say about the feelings that earning the gold badge still engender in him. He wrote:
Your student Eduardo indeed has reason to be proud. Back in the day, those on the school safety patrol were special. We had extra responsibility and with it went extra privileges. We got to leave school early and had a valid excuse for being a few minutes late. It was great.
The coolest part was that the principal announced your name over the PA on Friday afternoon with the end-of-the-week announcements. You got to go to the principal’s office, get a handshake and the badge, and then walk out early with your patrol colleagues to your corner post feeling “oh so important.” It was the one time you really enjoyed being called to the principal's office.
I think I had the badge for about 40% of my time on the safety patrol. I can even remember a few times when I forgot to turn it back on Friday morning and ran to the office on Friday afternoon before the announcements, only to be told “Don’t worry. You got it again.” One teacher told me they were going to retire the badge when I went to high school.
Congratulate Eduardo for me. Safety patrols are vastly under-rated on the scale of cool in schools.
To me, Eduardo is the personification of the immigration questions facing my local area and our nation today. He and his family live in a small apartment, and he and his sister qualify for free lunch. But his family cares deeply about his education and his behavior, and they support him in all that he does in school.
I don’t know if they are here in the U.S. legally, and I really don’t care. He is a very intelligent young man who has a bright future, and who has all of the characteristics and values that pundits describe as “American.” He is honest, hardworking, kind, thrifty, and goal-driven. He deserves to get a good education, and he will make a huge contribution to this country.
Many legislators in my town, my commonwealth, and the U.S. Congress are determined to stop the immigration of people who are not fluent in English. But I see this as a people issue—an issue about the individual hard-working families and children who are trying to make better lives. We cannot afford to put barriers in the way of children whose parents have made the choice to come here, even though they may have not come through regular channels.
Just as our country realized years ago that slavery was morally wrong, and much later, that women deserved equal voting rights and representation (and the opportunity to serve on safety patrol), we must recognize and value and encourage full participation and biculturalism by our newest residents. We can’t afford to lose the contributions and the potential of other Eduardos.
Laura Reasoner Jones was a public preschool special education teacher for many years and served as a teacher in residence at the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. She is now a school-based technology specialist in a Northern Virginia elementary school.
-Angela
February 5, 2008
Pride and Prejudice
By Laura Reasoner Jones
It was a crisp cold fall day. At 8:40 a.m., I waited in front of the school on morning bus duty. Eduardo, one of the 5th grade safety patrols, walked down the sidewalk with his clipboard and stopwatch, ready to note the bus arrival times. He stopped in front of me, smiled, and pulled his neon green safety patrol belt out of his jacket. “Look!”
My eyes locked on the gold-colored safety patrol badge on his belt. I was instantly transported back in time 40 years to a high-ceilinged gritty green elementary classroom in Indianapolis, and the memory of my younger brother Mark.
The announcement came over the ceiling PA system on Friday afternoon:
“The gold badge will be worn next week by (long pause) Mark Reasoner.”
Applause from the classrooms and glances my way—he was my brother after all, and he had won it again. In our large K-8 elementary school, two boys (girls were not allowed to be patrols) earned the gold badge every week. They had to show exemplary behavior and responsibility on their patrol posts. To those of us not privileged or male enough to be patrols, it was a big mystery, sort of like a lodge membership.
When Eduardo shyly asked me the next day why I was so impressed by his gold badge, I told him about the memory of my “little brother” and what an honor earning the gold badge had been for him. Eduardo asked, “Did you ever earn the gold badge?”
I tried hard to keep the scorn out of my voice as I said, “Girls were not allowed to be patrols.” I could see the puzzlement in his face — and the questions: You were young? Teachers have brothers? Girls couldn’t be patrols?
I observed Eduardo’s quiet pride as he showed the badge to other teachers, and I took pride in his joy and his shy pleasure. Eduardo came to our school in the 1st grade, fresh from Mexico and didn't speak or understand one word of English. He is now in the 5th grade gifted/talented classroom, the patrol captain, a trombone player, a star Lab Lunch participant and one of the most responsible and friendly children in this school.
Later, I asked my brother Mark what the gold badge meant to him as a child. Now 53 and living in Florida, Mark works in the computer software field doing training as a national consultant. An avid bicyclist, he racks up miles and miles every week on the flat roads of northern Florida. He had much to say about the feelings that earning the gold badge still engender in him. He wrote:
Your student Eduardo indeed has reason to be proud. Back in the day, those on the school safety patrol were special. We had extra responsibility and with it went extra privileges. We got to leave school early and had a valid excuse for being a few minutes late. It was great.
The coolest part was that the principal announced your name over the PA on Friday afternoon with the end-of-the-week announcements. You got to go to the principal’s office, get a handshake and the badge, and then walk out early with your patrol colleagues to your corner post feeling “oh so important.” It was the one time you really enjoyed being called to the principal's office.
I think I had the badge for about 40% of my time on the safety patrol. I can even remember a few times when I forgot to turn it back on Friday morning and ran to the office on Friday afternoon before the announcements, only to be told “Don’t worry. You got it again.” One teacher told me they were going to retire the badge when I went to high school.
Congratulate Eduardo for me. Safety patrols are vastly under-rated on the scale of cool in schools.
To me, Eduardo is the personification of the immigration questions facing my local area and our nation today. He and his family live in a small apartment, and he and his sister qualify for free lunch. But his family cares deeply about his education and his behavior, and they support him in all that he does in school.
I don’t know if they are here in the U.S. legally, and I really don’t care. He is a very intelligent young man who has a bright future, and who has all of the characteristics and values that pundits describe as “American.” He is honest, hardworking, kind, thrifty, and goal-driven. He deserves to get a good education, and he will make a huge contribution to this country.
Many legislators in my town, my commonwealth, and the U.S. Congress are determined to stop the immigration of people who are not fluent in English. But I see this as a people issue—an issue about the individual hard-working families and children who are trying to make better lives. We cannot afford to put barriers in the way of children whose parents have made the choice to come here, even though they may have not come through regular channels.
Just as our country realized years ago that slavery was morally wrong, and much later, that women deserved equal voting rights and representation (and the opportunity to serve on safety patrol), we must recognize and value and encourage full participation and biculturalism by our newest residents. We can’t afford to lose the contributions and the potential of other Eduardos.
Laura Reasoner Jones was a public preschool special education teacher for many years and served as a teacher in residence at the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. She is now a school-based technology specialist in a Northern Virginia elementary school.
Saturday, February 09, 2008
Protesters Step Out against Exploitation
This is an issue that committed activists in SC have been trying battle for years. My good friend and fellow activist Tony Madrigal gets a LOT of backlash from politicians and city officials for being outspoken and committed to fighting these types of inequality. Adelante! -Patricia
By Cody-Leigh Mullin
City on the Hill Press
“They said it couldn’t be done. They said that the workers in UC Santa Cruz would not come out. They said that the students would not come out, and we are here!”
Jose La Luz was one of roughly 2,700 protesters UC-wide who demonstrated against the university’s long-running contract negotiations with American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). La Luz, an international labor-rights activist and keynote speaker for Saturday’s Labor Studies conference in Santa Cruz, addressed UCSC workers and students Jan. 31 at a rally in front of Kerr Hall:
“This is not an accident—we have been working hard to make this moment happen and we are getting ready for the big moment when we say, ‘We are going to stop this University!’”
On January 31, AFSCME’s contract with the UC came to an end, which prompted the march at UCSC from Quarry Plaza to Kerr Hall last week. Protesters gathered to support the union, as the new contract will affect roughly 9,000 UC workers statewide. The protest followed a meeting between AFSCME and the UC Jan. 30, when the two parties discussed the UC’s newest contract proposal.
According to an economic analysis impact model, if UC workers employed at UC-run schools and medical centers earned the same wages as those who do the same work at state hospitals and California Community Colleges, they would receive, on average, a 25 percent raise.
At one point during the UCSC protest, Santa Cruz City Councilmember Tony Madrigal addressed the crowd of workers and students: “I’m very proud to get out here with every single one of you. A fight against you is a fight against me—we’re in this together. Are you guys gonna back down?”
UC employee Maria Padilla knows that AFSCME is up against a fierce contender, but she said that the union’s demands are not extreme. “We’re just asking for normal things, to be able to live everyday, especially since it’s an expensive city,” she said from within the crowd of protesters. “[Our] wages aren’t enough to live in Santa Cruz.”
Organizers created a list of New Years Resolutions to give to Chancellor Blumenthal. The list was sent to all 10 campus Chancellors, as well as to the UC medical centers’ CEOs. The list, created by AFSCME members, their relatives and UC students, outlined steps for the UC system to take in order to fulfill its duty to its employees.
Protesters demanded a written response from the Chancellor.
They also demanded that the UC draft a fair contract to cover affordable health care premiums, yearly bonuses and higher wages, urging the UC to take better care of all its workers.
Tony Madrigal believes the university needs to step up. “These workers live in Santa Cruz, they shop in Santa Cruz, they pay rent in Santa Cruz, they donate in Santa Cruz, and their children go to school in Santa Cruz,” he said. “The University needs to [support] the people with the same commitment that it shows when it invests in its projects up on campus.”
AFSCME and the UC system have been bargaining for a fair contract with market rate standards and benefits protections since October 2007. Since then, the AFSCME local chapter 3299 — composed of over 500 UCSC workers — has organized multiple demonstrations on campus.
During the Wednesday meeting between AFSCME members and the UC, Human Resources Communications Coordinator Nicole Savickas said that AFSCME presented the university with a proposal to extend the contract by five months and pass wage increases for a number of service workers in the union, which would total about $2.8 million. “The union rejected that proposal and they let us know of their intent to file for impasse—which is the next step in bargaining—with the Public Employment Relationship Board (PERB),” Savickas said. “To declare impasse is saying that the two parties can not reach any further progress.”
If PERB declares impasse, it will appoint a third party mediator to meet with the union.
Savickas continued, “Both parties have passed a number of proposals and we have discussed our demands back and forth. So I believe both parties have a pretty good idea of where we stand.”
As of now, the contract issue has no definite solution. Yet after witnessing and participating in the rally, Padilla said with confidence, “We’re going to keep fighting no matter what.”
By Cody-Leigh Mullin
City on the Hill Press
“They said it couldn’t be done. They said that the workers in UC Santa Cruz would not come out. They said that the students would not come out, and we are here!”
Jose La Luz was one of roughly 2,700 protesters UC-wide who demonstrated against the university’s long-running contract negotiations with American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). La Luz, an international labor-rights activist and keynote speaker for Saturday’s Labor Studies conference in Santa Cruz, addressed UCSC workers and students Jan. 31 at a rally in front of Kerr Hall:
“This is not an accident—we have been working hard to make this moment happen and we are getting ready for the big moment when we say, ‘We are going to stop this University!’”
On January 31, AFSCME’s contract with the UC came to an end, which prompted the march at UCSC from Quarry Plaza to Kerr Hall last week. Protesters gathered to support the union, as the new contract will affect roughly 9,000 UC workers statewide. The protest followed a meeting between AFSCME and the UC Jan. 30, when the two parties discussed the UC’s newest contract proposal.
According to an economic analysis impact model, if UC workers employed at UC-run schools and medical centers earned the same wages as those who do the same work at state hospitals and California Community Colleges, they would receive, on average, a 25 percent raise.
At one point during the UCSC protest, Santa Cruz City Councilmember Tony Madrigal addressed the crowd of workers and students: “I’m very proud to get out here with every single one of you. A fight against you is a fight against me—we’re in this together. Are you guys gonna back down?”
UC employee Maria Padilla knows that AFSCME is up against a fierce contender, but she said that the union’s demands are not extreme. “We’re just asking for normal things, to be able to live everyday, especially since it’s an expensive city,” she said from within the crowd of protesters. “[Our] wages aren’t enough to live in Santa Cruz.”
Organizers created a list of New Years Resolutions to give to Chancellor Blumenthal. The list was sent to all 10 campus Chancellors, as well as to the UC medical centers’ CEOs. The list, created by AFSCME members, their relatives and UC students, outlined steps for the UC system to take in order to fulfill its duty to its employees.
Protesters demanded a written response from the Chancellor.
They also demanded that the UC draft a fair contract to cover affordable health care premiums, yearly bonuses and higher wages, urging the UC to take better care of all its workers.
Tony Madrigal believes the university needs to step up. “These workers live in Santa Cruz, they shop in Santa Cruz, they pay rent in Santa Cruz, they donate in Santa Cruz, and their children go to school in Santa Cruz,” he said. “The University needs to [support] the people with the same commitment that it shows when it invests in its projects up on campus.”
AFSCME and the UC system have been bargaining for a fair contract with market rate standards and benefits protections since October 2007. Since then, the AFSCME local chapter 3299 — composed of over 500 UCSC workers — has organized multiple demonstrations on campus.
During the Wednesday meeting between AFSCME members and the UC, Human Resources Communications Coordinator Nicole Savickas said that AFSCME presented the university with a proposal to extend the contract by five months and pass wage increases for a number of service workers in the union, which would total about $2.8 million. “The union rejected that proposal and they let us know of their intent to file for impasse—which is the next step in bargaining—with the Public Employment Relationship Board (PERB),” Savickas said. “To declare impasse is saying that the two parties can not reach any further progress.”
If PERB declares impasse, it will appoint a third party mediator to meet with the union.
Savickas continued, “Both parties have passed a number of proposals and we have discussed our demands back and forth. So I believe both parties have a pretty good idea of where we stand.”
As of now, the contract issue has no definite solution. Yet after witnessing and participating in the rally, Padilla said with confidence, “We’re going to keep fighting no matter what.”
Friday, February 08, 2008
Low-income, minority Texas students less likely to have experienced teachers
Let's face it. Things are so out of whack that we focus excessively on test scores, acting as if all schools are the same. This means that we fail to address the underlying inequalities that contribute significantly to the achievement gap. Teacher quality--and its impacts--is one factor that cannot be underestimated in the least. We should focus our policies on what in some sense may be characterized as a crisis but which we know to be a historically chronic and pervasive problem in our state and nation. Regardless this info is important and it is a sad testament to either inadequate or ineffective leadership and corollary policies in Texas.
What will it take...?
-Angela
Low-income, minority Texas students less likely to have experienced teachers
Austin, Leander and Round Rock cited in statewide report for 'teacher quality gaps.'
By Raven L. Hill
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Friday, February 08, 2008
Achievement gaps between low-income and minority students and their
peers in Austin and Round Rock can be attributed in large part to gaps
in teacher quality and experience, according to a statewide report
released Thursday.
An analysis of the 50 largest Texas school districts by The Education
Trust, a Washington-based think tank, concluded that African American,
Hispanic and low-income students almost without exception lack "the
very resource that matters most to their academic success: strong teachers."
The report examined teacher credentials, experience levels, turnover
rates and teacher pay for 2005-06. Researchers found that 42 districts
across the state, including Austin and Round Rock, had
disproportionate numbers of novice teachers those with less than
three years of experience at predominantly minority and low-income schools.
Leander was included in the report, but it had more balanced numbers.
In Austin, predominantly minority and low-income schools were two or
three times more likely than campuses with more affluent, mostly white
students to have larger numbers of inexperienced teachers.
District officials said Thursday that its new bonus and merit pay
initiative, which was praised in the report, should help to eliminate
such disparities by improving salaries and working conditions.
"What we're trying to do ... (is) provide all teachers with supports
to be successful," said David Lussier, a member of the district's
strategic compensation task force.
Louis Malfaro, president of Education Austin, which represents 4,000
teachers and staff members, said the focus should be on retaining teachers.
"This idea that if we just forced good teachers to go to the hard
schools, everything would be OK really misses the point," Malfaro
said. "Those young, energetic, good-hearted teachers that haven't
quite gotten as good as our more experienced teachers, if given the
support, will become the master teachers and the expert teachers."
In Round Rock, about 16 percent of teachers at predominantly minority
schools were inexperienced compared with 8 percent at less diverse campuses.
Round Rock Superintendent Jesús Chávez defended the quality of his
teaching corps.
"I think the report does point to teachers in general seeking to work
in better environments and less challenging conditions," Chávez said.
"That is an issue we face not only in Round Rock but in school
districts across the state and across the nation."
Statewide, researchers found particularly egregious discrepancies at
campuses that were predominantly African American: 49 percent of
beginning English teachers and 42 percent of algebra teachers lacked
certification in those fields.
Passing rates on state exams in part reflect those disparities,
according to the report; less than half of African American and
Hispanic ninth-graders passed the math section of the Texas Assessment
of Knowledge and Skills in 2006.
Paul Ruiz, a senior adviser at the Education Trust's Southwest office,
said, "Many people are quick to attribute a school's performance to
the home lives of its students, but the reality is that what schools
do matters a lot."
rhill@statesman.com; 445-3620
Teaching in high-need schools
The terms 'highest-poverty' and 'highest-minority' refer to schools in
the highest quartile of low-income (students qualifying for the
federal free or reduced-price lunch program) and minority enrollment
in their district.
Low-income and minority student populations
Enrollment Percentage of Percentage of
2005-06 minority students low-income students
Austin 81,003 72.1 60.3
Leander 21,985 28.3 21.1
Round Rock 37,767 43.9 24.9
The teacher experience gap
Percentage of teachers with fewer than three years of teaching
experience, 2005-06
Lowest-poverty Highest-poverty Lowest-minority Highest-minority
schools schools schools schools
Austin 7.9 22.7 8.2 20.9
Leander 19.6 17.3 19.6 17.8
Round Rock 9 14.2 8 16.4
The teacher stability gap
Five-year average teacher turnover rates, 2001-02 to 2005-06
Lowest-poverty Highest-poverty Lowest-minority Highest-minority
schools schools schools schools
Austin 12.6 28.7 13 28
Leander 25.6 24.4 25.6 23.9
Round Rock 15 24.7 14.6 26
Sources: The Education Trust, Texas Education Agency
What will it take...?
-Angela
Low-income, minority Texas students less likely to have experienced teachers
Austin, Leander and Round Rock cited in statewide report for 'teacher quality gaps.'
By Raven L. Hill
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Friday, February 08, 2008
Achievement gaps between low-income and minority students and their
peers in Austin and Round Rock can be attributed in large part to gaps
in teacher quality and experience, according to a statewide report
released Thursday.
An analysis of the 50 largest Texas school districts by The Education
Trust, a Washington-based think tank, concluded that African American,
Hispanic and low-income students almost without exception lack "the
very resource that matters most to their academic success: strong teachers."
The report examined teacher credentials, experience levels, turnover
rates and teacher pay for 2005-06. Researchers found that 42 districts
across the state, including Austin and Round Rock, had
disproportionate numbers of novice teachers those with less than
three years of experience at predominantly minority and low-income schools.
Leander was included in the report, but it had more balanced numbers.
In Austin, predominantly minority and low-income schools were two or
three times more likely than campuses with more affluent, mostly white
students to have larger numbers of inexperienced teachers.
District officials said Thursday that its new bonus and merit pay
initiative, which was praised in the report, should help to eliminate
such disparities by improving salaries and working conditions.
"What we're trying to do ... (is) provide all teachers with supports
to be successful," said David Lussier, a member of the district's
strategic compensation task force.
Louis Malfaro, president of Education Austin, which represents 4,000
teachers and staff members, said the focus should be on retaining teachers.
"This idea that if we just forced good teachers to go to the hard
schools, everything would be OK really misses the point," Malfaro
said. "Those young, energetic, good-hearted teachers that haven't
quite gotten as good as our more experienced teachers, if given the
support, will become the master teachers and the expert teachers."
In Round Rock, about 16 percent of teachers at predominantly minority
schools were inexperienced compared with 8 percent at less diverse campuses.
Round Rock Superintendent Jesús Chávez defended the quality of his
teaching corps.
"I think the report does point to teachers in general seeking to work
in better environments and less challenging conditions," Chávez said.
"That is an issue we face not only in Round Rock but in school
districts across the state and across the nation."
Statewide, researchers found particularly egregious discrepancies at
campuses that were predominantly African American: 49 percent of
beginning English teachers and 42 percent of algebra teachers lacked
certification in those fields.
Passing rates on state exams in part reflect those disparities,
according to the report; less than half of African American and
Hispanic ninth-graders passed the math section of the Texas Assessment
of Knowledge and Skills in 2006.
Paul Ruiz, a senior adviser at the Education Trust's Southwest office,
said, "Many people are quick to attribute a school's performance to
the home lives of its students, but the reality is that what schools
do matters a lot."
rhill@statesman.com; 445-3620
Teaching in high-need schools
The terms 'highest-poverty' and 'highest-minority' refer to schools in
the highest quartile of low-income (students qualifying for the
federal free or reduced-price lunch program) and minority enrollment
in their district.
Low-income and minority student populations
Enrollment Percentage of Percentage of
2005-06 minority students low-income students
Austin 81,003 72.1 60.3
Leander 21,985 28.3 21.1
Round Rock 37,767 43.9 24.9
The teacher experience gap
Percentage of teachers with fewer than three years of teaching
experience, 2005-06
Lowest-poverty Highest-poverty Lowest-minority Highest-minority
schools schools schools schools
Austin 7.9 22.7 8.2 20.9
Leander 19.6 17.3 19.6 17.8
Round Rock 9 14.2 8 16.4
The teacher stability gap
Five-year average teacher turnover rates, 2001-02 to 2005-06
Lowest-poverty Highest-poverty Lowest-minority Highest-minority
schools schools schools schools
Austin 12.6 28.7 13 28
Leander 25.6 24.4 25.6 23.9
Round Rock 15 24.7 14.6 26
Sources: The Education Trust, Texas Education Agency
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Appeal of Challenge to ‘No Child’ Law
NATIONAL BRIEFING | EDUCATION
Appeal of Challenge to ‘No Child’ Law
By SAM DILLON
One month after a three-judge panel of a federal appeals court revived a legal challenge to the federal No Child Left Behind law, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said she would ask the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, to convene a larger panel to reconsider that ruling. In its 2-to-1 ruling on Jan. 7, the Sixth Circuit said that school districts in Michigan and several other states had been justified in their 2005 suit that argued the law required them to pay for testing and other programs without providing sufficient federal money.
NATIONAL BRIEFING | EDUCATION
Appeal of Challenge to ‘No Child’ Law
By SAM DILLON
One month after a three-judge panel of a federal appeals court revived a legal challenge to the federal No Child Left Behind law, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said she would ask the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, to convene a larger panel to reconsider that ruling. In its 2-to-1 ruling on Jan. 7, the Sixth Circuit said that school districts in Michigan and several other states had been justified in their 2005 suit that argued the law required them to pay for testing and other programs without providing sufficient federal money.
Monday, February 04, 2008
Mexican education comes to U.S.
Here's the link to the Plaza Comunitaria website if you'd like to read more on the program. -Patricia
Adult immigrants can complete their basic education in Spanish at one of 13 centers across L.A. County.
By Anna Gorman | Los Angeles Times
January 11, 2008
Florentino Vidal began working on his family's ranch in Mexico at age 7, forgoing grammar and high school for a childhood spent growing lettuce, carrots, watermelon and tomatoes.
Vidal, 47, said he knows the Spanish alphabet and can read some, but gets confused writing much more than his name. Now he will have the opportunity to resume his studies and earn his Mexican diploma here in the United States.
The Mexican government opened its latest Plaza Comunitaria, or Community Plaza, Thursday at San Fernando Middle School, minutes from Vidal's house. There are 13 such centers throughout Los Angeles County, aimed at helping Mexican nationals complete their basic education. The centers offer free classes, in person or through video and the Internet, to Mexican nationals living in the U.S.
"They are leaving our country without that education," said Mario Velazquez, acting consul general at the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles. "We have failed in giving education to those Mexicans. We must try our best to give that education, even if they are abroad."
More than 40% of Mexican nationals over age 25 living in the U.S. had less than a ninth-grade education, according to 2005 data compiled by the Pew Hispanic Center.
Consular officials said the Spanish-language classes improve immigrants' self-esteem and enable them to help their children with schoolwork. The education in their native tongue also better prepares immigrants to learn English and encourages their assimilation. Hundreds of Mexican nationals have taken classes since the first local center opened in 2003. There are similar programs elsewhere, including San Jose and San Bernardino.
Vidal, a legal permanent resident who arrived in the U.S. in 1979, said he and his wife raised their four children to value education and not to take anything for granted. The eldest now attends Cal State Northridge.
"We would tell them to study, study, study, until we got mad," he said.
Vidal wanted to study but said he was busy working construction to support his family. At the opening of the San Fernando center Thursday, Vidal flipped through a third-grade Mexican geography book. He said he was interested in learning about the history of his country so he could pass that culture along to his children.
Jose Palmillas, 34, who also attended the opening, started high school in Mexico but dropped out after one year to work in Mexico and then to come to the United States. Palmillas, a naturalized U.S. citizen, said he has earned the same salary in his maintenance job for many years and believes that finishing his education will enable him to advance in his career.
"I feel like something is missing," Palmillas said. "I couldn't attend school when I was young, but now I am going to study to get ahead."
Palmillas said he also wants to be a good role model for his children, ages 1, 11, 13 and 18.
Laura Gonzalez, a parent community facilitator for the Los Angeles Unified School District, works with about 70 students at a Plaza Comunitaria near Roscoe Elementary School in Sun Valley. Many come to her unable to read or write.
That illiteracy affects people in all aspects of their lives, including their ability to get apartments and jobs, said Daryabuth Martinez, program assistant at the Plaza Comunitaria at Cerritos College. Many parents have enrolled in classes at her center so they can learn to read to their children or grandchildren, or so they can more easily learn English and move past low-wage cleaning and restaurant jobs.
Space for the program is provided by schools and community centers, and the Mexican government supplies the textbooks. Students work at their own pace with the help of mostly volunteer teachers or tutors.
"They don't just learn how to read and write but how to grow as people," Martinez said.
San Fernando Middle School Principal Rafael Balderas said his goal is to build a "college-going culture."
"Remind your parents that we are pushing you through high school to graduate, not to be a dropout," Balderas told young students on hand for the opening Thursday. "But you know what? Your parents need to do the same thing. They now have the opportunity to go and get their GED, to become a United States citizen, to vote and to make a difference in the country."
Marisela Soto, 32, stopped going to school after sixth grade in Mexico but enrolled in classes at a Plaza Comunitaria in Los Angeles. Before taking the classes, Soto said, she was embarrassed to speak in public and worried about her inability to help her children with their homework.
Since enrolling, Soto said, "My self-confidence grew a lot."
On Thursday, she stood before a crowded auditorium at San Fernando Middle School and invited parents to follow her lead and go back to school.
Adult immigrants can complete their basic education in Spanish at one of 13 centers across L.A. County.
By Anna Gorman | Los Angeles Times
January 11, 2008
Florentino Vidal began working on his family's ranch in Mexico at age 7, forgoing grammar and high school for a childhood spent growing lettuce, carrots, watermelon and tomatoes.
Vidal, 47, said he knows the Spanish alphabet and can read some, but gets confused writing much more than his name. Now he will have the opportunity to resume his studies and earn his Mexican diploma here in the United States.
The Mexican government opened its latest Plaza Comunitaria, or Community Plaza, Thursday at San Fernando Middle School, minutes from Vidal's house. There are 13 such centers throughout Los Angeles County, aimed at helping Mexican nationals complete their basic education. The centers offer free classes, in person or through video and the Internet, to Mexican nationals living in the U.S.
"They are leaving our country without that education," said Mario Velazquez, acting consul general at the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles. "We have failed in giving education to those Mexicans. We must try our best to give that education, even if they are abroad."
More than 40% of Mexican nationals over age 25 living in the U.S. had less than a ninth-grade education, according to 2005 data compiled by the Pew Hispanic Center.
Consular officials said the Spanish-language classes improve immigrants' self-esteem and enable them to help their children with schoolwork. The education in their native tongue also better prepares immigrants to learn English and encourages their assimilation. Hundreds of Mexican nationals have taken classes since the first local center opened in 2003. There are similar programs elsewhere, including San Jose and San Bernardino.
Vidal, a legal permanent resident who arrived in the U.S. in 1979, said he and his wife raised their four children to value education and not to take anything for granted. The eldest now attends Cal State Northridge.
"We would tell them to study, study, study, until we got mad," he said.
Vidal wanted to study but said he was busy working construction to support his family. At the opening of the San Fernando center Thursday, Vidal flipped through a third-grade Mexican geography book. He said he was interested in learning about the history of his country so he could pass that culture along to his children.
Jose Palmillas, 34, who also attended the opening, started high school in Mexico but dropped out after one year to work in Mexico and then to come to the United States. Palmillas, a naturalized U.S. citizen, said he has earned the same salary in his maintenance job for many years and believes that finishing his education will enable him to advance in his career.
"I feel like something is missing," Palmillas said. "I couldn't attend school when I was young, but now I am going to study to get ahead."
Palmillas said he also wants to be a good role model for his children, ages 1, 11, 13 and 18.
Laura Gonzalez, a parent community facilitator for the Los Angeles Unified School District, works with about 70 students at a Plaza Comunitaria near Roscoe Elementary School in Sun Valley. Many come to her unable to read or write.
That illiteracy affects people in all aspects of their lives, including their ability to get apartments and jobs, said Daryabuth Martinez, program assistant at the Plaza Comunitaria at Cerritos College. Many parents have enrolled in classes at her center so they can learn to read to their children or grandchildren, or so they can more easily learn English and move past low-wage cleaning and restaurant jobs.
Space for the program is provided by schools and community centers, and the Mexican government supplies the textbooks. Students work at their own pace with the help of mostly volunteer teachers or tutors.
"They don't just learn how to read and write but how to grow as people," Martinez said.
San Fernando Middle School Principal Rafael Balderas said his goal is to build a "college-going culture."
"Remind your parents that we are pushing you through high school to graduate, not to be a dropout," Balderas told young students on hand for the opening Thursday. "But you know what? Your parents need to do the same thing. They now have the opportunity to go and get their GED, to become a United States citizen, to vote and to make a difference in the country."
Marisela Soto, 32, stopped going to school after sixth grade in Mexico but enrolled in classes at a Plaza Comunitaria in Los Angeles. Before taking the classes, Soto said, she was embarrassed to speak in public and worried about her inability to help her children with their homework.
Since enrolling, Soto said, "My self-confidence grew a lot."
On Thursday, she stood before a crowded auditorium at San Fernando Middle School and invited parents to follow her lead and go back to school.
The Changes we need in our schools
Check out this piece. It deals with a very successful Texas superintendent who builds on children’s strengths. I’ve heard good things about him over the years. We need more leaders like him.
-Angela
Hector Montenegro
56, superintendent, Arlington
Hector Montenegro
Illustration by Andy Friedman
Green buildings, awesome movie theaters, and high-speed semiconductors won’t be worth much if we fail to educate our kids, more and more of whom can’t speak English when they enter the school system. Good thing this California native, who was picked by the League of United Latin American Citizens as its 2005 Educator of the Year, has risen to the challenge. After stints at schools in Austin, Dallas, and San Marcos, Montenegro took charge of the Ysleta Independent School District, the least affluent of El Paso’s three ISDs, in 2003. Ninety-one percent of Ysleta’s 46,036 students are Hispanic, and its schools faced chronic problems with test scores and dropout rates. Montenegro was able to effect a remarkable turnaround—between 2005 and 2006, the number of campuses in the district recognized by the Texas Education Agency for their scores on the TAKS test rose from 9 to 23. In November the Arlington Independent School District, a larger, more ethnically diverse ISD (35 percent white, 33 percent Hispanic, 24 percent black), named Montenegro as its superintendent. His first day on the job is February 1. Someone get this man an apple.
How were you able to get the results you did at Ysleta?
We took a more systemic approach to addressing academic issues, with a special focus on strengthening bilingual, dual language, and ESL programs. We standardized our curriculum and set up protocols for quality control on instructional standards. We created a new professional-development department, which didn’t exist before, and introduced the principles of Professional Learning Communities, which require higher levels of collaboration between faculty, staff, and administrators. In our experience in YISD, dual language has been very successful because it is very inclusive. But it’s also very controversial.
Where does the controversy come from?
The school of thought that says we have to transition children into English as soon as possible. The research in Ysleta shows that the students enrolled in dual-language programs that include monolingual English students excel far beyond those students in ESL and bilingual programs. It does have a maintenance component, in which their dominant language is reinforced, but it also has a transition component, meaning that once you strengthen the native language, then it’s easier to transition to English. We found that to be the case, and also, we have blond-haired, blue-eyed youngsters that are very fluent in Spanish before they even get out of the eighth grade.
That’s impressive.
Yes. The program builds on the strengths of all children. It’s not a deficit model; it’s an enrichment model that not only teaches survival English but also academic language and socialization skills. It eliminates the stigma of social segregation that other programs create. We have a long, long waiting list of parents whose children only speak English that want to enroll.
Your home state of California is another that has a booming Hispanic population, overburdened school districts, and chronic money problems. How have the two states handled these educational challenges differently?
The systems are quite different. They have income tax, we have property tax. They’re very anti-bilingual, where we’re very bilingual-friendly. I will say that the demographics are similar. Educators have to be sensitive to that and prepare these children for a future that will include them in one way or another. There is among educators that I know in California and Texas a sense of urgency, and if there’s anything that’s going to stand out in my interview here it’s that we need to have a sense of urgency in preparing this generation of children to become responsible leaders in a very diverse and inclusive future. Our future is dependent on the success of all children regardless of background or primary language.
-Angela
Hector Montenegro
56, superintendent, Arlington
Hector Montenegro
Illustration by Andy Friedman
Green buildings, awesome movie theaters, and high-speed semiconductors won’t be worth much if we fail to educate our kids, more and more of whom can’t speak English when they enter the school system. Good thing this California native, who was picked by the League of United Latin American Citizens as its 2005 Educator of the Year, has risen to the challenge. After stints at schools in Austin, Dallas, and San Marcos, Montenegro took charge of the Ysleta Independent School District, the least affluent of El Paso’s three ISDs, in 2003. Ninety-one percent of Ysleta’s 46,036 students are Hispanic, and its schools faced chronic problems with test scores and dropout rates. Montenegro was able to effect a remarkable turnaround—between 2005 and 2006, the number of campuses in the district recognized by the Texas Education Agency for their scores on the TAKS test rose from 9 to 23. In November the Arlington Independent School District, a larger, more ethnically diverse ISD (35 percent white, 33 percent Hispanic, 24 percent black), named Montenegro as its superintendent. His first day on the job is February 1. Someone get this man an apple.
How were you able to get the results you did at Ysleta?
We took a more systemic approach to addressing academic issues, with a special focus on strengthening bilingual, dual language, and ESL programs. We standardized our curriculum and set up protocols for quality control on instructional standards. We created a new professional-development department, which didn’t exist before, and introduced the principles of Professional Learning Communities, which require higher levels of collaboration between faculty, staff, and administrators. In our experience in YISD, dual language has been very successful because it is very inclusive. But it’s also very controversial.
Where does the controversy come from?
The school of thought that says we have to transition children into English as soon as possible. The research in Ysleta shows that the students enrolled in dual-language programs that include monolingual English students excel far beyond those students in ESL and bilingual programs. It does have a maintenance component, in which their dominant language is reinforced, but it also has a transition component, meaning that once you strengthen the native language, then it’s easier to transition to English. We found that to be the case, and also, we have blond-haired, blue-eyed youngsters that are very fluent in Spanish before they even get out of the eighth grade.
That’s impressive.
Yes. The program builds on the strengths of all children. It’s not a deficit model; it’s an enrichment model that not only teaches survival English but also academic language and socialization skills. It eliminates the stigma of social segregation that other programs create. We have a long, long waiting list of parents whose children only speak English that want to enroll.
Your home state of California is another that has a booming Hispanic population, overburdened school districts, and chronic money problems. How have the two states handled these educational challenges differently?
The systems are quite different. They have income tax, we have property tax. They’re very anti-bilingual, where we’re very bilingual-friendly. I will say that the demographics are similar. Educators have to be sensitive to that and prepare these children for a future that will include them in one way or another. There is among educators that I know in California and Texas a sense of urgency, and if there’s anything that’s going to stand out in my interview here it’s that we need to have a sense of urgency in preparing this generation of children to become responsible leaders in a very diverse and inclusive future. Our future is dependent on the success of all children regardless of background or primary language.
How Teenage Rebellion Has Become a Mental Illness
Interesting read. I love the line: "when ADHD-labeled kids are having a good time and in control, the 'disease' goes away." I think it's also important to note how historically our society has also resorted to incarceration to cure "deviance". -Patricia
By Bruce E. Levine | AlterNet
January 28, 2008.
Big pharma has some new customers. Not complying with authority is now, in many cases, labeled a disease.
For a generation now, disruptive young Americans who rebel against authority figures have been increasingly diagnosed with mental illnesses and medicated with psychiatric (psychotropic) drugs.
Disruptive young people who are medicated with Ritalin, Adderall and other amphetamines routinely report that these drugs make them "care less" about their boredom, resentments and other negative emotions, thus making them more compliant and manageable. And so-called atypical antipsychotics such as Risperdal and Zyprexa -- powerful tranquilizing drugs -- are increasingly prescribed to disruptive young Americans, even though in most cases they are not displaying any psychotic symptoms.
Many talk show hosts think I'm kidding when I mention oppositional defiant disorder (ODD). After I assure them that ODD is in fact an official mental illness -- an increasingly popular diagnosis for children and teenagers -- they often guess that ODD is simply a new term for juvenile delinquency. But that is not the case.
Young people diagnosed with ODD, by definition, are doing nothing illegal (illegal behaviors are a symptom of another mental illness called conduct disorder). In 1980, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) created oppositional defiant disorder, defining it as "a pattern of negativistic, hostile and defiant behavior." The official symptoms of ODD include "often actively defies or refuses to comply with adult requests or rules" and "often argues with adults." While ODD-diagnosed young people are obnoxious with adults they don't respect, these kids can be a delight with adults they do respect; yet many of them are medicated with psychotropic drugs.
An even more common reaction to oppressive authorities than overt defiance is some type of passive defiance.
John Holt, the late school critic, described passive-aggressive strategies employed by prisoners in concentration camps and slaves on plantations, as well as some children in classrooms. Holt pointed out that subjects may attempt to appease their rulers while still satisfying some part of their own desire for dignity "by putting on a mask, by acting much more stupid and incompetent than they really are, by denying their rulers the full use of their intelligence and ability, by declaring their minds and spirits free of their enslaved bodies."
Holt observed that by "going stupid" in a classroom, children frustrate authorities through withdrawing the most intelligent and creative parts of their minds from the scene, thus achieving some sense of potency.
Going stupid -- or passive aggression -- is one of many nondisease explanations for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Studies show that virtually all ADHD-diagnosed children will pay attention to activities that they enjoy or that they have chosen. In other words, when ADHD-labeled kids are having a good time and in control, the "disease" goes away.
There are other passive rebellions against authority that have been medicalized by mental health authorities. I have talked to many people who earlier in their lives had been diagnosed with substance abuse, depression and even schizophrenia but believe that their "symptoms" had in fact been a kind of resistance to the demands of an oppressive environment. Some of these people now call themselves psychiatric survivors.
While there are several reasons for behavioral disruptiveness and emotional difficulties, rebellion against an oppressive environment is one common reason that is routinely not even considered by many mental health professionals. Why? It is my experience that many mental health professionals are unaware of how extremely obedient they are to authorities. Acceptance into medical school and graduate school and achieving a Ph.D. or M.D. means jumping through many meaningless hoops, all of which require much behavioral, attentional and emotional compliance to authorities -- even disrespected ones. When compliant M.D.s and Ph.D.s begin seeing noncompliant patients, many of these doctors become anxious, sometimes even ashamed of their own excessive compliance, and this anxiety and shame can be fuel for diseasing normal human reactions.
Two ways of subduing defiance are to criminalize it and to pathologize it, and U.S. history is replete with examples of both. In the same era that John Adams' Sedition Act criminalized criticism of U.S. governmental policy, Dr. Benjamin Rush, the father of American psychiatry (his image adorns the APA seal), pathologized anti-authoritarianism. Rush diagnosed those rebelling against a centralized federal authority as having an "excess of the passion for liberty" that "constituted a form of insanity." He labeled this illness "anarchia."
Throughout American history, both direct and indirect resistance to authority has been diseased. In an 1851 article in the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, Louisiana physician Samuel Cartwright reported his discovery of "drapetomania," the disease that caused slaves to flee captivity. Cartwright also reported his discovery of "dysaesthesia aethiopis," the disease that caused slaves to pay insufficient attention to the master's needs. Early versions of ODD and ADHD?
In Rush's lifetime, few Americans took anarchia seriously, nor was drapetomania or dysaesthesia aethiopis taken seriously in Cartwright's lifetime. But these were eras before the diseasing of defiance had a powerful financial ally in Big Pharma.
In every generation there will be authoritarians. There will also be the "bohemian bourgeois" who may enjoy anti-authoritarian books, music, and movies but don't act on them. And there will be genuine anti-authoritarians, who are so pained by exploitive hierarchies that they take action. Only occasionally in American history do these genuine anti-authoritarians actually take effective direct action that inspires others to successfully revolt, but every once in a while a Tom Paine comes along. So authoritarians take no chances, and the state-corporate partnership criminalizes anti-authoritarianism, pathologizes it, markets drugs to "cure" it and financially intimidates those who might buck the system.
It would certainly be a dream of Big Pharma and those who favor an authoritarian society if every would-be Tom Paine -- or Crazy Horse, Tecumseh, Emma Goldman or Malcolm X -- were diagnosed as a youngster with mental illness and quieted with a lifelong regimen of chill pills.
The question is: Has this dream become reality?
By Bruce E. Levine | AlterNet
January 28, 2008.
Big pharma has some new customers. Not complying with authority is now, in many cases, labeled a disease.
For a generation now, disruptive young Americans who rebel against authority figures have been increasingly diagnosed with mental illnesses and medicated with psychiatric (psychotropic) drugs.
Disruptive young people who are medicated with Ritalin, Adderall and other amphetamines routinely report that these drugs make them "care less" about their boredom, resentments and other negative emotions, thus making them more compliant and manageable. And so-called atypical antipsychotics such as Risperdal and Zyprexa -- powerful tranquilizing drugs -- are increasingly prescribed to disruptive young Americans, even though in most cases they are not displaying any psychotic symptoms.
Many talk show hosts think I'm kidding when I mention oppositional defiant disorder (ODD). After I assure them that ODD is in fact an official mental illness -- an increasingly popular diagnosis for children and teenagers -- they often guess that ODD is simply a new term for juvenile delinquency. But that is not the case.
Young people diagnosed with ODD, by definition, are doing nothing illegal (illegal behaviors are a symptom of another mental illness called conduct disorder). In 1980, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) created oppositional defiant disorder, defining it as "a pattern of negativistic, hostile and defiant behavior." The official symptoms of ODD include "often actively defies or refuses to comply with adult requests or rules" and "often argues with adults." While ODD-diagnosed young people are obnoxious with adults they don't respect, these kids can be a delight with adults they do respect; yet many of them are medicated with psychotropic drugs.
An even more common reaction to oppressive authorities than overt defiance is some type of passive defiance.
John Holt, the late school critic, described passive-aggressive strategies employed by prisoners in concentration camps and slaves on plantations, as well as some children in classrooms. Holt pointed out that subjects may attempt to appease their rulers while still satisfying some part of their own desire for dignity "by putting on a mask, by acting much more stupid and incompetent than they really are, by denying their rulers the full use of their intelligence and ability, by declaring their minds and spirits free of their enslaved bodies."
Holt observed that by "going stupid" in a classroom, children frustrate authorities through withdrawing the most intelligent and creative parts of their minds from the scene, thus achieving some sense of potency.
Going stupid -- or passive aggression -- is one of many nondisease explanations for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Studies show that virtually all ADHD-diagnosed children will pay attention to activities that they enjoy or that they have chosen. In other words, when ADHD-labeled kids are having a good time and in control, the "disease" goes away.
There are other passive rebellions against authority that have been medicalized by mental health authorities. I have talked to many people who earlier in their lives had been diagnosed with substance abuse, depression and even schizophrenia but believe that their "symptoms" had in fact been a kind of resistance to the demands of an oppressive environment. Some of these people now call themselves psychiatric survivors.
While there are several reasons for behavioral disruptiveness and emotional difficulties, rebellion against an oppressive environment is one common reason that is routinely not even considered by many mental health professionals. Why? It is my experience that many mental health professionals are unaware of how extremely obedient they are to authorities. Acceptance into medical school and graduate school and achieving a Ph.D. or M.D. means jumping through many meaningless hoops, all of which require much behavioral, attentional and emotional compliance to authorities -- even disrespected ones. When compliant M.D.s and Ph.D.s begin seeing noncompliant patients, many of these doctors become anxious, sometimes even ashamed of their own excessive compliance, and this anxiety and shame can be fuel for diseasing normal human reactions.
Two ways of subduing defiance are to criminalize it and to pathologize it, and U.S. history is replete with examples of both. In the same era that John Adams' Sedition Act criminalized criticism of U.S. governmental policy, Dr. Benjamin Rush, the father of American psychiatry (his image adorns the APA seal), pathologized anti-authoritarianism. Rush diagnosed those rebelling against a centralized federal authority as having an "excess of the passion for liberty" that "constituted a form of insanity." He labeled this illness "anarchia."
Throughout American history, both direct and indirect resistance to authority has been diseased. In an 1851 article in the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, Louisiana physician Samuel Cartwright reported his discovery of "drapetomania," the disease that caused slaves to flee captivity. Cartwright also reported his discovery of "dysaesthesia aethiopis," the disease that caused slaves to pay insufficient attention to the master's needs. Early versions of ODD and ADHD?
In Rush's lifetime, few Americans took anarchia seriously, nor was drapetomania or dysaesthesia aethiopis taken seriously in Cartwright's lifetime. But these were eras before the diseasing of defiance had a powerful financial ally in Big Pharma.
In every generation there will be authoritarians. There will also be the "bohemian bourgeois" who may enjoy anti-authoritarian books, music, and movies but don't act on them. And there will be genuine anti-authoritarians, who are so pained by exploitive hierarchies that they take action. Only occasionally in American history do these genuine anti-authoritarians actually take effective direct action that inspires others to successfully revolt, but every once in a while a Tom Paine comes along. So authoritarians take no chances, and the state-corporate partnership criminalizes anti-authoritarianism, pathologizes it, markets drugs to "cure" it and financially intimidates those who might buck the system.
It would certainly be a dream of Big Pharma and those who favor an authoritarian society if every would-be Tom Paine -- or Crazy Horse, Tecumseh, Emma Goldman or Malcolm X -- were diagnosed as a youngster with mental illness and quieted with a lifelong regimen of chill pills.
The question is: Has this dream become reality?
A Tiny Staff, Tracking People Across the Globe
JASON DePARLE | NY Times
February 4, 2008
WASHINGTON — It has an editorial staff of one and annual advertising revenues of less than $2,000. It charges its subscribers nothing and pays most contributors the same. Mapping the settlement of Latino poultry workers is its idea of a sexy piece.
But for a growing number of followers, it has become an important read.
Every moment has its magazine, and for the age of migration it is the Migration Information Source, a weekly (more or less) online journal followed worldwide by scholars, policy makers and the occasional migrant in distress. “My soul’s dying every moment,” an Iranian asylum seeker wrote last year in an e-mail message from Greece. “Give me an answer.”
Many readers discover the Source simply by googling the word “immigrant” and finding a link to migrationinformation.org among the millions of citations.
At the site’s helm is an American-born editor, Kirin Kalia, 32, who describes herself as “half Dutch, half Indian, 100 percent American and total migration geek.” Ms. Kalia thrives on hybridity — devouring Indian-American novels and Dutch-Moroccan films — and finds no migration topic too obscure. To know the fate of Latvian mushroom pickers in Ireland is, for her, to glimpse the world in a grain of sand.
“To move to a different country for whatever reason takes so much courage,” she said, interrupting an interview to play a song by a British-Indian rapper, Panjabi MC, stored on her hard drive. “The fact that so many people do it is just endlessly fascinating to me.”
With conflicts rising over immigration to the United States, interest in the Source has surged. Readership has doubled in the past three years, Ms. Kalia said, to about 140,000 unique visits each month. To stroll through the archives is to see the American debate freshly, as part of a global phenomenon.
If the Source has a unifying theme, it is that migration is a defining force nearly everywhere. There are about 200 million migrants in the world — probably a record, demographers say, in both relative and absolute terms — and more than 80 percent live outside the United States.
The Source has focused on Tajik construction workers in Russia, farmhands from Burkina Faso who pick Ghanaian crops and the Peruvians who take jobs left behind by Ecuadorean workers who have migrated to Spain.
Other themes of the coverage include the speed with which migration has grown (Spain’s immigrant population has risen nearly sixfold in 10 years) and the conflict it brings, within both nations and living rooms. Political parties rise and fall. Economic interests win and lose. Family relations change.
“None of this is easy,” Ms. Kalia said.
Nor is the process of tracking it, with migration studies a nascent field and data on many countries scarce. But the magazine has won praise from a roster of A-list scholars who read it, write for it and assign it to their students.
“It’s the best online source of information on migration that I have seen worldwide,” said Rubén G. Rumbaut, a sociologist at the University of California at Irvine and a leading authority on the children of immigrants to the United States.
The magazine is published by a Washington research group, the Migration Policy Institute, that was started six years ago (with assistance from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Ford Foundation and the J. M. Kaplan Fund) to help fill the knowledge gap.
Does migration drive down domestic wages? Do guest worker programs always bring permanent settlement? Does “brain drain” hurt developing countries, or have critics overlooked indirect benefits, like the money the migrants send home?
“Heck! I don’t believe we have a consensus on a single thing in migration,” said Demetrios G. Papademetriou, the Migration Policy Institute’s president. “You have to build a knowledge base if you’re going to make progress.”
With a staff of 20, the institute reflects the mobility it studies. In addition to Mr. Papademetriou, a Greek immigrant, it includes a Moldovan demographer (Jeanne Batalova), a British analyst (Will Somerville), a Filipino-American with dual citizenship in Iceland (Dovelyn R. Agunias), and a refugee expert (Kathleen Newland, a co-director) who is American-born and married to a British journalist.
Some critics see a loose-borders tilt to the work. “They do some useful research,” said Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that seeks lower immigration to the United States. “But their orientation is towards higher immigration and looser borders worldwide.”
But admirers said the work merely reflected the reality that migration is ubiquitous. “This is not something just going on inside the United States,” Mr. Rumbaut said.
One recent article charts the emergence of Tajikistan as a leading exporter of labor, with one in five Tajik adults leaving to work abroad each year. Another shows that at least 60 million migrants have left one poor country to live in another.
Yet another compares the incentives that draw Mexicans to the United States with those that lure Africans onto rickety boats bounds for Spain. American wages are about four times those in Mexico, a Norwegian scholar, Jorgen Carling, noted, while the wage differential between Spain and Senegal is “a staggering 15 to one.”
Even nonmigrants can be deeply affected by migration, at both ends of the stream. Studying a village in the Dominican Republic, Peggy Levitt of Wellesley College found that women prefer to marry men who have worked abroad “because they want husbands who will share in the housework and take care of the children the way men who have been to the United States do.”
Conflict is also a running theme, across cultures and time. The Dutch are so worried about assimilation they require migrants to pass a language test before they come. Aristede R. Zolberg of the New School, notes that Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin “considered the German language to be the bearer of a culture incompatible with republican democracy.”
Professor Zolberg resists the term “age of migration” (coined by the scholars Stephen Castles and Mark J. Miller) because people have been migrating since the beginning of time. Still, he sees migration growth as likely to continue, in an era of cheap travel and easy communication via cellphones and Web cams. And as incomes rise in the developing world, more people have the means to move.
“What’s new is it’s much easier now,” he said.
Financially, the Source may be a victim of its own success. Its initial supporters largely consider the site a core mission of the institute, to be financed from the broader institute’s $3.5 million budget. That leaves Ms. Kalia rattling the online cup for reader donations.
As for the difficulties that migration can bring, Ms. Kalia encountered them early when her uncle, who is Dutch and a Catholic priest, flew to California to baptize her baby brother. Her Hindu grandmother lived with the family, and locked herself in her bedroom, beside a Lord Krishna poster, until the uncle promised to desist.
Ms. Kalia has yet to write about the episode, but she does see a lesson. “It shows you just how difficult negotiating cultural differences can be,” she said.
February 4, 2008
WASHINGTON — It has an editorial staff of one and annual advertising revenues of less than $2,000. It charges its subscribers nothing and pays most contributors the same. Mapping the settlement of Latino poultry workers is its idea of a sexy piece.
But for a growing number of followers, it has become an important read.
Every moment has its magazine, and for the age of migration it is the Migration Information Source, a weekly (more or less) online journal followed worldwide by scholars, policy makers and the occasional migrant in distress. “My soul’s dying every moment,” an Iranian asylum seeker wrote last year in an e-mail message from Greece. “Give me an answer.”
Many readers discover the Source simply by googling the word “immigrant” and finding a link to migrationinformation.org among the millions of citations.
At the site’s helm is an American-born editor, Kirin Kalia, 32, who describes herself as “half Dutch, half Indian, 100 percent American and total migration geek.” Ms. Kalia thrives on hybridity — devouring Indian-American novels and Dutch-Moroccan films — and finds no migration topic too obscure. To know the fate of Latvian mushroom pickers in Ireland is, for her, to glimpse the world in a grain of sand.
“To move to a different country for whatever reason takes so much courage,” she said, interrupting an interview to play a song by a British-Indian rapper, Panjabi MC, stored on her hard drive. “The fact that so many people do it is just endlessly fascinating to me.”
With conflicts rising over immigration to the United States, interest in the Source has surged. Readership has doubled in the past three years, Ms. Kalia said, to about 140,000 unique visits each month. To stroll through the archives is to see the American debate freshly, as part of a global phenomenon.
If the Source has a unifying theme, it is that migration is a defining force nearly everywhere. There are about 200 million migrants in the world — probably a record, demographers say, in both relative and absolute terms — and more than 80 percent live outside the United States.
The Source has focused on Tajik construction workers in Russia, farmhands from Burkina Faso who pick Ghanaian crops and the Peruvians who take jobs left behind by Ecuadorean workers who have migrated to Spain.
Other themes of the coverage include the speed with which migration has grown (Spain’s immigrant population has risen nearly sixfold in 10 years) and the conflict it brings, within both nations and living rooms. Political parties rise and fall. Economic interests win and lose. Family relations change.
“None of this is easy,” Ms. Kalia said.
Nor is the process of tracking it, with migration studies a nascent field and data on many countries scarce. But the magazine has won praise from a roster of A-list scholars who read it, write for it and assign it to their students.
“It’s the best online source of information on migration that I have seen worldwide,” said Rubén G. Rumbaut, a sociologist at the University of California at Irvine and a leading authority on the children of immigrants to the United States.
The magazine is published by a Washington research group, the Migration Policy Institute, that was started six years ago (with assistance from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Ford Foundation and the J. M. Kaplan Fund) to help fill the knowledge gap.
Does migration drive down domestic wages? Do guest worker programs always bring permanent settlement? Does “brain drain” hurt developing countries, or have critics overlooked indirect benefits, like the money the migrants send home?
“Heck! I don’t believe we have a consensus on a single thing in migration,” said Demetrios G. Papademetriou, the Migration Policy Institute’s president. “You have to build a knowledge base if you’re going to make progress.”
With a staff of 20, the institute reflects the mobility it studies. In addition to Mr. Papademetriou, a Greek immigrant, it includes a Moldovan demographer (Jeanne Batalova), a British analyst (Will Somerville), a Filipino-American with dual citizenship in Iceland (Dovelyn R. Agunias), and a refugee expert (Kathleen Newland, a co-director) who is American-born and married to a British journalist.
Some critics see a loose-borders tilt to the work. “They do some useful research,” said Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that seeks lower immigration to the United States. “But their orientation is towards higher immigration and looser borders worldwide.”
But admirers said the work merely reflected the reality that migration is ubiquitous. “This is not something just going on inside the United States,” Mr. Rumbaut said.
One recent article charts the emergence of Tajikistan as a leading exporter of labor, with one in five Tajik adults leaving to work abroad each year. Another shows that at least 60 million migrants have left one poor country to live in another.
Yet another compares the incentives that draw Mexicans to the United States with those that lure Africans onto rickety boats bounds for Spain. American wages are about four times those in Mexico, a Norwegian scholar, Jorgen Carling, noted, while the wage differential between Spain and Senegal is “a staggering 15 to one.”
Even nonmigrants can be deeply affected by migration, at both ends of the stream. Studying a village in the Dominican Republic, Peggy Levitt of Wellesley College found that women prefer to marry men who have worked abroad “because they want husbands who will share in the housework and take care of the children the way men who have been to the United States do.”
Conflict is also a running theme, across cultures and time. The Dutch are so worried about assimilation they require migrants to pass a language test before they come. Aristede R. Zolberg of the New School, notes that Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin “considered the German language to be the bearer of a culture incompatible with republican democracy.”
Professor Zolberg resists the term “age of migration” (coined by the scholars Stephen Castles and Mark J. Miller) because people have been migrating since the beginning of time. Still, he sees migration growth as likely to continue, in an era of cheap travel and easy communication via cellphones and Web cams. And as incomes rise in the developing world, more people have the means to move.
“What’s new is it’s much easier now,” he said.
Financially, the Source may be a victim of its own success. Its initial supporters largely consider the site a core mission of the institute, to be financed from the broader institute’s $3.5 million budget. That leaves Ms. Kalia rattling the online cup for reader donations.
As for the difficulties that migration can bring, Ms. Kalia encountered them early when her uncle, who is Dutch and a Catholic priest, flew to California to baptize her baby brother. Her Hindu grandmother lived with the family, and locked herself in her bedroom, beside a Lord Krishna poster, until the uncle promised to desist.
Ms. Kalia has yet to write about the episode, but she does see a lesson. “It shows you just how difficult negotiating cultural differences can be,” she said.
Sunday, February 03, 2008
Take the Hate Out of the Immigration Debate
Christine Senteno | New America Media
February 1, 2008
Editor’s Note: The FBI reports a 25 percent increase in hate crimes committed against Latinos between 2004 and 2006, with many more crimes unreported. The National Council of La Raza is now pushing for presidential candidates and the mainstream media to stop affiliating themselves with fringe anti-immigrant groups such as the Minutemen.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – This week the National Council of La Raza called for presidential candidates and news media networks to “take the hate out of the debate” over immigration.
The organization contends that small but vocal groups that use hate speech in the immigration debate are moving out of the fringes of American society and into mainstream media. Hate is framing the political discourse.
Civil rights advocacy groups demand that three cable news networks – FOX, MSNBC and CNN – stop using extremists as messengers for their talk shows and put an end the rhetoric of hosts such as Lou Dobbs, Glenn Beck and Pat Buchanan. They are also pushing for Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee to sever his ties and renounce his endorsement of Minutemen co-founder Jim Gilchrist.
Dan Stein of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), Gilchrist and Chris Simcox, co-founders of the anti-immigration group the Minutemen Project, have appeared on national cable network television at least 110 times in the past three years.
FAIR was listed as a hate group by the internationally known civil rights law firm Southern Poverty Law Center located in Montgomery, Ala. SPLC noted that FAIR often compares immigrants to bacteria, has members of white supremacist groups working for them, and has accepted more than a million dollars from the Pioneer Fund, a racist foundation devoted to proving a connection between race and IQ.
In addition to the Minutemen Project’s controversial actions to police the Southern border, Gilchrist was once videotaped at an anti-immigration rally saying he was “proud to be a vigilante.” Simcox, the group’s co-founder, was convicted in 2003 of carrying a weapon into a national park while searching for undocumented immigrants, according to SPLC.
“This is all about free speech,” Gilchrist told New America Media. “La Raza has the right to free speech. Jim Gilchrist has the right to free speech.”
NCLR President Janet Murguía explained that, because the president and Congress have failed to address the immigration issue, the debate has moved to the states and now to the presidential debates.
“This debate is no longer about substantive policy approaches. This debate is about hate,” Murguía said. “ And if letting these people get on the air unchecked isn’t bad enough, many of the network talk show hosts parrot hate speech openly and abundantly on the air.”
On June 28, CNN’s Glenn Beck jokingly offered a one-step solution to the immigration and energy crises on his radio program. He read a proposed ad for a "giant refinery" that produces "Mexinol," a fuel made from the bodies of illegal immigrants coming here from Mexico to find work.
With this type of hate speech comes an increase in hate crimes, according to NCLR Vice President Cecilia Muñoz: The FBI reports a 25 percent increase in hate crimes committed against Latinos between 2004 and 2006. The statistics do not include crimes that go unreported by undocumented immigrants who fear being deported.
On Jan. 31, the National Council of La Raza, which includes nearly 300 affiliated organizations, launched a new initiative titled "We Can Stop The Hate," in partnership with MALDEF, the Anti-Defamation League of Washington, D.C., the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Center for American Progress and Media Matters for America.
The initiative includes a campaign to educate the public about the use of hate speech and the growing rise of violence against Latinos. NCLR has already written to FOX, CNN and MSNBC network executives about extremists appearing regularly on their programming. They are also asking candidates to pledge to reject hate speech in discussions on immigration.
Latinos have the power to change the debate, says Murguía.
“Latinos buy products from the advertisers supporting these programs. Latinos vote in primaries and in the general election. We need to make it clear to those who embrace hate that they do so at their own economic and political peril,” said Murguía.
For more information go to www.wecanstopthehate.org
February 1, 2008
Editor’s Note: The FBI reports a 25 percent increase in hate crimes committed against Latinos between 2004 and 2006, with many more crimes unreported. The National Council of La Raza is now pushing for presidential candidates and the mainstream media to stop affiliating themselves with fringe anti-immigrant groups such as the Minutemen.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – This week the National Council of La Raza called for presidential candidates and news media networks to “take the hate out of the debate” over immigration.
The organization contends that small but vocal groups that use hate speech in the immigration debate are moving out of the fringes of American society and into mainstream media. Hate is framing the political discourse.
Civil rights advocacy groups demand that three cable news networks – FOX, MSNBC and CNN – stop using extremists as messengers for their talk shows and put an end the rhetoric of hosts such as Lou Dobbs, Glenn Beck and Pat Buchanan. They are also pushing for Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee to sever his ties and renounce his endorsement of Minutemen co-founder Jim Gilchrist.
Dan Stein of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), Gilchrist and Chris Simcox, co-founders of the anti-immigration group the Minutemen Project, have appeared on national cable network television at least 110 times in the past three years.
FAIR was listed as a hate group by the internationally known civil rights law firm Southern Poverty Law Center located in Montgomery, Ala. SPLC noted that FAIR often compares immigrants to bacteria, has members of white supremacist groups working for them, and has accepted more than a million dollars from the Pioneer Fund, a racist foundation devoted to proving a connection between race and IQ.
In addition to the Minutemen Project’s controversial actions to police the Southern border, Gilchrist was once videotaped at an anti-immigration rally saying he was “proud to be a vigilante.” Simcox, the group’s co-founder, was convicted in 2003 of carrying a weapon into a national park while searching for undocumented immigrants, according to SPLC.
“This is all about free speech,” Gilchrist told New America Media. “La Raza has the right to free speech. Jim Gilchrist has the right to free speech.”
NCLR President Janet Murguía explained that, because the president and Congress have failed to address the immigration issue, the debate has moved to the states and now to the presidential debates.
“This debate is no longer about substantive policy approaches. This debate is about hate,” Murguía said. “ And if letting these people get on the air unchecked isn’t bad enough, many of the network talk show hosts parrot hate speech openly and abundantly on the air.”
On June 28, CNN’s Glenn Beck jokingly offered a one-step solution to the immigration and energy crises on his radio program. He read a proposed ad for a "giant refinery" that produces "Mexinol," a fuel made from the bodies of illegal immigrants coming here from Mexico to find work.
With this type of hate speech comes an increase in hate crimes, according to NCLR Vice President Cecilia Muñoz: The FBI reports a 25 percent increase in hate crimes committed against Latinos between 2004 and 2006. The statistics do not include crimes that go unreported by undocumented immigrants who fear being deported.
On Jan. 31, the National Council of La Raza, which includes nearly 300 affiliated organizations, launched a new initiative titled "We Can Stop The Hate," in partnership with MALDEF, the Anti-Defamation League of Washington, D.C., the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Center for American Progress and Media Matters for America.
The initiative includes a campaign to educate the public about the use of hate speech and the growing rise of violence against Latinos. NCLR has already written to FOX, CNN and MSNBC network executives about extremists appearing regularly on their programming. They are also asking candidates to pledge to reject hate speech in discussions on immigration.
Latinos have the power to change the debate, says Murguía.
“Latinos buy products from the advertisers supporting these programs. Latinos vote in primaries and in the general election. We need to make it clear to those who embrace hate that they do so at their own economic and political peril,” said Murguía.
For more information go to www.wecanstopthehate.org
Left in dark over No Child Left Behind
BY CARRIE MELAGO | NY DAILY NEWS
Sunday, February 3rd 2008
Less than 2% of the 181,000 children eligible to transfer to higher-performing schools under NCLB actually did this year, according to education department figures.
"In a city as large as New York, obviously the public school choice part of NCLB presents logistical challenges," said schools spokesman Andrew Jacob. "But we've been doing it several years, and I think we're improving."
Only 9,200 students even applied to leave their failing schools, and of those just 3,090 ultimately enrolled in a different school.
Some parents of kids in failing schools told the Daily News they weren't even aware they could transfer out, and some were turned away from better schools that are already overcrowded.
And still other parents like their children's schools just fine, even if they are labeled as failing, or think transferring kids will only make the institutions worse.
"I definitely don't think the NCLB system is fixing the problem. It's a band-aid, and it's a temporary band-aid," said Stephanie Pryor, who threw out the application to transfer her daughter out of P.S. 93 in the Bronx.
The controversial law was passed six years ago to sanction schools with low test scores and allow parents to transfer their children out. Critics, though, charge that the law punishes struggling schools and encourages educators to teach to the test.
As members of Congress wrangle over whether to reauthorize NCLB, President Bush declared it a success in his State of the Union address and called on legislators to strengthen it.
But while school choice has been held up as a hallmark of the law, the percentage of children transferring nationwide is just as low as it is in New York City. Last school year, only 120,000 kids transferred out of 5 million eligible - just 2%.
With 283 city schools deemed failing - about 20% of all schools - education officials acknowledge the difficulties faced by parents who may want to transfer.
The education department received a $2.4 million federal grant to create a team of advisers that will help parents use the new report cards and other data to decide which school works best for their child.
"Ultimately, that decision is a personal one for parents," Jacob said.
Additionally, under the mayor's "fair student funding" formula, schools earn $2,000 for every child they accept under NCLB.
At some schools, the extra information is needed. Even though she's PTA president at Acorn High School in Brooklyn, Dawn Beckles didn't realize that she could transfer her three children out. She says, though, that she wouldn't have anyway.
"They have teachers that are there for them. For me, to just move them, it wouldn't be fair," Beckles said.
But for some parents who successfully transferred their children, NCLB has been a ticket to a better future.
Until she secured a transfer in 2005, Carol Boyd applied for charter school lotteries and variances to move her son out of failing P.S. 64 in the Bronx, which she said had no school yard and focused heavily on test prep to lift poor scores.
Boyd said she is thrilled with the school where her son, Zachary, landed - Ella Baker in Manhattan. The 13-year-old now walks to Central Park for science classes and plays percussion instruments during concerts at Columbia University's Miller Theater.
"I did a lot of research and I said, 'A-ha! This is the place for him,'" she said. "It makes for a difference."
Sunday, February 3rd 2008
Less than 2% of the 181,000 children eligible to transfer to higher-performing schools under NCLB actually did this year, according to education department figures.
"In a city as large as New York, obviously the public school choice part of NCLB presents logistical challenges," said schools spokesman Andrew Jacob. "But we've been doing it several years, and I think we're improving."
Only 9,200 students even applied to leave their failing schools, and of those just 3,090 ultimately enrolled in a different school.
Some parents of kids in failing schools told the Daily News they weren't even aware they could transfer out, and some were turned away from better schools that are already overcrowded.
And still other parents like their children's schools just fine, even if they are labeled as failing, or think transferring kids will only make the institutions worse.
"I definitely don't think the NCLB system is fixing the problem. It's a band-aid, and it's a temporary band-aid," said Stephanie Pryor, who threw out the application to transfer her daughter out of P.S. 93 in the Bronx.
The controversial law was passed six years ago to sanction schools with low test scores and allow parents to transfer their children out. Critics, though, charge that the law punishes struggling schools and encourages educators to teach to the test.
As members of Congress wrangle over whether to reauthorize NCLB, President Bush declared it a success in his State of the Union address and called on legislators to strengthen it.
But while school choice has been held up as a hallmark of the law, the percentage of children transferring nationwide is just as low as it is in New York City. Last school year, only 120,000 kids transferred out of 5 million eligible - just 2%.
With 283 city schools deemed failing - about 20% of all schools - education officials acknowledge the difficulties faced by parents who may want to transfer.
The education department received a $2.4 million federal grant to create a team of advisers that will help parents use the new report cards and other data to decide which school works best for their child.
"Ultimately, that decision is a personal one for parents," Jacob said.
Additionally, under the mayor's "fair student funding" formula, schools earn $2,000 for every child they accept under NCLB.
At some schools, the extra information is needed. Even though she's PTA president at Acorn High School in Brooklyn, Dawn Beckles didn't realize that she could transfer her three children out. She says, though, that she wouldn't have anyway.
"They have teachers that are there for them. For me, to just move them, it wouldn't be fair," Beckles said.
But for some parents who successfully transferred their children, NCLB has been a ticket to a better future.
Until she secured a transfer in 2005, Carol Boyd applied for charter school lotteries and variances to move her son out of failing P.S. 64 in the Bronx, which she said had no school yard and focused heavily on test prep to lift poor scores.
Boyd said she is thrilled with the school where her son, Zachary, landed - Ella Baker in Manhattan. The 13-year-old now walks to Central Park for science classes and plays percussion instruments during concerts at Columbia University's Miller Theater.
"I did a lot of research and I said, 'A-ha! This is the place for him,'" she said. "It makes for a difference."
Bad Parents Don't Make Bad Schools
Some really good comments in this article. Something it fails to mention regarding schools in highly affluent communities showing higher parent involvement (in the traditional sense) is how these parents are not as likely, if at all, to have many of the barriers that non-affluent parents have. You can also find the Nakamura and Agiesta in an earlier post. -Patricia
By Jay Mathews
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
A Washington Post poll this month revealed, once again, that D.C. residents put the most blame for their failing public schools on apathetic and uninvolved parents. Many Americans feel the same way about the same school troubles in their areas. They are wrong, but in such a convoluted way that it is difficult for us parents to get a good grasp on what role we play in making our schools bad or good.
Do unsupportive parents create pathetic schools or do pathetic schools create unsupportive parents? It is the most frustrating of chicken-and-egg questions. Many education experts will say it is a bit of both, but that's a cop-out. Most of our worst schools are full of low-income children in our biggest cities. No one has yet found a way to revive those schools in any significant way by training the students' parents to be more engaged with their children's educations. It is too hard to do and too unlikely to have much impact on the chaotic school district leadership.
What has worked, again and again, is the opposite: Bring an energetic and focused leader into the school, let that person recruit and train good teachers and find ways to get rid of those who resist making the necessary changes. Great teaching makes great schools, and once you have a good school, parents become engaged and active.
This happens, if you think about it, not only in our most disadvantaged neighborhoods but in those places where the rich folks live. Why do parents moving to this area flock to the suburbs where the housing is most expensive? It is because they have the best schools. Why are those schools full of parent volunteers? Because those mothers and fathers know their children are being given the best possible instruction and realize that their extra efforts will enrich an already good product. Schools that reject parental help and are slow to rid themselves of inadequate teachers -- there are some even in wealthy neighborhoods -- are readily detected by parental radar and find their PTA meetings poorly attended.
Yet we still blame parents for bad schools, a vestige of the racism and classism that distorts popular opinion on education everywhere. Stroll down any street in America and ask the neighbors about the local school. If it is full of the children of affluent parents, they will say it is great place to learn. If the children are largely from low-income, largely minority homes, they will say it is not a good school, even if some of its teachers have made great strides in raising achievement. When I write stories praising such schools for confounding expectations, I invariably get e-mails saying I have to be wrong, that such kids with such parents just can't be doing what I am seeing them do.
The Washington Post survey proved this point in a vivid way. When asked what was the biggest of a list of problems in D.C. schools, the highest portion of respondents, 20 percent, said parental apathy. When asked to read a list of issues and check all that they thought were big problems in the schools, parental apathy at 76 percent came in a close second to condition of facilities, 78 percent. (That is also an incorrect answer. I have visited some terrific schools in creaky buildings, but that is an issue for another day.) The choice that got the lowest number of votes as a big problem was quality of the teachers. Only 47 percent picked that issue, even though it is clear to anyone who has seen a bad school change to a good one that the teaching is by far the most important factor. (To be fair to D.C. teachers, I am talking about the quality of the teaching, not the quality of the teachers, which in some circumstances may not be the same thing. Good teachers stuck in a badly run school rarely do their best.)
Parents, no matter how much money they have or how difficult their lives are, are often smart about schools. They can figure out which ones are adding value to their children's lives, which are not, and they act accordingly. Mount Vernon High School in Fairfax County was struggling to keep middle-class families from moving away in the early 1990s as low-income families moved into the Route 1 corridor and standards lapsed. A group of community leaders, including then-school board member Kris Amundson, former superintendent Robert R. "Bud" Spillane, then-assistant superintendent Nancy Sprague and former Mount Vernon principal Calanthia Tucker, introduced the International Baccalaureate program to the school and staffed it with exceptional teachers, like Betsy Calhoon and Bernie Glaze. Three years later, Amundson was hearing middle-class parents at cocktail parties brag about their children being admitted to IB at Mount Vernon.
Or consider an example in a New York City neighborhood much like the poorer parts of the District. Dave Levin and Frank Corcoran, both in their 20s, tried to start a middle school called the KIPP Academy in the South Bronx in 1995. Parents were not impressed. Some called them crazy for thinking they could make any headway in a school system that had disappointed them for so long. But Levin and Corcoran kept at it and succeeded in adding some first-class veteran teachers, such as Charlie Randall and Jerry Myers, who were decidedly not crazy. Five years later, KIPP test scores were the highest in the Bronx. When the local school board considered a plan to eject the school from its building, 200 parents showed up and chanted, "KIPP! KIPP! KIPP!" incessantly until the plan was shelved and the meeting adjourned.
The Jan. 21 Post story by David Nakamura and Jennifer Agiesta that accompanied the poll results indicated that D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee understands this dynamic. She said the school system cannot demand more of parents until it offers better services. "I have seen firsthand how parents are treated in our schools," she said. "I can't blame them if they do not jump to volunteer."
Nor, I think, can they be blamed if they protest when Rhee tries to close their neighborhood schools, having learned that change in the D.C. schools is rarely for the better. But Rhee has spent all of her professional life doing exactly what has to be done, finding ways to get the best principals and best teachers so parents will have a great school to rally around. It is always a risk for any D.C. parent to hope that school system leaders will finally do it right, but at least Rhee, unlike most D.C. residents, doesn't think the sorry state of education in the city is the parents' fault.
By Jay Mathews
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
A Washington Post poll this month revealed, once again, that D.C. residents put the most blame for their failing public schools on apathetic and uninvolved parents. Many Americans feel the same way about the same school troubles in their areas. They are wrong, but in such a convoluted way that it is difficult for us parents to get a good grasp on what role we play in making our schools bad or good.
Do unsupportive parents create pathetic schools or do pathetic schools create unsupportive parents? It is the most frustrating of chicken-and-egg questions. Many education experts will say it is a bit of both, but that's a cop-out. Most of our worst schools are full of low-income children in our biggest cities. No one has yet found a way to revive those schools in any significant way by training the students' parents to be more engaged with their children's educations. It is too hard to do and too unlikely to have much impact on the chaotic school district leadership.
What has worked, again and again, is the opposite: Bring an energetic and focused leader into the school, let that person recruit and train good teachers and find ways to get rid of those who resist making the necessary changes. Great teaching makes great schools, and once you have a good school, parents become engaged and active.
This happens, if you think about it, not only in our most disadvantaged neighborhoods but in those places where the rich folks live. Why do parents moving to this area flock to the suburbs where the housing is most expensive? It is because they have the best schools. Why are those schools full of parent volunteers? Because those mothers and fathers know their children are being given the best possible instruction and realize that their extra efforts will enrich an already good product. Schools that reject parental help and are slow to rid themselves of inadequate teachers -- there are some even in wealthy neighborhoods -- are readily detected by parental radar and find their PTA meetings poorly attended.
Yet we still blame parents for bad schools, a vestige of the racism and classism that distorts popular opinion on education everywhere. Stroll down any street in America and ask the neighbors about the local school. If it is full of the children of affluent parents, they will say it is great place to learn. If the children are largely from low-income, largely minority homes, they will say it is not a good school, even if some of its teachers have made great strides in raising achievement. When I write stories praising such schools for confounding expectations, I invariably get e-mails saying I have to be wrong, that such kids with such parents just can't be doing what I am seeing them do.
The Washington Post survey proved this point in a vivid way. When asked what was the biggest of a list of problems in D.C. schools, the highest portion of respondents, 20 percent, said parental apathy. When asked to read a list of issues and check all that they thought were big problems in the schools, parental apathy at 76 percent came in a close second to condition of facilities, 78 percent. (That is also an incorrect answer. I have visited some terrific schools in creaky buildings, but that is an issue for another day.) The choice that got the lowest number of votes as a big problem was quality of the teachers. Only 47 percent picked that issue, even though it is clear to anyone who has seen a bad school change to a good one that the teaching is by far the most important factor. (To be fair to D.C. teachers, I am talking about the quality of the teaching, not the quality of the teachers, which in some circumstances may not be the same thing. Good teachers stuck in a badly run school rarely do their best.)
Parents, no matter how much money they have or how difficult their lives are, are often smart about schools. They can figure out which ones are adding value to their children's lives, which are not, and they act accordingly. Mount Vernon High School in Fairfax County was struggling to keep middle-class families from moving away in the early 1990s as low-income families moved into the Route 1 corridor and standards lapsed. A group of community leaders, including then-school board member Kris Amundson, former superintendent Robert R. "Bud" Spillane, then-assistant superintendent Nancy Sprague and former Mount Vernon principal Calanthia Tucker, introduced the International Baccalaureate program to the school and staffed it with exceptional teachers, like Betsy Calhoon and Bernie Glaze. Three years later, Amundson was hearing middle-class parents at cocktail parties brag about their children being admitted to IB at Mount Vernon.
Or consider an example in a New York City neighborhood much like the poorer parts of the District. Dave Levin and Frank Corcoran, both in their 20s, tried to start a middle school called the KIPP Academy in the South Bronx in 1995. Parents were not impressed. Some called them crazy for thinking they could make any headway in a school system that had disappointed them for so long. But Levin and Corcoran kept at it and succeeded in adding some first-class veteran teachers, such as Charlie Randall and Jerry Myers, who were decidedly not crazy. Five years later, KIPP test scores were the highest in the Bronx. When the local school board considered a plan to eject the school from its building, 200 parents showed up and chanted, "KIPP! KIPP! KIPP!" incessantly until the plan was shelved and the meeting adjourned.
The Jan. 21 Post story by David Nakamura and Jennifer Agiesta that accompanied the poll results indicated that D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee understands this dynamic. She said the school system cannot demand more of parents until it offers better services. "I have seen firsthand how parents are treated in our schools," she said. "I can't blame them if they do not jump to volunteer."
Nor, I think, can they be blamed if they protest when Rhee tries to close their neighborhood schools, having learned that change in the D.C. schools is rarely for the better. But Rhee has spent all of her professional life doing exactly what has to be done, finding ways to get the best principals and best teachers so parents will have a great school to rally around. It is always a risk for any D.C. parent to hope that school system leaders will finally do it right, but at least Rhee, unlike most D.C. residents, doesn't think the sorry state of education in the city is the parents' fault.
Top Issue For D.C. Schools? Parents.
Check out the Washington Post Poll that's mentioned in this article. -Patricia
By David Nakamura and Jennifer Agiesta
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, January 21, 2008; Page B01
So Say Residents, Who Cite Apathy
Seven in 10 D.C. residents believe the city's public schools are performing inadequately, with the lack of parental involvement still cited as the biggest problem facing the nearly 50,000-student system, a Washington Post poll has found.
Despite widespread concerns, however, 68 percent of those polled believe Mayor Adrian M. Fenty's takeover of the schools will help improve them, and 59 percent approved of the performance of his handpicked schools chancellor, Michelle A. Rhee.
The poll of 1,000 randomly selected adults took place from Jan. 3 to 8, before last week's public hearings on Rhee's controversial plan to close 23 schools this fall. A vocal group of parents and activists has called the plan insensitive and poorly thought out, and more than 200 boycotted the scheduled hearings Thursday, holding a counter-gathering instead.
Rhee, who said the closings will save money that can be invested in program enhancements, said she will make amendments. But she did not promise to remove schools from the list, as some critics of the closing plan have demanded.
Although relatively hopeful about the future of the education system under Fenty (D), residents remain skeptical of the mayor's performance on education after a year in office, with about half giving him good marks.
The poll also showed that views are divided sharply along racial and socioeconomic lines, and Fenty's approval ratings on school reform falls to 39 percent among parents with students in the public schools.
But little has changed in District residents' perceptions of the biggest problems facing the public schools since Fenty took office. As in July 2006, about three-quarters called the condition of buildings and other facilities, the lack of parental involvement, disruptive students, and the presence of violence or crime "big problems."
In a meeting with Washington Post reporters and editors last week, Rhee said she was not surprised that public school parents were the most frustrated.
"We've made a lot of improvements, but fundamentally we have not changed the things that matter most: the quality of instruction," said Rhee, who took over in June after Fenty downgraded the school board and took direct control of the system. "Until we do that, we will continue to hear that" frustration.
That might take a while: Rhee said she expects to see signs of academic improvement by the 2008-09 school year, but allowed that it could be eight years before the system is in good shape.
Fenty said his first year in charge of the schools was aimed at getting "controversial, aggressive" policy changes in place.
The mayor has successfully pushed through legislation that gives Rhee authority to fire central office employees more easily, and he has created a separate departme nt in charge of school renovations, headed by Allen Y. Lew. "It's about laying the foundations of change, creating the inertia so the system is set up to go 700 miles per hour and never stop," Fenty said.
Amy Kauffman, 44, a poll respondent who works in public policy and lives in Georgetown, said her three children, ages 5, 8 and 10, attend parochial school. But she will consider switching them to public high schools if things improve. "That's why I have to have faith in Adrian," Kauffman said.
But Jacqueline Yates, 37, whose 13-year-old daughter attends Hine Junior High, which is scheduled to close, is less optimistic.
"Since he's taken over, nothing has still been done about the school system," Yates, who lives in Congress Heights, said of Fenty. "By them closing these other schools, the [remaining] schools are going to get more packed."
Such frustration was on display at the hearings and protest meeting last week.
Chris Allen, who has two children at John Burroughs Elementary in Northeast Washington, said Thursday night that she joined the protest at the "People's Meeting" at the John A. Wilson Building because she felt "disrespected" that Fenty and Rhee were not including enough parent input in their decisions on the closings. "They can't be listening to us, they're not there," she said.
The racial and class division on the schools echoes similar divides reflected in Fenty's overall approval ratings and the outlook on the future of the city. White and more-affluent residents were generally more optimistic about the city and approving of the mayor than were black and poorer residents.
Whites more frequently mentioned schools as the city's top problem, while blacks called crime a bigger concern. Thirty percent of blacks gave the schools decent marks, more than twice the 14 percent of whites who did so.
At the same time, half of black residents and half of residents in wards 7 and 8, the poorest in the city, approved of Rhee's job performance; 71 percent of whites and 64 percent of those living in more affluent Northwest approved.
Rhee did not include a school from affluent Ward 3 on her closings list, saying that ward has the fewest schools and is not experiencing enrollment drops.
"Someone said to me that we have to close a school in Ward 3 as a symbolic gesture. I thought it was the dumbest thing I'd ever heard," Rhee said.
Asked whether she takes race and social class into consideration, she responded: "You have to be sensitive. It's a valid question people should ask. But I cannot allow it to dictate decisions. It should be what's best for kids first and foremost."
Many residents polled said part of what would be best for District students and schools is addressing parent apathy. Twenty percent of those surveyed called the lack of parental involvement the top problem"Many parents spend more time researching a new car than their school," said Bob Payne, a Capitol Hill computer consultant who plans to send his two young children to public school. "I also realize some of the economic realities where you've got some families with two parents working really hard to scrape by" with little free time.
Rhee said the school system cannot demand more of parents until it offers better services. "I have seen firsthand how parents are treated in our schools," said Rhee, whose two daughters attend Oyster Elementary in Ward 4. "I can't blame them if they do not jump to volunteer."
Crime and violence is what worries Ivana Williams, who lives in Ward 5's North Michigan Park neighborhood and has a 14-year-old son at Wilson High School in Ward 3. Her son's cellphone was stolen during gym class, she said.
Williams said she fears things could worsen with the school consolidation plan, which some activists have cautioned would bring together students from rival neighborhoods.
"I'm hopeful, but I've been hopeful for years," said Williams, who attended D.C. public schools through 11th grade in 1972. "I don't know what they can do to improve the schools and test scores and discipline. To me, it's not putting more kids together in one school."
Staff writers Robert E. Pierre, Nikita Stewart and V. Dion Haynes and polling director Jon Cohen contributed to this report.
By David Nakamura and Jennifer Agiesta
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, January 21, 2008; Page B01
So Say Residents, Who Cite Apathy
Seven in 10 D.C. residents believe the city's public schools are performing inadequately, with the lack of parental involvement still cited as the biggest problem facing the nearly 50,000-student system, a Washington Post poll has found.
Despite widespread concerns, however, 68 percent of those polled believe Mayor Adrian M. Fenty's takeover of the schools will help improve them, and 59 percent approved of the performance of his handpicked schools chancellor, Michelle A. Rhee.
The poll of 1,000 randomly selected adults took place from Jan. 3 to 8, before last week's public hearings on Rhee's controversial plan to close 23 schools this fall. A vocal group of parents and activists has called the plan insensitive and poorly thought out, and more than 200 boycotted the scheduled hearings Thursday, holding a counter-gathering instead.
Rhee, who said the closings will save money that can be invested in program enhancements, said she will make amendments. But she did not promise to remove schools from the list, as some critics of the closing plan have demanded.
Although relatively hopeful about the future of the education system under Fenty (D), residents remain skeptical of the mayor's performance on education after a year in office, with about half giving him good marks.
The poll also showed that views are divided sharply along racial and socioeconomic lines, and Fenty's approval ratings on school reform falls to 39 percent among parents with students in the public schools.
But little has changed in District residents' perceptions of the biggest problems facing the public schools since Fenty took office. As in July 2006, about three-quarters called the condition of buildings and other facilities, the lack of parental involvement, disruptive students, and the presence of violence or crime "big problems."
In a meeting with Washington Post reporters and editors last week, Rhee said she was not surprised that public school parents were the most frustrated.
"We've made a lot of improvements, but fundamentally we have not changed the things that matter most: the quality of instruction," said Rhee, who took over in June after Fenty downgraded the school board and took direct control of the system. "Until we do that, we will continue to hear that" frustration.
That might take a while: Rhee said she expects to see signs of academic improvement by the 2008-09 school year, but allowed that it could be eight years before the system is in good shape.
Fenty said his first year in charge of the schools was aimed at getting "controversial, aggressive" policy changes in place.
The mayor has successfully pushed through legislation that gives Rhee authority to fire central office employees more easily, and he has created a separate departme nt in charge of school renovations, headed by Allen Y. Lew. "It's about laying the foundations of change, creating the inertia so the system is set up to go 700 miles per hour and never stop," Fenty said.
Amy Kauffman, 44, a poll respondent who works in public policy and lives in Georgetown, said her three children, ages 5, 8 and 10, attend parochial school. But she will consider switching them to public high schools if things improve. "That's why I have to have faith in Adrian," Kauffman said.
But Jacqueline Yates, 37, whose 13-year-old daughter attends Hine Junior High, which is scheduled to close, is less optimistic.
"Since he's taken over, nothing has still been done about the school system," Yates, who lives in Congress Heights, said of Fenty. "By them closing these other schools, the [remaining] schools are going to get more packed."
Such frustration was on display at the hearings and protest meeting last week.
Chris Allen, who has two children at John Burroughs Elementary in Northeast Washington, said Thursday night that she joined the protest at the "People's Meeting" at the John A. Wilson Building because she felt "disrespected" that Fenty and Rhee were not including enough parent input in their decisions on the closings. "They can't be listening to us, they're not there," she said.
The racial and class division on the schools echoes similar divides reflected in Fenty's overall approval ratings and the outlook on the future of the city. White and more-affluent residents were generally more optimistic about the city and approving of the mayor than were black and poorer residents.
Whites more frequently mentioned schools as the city's top problem, while blacks called crime a bigger concern. Thirty percent of blacks gave the schools decent marks, more than twice the 14 percent of whites who did so.
At the same time, half of black residents and half of residents in wards 7 and 8, the poorest in the city, approved of Rhee's job performance; 71 percent of whites and 64 percent of those living in more affluent Northwest approved.
Rhee did not include a school from affluent Ward 3 on her closings list, saying that ward has the fewest schools and is not experiencing enrollment drops.
"Someone said to me that we have to close a school in Ward 3 as a symbolic gesture. I thought it was the dumbest thing I'd ever heard," Rhee said.
Asked whether she takes race and social class into consideration, she responded: "You have to be sensitive. It's a valid question people should ask. But I cannot allow it to dictate decisions. It should be what's best for kids first and foremost."
Many residents polled said part of what would be best for District students and schools is addressing parent apathy. Twenty percent of those surveyed called the lack of parental involvement the top problem"Many parents spend more time researching a new car than their school," said Bob Payne, a Capitol Hill computer consultant who plans to send his two young children to public school. "I also realize some of the economic realities where you've got some families with two parents working really hard to scrape by" with little free time.
Rhee said the school system cannot demand more of parents until it offers better services. "I have seen firsthand how parents are treated in our schools," said Rhee, whose two daughters attend Oyster Elementary in Ward 4. "I can't blame them if they do not jump to volunteer."
Crime and violence is what worries Ivana Williams, who lives in Ward 5's North Michigan Park neighborhood and has a 14-year-old son at Wilson High School in Ward 3. Her son's cellphone was stolen during gym class, she said.
Williams said she fears things could worsen with the school consolidation plan, which some activists have cautioned would bring together students from rival neighborhoods.
"I'm hopeful, but I've been hopeful for years," said Williams, who attended D.C. public schools through 11th grade in 1972. "I don't know what they can do to improve the schools and test scores and discipline. To me, it's not putting more kids together in one school."
Staff writers Robert E. Pierre, Nikita Stewart and V. Dion Haynes and polling director Jon Cohen contributed to this report.
Saturday, February 02, 2008
English-Only School Bus Rule Violates Students’ Rights
The following is from an email newsletter. The link will take you to the site where you can download the ACLU's response to the Nevada School District. -Patricia
In Nevada, the Esmeralda County School District is blatantly discriminating against Latino students and violating their first amendment rights by forbidding students from speaking Spanish on school buses. The ACLU sent a letter to the superintendent requesting that the school district rescind the ban on Spanish immediately.
"During the bus ride to and from school there is no scheduled scholastic instruction,” said Lee Rowland, staff attorney with the ACLU of Nevada. “Yet while English-speaking students can carry on personal conversations that don’t further any educational goals, Spanish-speaking students must sit in silence."
By singling out and prohibiting the use of Spanish, the ACLU’s letter points out, the school district sends the message that Spanish-speakers, the majority of whom are Latino, are inferior. Because the language people choose to speak closely reflects their culture and where they are from, restricting the use of languages violates federal prohibitions against discrimination based on national origin.
The ACLU has requested to meet with the superintendent soon to resolve the matter of the school district’s policy that prohibits Spanish on the bus.
In Nevada, the Esmeralda County School District is blatantly discriminating against Latino students and violating their first amendment rights by forbidding students from speaking Spanish on school buses. The ACLU sent a letter to the superintendent requesting that the school district rescind the ban on Spanish immediately.
"During the bus ride to and from school there is no scheduled scholastic instruction,” said Lee Rowland, staff attorney with the ACLU of Nevada. “Yet while English-speaking students can carry on personal conversations that don’t further any educational goals, Spanish-speaking students must sit in silence."
By singling out and prohibiting the use of Spanish, the ACLU’s letter points out, the school district sends the message that Spanish-speakers, the majority of whom are Latino, are inferior. Because the language people choose to speak closely reflects their culture and where they are from, restricting the use of languages violates federal prohibitions against discrimination based on national origin.
The ACLU has requested to meet with the superintendent soon to resolve the matter of the school district’s policy that prohibits Spanish on the bus.
Friday, February 01, 2008
Up to 100,000 Mexican Farmers Protest NAFTA
From Democracy Now!:
In Mexico, up to 100,000 farmers and supporters marched through Mexico City Thursday to rally against the lifting of tariffs on U.S. imports. A Mexican tax on basic crops, including corn, beans and sugar, from Canada and the U.S. ended last month under the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. Critics say NAFTA has devastated Mexican farmers by forcing them to compete with government-subsidized American and Canadian goods. Farmer Armando Villegas was one of the protesters.
Armando Villegas: “The public policies of the North American Free Trade are wrong. The public policies of the NAFTA agreement have created a Frankenstein and as it is fed with bad public policies, this is disastrous for us. The government has created a Frankenstein in the countryside with its bad public policies. If these public policies weren’t so bad the NAFTA wouldn’t worry us.”
To read more (in Spanish): Mega marcha campesina contra el TLCAN
Segregation is coming to our schools next year
Important message on the effects of top-down policies on ELL students from the perspective of a school administrator. -Patricia
Opinion by Kathleen Bethel | Arizona Star
Tucson, Arizona
January 22, 2008
The Arizona Department of Education introduced the "new" plan for English Language Learners to principals and leaders in our district. But the informational meetings have been occurring around the state for many months. And the silence is deafening.
Many educators are in shock wondering how we could have come to this without a public outcry. But voters never even had a chance to express their approval or outrage.
Principals are being mandated to separate all students who are not deemed "proficient" in the English language from the rest of the population next year. They must be placed in separate classes from any child who is "proficient," or, any student who will never be tested due to the fact that their parents speak only English. The child must stay assigned to that class until they are deemed proficient.
It does not take much imagination to see how these classes will look. Arizona schools will have much the same feel as the historic "separate but equal" education. The psychological barriers will be firmly established from the beginning. Children will learn their place by being assigned to "that classroom." They will know who are the language "haves" and "have-nots."
Using Prop. 203, the English for Children initiative that passed in 2000, as the basis for an overhaul in the learning of English in Arizona, a task force of nine individuals was appointed to design this model. None of those appointed was an expert in the field of language learning, only two were educators and some had a political agenda.
The model was not based on any proven, successful plan. It will not be funded, although it will cause financial hardship to every district. Our Legislature quietly passed it as ARS 2064 in September 2006.
The plan's writers are quick to state their plan is not actually unconstitutional. Defending the segregated placements as "only temporary" until the child proves he is proficient in English, the writers claim that the plan is not a violation of civil rights. A child might be there for only one year. But the burden of proof is on the children. It is up to them to test out.
Testing out depends on proficiency not only in speaking English but also in reading and writing on the Arizona English Language Learner Assessment (AZELLA). Even native English speakers might have trouble passing, but we will never know. They will not be tested.
If the writers of the plan truly had English proficiency for all students as their primary motivation, they should have included the testing of all students to prove its intent is not discriminatory.
All logic is missing. To learn German, I would want to be immersed in a class with German language role models, and supported with instruction, not "held" in a separate class with others who speak at the same level I do.
The level of proficiency determines class placement and is obtained as a child registers. Even if a child has a baby-sitter after school who speaks another language, stating that will red flag that child as needing to test his proficiency. Imagine being a kindergartner or student new to a school, walking through the doors for the first time, only to be taken to another room by a stranger and given a test. How well would you do?
Unfortunately, the parents who should and would be most outraged at this new development will remain silent. They are the ones who also are not proficient enough to protest. And educators may be afraid they will be more closely monitored if they express their concerns.
So it is imperative that those of us who have witnessed the impact of separate but equal speak out. We must not be afraid. We must invite scrutiny and resist the temptation to let the injustice of this plan continue.
E-mail Kathleen Bethel at kathleenb@susd12.org.
Opinion by Kathleen Bethel | Arizona Star
Tucson, Arizona
January 22, 2008
The Arizona Department of Education introduced the "new" plan for English Language Learners to principals and leaders in our district. But the informational meetings have been occurring around the state for many months. And the silence is deafening.
Many educators are in shock wondering how we could have come to this without a public outcry. But voters never even had a chance to express their approval or outrage.
Principals are being mandated to separate all students who are not deemed "proficient" in the English language from the rest of the population next year. They must be placed in separate classes from any child who is "proficient," or, any student who will never be tested due to the fact that their parents speak only English. The child must stay assigned to that class until they are deemed proficient.
It does not take much imagination to see how these classes will look. Arizona schools will have much the same feel as the historic "separate but equal" education. The psychological barriers will be firmly established from the beginning. Children will learn their place by being assigned to "that classroom." They will know who are the language "haves" and "have-nots."
Using Prop. 203, the English for Children initiative that passed in 2000, as the basis for an overhaul in the learning of English in Arizona, a task force of nine individuals was appointed to design this model. None of those appointed was an expert in the field of language learning, only two were educators and some had a political agenda.
The model was not based on any proven, successful plan. It will not be funded, although it will cause financial hardship to every district. Our Legislature quietly passed it as ARS 2064 in September 2006.
The plan's writers are quick to state their plan is not actually unconstitutional. Defending the segregated placements as "only temporary" until the child proves he is proficient in English, the writers claim that the plan is not a violation of civil rights. A child might be there for only one year. But the burden of proof is on the children. It is up to them to test out.
Testing out depends on proficiency not only in speaking English but also in reading and writing on the Arizona English Language Learner Assessment (AZELLA). Even native English speakers might have trouble passing, but we will never know. They will not be tested.
If the writers of the plan truly had English proficiency for all students as their primary motivation, they should have included the testing of all students to prove its intent is not discriminatory.
All logic is missing. To learn German, I would want to be immersed in a class with German language role models, and supported with instruction, not "held" in a separate class with others who speak at the same level I do.
The level of proficiency determines class placement and is obtained as a child registers. Even if a child has a baby-sitter after school who speaks another language, stating that will red flag that child as needing to test his proficiency. Imagine being a kindergartner or student new to a school, walking through the doors for the first time, only to be taken to another room by a stranger and given a test. How well would you do?
Unfortunately, the parents who should and would be most outraged at this new development will remain silent. They are the ones who also are not proficient enough to protest. And educators may be afraid they will be more closely monitored if they express their concerns.
So it is imperative that those of us who have witnessed the impact of separate but equal speak out. We must not be afraid. We must invite scrutiny and resist the temptation to let the injustice of this plan continue.
E-mail Kathleen Bethel at kathleenb@susd12.org.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Bush Calls for NCLB Renewal, ‘Pell Grants for Kids’
Here is what was said on education taken from the Union Address transcript:
On education, we must trust students to learn if given the chance, and empower parents to demand results from our schools. In neighborhoods across our country, there are boys and girls with dreams -- and a decent education is their only hope of achieving them.
Six years ago, we came together to pass the No Child Left Behind Act, and today no one can deny its results. Last year, fourth and eighth graders achieved the highest math scores on record. Reading scores are on the rise. African American and Hispanic students posted all-time highs. (Applause.) Now we must work together to increase accountability, add flexibility for states and districts, reduce the number of high school dropouts, provide extra help for struggling schools.
Members of Congress: The No Child Left Behind Act is a bipartisan achievement. It is succeeding. And we owe it to America's children, their parents, and their teachers to strengthen this good law. (Applause.)
We must also do more to help children when their schools do not measure up. Thanks to the D.C. Opportunity Scholarships you approved, more than 2,600 of the poorest children in our Nation's Capital have found new hope at a faith-based or other non-public school. Sadly, these schools are disappearing at an alarming rate in many of America's inner cities. So I will convene a White House summit aimed at strengthening these lifelines of learning. And to open the doors of these schools to more children, I ask you to support a new $300 million program called Pell Grants for Kids. We have seen how Pell Grants help low-income college students realize their full potential. Together, we've expanded the size and reach of these grants. Now let us apply that same spirit to help liberate poor children trapped in failing public schools. (Applause.)
This proposal could have great meaning here in Austin, where last week KIPP shared its plans to open 9 charter schools. As I said in that post, there's indication (in my opinion), that KIPP appears to be banking on schools failing over the next 9 years. -Patricia
By Alyson Klein and David J. Hoff | Ed Week
January
Washington
President Bush used his final State of the Union address to once again call on Congress to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act. But the one concrete idea he proposed in the speech—$300 million for public and private school choice—won't generate much enthusiasm in Congress, particularly from Democrats.
The president proposed a program dubbed “Pell Grants for Kids” that would provide grants on a competitive basis to states, school districts, cities, and non-profit organizations to create scholarship programs for low-income students in schools that have missed their achievement targets under the NCLB law, and in high schools in which graduation rates are lower than 60 percent.
Read on...
On education, we must trust students to learn if given the chance, and empower parents to demand results from our schools. In neighborhoods across our country, there are boys and girls with dreams -- and a decent education is their only hope of achieving them.
Six years ago, we came together to pass the No Child Left Behind Act, and today no one can deny its results. Last year, fourth and eighth graders achieved the highest math scores on record. Reading scores are on the rise. African American and Hispanic students posted all-time highs. (Applause.) Now we must work together to increase accountability, add flexibility for states and districts, reduce the number of high school dropouts, provide extra help for struggling schools.
Members of Congress: The No Child Left Behind Act is a bipartisan achievement. It is succeeding. And we owe it to America's children, their parents, and their teachers to strengthen this good law. (Applause.)
We must also do more to help children when their schools do not measure up. Thanks to the D.C. Opportunity Scholarships you approved, more than 2,600 of the poorest children in our Nation's Capital have found new hope at a faith-based or other non-public school. Sadly, these schools are disappearing at an alarming rate in many of America's inner cities. So I will convene a White House summit aimed at strengthening these lifelines of learning. And to open the doors of these schools to more children, I ask you to support a new $300 million program called Pell Grants for Kids. We have seen how Pell Grants help low-income college students realize their full potential. Together, we've expanded the size and reach of these grants. Now let us apply that same spirit to help liberate poor children trapped in failing public schools. (Applause.)
This proposal could have great meaning here in Austin, where last week KIPP shared its plans to open 9 charter schools. As I said in that post, there's indication (in my opinion), that KIPP appears to be banking on schools failing over the next 9 years. -Patricia
By Alyson Klein and David J. Hoff | Ed Week
January
Washington
President Bush used his final State of the Union address to once again call on Congress to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act. But the one concrete idea he proposed in the speech—$300 million for public and private school choice—won't generate much enthusiasm in Congress, particularly from Democrats.
The president proposed a program dubbed “Pell Grants for Kids” that would provide grants on a competitive basis to states, school districts, cities, and non-profit organizations to create scholarship programs for low-income students in schools that have missed their achievement targets under the NCLB law, and in high schools in which graduation rates are lower than 60 percent.
Read on...
Monday, January 28, 2008
Sparring Continues Over NCLB Legal Ruling
This is really BIG news. I wonder how all of this will end? Check out the comment by Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal: “In our view, she has an obligation to follow the 6th Circuit’s ruling. It’s binding on her [Margaret Spellings].”
-Angela
Published Online: January 24, 2008
Published in Print: January 30, 2008
Sparring Continues Over NCLB Legal Ruling
By David J. Hoff and Mark Walsh
A court ruling that revived a major legal challenge to the No Child Left Behind Act is drawing sharply differing interpretations from Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings and advocates for states and school districts.
“No state or school district should regard the ruling as license to disregard NCLB’s requirements,” Ms. Spellings wrote in a letter this month to all chief state school officers.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, in Cincinnati, ruled Jan. 7 that the states were not on clear notice of their financial obligations when they agreed to accept federal money under the NCLB law. In a 2-1 panel decision, the majority ruled that state and local officials could “reasonably read” the law’s unfunded-mandate provision to conclude the federal government would pay for all costs associated with complying with the law.
Read on...
-Angela
Published Online: January 24, 2008
Published in Print: January 30, 2008
Sparring Continues Over NCLB Legal Ruling
By David J. Hoff and Mark Walsh
A court ruling that revived a major legal challenge to the No Child Left Behind Act is drawing sharply differing interpretations from Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings and advocates for states and school districts.
“No state or school district should regard the ruling as license to disregard NCLB’s requirements,” Ms. Spellings wrote in a letter this month to all chief state school officers.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, in Cincinnati, ruled Jan. 7 that the states were not on clear notice of their financial obligations when they agreed to accept federal money under the NCLB law. In a 2-1 panel decision, the majority ruled that state and local officials could “reasonably read” the law’s unfunded-mandate provision to conclude the federal government would pay for all costs associated with complying with the law.
Read on...
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