This looks at Neeley's defiant response to the federal government's mandated testing of special education students. The feds allow only 1% of all such students to be exempted. Neeley exempted three quarters of all special education (9 out of a total 12 percent) by administering them an alternative test instead.
I wish that this logic would extend to English language learners, as well as to all children, generally, since there exists no standard child to whom one-size-fits-all remedies are appropriate.
-Angela
06/06/2005 12:00 AM CDT
Jenny LaCoste-Caputo
San Antonio Express-News Staff Writer
By her own description, Shirley Neeley is a fast-talking, Harley-riding, cattle-branding, no-excuses Texan.
The first woman to hold the post of state education commissioner, Neeley's not afraid to speak her mind, even if her opinion is controversial.
But when it comes to her very public, ongoing disagreement with U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, a self-described "salty" Texas woman, Neeley says the issue has been overblown.
"The media has had some fun trying to make this a catfight between two Texas women," she said. "It's never been a catfight. The secretary and this commissioner respectfully disagree."
It may not be an out-and-out fight, but the two are certainly locked in a battle of wills over how special education students' academic progress should be measured.
Federal officials say Texas allows too many special education students to opt out of taking the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills at their grade level. Neeley traveled to Washington in April to meet Spellings and her staff to try to reach a compromise.
It was a bold move that has yet to pay off. Spellings' initial reaction to the meeting was to fine Texas almost $500,000 for ignoring a deadline to report school ranking information. Neeley hopes to have an answer on the special education issue this summer.
Whether she gets the answer she wants, Neeley said she won't regret the effort. Never mind that Neeley describes Spellings as a friend. Never mind that both are Republicans. Details like that don't dictate her behavior, Neeley said.
"We have to do what's right for every individual child," she said. "Of the 4.4 million children we serve, to date I've not seen any with a little 'D' or a little 'R' tattooed on their forehead. Education is nonpartisan."
Neeley's frankness has earned the respect of political leaders such as state Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, chair of the Senate's education committee.
"Don't ask her what she thinks unless you really want to know. She doesn't hold anything back," Shapiro said. "I've been so impressed with her enthusiasm and her tremendous desire to do what's right. I don't believe I've met many people that believe in doing what's right more than Shirley Neeley."
In her first year as commissioner, Neeley has dealt with unprecedented federal mandates, an ongoing legal challenge to the state's school finance system, the controversial process of adopting new health textbooks that include sex education topics, and accusations of widespread cheating on standardized tests in Texas public schools.
And for five months her staff has worked almost around the clock as lawmakers worked to revamp the way Texas pays for public schools, though the effort failed when House and Senate leaders couldn't reach a compromise.
"I can't think of a better time to be commissioner than with the Legislature in session and their whole charge is to come up with a school finance system," she said.
Neeley, 56, likes to describe herself as an "old schoolmarm," a studied understatement at best.
A single working mom for much of her professional life, Neeley, who is divorced, is now the grandmother of two boys. Her favorite weekend pastime is riding her black-and-gold Harley-Davidson motorcycle, and she likes to escape to her family's Leon County ranch, where she still keeps a small herd of cattle.
Neeley has the energy level of an 8-year-old. She seems constantly in motion and is an animated talker and an active listener. Her calendar is jammed with State Board of Education meetings, legislative hearings, high school graduation speeches and school groundbreakings.
But she's not all business. On Friday she traded in her Austin-appropriate suit for leather and denim and led hundreds of hard-partying bikers along Congress Avenue to kick off the 10th annual Republic of Texas Biker Rally.
"We took it for granted that she'd be like other commissioners, but she's been different," state education board member Mary Helen Berlanga said. "She's a go-getter. She's aggressive, and that's what we need."
Neeley honed her iron-fist-in-a-velvet-glove reputation in her hometown of Galena Park. She served as superintendent of Galena Park's school district from 1995 until her appointment as education commissioner by Gov. Rick Perry in January 2004.
She inherited a district that teetered on the brink of academically acceptable. Neeley's alma mater, Galena Park High School, had earned the state's low-performing tag.
Neeley's plan: Demand success. She pledged to parents that if the district had another school that ranked "low-performing" she would resign. Then she told her principals they had three years to reach "recognized" or "exemplary" status or lose their jobs.
"Here's the deal: As the teacher goes, so goes the classroom. As the principal goes, so goes the school. And as the superintendent goes, so goes the district," she said. "You have to set high standards, roll up your sleeves and get in there and go to work."
Some of her principals, who were longtime colleagues and friends, lost their jobs, but Neeley says the decision was the right one.
"In every instance where I removed a principal, the next year the school was 'recognized' and in most cases 'exemplary.' I told the board, 'If I'm the problem, get rid of me.' I told my central office, "If you're the problem, you're going, too,'" she said. "You just have to have that kind of accountability."
Neeley is not a critic of standardized tests. And she backs education reform efforts, even when they include sanctions for low-performing schools.
"How do we assess if we're doing our jobs without a test?" she asks. " Life is a test."
She's blasé about the idea of vouchers, an effort to make private school available at taxpayer expense that most teacher associations vehemently fight. The way Neeley sees it, if public schools do the job right, parents won't want to leave them.
An autographed picture of President Bush thanking Neeley for her contributions sits near the computer in her office at the Texas Education Agency.
Not typical office décor for someone who bucks the mandates of No Child Left Behind, Bush's education reform law.
Neeley's disagreement isn't with the overall goal of No Child Left Behind, it's with its implementation in one specific area.
Under the law, only 1 percent of a school's student population can be exempted from taking standardized tests at their grade level. If any more kids take an alternative test, regardless of their disabilities, their scores count as failures.
That resulted in more than 1,500 Texas public schools failing federal standards this year. Neeley granted appeals to more than 1,300 of those schools, effectively reversing the federal rating status.
Soon after Spellings took office in January, she agreed that states needed more flexibility and said an additional 2 percent of students may take an alternative test if necessary.
But in Texas, where about 12 percent of students are in special-education classes, about 9 percent took an alternative test this school year.
Neeley agrees that number needs to come down. But she's still lobbying the Department of Education to give her three years to get to the federal cap. Otherwise, hundreds of Texas schools likely will fail the federal benchmark again this year.
"I don't want to put children with disabilities in a stressful situation or doom them to failure from the get-go, but the number has got to decrease," Neeley said. "I want to be able to say: 'You gave us an opportunity and Texas did it,' without having to compromise our integrity, hurting children or pushing children too far."
Spellings, too, has downplayed the disagreement. She's also dealing with challenges from other states.
Connecticut has announced plans to sue the Department of Education, arguing the law imposes unfunded mandates on local school districts. And last month, the Utah Legislature passed a bill that gave priority to state education rules over regulations from Washington, even though it could cost the state as much as $76 million in federal funding.
"I sincerely hope and believe that Connecticut, Texas and Utah want what's best for (their) children. I sincerely hope we can work out our differences," Spellings said in May at an Education Writers Association meeting. "There are a vast majority of states quietly working to get the job done and a few states loudly protesting. I wouldn't call that a rebellion."
Neeley is adamant in her support for No Child Left Behind. But she also believes the Texas accountability plan, the blueprint for No Child Left Behind, is in some ways superior to the feds' approach.
The test Texas developed to assess special-education student progress is rigorous, not "low-level" as U.S. education officials have described it, Neely said.
"I've tried to tell USDE (U.S. Department of Education), you need to look at autistic children, for example. They don't fit neatly into one category," Neeley said. "They may be geniuses in art, music or recall of numbers, but they may not be able to read."
State Board of Education members are proud of Neeley's gumption.
"I just want to thank you for taking some arrows on this," board member Terri Leo told Neeley at the board's April meeting. "As I understand it, the same people that are fussing about it are the people who wrote the rules for Texas."
Neeley doesn't want to be pegged as "defiant" or "rebellious" when it comes to federal law. She agrees that too many students in Texas are in special education and that many of those could and should take the TAKS on grade level.
"I always tell my superintendents and principal and teachers to do what's best for every individual child, but where we can raise expectations, let's do it," Neeley said.
She wants hard data to show the Department of Education that Texas is making headway with special-education students, and to extensively document in every case why it was necessary for a child to take an alternative test.
"To put it very bluntly, I've fired my last bullet," she said. "In order for me to reload, I need more ammunition. I need examples of what we're doing to raise the bar here."
Richard Middleton, superintendent of North East School District in San Antonio, said Texas educators stand ready to deliver that ammunition.
He said Neeley has won their loyalty by standing up to the federal government.
"She proved her mettle to me. She really stood up for what is right and protected and honored the work of educators in the state," he said. "Had she not taken this strong stand, I think you could've seen a complete collapse of support from superintendents. It was make-or-break time."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
jcaputo@express-news.net
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/MYSA060605.1A.education.2e72827dd.html
Monday, June 06, 2005
Financial Aid Rules for College Change, and Families Pay More
June 6, 2005
By GREG WINTER / NYTimes
For those with kids in college, this is an important account of the middle-class squeeze. -Angela
By GREG WINTER / NYTimes
For those with kids in college, this is an important account of the middle-class squeeze. -Angela
Sunday, June 05, 2005
Schools in U.S. Set Enrollment Record
The kids of the baby boomers (so, for example, my kids since I was born at the tail of the baby boom), coupled with immigration, has pushed enrollment beyond the 1970 record of 48.7 million to a record 49.6 million mark. Our nation prepared deliberately for the baby boom generation, a generation in a way that our present society is not. It did so by expanding both higher education (literally university building structures) and higher education access.
When I contemplate my own admissions into higher education, it's inseparable from the fact that I, as a Mexican American female also entered at a time of expannding access rather than constricted opportunity wherein tighter mechanisms for college admission reign due to limited spaces. The Civil Rights Movement, resulting in Affirmative Action and other policies benefitting women and minorities were also instrumental in securing my admission into higher education—just as they were for so many of us.
With budget crises in both pre-K-12 and higher education, coupled with declining state support for education at all levels (at least in our, and probably numerous other states), difficulties of access and admission into higher education threatens to impact us negatively.
This runs counter to two other trends where 1) human capital as expressed in university credentials is essential now more than previously in order to attain middle class status; and 2) where students today more previous eras also know that their route to the good life is through higher education. The responsible approach therefore is to expand higher education access and enrollmemt. My thoughts for today. -Angela
June 2, 2005
Schools in U.S. Set Enrollment Record
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON, June 1 (AP) - A record 49.6 million students filled American elementary and secondary schools in 2003, breaking a mark set by their baby-boomer parents and giving educators a new generation of challenges, the Census Bureau said Wednesday.
The growth largely stems from children born to the baby boomers, the bureau said. Rising immigration played a part, too, in pushing enrollment past the 1970 record of 48.7 million.
"You could have predicted this back in 1970 when we had all those kids," said Mark Mather, a demographer for the Population Reference Bureau, which assesses population trends. "We knew they were going to have kids of their own. We have this classic echo effect going on."
The record tally of students in the first 12 grades poses steep challenges for schools: recruiting teachers, helping children who do not speak English, keeping class sizes manageable and coming up with financial aid for college students.
In population rings outside urban areas and in Western states like Nevada and California, the growth has been intense, increasing demands on schools.
"They just really don't have the fiscal capacity to match this," said Scott Young, senior policy specialist in education for the National Conference of State Legislatures.
In districts outside Atlanta, Houston and Las Vegas, enrollment has soared more than 20 percent in the last five years.
Immigration helped fuel the boom. A total of 22 percent of students had at least one foreign-born parent.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/02/education/02schools.html?pagewanted=print
When I contemplate my own admissions into higher education, it's inseparable from the fact that I, as a Mexican American female also entered at a time of expannding access rather than constricted opportunity wherein tighter mechanisms for college admission reign due to limited spaces. The Civil Rights Movement, resulting in Affirmative Action and other policies benefitting women and minorities were also instrumental in securing my admission into higher education—just as they were for so many of us.
With budget crises in both pre-K-12 and higher education, coupled with declining state support for education at all levels (at least in our, and probably numerous other states), difficulties of access and admission into higher education threatens to impact us negatively.
This runs counter to two other trends where 1) human capital as expressed in university credentials is essential now more than previously in order to attain middle class status; and 2) where students today more previous eras also know that their route to the good life is through higher education. The responsible approach therefore is to expand higher education access and enrollmemt. My thoughts for today. -Angela
June 2, 2005
Schools in U.S. Set Enrollment Record
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON, June 1 (AP) - A record 49.6 million students filled American elementary and secondary schools in 2003, breaking a mark set by their baby-boomer parents and giving educators a new generation of challenges, the Census Bureau said Wednesday.
The growth largely stems from children born to the baby boomers, the bureau said. Rising immigration played a part, too, in pushing enrollment past the 1970 record of 48.7 million.
"You could have predicted this back in 1970 when we had all those kids," said Mark Mather, a demographer for the Population Reference Bureau, which assesses population trends. "We knew they were going to have kids of their own. We have this classic echo effect going on."
The record tally of students in the first 12 grades poses steep challenges for schools: recruiting teachers, helping children who do not speak English, keeping class sizes manageable and coming up with financial aid for college students.
In population rings outside urban areas and in Western states like Nevada and California, the growth has been intense, increasing demands on schools.
"They just really don't have the fiscal capacity to match this," said Scott Young, senior policy specialist in education for the National Conference of State Legislatures.
In districts outside Atlanta, Houston and Las Vegas, enrollment has soared more than 20 percent in the last five years.
Immigration helped fuel the boom. A total of 22 percent of students had at least one foreign-born parent.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/02/education/02schools.html?pagewanted=print
CALIFORNIA--10,000 Protest Governor
Schwarzenegger has been demonizing the unions in California, holding them responsible for the 22 billion dollar deficit that he inherited. And now the unions are firing back. -Angela
Sharp words from public workers he has called 'special interests'
- Mark Martin, John M. Hubbell, Chronicle Staff Writers
Thursday, May 26, 2005
Sacramento -- Thousands of public employees staged the biggest political rallies of the year at the state Capitol and in Los Angeles on Wednesday, charging that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's policy agenda shortchanges schoolchildren and undermines the fabric of California's poor and middle class.
The protests came after weeks of increasingly heated, campaign-style rhetoric from both sides as Schwarzenegger moved the state closer to a special election on issues such as state spending and teacher tenure.
Schwarzenegger has derided unions as "special interests" whose grip on Democratic party politics is the source of many of the state's ills. At the Capitol on Wednesday, firefighters, teachers, nurses and others -- many wearing the insignias of their professions -- stood under a sweltering late- afternoon sun and, in the most charged and personal rhetoric yet, fired back.
"The CEO of California is ... picking on women in wheelchairs," Frances Gracechild, director of Resources for Independent Living, told a crowd of roughly 10,000 people. "The only thing I can think of so he won't have to do hard time in hell is resign."
California Teachers Association President Barbara Kerr, an increasingly vocal critic of the governor, accused him of trying to "silence the voices of working people" through a proposed ballot initiative that could hobble political activity by unions.
The Sacramento rally, which occurred simultaneously with a similar protest in Los Angeles' Pershing Square, clogged the Capitol's south lawn, where protesters packed together closely enough to keep a giant beach ball aloft. One man suffered an apparent heart attack near the stage; his condition was unknown.
Schwarzenegger spokesman Vince Sollitto said the rally was sponsored by the same groups that created a $22 billion deficit that the governor inherited.
"These are the groups that are bound and determined to maintain the status quo,'' Sollitto said.
Schwarzenegger was on the attack himself Wednesday, using an appearance at a state Chamber of Commerce-sponsored breakfast to ridicule the Democrat- controlled Legislature. Noting that a state commission voted Monday to give lawmakers a 12 percent pay increase, Schwarzenegger listed some of the state's problems and blamed lawmakers for them.
"They have spent all of that money, and they went and created a $22 billion debt,'' he said. "And they continue to spend more than we have. And they have chased businesses out of the state and jobs out of the state. They took the economy right down into the toilet and almost made the state go into bankruptcy.
"Yes, they deserve a raise! That's fair!" he said, drawing laughs from the crowd. "Under any normal circumstances, they would be fighting to keep their jobs and keep their salaries."
It was a day in which the battle lines in Sacramento were clearly visible. Schwarzenegger, who has consistently allied with business interests since becoming governor, received a hero's welcome at the Chamber of Commerce event in downtown Sacramento. Hours later, less than a mile away on the south steps of the Capitol, thousands of protesters sheltered themselves from the sun with signs that ranged from the plaintive to the personal.
"Where are you, Maria?" read one, referring to Schwarzenegger's wife, Maria Shriver, a Democrat.
"Ship Boobengrabber and his anorexic frau back to Austria," read another.
Anger at Schwarzenegger ran the gamut Wednesday, protesters objecting to his attack on nurse-to-patient ratios, his discarded plan to limit state contributions to pensions and a budget initiative that would alter voter- approved safeguards for school spending. The governor has said he plans to put his agenda up for a vote in a November special election.
Education remains the hottest point of contention between the governor and his adversaries, each side saying it is defending children from the other.
For his part, Schwarzenegger toured a charter school in Sacramento, his second appearance at a public school in a week.
After watching a student drama group perform a scene from Shakespeare's "Richard III," Schwarzenegger recapped his education budget proposal to a group of pupils, telling them he is pouring more than $50 billion into K-12 funding and spending more than $3 billion on education more than a voter- approved Proposition 98 requires.
Schwarzenegger also is proposing to increase the time it takes for a teacher to get tenure, and he wants to spend $170 million paying teachers bonuses for working in low-performing schools.
While the governor insists he is spending adequately on education, that claim was disputed at the Sacramento rally. Education advocates repeated their charges that Schwarzenegger reneged on a deal he made with them last year and owes schools $1.8 billion -- which Schwarzenegger denies.
Critics also disagree that the governor is spending enough on education, noting that the state's per-pupil spending lags nationally.
"There's not enough full-time teachers, and I don't feel like we're getting the money that we need to get to support them," said Amanda Green, a 28-year-old first-year teacher of English at Berkeley High School. While Schwarzenegger was watching students perform Shakespeare, Green said that even reading a play could be a problem in her class.
"I don't have enough books ... to teach to all of my kids at the same time," she said. "There's nothing more frustrating than not having enough copies of 'Huckleberry Finn' in working condition or basic Shakespeare being inaccessible -- having Act I fall out of every copy."
"We don't have money to replace those things," she said.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE ISSUES
-- A coalition of labor unions called Alliance for a Better California is opposed to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed government shakeup, which he plans to put on the ballot in a special election in November.
-- The governor has endorsed initiatives that would change legislative redistricting and teacher tenure and impose new controls on the state budget. His top political adviser has said Schwarzenegger might campaign for a measure that would curb the ability of public employee unions to use dues for political purposes.
-- Schwarzenegger says special interests in Sacramento, including unions, hold too much power and are blocking reforms.
Chronicle staff writer Lynda Gledhill contributed to this report.E-mail the writers at markmartin@sfchronicle.com and jhubbell@sfchronicle.com.
Page A - 1
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/05/26/MNGVOCUTOF1.DTL
------------------------------------------------------------------------
©2005 San Francisco Chronicle
Sharp words from public workers he has called 'special interests'
- Mark Martin, John M. Hubbell, Chronicle Staff Writers
Thursday, May 26, 2005
Sacramento -- Thousands of public employees staged the biggest political rallies of the year at the state Capitol and in Los Angeles on Wednesday, charging that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's policy agenda shortchanges schoolchildren and undermines the fabric of California's poor and middle class.
The protests came after weeks of increasingly heated, campaign-style rhetoric from both sides as Schwarzenegger moved the state closer to a special election on issues such as state spending and teacher tenure.
Schwarzenegger has derided unions as "special interests" whose grip on Democratic party politics is the source of many of the state's ills. At the Capitol on Wednesday, firefighters, teachers, nurses and others -- many wearing the insignias of their professions -- stood under a sweltering late- afternoon sun and, in the most charged and personal rhetoric yet, fired back.
"The CEO of California is ... picking on women in wheelchairs," Frances Gracechild, director of Resources for Independent Living, told a crowd of roughly 10,000 people. "The only thing I can think of so he won't have to do hard time in hell is resign."
California Teachers Association President Barbara Kerr, an increasingly vocal critic of the governor, accused him of trying to "silence the voices of working people" through a proposed ballot initiative that could hobble political activity by unions.
The Sacramento rally, which occurred simultaneously with a similar protest in Los Angeles' Pershing Square, clogged the Capitol's south lawn, where protesters packed together closely enough to keep a giant beach ball aloft. One man suffered an apparent heart attack near the stage; his condition was unknown.
Schwarzenegger spokesman Vince Sollitto said the rally was sponsored by the same groups that created a $22 billion deficit that the governor inherited.
"These are the groups that are bound and determined to maintain the status quo,'' Sollitto said.
Schwarzenegger was on the attack himself Wednesday, using an appearance at a state Chamber of Commerce-sponsored breakfast to ridicule the Democrat- controlled Legislature. Noting that a state commission voted Monday to give lawmakers a 12 percent pay increase, Schwarzenegger listed some of the state's problems and blamed lawmakers for them.
"They have spent all of that money, and they went and created a $22 billion debt,'' he said. "And they continue to spend more than we have. And they have chased businesses out of the state and jobs out of the state. They took the economy right down into the toilet and almost made the state go into bankruptcy.
"Yes, they deserve a raise! That's fair!" he said, drawing laughs from the crowd. "Under any normal circumstances, they would be fighting to keep their jobs and keep their salaries."
It was a day in which the battle lines in Sacramento were clearly visible. Schwarzenegger, who has consistently allied with business interests since becoming governor, received a hero's welcome at the Chamber of Commerce event in downtown Sacramento. Hours later, less than a mile away on the south steps of the Capitol, thousands of protesters sheltered themselves from the sun with signs that ranged from the plaintive to the personal.
"Where are you, Maria?" read one, referring to Schwarzenegger's wife, Maria Shriver, a Democrat.
"Ship Boobengrabber and his anorexic frau back to Austria," read another.
Anger at Schwarzenegger ran the gamut Wednesday, protesters objecting to his attack on nurse-to-patient ratios, his discarded plan to limit state contributions to pensions and a budget initiative that would alter voter- approved safeguards for school spending. The governor has said he plans to put his agenda up for a vote in a November special election.
Education remains the hottest point of contention between the governor and his adversaries, each side saying it is defending children from the other.
For his part, Schwarzenegger toured a charter school in Sacramento, his second appearance at a public school in a week.
After watching a student drama group perform a scene from Shakespeare's "Richard III," Schwarzenegger recapped his education budget proposal to a group of pupils, telling them he is pouring more than $50 billion into K-12 funding and spending more than $3 billion on education more than a voter- approved Proposition 98 requires.
Schwarzenegger also is proposing to increase the time it takes for a teacher to get tenure, and he wants to spend $170 million paying teachers bonuses for working in low-performing schools.
While the governor insists he is spending adequately on education, that claim was disputed at the Sacramento rally. Education advocates repeated their charges that Schwarzenegger reneged on a deal he made with them last year and owes schools $1.8 billion -- which Schwarzenegger denies.
Critics also disagree that the governor is spending enough on education, noting that the state's per-pupil spending lags nationally.
"There's not enough full-time teachers, and I don't feel like we're getting the money that we need to get to support them," said Amanda Green, a 28-year-old first-year teacher of English at Berkeley High School. While Schwarzenegger was watching students perform Shakespeare, Green said that even reading a play could be a problem in her class.
"I don't have enough books ... to teach to all of my kids at the same time," she said. "There's nothing more frustrating than not having enough copies of 'Huckleberry Finn' in working condition or basic Shakespeare being inaccessible -- having Act I fall out of every copy."
"We don't have money to replace those things," she said.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE ISSUES
-- A coalition of labor unions called Alliance for a Better California is opposed to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed government shakeup, which he plans to put on the ballot in a special election in November.
-- The governor has endorsed initiatives that would change legislative redistricting and teacher tenure and impose new controls on the state budget. His top political adviser has said Schwarzenegger might campaign for a measure that would curb the ability of public employee unions to use dues for political purposes.
-- Schwarzenegger says special interests in Sacramento, including unions, hold too much power and are blocking reforms.
Chronicle staff writer Lynda Gledhill contributed to this report.E-mail the writers at markmartin@sfchronicle.com and jhubbell@sfchronicle.com.
Page A - 1
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/05/26/MNGVOCUTOF1.DTL
------------------------------------------------------------------------
©2005 San Francisco Chronicle
AFT Perspective on Standards-based reform and Accountability
Check out the nation AFT website for a more complete perspective on their sense of why standards-based reform and accountability have done to help out our nation. I'm skeptical, but it's worth a careful read. -Angela
From editors of the May - Spring issue of AMERICAN EDUCATOR
Standards-based reform and accountability have helped bring focus and attention to key elements necessary for improved student achievement, especially among poor and minority students in schools with the lowest levels of student achievement.
• Investment in early childhood education is up: Poor children come to school already far behind their middle-class peers (NCES, 2001). Policymakers who want to raise standards and require students to pass tests for promotion or graduation have realized that they will have to invest more heavily in quality early childhood experiences. State expenditures on early childhood education have increased from $267 million in 1988 to $2.54 billion (in constant dollars) in 2002-2003 (Barnett, 2005; Barnett et al., 2004). Unfortunately, as states face financial problems, they often cut these very programs.
• Investment in early reading is up: Likewise, there’s a growing understanding that students will not meet increased high school graduation standards unless they’ve received excellent early reading instruction. In the last two decades, enormous advances have been made in defining effective reading instruction. First under President Clinton, with the Reading Education Act, and now under President Bush, with $1 billion in 2005 for the Reading First Act, the federal government is bringing the new knowledge to the nation’s teachers. Many states (Texas, Maryland, California, Ohio, and Florida among them) have beefed-up their own investments in reading as well.
• Lawsuits requiring adequate funding are increasingly successful: For the 15 years from 1973 until 1988, only seven of 22 such lawsuits were victorious—but since 1989, 19 out of 29 have been successful (Vock, 2004). According to Michael Rebell (2004), executive director of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, “It is not a coincidence that the implementation of standards-based reforms and the accelerating plaintiff successes in the education adequacy litigations have occurred almost simultaneously since 1989.... [T]he new state standards for defining and assessing educational achievement have provided courts with judicially manageable criteria for implementing workable remedies in cases where the courts have invalidated state education finance systems.”
• Public confidence in schools is rebounding: In the eighties, confidence in public schools was low, according to the annual surveys published in Phi Delta Kappan magazine. In 1983, 31 percent of survey respondents gave their local public schools an “A” or “B” (White, 1983); in 1998, it was up to 62 percent (Rose and Gallup, 1998); and in 2002, it was up to 71 percent (Rose and Gallup, 2002). According to Public Agenda, which has tracked public views of education for over a decade, “surveys suggest that attitudes about local public schools have actually improved from 1998-2002—at least in the academic arena. Both professors and employers are less likely to say that local schools ask too little of students” (Johnson et al., 2003).
• Teacher frustration with lax academic standards has greatly decreased: Polls of AFT teachers conducted by Peter D. Hart Research Associates in the early nineties showed significant dissatisfaction with low standards, including, for example, 46 percent of teachers saying that in 1994, they felt pressure to “pass students on to the next grade who really are not ready”; in the same poll, nearly one-third (30 percent) felt pressure to “give higher grades than students’ work deserves” and to “reduce the difficulty and amount of work you assign.” But that’s changing. Between 1994 and 2002, Hart’s polls found that the percentage of AFT teachers who believed that academic standards were too low dropped dramatically—from 51 percent to just 23 percent. (At the same time, there is increasing dissatisfaction with aspects of reform, including the number of tests given and the time devoted to test preparation.)
• More struggling students are receiving special interventions: Where states and cities have established clear proficiency standards for promotion to the next grade and for graduation, there has often been a flow of resources and attention to providing interventions for struggling students. In Chicago, for example, when social promotion was ended, the school district created after-school and summer programs (with small classes of about 16 and a specially developed curriculum) for the thousands of students who were in danger of being retained (Roderick et al., 2003). In Charlotte-Mecklenburg, low-achieving students may be assigned to smaller classes, special tutoring, double doses of reading or math, or afterschool or summer programs (Snipes et al., 2002).
Similar efforts are in place in states such as Virginia and Massachusetts, where students must pass exams to graduate from high school. In Massachusetts, for example, in 2001, just 68 percent of all students—and only 37 percent of black students—passed (on their first try, as sophomores) newly required high school exit tests in math and English. The state, school districts, and non-profit groups have worked to provide failing students with intensive assistance to master the content included in these tests. By the time these students were seniors (in 2003), 95 percent, including 88 percent of blacks, passed both tests (Achieve, 2004). But the state resources for these special assistance programs have recently declined, leading advocacy groups to argue for more resources for pre-K, afterschool, and other programs. Further, according to AFT’s Making Standards Matter report (2001), half of states either didn’t require or didn’t fund interventions for failing students.
The Center on Education Policy (2005) found that among school districts with schools that failed to make AYP, 99 percent (according to district self-reports) were providing “extra or more intensive instruction to low-achieving students”; 84 percent were providing “before- or after-school, weekend, or summer programs”; and 48 percent were hiring “additional teachers to reduce class size.”
Across the country, the students getting these extra services are the very students who, absent these accountability requirements, were neglected in the past. However, according to CEP, just 20 percent of districts with the neediest students say they have adequate money to assist schools identified for improvement under AYP.
• Knowledge about improving achievement in low-performing schools is growing: The standards movement’s clear focus on achievement is pushing new investments in researching the effectiveness of specific curricula and is also spawning a great deal of new knowledge about how to help specific schools improve themselves. Examples include the press for schools to use research-based methods (exemplified by the U.S. Department of Education’s recently established Institute of Education Sciences), some states’ formation of school assistance teams (like the ones that North Carolina created in 1997-98), the research community’s drive to develop replicable models for comprehensive school reform (see, for example, the Catalog of School Reform Models at www.nwrel.org/scpd/catalog/index.shtml), and some think tanks and associations’ attempts to distribute reliable information on school improvement research (such as the RAND Corporation’s Promising Practices Network, online at www.promisingpractices.net).
—Editors
http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/spring05/index.htmf
From editors of the May - Spring issue of AMERICAN EDUCATOR
Standards-based reform and accountability have helped bring focus and attention to key elements necessary for improved student achievement, especially among poor and minority students in schools with the lowest levels of student achievement.
• Investment in early childhood education is up: Poor children come to school already far behind their middle-class peers (NCES, 2001). Policymakers who want to raise standards and require students to pass tests for promotion or graduation have realized that they will have to invest more heavily in quality early childhood experiences. State expenditures on early childhood education have increased from $267 million in 1988 to $2.54 billion (in constant dollars) in 2002-2003 (Barnett, 2005; Barnett et al., 2004). Unfortunately, as states face financial problems, they often cut these very programs.
• Investment in early reading is up: Likewise, there’s a growing understanding that students will not meet increased high school graduation standards unless they’ve received excellent early reading instruction. In the last two decades, enormous advances have been made in defining effective reading instruction. First under President Clinton, with the Reading Education Act, and now under President Bush, with $1 billion in 2005 for the Reading First Act, the federal government is bringing the new knowledge to the nation’s teachers. Many states (Texas, Maryland, California, Ohio, and Florida among them) have beefed-up their own investments in reading as well.
• Lawsuits requiring adequate funding are increasingly successful: For the 15 years from 1973 until 1988, only seven of 22 such lawsuits were victorious—but since 1989, 19 out of 29 have been successful (Vock, 2004). According to Michael Rebell (2004), executive director of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, “It is not a coincidence that the implementation of standards-based reforms and the accelerating plaintiff successes in the education adequacy litigations have occurred almost simultaneously since 1989.... [T]he new state standards for defining and assessing educational achievement have provided courts with judicially manageable criteria for implementing workable remedies in cases where the courts have invalidated state education finance systems.”
• Public confidence in schools is rebounding: In the eighties, confidence in public schools was low, according to the annual surveys published in Phi Delta Kappan magazine. In 1983, 31 percent of survey respondents gave their local public schools an “A” or “B” (White, 1983); in 1998, it was up to 62 percent (Rose and Gallup, 1998); and in 2002, it was up to 71 percent (Rose and Gallup, 2002). According to Public Agenda, which has tracked public views of education for over a decade, “surveys suggest that attitudes about local public schools have actually improved from 1998-2002—at least in the academic arena. Both professors and employers are less likely to say that local schools ask too little of students” (Johnson et al., 2003).
• Teacher frustration with lax academic standards has greatly decreased: Polls of AFT teachers conducted by Peter D. Hart Research Associates in the early nineties showed significant dissatisfaction with low standards, including, for example, 46 percent of teachers saying that in 1994, they felt pressure to “pass students on to the next grade who really are not ready”; in the same poll, nearly one-third (30 percent) felt pressure to “give higher grades than students’ work deserves” and to “reduce the difficulty and amount of work you assign.” But that’s changing. Between 1994 and 2002, Hart’s polls found that the percentage of AFT teachers who believed that academic standards were too low dropped dramatically—from 51 percent to just 23 percent. (At the same time, there is increasing dissatisfaction with aspects of reform, including the number of tests given and the time devoted to test preparation.)
• More struggling students are receiving special interventions: Where states and cities have established clear proficiency standards for promotion to the next grade and for graduation, there has often been a flow of resources and attention to providing interventions for struggling students. In Chicago, for example, when social promotion was ended, the school district created after-school and summer programs (with small classes of about 16 and a specially developed curriculum) for the thousands of students who were in danger of being retained (Roderick et al., 2003). In Charlotte-Mecklenburg, low-achieving students may be assigned to smaller classes, special tutoring, double doses of reading or math, or afterschool or summer programs (Snipes et al., 2002).
Similar efforts are in place in states such as Virginia and Massachusetts, where students must pass exams to graduate from high school. In Massachusetts, for example, in 2001, just 68 percent of all students—and only 37 percent of black students—passed (on their first try, as sophomores) newly required high school exit tests in math and English. The state, school districts, and non-profit groups have worked to provide failing students with intensive assistance to master the content included in these tests. By the time these students were seniors (in 2003), 95 percent, including 88 percent of blacks, passed both tests (Achieve, 2004). But the state resources for these special assistance programs have recently declined, leading advocacy groups to argue for more resources for pre-K, afterschool, and other programs. Further, according to AFT’s Making Standards Matter report (2001), half of states either didn’t require or didn’t fund interventions for failing students.
The Center on Education Policy (2005) found that among school districts with schools that failed to make AYP, 99 percent (according to district self-reports) were providing “extra or more intensive instruction to low-achieving students”; 84 percent were providing “before- or after-school, weekend, or summer programs”; and 48 percent were hiring “additional teachers to reduce class size.”
Across the country, the students getting these extra services are the very students who, absent these accountability requirements, were neglected in the past. However, according to CEP, just 20 percent of districts with the neediest students say they have adequate money to assist schools identified for improvement under AYP.
• Knowledge about improving achievement in low-performing schools is growing: The standards movement’s clear focus on achievement is pushing new investments in researching the effectiveness of specific curricula and is also spawning a great deal of new knowledge about how to help specific schools improve themselves. Examples include the press for schools to use research-based methods (exemplified by the U.S. Department of Education’s recently established Institute of Education Sciences), some states’ formation of school assistance teams (like the ones that North Carolina created in 1997-98), the research community’s drive to develop replicable models for comprehensive school reform (see, for example, the Catalog of School Reform Models at www.nwrel.org/scpd/catalog/index.shtml), and some think tanks and associations’ attempts to distribute reliable information on school improvement research (such as the RAND Corporation’s Promising Practices Network, online at www.promisingpractices.net).
—Editors
http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/spring05/index.htmf
A Vision for Public Schools: Academics Is Not Enough
May 2005
A Vision for Public Schools: Academics Is Not Enough
By Gene R. Carter, Executive Director, ASCD
"Education's current focus on academics has a blind spot."
The first step in accomplishing any goal is to identify the goal itself. Not until you know where you're going can you determine what you need to do to get there.
Under No Child Left Behind, education's goal is set at 100 percent proficiency by 2013–14. But this goal is insufficient. Test scores are an incomplete measure of the academic knowledge we want our children to have, and they fail entirely in measuring other core work of our schools.
As a recent report from ASCD and the American Youth Policy Forum (AYPF) states, education's current focus on academics has a blind spot. Schools exist not only to help students gain knowledge in subjects such as reading and math but also to prepare them to become engaged members of their communities.
A number of surveys and assessments have highlighted the consequences of focusing too narrowly on academics—for example, the finding that American youth are increasingly disengaged from civic life. Many young people do not vote or stay informed about national politics. They are uninformed on the issues and uninvolved in contributing to their communities or helping solve societal problems.
This situation is exacerbated by goals that focus solely on academics. ASCD believes a comprehensive approach to learning must recognize that successful young people are knowledgeable, emotionally and physically healthy, motivated, civically inspired, engaged in the arts, prepared for work and economic self-sufficiency, and ready for the world beyond their own borders.
In the words of another recent report, education has two great goals—to help students become smart and to help them become good. The report, Smart & Good High Schools, identifies qualities students need to succeed. These qualities include honesty, respect, determination to work hard and achieve one's goals, and moral character, which includes the traits needed to develop just and caring relationships, contribute to one's community, and assume the responsibilities of democratic citizenship.
Both of these reports recognize that we must start by setting goals worthy of our aspiration, but we cannot stop there. Making these goals a reality will require a conscious effort by educators, policymakers, and the general public to create and sustain schools in which all members of the school community develop ethically, physically, emotionally, and civically—as well as academically.
We must not only eliminate the current policies that pressure schools to narrow the curriculum but also add new support structures that will refocus educators on the broader needs of all children. The Smart & Good High Schools report identifies several conditions necessary to support these goals, including strong leadership, optimal school size, time for planning and reflection, supportive scheduling, manageable teaching loads, a safe and orderly environment, trusting and respectful relationships, and adequate budgetary resources.
Graduating students with the skills and disposition to contribute to their communities must be a core focus of our schools, but it is not an either-or dichotomy that detracts from academic achievement. Our greatest goals in education—helping students become healthy, knowledgeable, motivated, and engaged—are inextricably intertwined.
Students perform better academically when they have the opportunity to learn and practice citizenship. Civic education, which includes service learning and character education, has proven successful in improving student engagement in school and community life, bolstering academic performance, and reducing negative behaviors.
No step is more important than defining our vision, and no vision is more important to reach than helping our students succeed. If we strive for academics alone, we will shortchange our students and our future. Incorporating civic engagement into a more complete vision for education is the first step toward achieving our greatest goals and aspirations.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Restoring the Balance Between Academics and Civic Engagement in Public Schools, from ASCD and AYPF, is available at www.aypf.org/pdf/Restoring the Balance Report.pdf (PDF).
Smart & Good High Schools, from the Center for the 4th and 5th Rs and the Character Education Partnership, is available at www.cortland.edu/character/highschools.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
© 2005 Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development
A Vision for Public Schools: Academics Is Not Enough
By Gene R. Carter, Executive Director, ASCD
"Education's current focus on academics has a blind spot."
The first step in accomplishing any goal is to identify the goal itself. Not until you know where you're going can you determine what you need to do to get there.
Under No Child Left Behind, education's goal is set at 100 percent proficiency by 2013–14. But this goal is insufficient. Test scores are an incomplete measure of the academic knowledge we want our children to have, and they fail entirely in measuring other core work of our schools.
As a recent report from ASCD and the American Youth Policy Forum (AYPF) states, education's current focus on academics has a blind spot. Schools exist not only to help students gain knowledge in subjects such as reading and math but also to prepare them to become engaged members of their communities.
A number of surveys and assessments have highlighted the consequences of focusing too narrowly on academics—for example, the finding that American youth are increasingly disengaged from civic life. Many young people do not vote or stay informed about national politics. They are uninformed on the issues and uninvolved in contributing to their communities or helping solve societal problems.
This situation is exacerbated by goals that focus solely on academics. ASCD believes a comprehensive approach to learning must recognize that successful young people are knowledgeable, emotionally and physically healthy, motivated, civically inspired, engaged in the arts, prepared for work and economic self-sufficiency, and ready for the world beyond their own borders.
In the words of another recent report, education has two great goals—to help students become smart and to help them become good. The report, Smart & Good High Schools, identifies qualities students need to succeed. These qualities include honesty, respect, determination to work hard and achieve one's goals, and moral character, which includes the traits needed to develop just and caring relationships, contribute to one's community, and assume the responsibilities of democratic citizenship.
Both of these reports recognize that we must start by setting goals worthy of our aspiration, but we cannot stop there. Making these goals a reality will require a conscious effort by educators, policymakers, and the general public to create and sustain schools in which all members of the school community develop ethically, physically, emotionally, and civically—as well as academically.
We must not only eliminate the current policies that pressure schools to narrow the curriculum but also add new support structures that will refocus educators on the broader needs of all children. The Smart & Good High Schools report identifies several conditions necessary to support these goals, including strong leadership, optimal school size, time for planning and reflection, supportive scheduling, manageable teaching loads, a safe and orderly environment, trusting and respectful relationships, and adequate budgetary resources.
Graduating students with the skills and disposition to contribute to their communities must be a core focus of our schools, but it is not an either-or dichotomy that detracts from academic achievement. Our greatest goals in education—helping students become healthy, knowledgeable, motivated, and engaged—are inextricably intertwined.
Students perform better academically when they have the opportunity to learn and practice citizenship. Civic education, which includes service learning and character education, has proven successful in improving student engagement in school and community life, bolstering academic performance, and reducing negative behaviors.
No step is more important than defining our vision, and no vision is more important to reach than helping our students succeed. If we strive for academics alone, we will shortchange our students and our future. Incorporating civic engagement into a more complete vision for education is the first step toward achieving our greatest goals and aspirations.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Restoring the Balance Between Academics and Civic Engagement in Public Schools, from ASCD and AYPF, is available at www.aypf.org/pdf/Restoring the Balance Report.pdf (PDF).
Smart & Good High Schools, from the Center for the 4th and 5th Rs and the Character Education Partnership, is available at www.cortland.edu/character/highschools.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
© 2005 Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development
Saturday, June 04, 2005
Austin Chronicle—Forgotten but Not Quite Gone
June 3, 2005
The 79th Legislature ends not with a bang, but lots of whimpers
BY AMY SMITH
Don't think for a moment that you've seen the last of the lawmakers, what with all the hints this week of a possible return engagement for another crack at school finance – or rather, property tax reduction. So enjoy the reprieve while you can. As with most sessions, the 79th Legislature had its share of highs and lows – the lowest point, the night Democratic Rep. Joe Moreno was killed driving back to Austin from a Rockets-Mavericks playoff game in Houston. As for the high points, that depends on where you stand. Many of us are still relishing that five-hour debate leading up to the death of private school vouchers. It provided one of those rare moments (these days) of Republicans and Democrats teaming up to defeat bad public policy. Another unpredictable alliance had reformist Dems and social conservatives coming together to successfully thwart persistent efforts (mostly from the GOP leadership) to expand the state's gambling footprint.
In his post-session assessment on Tuesday, Gov. Rick Perry put his best spin on his 2005 legislative agenda – which he had originally declared would be judged on property tax cuts and school finance reform. Oh, well. On other fronts, Perry got what he sought on lowering workers' compensation costs, curbing "frivolous" asbestos lawsuits, and requiring parental consent for minors seeking abortions. And he got some, but not all, of what he wanted in the way of funding for child and adult protective services, his pet Enterprise Fund, and his new Emerging Technology Fund (maybe next session we'll see an Emerging and Enterprising Video Slot Machine Fund). Concerning his losses – in addition to coming up short on school finance and vouchers, Perry lost his bid to lower the cap on property appraisals, in large measure because of loud and effective opposition from local municipalities and counties.
The big losers, of course, were neither Perry nor the Lege – but Texas schools, children, and teachers, who will spend yet another biennium waiting for the state "leadership" to recognize the obvious: that Texas public schools are woefully underfunded.
As of press time, Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn had not offered her own review of Perry's legislative performance. Rest assured we'll be hearing from her soon enough – in her official capacity, as she and her staff review the budget and assorted revenue bills to determine whether projected revenues will match planned expenditures. And in her unofficial capacity, as she (and perhaps Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison) determine whether Perry is now more vulnerable to a 2006 Republican primary challenge.
What follows in the "Lege Wrap-Up" is a quick recap by the Chronicle news staff of bills that lived and died this session.
Copyright © 2005 Austin Chronicle Corporation. All rights reserved.
http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2005-06-03/pols_lege.html
The 79th Legislature ends not with a bang, but lots of whimpers
BY AMY SMITH
Don't think for a moment that you've seen the last of the lawmakers, what with all the hints this week of a possible return engagement for another crack at school finance – or rather, property tax reduction. So enjoy the reprieve while you can. As with most sessions, the 79th Legislature had its share of highs and lows – the lowest point, the night Democratic Rep. Joe Moreno was killed driving back to Austin from a Rockets-Mavericks playoff game in Houston. As for the high points, that depends on where you stand. Many of us are still relishing that five-hour debate leading up to the death of private school vouchers. It provided one of those rare moments (these days) of Republicans and Democrats teaming up to defeat bad public policy. Another unpredictable alliance had reformist Dems and social conservatives coming together to successfully thwart persistent efforts (mostly from the GOP leadership) to expand the state's gambling footprint.
In his post-session assessment on Tuesday, Gov. Rick Perry put his best spin on his 2005 legislative agenda – which he had originally declared would be judged on property tax cuts and school finance reform. Oh, well. On other fronts, Perry got what he sought on lowering workers' compensation costs, curbing "frivolous" asbestos lawsuits, and requiring parental consent for minors seeking abortions. And he got some, but not all, of what he wanted in the way of funding for child and adult protective services, his pet Enterprise Fund, and his new Emerging Technology Fund (maybe next session we'll see an Emerging and Enterprising Video Slot Machine Fund). Concerning his losses – in addition to coming up short on school finance and vouchers, Perry lost his bid to lower the cap on property appraisals, in large measure because of loud and effective opposition from local municipalities and counties.
The big losers, of course, were neither Perry nor the Lege – but Texas schools, children, and teachers, who will spend yet another biennium waiting for the state "leadership" to recognize the obvious: that Texas public schools are woefully underfunded.
As of press time, Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn had not offered her own review of Perry's legislative performance. Rest assured we'll be hearing from her soon enough – in her official capacity, as she and her staff review the budget and assorted revenue bills to determine whether projected revenues will match planned expenditures. And in her unofficial capacity, as she (and perhaps Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison) determine whether Perry is now more vulnerable to a 2006 Republican primary challenge.
What follows in the "Lege Wrap-Up" is a quick recap by the Chronicle news staff of bills that lived and died this session.
Copyright © 2005 Austin Chronicle Corporation. All rights reserved.
http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2005-06-03/pols_lege.html
Suit to Fight for Bilingual Testing
Sunday, June 5, 2005
Suit to Fight for Bilingual Testing
South County schools want more accurate assessments
By Chris Moran
STAFF WRITER / San Diego Union-Tribune
June 1, 2005
CHULA VISTA – The Chula Vista Elementary and Sweetwater Union High School districts are among 10 school districts statewide that plan to file suit against the state of California this week to put a stop to English-only testing of students who are learning English.
The suit will ask the state to enforce the federal No Child Left Behind Act provision that calls for each state to give English learners "to the extent practicable, assessments in the language and form most likely to yield accurate data on what such students know."
PEGGY PEATTIE / Union-Tribune
Zhiyan Khoshnaw (center) smiled as she performed a traditional Mexican folk dance at the Spanish Festival at Chula Vista Learning Community Charter School. The school teaches in both English and Spanish, but California Standards Tests are administered only in English.
In South County that means Spanish, the home language of more than 90 percent of students who are learning English. One of the attorneys representing the school districts, Mary Hernandez, said the lawsuit sets three goals: modifications such as oral directions in students' native language, state tests in Spanish and a plan for developing tests in other languages.
The California Association for Bilingual Education, Californians Together, the League of United Latin American Citizens and eight other school districts in the state will join Chula Vista Elementary and Sweetwater in the suit.
All second-through 11th-graders in the state annually sit for what are known as the California Standards Tests. The exams have been designed to measure how well students know the standards – what the state has deemed important to know in each subject in each grade.
By requiring schools to report pass rates on these math and English tests by race, income and language fluency, the No Child Left Behind Act aims in part to focus attention on students who have lagged historically in most academic measures.
Starting this year the law also requires that at least 24.4 percent of each group – including low-income students, minorities and English learners – pass the English/language arts test for a school to get a passing grade from the federal government.
Chula Vista and Sweetwater contend that by choosing to offer English-only tests, the state isn't measuring how well English learners learn content – reading comprehension and math word problems, for example. The low pass rates say only that these students don't understand the questions.
"It's telling us what we already know," said Chula Vista Superintendent Lowell Billings.
Eventual English fluency
The state doesn't make distinctions between the language and the content. To the state, the language is the content.
"Part of our content standards is English/language arts, and it's hard to test that if you're not doing it in English," said Hilary McLean, spokeswoman for the California Department of Education.
PEGGY PEATTIE / Union-Tribune
Bertha Lopez coordinates student testing in South Bay. Two local school districts plan to join a challenge against the state's English-only exams.
Sweetwater Assistant Superintendent Ernie Anastos said South County's English learners eventually become fluent, and scores show that when they do they outperform even native English speakers. It doesn't happen quickly, though, he said, and No Child Left Behind recognizes this with a clause that gives schools the option to test English learners in another language for as many as five years.
McLean argues that students already get time to learn English. Because so many English learners enter public schools in kindergarten and testing doesn't occur until near the end of second grade, they're close to completing three years of school before they're tested, McLean said.
Of the 432,000 English learners who took a separate state test last year to measure their English fluency, 47 percent of them were kindergarteners.
Students who enter the school system at an older age are also given time to adjust, McLean said. The scores of English learners who have attended California schools for less than a year don't count on schools' federal report cards.
Sanctions for low scores
The language of testing matters enough for Chula Vista and Sweetwater to budget $20,000 to $40,000 each for a lawsuit because the consequences for failing the test are so high.
Advertisement Schools where pass rates repeatedly fall short of federal benchmarks face sanctions that start with giving parents the choice to transfer their children to other schools and a ride to get there. Ultimately, low scores can prompt the government to close a school or hand its management over to a private company.
Many schools in the county are on this path of escalating punishments because English learners aren't passing the tests.
Anastos said the lawsuit is about making sure that sanctions are imposed on schools because of what students learn or don't learn, not because of the way their learning is measured.
In desperation to meet federal passing rates for English learners in English and math, Anastos said, schools may double up on these subjects at the expense of science, social studies and other subjects – courses students need to qualify for admission to the state university systems.
And Billings said that because the sanctions prescribe that money be spent on busing and private tutors, it shrinks the pot of money available to fund other programs to help low-income students.
"This is not about relaxing accountability," Billings said in an interview Thursday. "It's not about circumventing (Proposition) 227," the initiative approved by state voters in 1998 that bans most bilingual education. "It's not about denying children the opportunity to learn English."
The previous night Billings attended a Spanish language celebration on the campus of the Chula Vista Learning Community Charter School, which has been put on the federal watch list for low test scores. It's an elementary school where more than half the students are English learners.
The school's mission is to produce bilingual students, teaching its students half the time in English and half in Spanish from kindergarten through sixth grade.
Second-grader Luis Cacho wowed the auditorium crowd with an essay on why Spanish is important to him. It's the language of his grandparents, he said in Spanish, and it's sad that some of his cousins can't understand them.
"When I grow up I'm going to make a lot of money because I'm bilingual!" he said, rubbing his thumb against his fingers to emphasize the point to grand applause.
Juanita Marquez, a monolingual Spanish-speaking parent who organized the event, judges the school by the nights and weekends that teachers work and by the beautiful essay the daughter she's raising by herself read on stage.
The results of one test in English don't tell her what she needs to know about Chula Vista Learning Community, she said.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chris Moran: (619) 498-6637; chris.moran@uniontrib.com
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050601/news_7m1language.html
Suit to Fight for Bilingual Testing
South County schools want more accurate assessments
By Chris Moran
STAFF WRITER / San Diego Union-Tribune
June 1, 2005
CHULA VISTA – The Chula Vista Elementary and Sweetwater Union High School districts are among 10 school districts statewide that plan to file suit against the state of California this week to put a stop to English-only testing of students who are learning English.
The suit will ask the state to enforce the federal No Child Left Behind Act provision that calls for each state to give English learners "to the extent practicable, assessments in the language and form most likely to yield accurate data on what such students know."
PEGGY PEATTIE / Union-Tribune
Zhiyan Khoshnaw (center) smiled as she performed a traditional Mexican folk dance at the Spanish Festival at Chula Vista Learning Community Charter School. The school teaches in both English and Spanish, but California Standards Tests are administered only in English.
In South County that means Spanish, the home language of more than 90 percent of students who are learning English. One of the attorneys representing the school districts, Mary Hernandez, said the lawsuit sets three goals: modifications such as oral directions in students' native language, state tests in Spanish and a plan for developing tests in other languages.
The California Association for Bilingual Education, Californians Together, the League of United Latin American Citizens and eight other school districts in the state will join Chula Vista Elementary and Sweetwater in the suit.
All second-through 11th-graders in the state annually sit for what are known as the California Standards Tests. The exams have been designed to measure how well students know the standards – what the state has deemed important to know in each subject in each grade.
By requiring schools to report pass rates on these math and English tests by race, income and language fluency, the No Child Left Behind Act aims in part to focus attention on students who have lagged historically in most academic measures.
Starting this year the law also requires that at least 24.4 percent of each group – including low-income students, minorities and English learners – pass the English/language arts test for a school to get a passing grade from the federal government.
Chula Vista and Sweetwater contend that by choosing to offer English-only tests, the state isn't measuring how well English learners learn content – reading comprehension and math word problems, for example. The low pass rates say only that these students don't understand the questions.
"It's telling us what we already know," said Chula Vista Superintendent Lowell Billings.
Eventual English fluency
The state doesn't make distinctions between the language and the content. To the state, the language is the content.
"Part of our content standards is English/language arts, and it's hard to test that if you're not doing it in English," said Hilary McLean, spokeswoman for the California Department of Education.
PEGGY PEATTIE / Union-Tribune
Bertha Lopez coordinates student testing in South Bay. Two local school districts plan to join a challenge against the state's English-only exams.
Sweetwater Assistant Superintendent Ernie Anastos said South County's English learners eventually become fluent, and scores show that when they do they outperform even native English speakers. It doesn't happen quickly, though, he said, and No Child Left Behind recognizes this with a clause that gives schools the option to test English learners in another language for as many as five years.
McLean argues that students already get time to learn English. Because so many English learners enter public schools in kindergarten and testing doesn't occur until near the end of second grade, they're close to completing three years of school before they're tested, McLean said.
Of the 432,000 English learners who took a separate state test last year to measure their English fluency, 47 percent of them were kindergarteners.
Students who enter the school system at an older age are also given time to adjust, McLean said. The scores of English learners who have attended California schools for less than a year don't count on schools' federal report cards.
Sanctions for low scores
The language of testing matters enough for Chula Vista and Sweetwater to budget $20,000 to $40,000 each for a lawsuit because the consequences for failing the test are so high.
Advertisement Schools where pass rates repeatedly fall short of federal benchmarks face sanctions that start with giving parents the choice to transfer their children to other schools and a ride to get there. Ultimately, low scores can prompt the government to close a school or hand its management over to a private company.
Many schools in the county are on this path of escalating punishments because English learners aren't passing the tests.
Anastos said the lawsuit is about making sure that sanctions are imposed on schools because of what students learn or don't learn, not because of the way their learning is measured.
In desperation to meet federal passing rates for English learners in English and math, Anastos said, schools may double up on these subjects at the expense of science, social studies and other subjects – courses students need to qualify for admission to the state university systems.
And Billings said that because the sanctions prescribe that money be spent on busing and private tutors, it shrinks the pot of money available to fund other programs to help low-income students.
"This is not about relaxing accountability," Billings said in an interview Thursday. "It's not about circumventing (Proposition) 227," the initiative approved by state voters in 1998 that bans most bilingual education. "It's not about denying children the opportunity to learn English."
The previous night Billings attended a Spanish language celebration on the campus of the Chula Vista Learning Community Charter School, which has been put on the federal watch list for low test scores. It's an elementary school where more than half the students are English learners.
The school's mission is to produce bilingual students, teaching its students half the time in English and half in Spanish from kindergarten through sixth grade.
Second-grader Luis Cacho wowed the auditorium crowd with an essay on why Spanish is important to him. It's the language of his grandparents, he said in Spanish, and it's sad that some of his cousins can't understand them.
"When I grow up I'm going to make a lot of money because I'm bilingual!" he said, rubbing his thumb against his fingers to emphasize the point to grand applause.
Juanita Marquez, a monolingual Spanish-speaking parent who organized the event, judges the school by the nights and weekends that teachers work and by the beautiful essay the daughter she's raising by herself read on stage.
The results of one test in English don't tell her what she needs to know about Chula Vista Learning Community, she said.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chris Moran: (619) 498-6637; chris.moran@uniontrib.com
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050601/news_7m1language.html
Back from Guanajuato...
Hi everybody. Back from Guanajuato, Mexico. The qualitative research conference at the Escuela de Idiomas at the University of Guanajuato was not only excellent but among the first such conferences in Mexico. My colleague, U of Tx professor, Doug Foley and I, made a presentation on the politics of collaboration within ethnography. If anyone is interested, you may find this in Lincoln and Denzin's HANDBOOK OF QUALITATIVE RESEARCH (third edition).
Guanajuato itself is such an incredibly beautiful city. It's an nestled within mountains with hilly, cobble stoned streets and terraced balconies that imbue this old colonial city with a romantic flare. Read up on Guanajuato here if you like.
Guanajuato itself is one of the primary sending states in terms of immigration to the U.S., a topic that weaved through severa conference presentations. One colleague at the U of Gto., David Sandell is looking in his research at the experience back home of losing family members who die in the process of migrating to the U.S. Unfortunately, far too many die attempting to cross the U.S.
Learned a lot. Good to be back home now. -Angela
Guanajuato itself is such an incredibly beautiful city. It's an nestled within mountains with hilly, cobble stoned streets and terraced balconies that imbue this old colonial city with a romantic flare. Read up on Guanajuato here if you like.
Guanajuato itself is one of the primary sending states in terms of immigration to the U.S., a topic that weaved through severa conference presentations. One colleague at the U of Gto., David Sandell is looking in his research at the experience back home of losing family members who die in the process of migrating to the U.S. Unfortunately, far too many die attempting to cross the U.S.
Learned a lot. Good to be back home now. -Angela
Rather than Being Job 1, Texas Children Got Jobbed
John Young, Opinion page editor WACO HERALD-TRIBUNE
Thursday, June 02, 2005
If I were a child I'd feel used.
I'd feel my cheeks were chaffed from pinching. I'd feel my scalp was sore from tousling.
And now, as I sat on the curb, abandoned by the 79th Texas Legislature, I'd think: The next politician who lays a finger gets bit.
Children, particularly schools, were what this was supposed to be about, this Legislature. And yet this week the 79th adjourned without Job 1.
But understand: Children weren't what it was about. Tax relief for a select few is what it was all about.
That's why a district judge's order looms: Shut down schools Oct. 1 for want of an equitable and adequate means of paying for them.
A Republican Supreme Court could deliver a reprieve to those who would do nothing. Or leadership could arrive at an epiphany that brings everyone back for a special session.
The latter seems unlikely for one reason: Children and schools aren't what this was about. Taxes were.
Before issuing demerits on that count, let's give lawmakers partial credit. They did try to make Texas's business tax, in which only one in six pays anything, more equitable and more a reflection of today's economy.
But toward funding schools and having the state assume more of the tax burden, the record will show that lawmakers couldn't pull it off. They were too greedy.
Hooked on a fraction
The Republican leadership wouldn't budge from the idea of cutting the state's maximum property tax rate by one-third. Why one-third? Why not one-fourth? Why not one-sixth?
Cutting the property tax by a third meant the state had to find $8 billion in new taxes to make up the difference. Finding a bicameral consensus on getting there was beyond this Legislature's doing.
The irony is that when all the alternative taxes were computed, including a sales tax hike of between a penny (House version) and a half-cent (Senate), any tax relief was reserved only for those with great property wealth.
Sales taxes (and excise taxes on cigarettes and alcohol, or snacks) hit the poorest and middle class hardest. Period. The Senate, to its credit, chose not to lean so heavily on such a regressive device.
So no deal, said the House, not liking the flavor of business tax the Senate offered to make up the half-penny.
But schools weren't the only area where lawmakers let children down.
Many lawmakers made a big deal over moves to restore cuts in the Children's Health Insurance Program. Cuts in 2003 not only left children uninsured but left millions of federal dollars on the table.
The fact is that every 2003 vintage impediment to CHIP enrollment, such as requiring re-enrollment every six months, remains in place despite State Sen. Kip Averitt's effort to return it to the more forgiving 12 months.
The end result, based on Legislative Budget Board projections, is that though rolls will rise, in 2007 Texas will have 108,000 fewer on CHIP than before the 2003 cuts.
Child Protective Services was another area in which lawmakers will claim they did the right thing. And in degrees, they did. Still, with one of the most miserly human services budgets in the nation, we had this sadly comedic situation:
The chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Sen. Steve Ogden, said at one point that the $253 million requested by Gov. Rick Perry for improved child protection was more than the Department of Health and Human Services could spend over two years.
HHS Commissioner Albert Hawkins cleared his throat and begged to differ. Find a use for that money? Oh, yes. Cash-strapped CPS can do that. Regardless, the final budget authorizes $175 million.
OK, that's a lot better than nothing – a lot better than what the 79th Legislature did for school finance reform.
All totaled, if I were a child in this sprawling state of tall towers, big herds and boundless resources, my cheeks would be chapped.
John Young's column appears Thursday and Sunday. E-mail: jyoung@wacotrib.com.
© 2005 Cox Texas Newspapers, L.P. - The Waco Tribune-Herald
Thursday, June 02, 2005
If I were a child I'd feel used.
I'd feel my cheeks were chaffed from pinching. I'd feel my scalp was sore from tousling.
And now, as I sat on the curb, abandoned by the 79th Texas Legislature, I'd think: The next politician who lays a finger gets bit.
Children, particularly schools, were what this was supposed to be about, this Legislature. And yet this week the 79th adjourned without Job 1.
But understand: Children weren't what it was about. Tax relief for a select few is what it was all about.
That's why a district judge's order looms: Shut down schools Oct. 1 for want of an equitable and adequate means of paying for them.
A Republican Supreme Court could deliver a reprieve to those who would do nothing. Or leadership could arrive at an epiphany that brings everyone back for a special session.
The latter seems unlikely for one reason: Children and schools aren't what this was about. Taxes were.
Before issuing demerits on that count, let's give lawmakers partial credit. They did try to make Texas's business tax, in which only one in six pays anything, more equitable and more a reflection of today's economy.
But toward funding schools and having the state assume more of the tax burden, the record will show that lawmakers couldn't pull it off. They were too greedy.
Hooked on a fraction
The Republican leadership wouldn't budge from the idea of cutting the state's maximum property tax rate by one-third. Why one-third? Why not one-fourth? Why not one-sixth?
Cutting the property tax by a third meant the state had to find $8 billion in new taxes to make up the difference. Finding a bicameral consensus on getting there was beyond this Legislature's doing.
The irony is that when all the alternative taxes were computed, including a sales tax hike of between a penny (House version) and a half-cent (Senate), any tax relief was reserved only for those with great property wealth.
Sales taxes (and excise taxes on cigarettes and alcohol, or snacks) hit the poorest and middle class hardest. Period. The Senate, to its credit, chose not to lean so heavily on such a regressive device.
So no deal, said the House, not liking the flavor of business tax the Senate offered to make up the half-penny.
But schools weren't the only area where lawmakers let children down.
Many lawmakers made a big deal over moves to restore cuts in the Children's Health Insurance Program. Cuts in 2003 not only left children uninsured but left millions of federal dollars on the table.
The fact is that every 2003 vintage impediment to CHIP enrollment, such as requiring re-enrollment every six months, remains in place despite State Sen. Kip Averitt's effort to return it to the more forgiving 12 months.
The end result, based on Legislative Budget Board projections, is that though rolls will rise, in 2007 Texas will have 108,000 fewer on CHIP than before the 2003 cuts.
Child Protective Services was another area in which lawmakers will claim they did the right thing. And in degrees, they did. Still, with one of the most miserly human services budgets in the nation, we had this sadly comedic situation:
The chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Sen. Steve Ogden, said at one point that the $253 million requested by Gov. Rick Perry for improved child protection was more than the Department of Health and Human Services could spend over two years.
HHS Commissioner Albert Hawkins cleared his throat and begged to differ. Find a use for that money? Oh, yes. Cash-strapped CPS can do that. Regardless, the final budget authorizes $175 million.
OK, that's a lot better than nothing – a lot better than what the 79th Legislature did for school finance reform.
All totaled, if I were a child in this sprawling state of tall towers, big herds and boundless resources, my cheeks would be chapped.
John Young's column appears Thursday and Sunday. E-mail: jyoung@wacotrib.com.
© 2005 Cox Texas Newspapers, L.P. - The Waco Tribune-Herald
Fixing a Mess at Charter Schools
This is a scary story about a Dallas-area charter school. The general picture is the following: "To date, the state Board of Education has granted 238 charters, although fewer than 200 are currently in business. The groups that hold charters run about 275 schools enrolling about 61,000 students. Collectively, the state's charter schools received an estimated $350 million in taxpayer money last school year." This specific case should give us all pause. -Angela
Family's campuses back on track with state help
02:06 PM CDT on Sunday, May 22, 2005
By KENT FISCHER / The Dallas Morning News
Their names conjure images of scholarship and hope in some of southern Dallas' most blighted neighborhoods: Inspired Vision. A+ Academy. Rylie Family Faith Academy.
NATALIE CAUDILL/DMN
From left: Students Na'omei Walker, Brittney Swinton and Kaylor Sanders, all 8, perform a dance routine in a play area behind A+ Academy, one of the charter schools run by Rylie Faith Family.
During their early years, the millions of state education dollars that flowed into these charter schools, all operated by one family, produced little student achievement. Meanwhile, former employees accused their bosses of misusing funds, according to state and court records.
As lawmakers in Austin consider rewriting Texas charter school laws – including one proposal that could close dozens of them – the Rylie Faith Family charter offers a sober lesson on what it takes to reform troubled charter schools.
In 2000, as problems escalated at the Rylie charter schools, the state dispatched a retired public school superintendent to sort it all out.
Jack Ammons found the schools $400,000 in debt and operating without a budget. Family members and friends of the founders populated the payroll. There was no coherent curriculum, and no urgency to improve.
"They were basically running a $5 million ... [business] with just a checkbook," Dr. Ammons said. "And they were spending [taxpayer] money like it was their own."
Charter schools are public schools open to any student, but they're operated by businesses, parents and community groups through state contracts, called charters. For each student they enroll, the charters receive about $5,700 in taxpayer money.
To date, the state Board of Education has granted 238 charters, although fewer than 200 are currently in business. The groups that hold charters run about 275 schools enrolling about 61,000 students. Collectively, the state's charter schools received an estimated $350 million in taxpayer money last school year.
Rylie Faith Family, the nonprofit organization that operates Inspired Vision, A+ Academy and two charter campuses in El Paso, received a little more than $8 million in public funds last year.
Rylie Faith Family co-founder Karen Lewis Belknap said recently that the schools' early mistakes were the result of inexperience in accounting for public money.
"Charter schools want to do it right," said Mrs. Belknap, who began the charter with her husband, Don. "We're not just out here trying to scrape the system. We're finally at the point now where we're getting the advice we need."
Today, the schools are ready to stand on their own again, Dr. Ammons said. Finances are stable, achievement is improving, and former public school administrators are in charge.
Part of third wave
The Belknaps obtained their first contract with the state in September 1998, during a fractious Board of Education meeting that saw members approve 89 charters in one fell swoop. Many of the schools approved that day, called Generation Three charters, have been among the lowest-performing charters in the state. Many have been entangled in financial scandals; 23 had their contracts with the state revoked.
The Belknaps acknowledge the early going was rocky. They struggled to get their first school started and got in over their heads when they leased a dilapidated facility and had trouble hiring qualified staff.
The Belknaps deny any intentional wrongdoing and blame the state for giving them contracts but no support or training.
"We had no idea what we were getting into," Mrs. Belknap said. "We were basically given three days of training from the state and then told, 'Go start a charter school.' We had nothing."
There were no purchase orders, and there was no way to track expenses, no monitoring of cash flow. As a result, the schools racked up more than $7,000 in overdraft charges in three years, records show. More than $28,200 in checks were simply written to cash between 2000 and 2002. The Belknaps failed to deduct income taxes and workman's compensation withholdings from paychecks. Payments into teacher retirement accounts were constantly delinquent.
"We had a budget, but we struggled to stay on it," Mr. Belknap said, adding that he and his wife personally borrowed nearly $3 million to cover start-up costs.
In the early days of Texas' charter schools, there was little regulation of how they were to be operated. In the Rylie schools, state records show, public funds were spent quickly and without much accountability. The Belknaps set up their daughter's chiropractic office in the original school, paying her utility bills and charging no rent. The daughter, Shala White, also earned $40,000 as one of the school's top administrators.
School records show that the Belknaps and their children collected $420,000 in pay and reimbursements from the schools between September 2000 and August 2002.
The Belknaps hired friends and family, they said, because they couldn't get anybody else to work for them.
"We hired the most educated people we could find, and that was family," Mr. Belknap said. "Why would we fire them just because they're kin?"
More than three dozen family members and parishioners of the Belknaps' church were on the payroll in 2002, including a cousin who was in charge of special education. Her previous work was as a cashier at Kmart and McDonald's, records show.
Despite all the problems, the Belknaps continued to apply to start new schools. In May 2000, state officials gave them permission to open two more schools.
State gets involved
State education officials launched an investigation of the charters' books in 2000 and installed Dr. Ammons in a position advising the Belknaps. The results of the investigation were turned over to the Dallas County district attorney's office, but no charges were ever filed. The management problems continued, however, and in 2003, the state shut down the original Dallas school, leaving the family with two schools on three campuses.
The state education commissioner also expanded Dr. Ammons' authority, empowering him to overrule virtually any decision made by the Belknaps. He ordered the budget slashed and returned hundreds of thousands of dollars in misspent taxpayer money to the state. New policies were drafted to end nepotism, and a system of financial checks and balances was put into place. Teachers and administrators began meeting regularly to discuss programs and improvement.
Among the most important changes at the Rylie schools has been the infusion of professional educators into the operation. The Belknaps hired a retired public school superintendent, Gerald "Rosie" Rosebure, to run the daily operation.
Overall scores are still lagging at A+ Academy but results have been improving.
A new principal replaced the Belknaps' son, Brenton, who for years ran the 870-student A+ Academy despite having no administrative or managerial experience. Dr. Rosebure has also hired a respected public school business manager to oversee the organization's finances.
"It's been hard progress," Dr. Ammons said of the school's improvement, "and it's taken years."
He says the changes came only when the Belknaps realized their state contacts would soon expire – they're up in June – and that their past performance might doom their hopes for a renewal. The Bel-knaps are hopeful the new blood at the schools and their willingness to turn over the reins to professionals will result in a new contract with the state worth an estimated $84 million over 10 years.
"There is no doubt we would not be here today if [the state] had not stepped in," said Barbara Gibson, principal at one of the schools, A+ Academy. "I have been here four years, and I saw what we went through, the questions that were raised."
While most of Dr. Ammons' recommendations have been adopted, others have been met with resistance. There was a dust-up when he ordered the elimination of the school's Navy ROTC program. In addition to costing the school $17,000 a year, the Belknaps had hired their future son-in-law to run the program. The program was cut.
Adding to the tension was the fact that the state ordered the Bel-knaps to pay Dr. Ammons for his counsel – $400 a day plus expenses. Dr. Ammons estimated that his work with the Belknap charters have cost the schools – and taxpayers – about $80,000.
It was not the first time that Dr. Ammons, 66, had been called upon to mend a dysfunctional system of public schools. In the early 1980s, he oversaw the consolidation of six rural, nearly broke districts into Northwest ISD. When the Brownsville schools lost their accreditation in the early 1990s, Dr. Ammons was hired to restore it. He also spent several years as the chief in Melissa ISD after superintendents there abruptly resigned – twice.
Dr. Ammons said he knew nothing about charter schools when the state asked him to oversee the Belknap schools as well as two other charters. He said his initial impression of Texas charters (he's now overseen six of them) sticks with him: They're well-intentioned, but woefully amateurish.
"Basically, there needs to be much better monitoring of charter schools," Dr. Ammons said. "It's so easy to run into problems, debts, because they get in over their heads."
Dr. Ammons said every charter school should be paired with a state-sanctioned monitor for the first year or two. That way, charters will have access to an expert in public school financing, curriculum and administration.
Balanced budget
Rylie Faith Family's budget is, for the first time, in the black, thanks in part to a massive budget cut that included laying off 13 employees. Karen and Don Belknap have moved into off-campus administrative jobs, although they have retained their salaries. The nonprofit has repaid more than $300,000 in debts to vendors and paid the Internal Revenue Service more than $100,000 in overdue payroll taxes. Additionally, 10 percent of the charter's budget is earmarked for a contingency fund and future needs, also a first, said Dr. Rosebure, the new superintendent.
"The nepotism has stopped," Dr. Rosebure said. "We're making every effort to get top-quality people in here."
In the classroom, improvements also are under way, said Mrs. Gibson, the principal of A+ Academy. Although the school's overall test scores still lag, students have shown improvement. For example, the percentage of third-graders meeting state standards increased from 57 percent in 2003 to 80 percent last year.
"We're here for the kids," Mrs. Gibson said. "There is a great need here, and our teachers really care about the students."
Recently, the school's color guard won first place in a statewide competition. Required tutoring sessions take place on Saturdays, and there's an after-school character-building program.
Despite the housecleaning and newfound optimism, questions remain over how the reorganized schools will operate in the long term. For instance, Don and Karen Belknap serve two roles under Dr. Ammons' reorganization. Not only do they report to Dr. Rosebure as employees, they also hired him as members of the schools' board of directors.
"Sometimes when we sit down for a meeting, we're not sure who's the boss," acknowledged Dr. Rosebure.
Dr. Ammons said the schools have come a long way, but their operation is not perfect. He said he may recommend releasing the schools from his supervision in the next couple of months.
"As a taxpayer and as a former school administrator, I'm still not completely satisfied. But the schools are getting better every day," he said.
E-mail kfischer@dallasnews.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/education/stories/052205dnmetcharter1a.cf6eeec8.html
Family's campuses back on track with state help
02:06 PM CDT on Sunday, May 22, 2005
By KENT FISCHER / The Dallas Morning News
Their names conjure images of scholarship and hope in some of southern Dallas' most blighted neighborhoods: Inspired Vision. A+ Academy. Rylie Family Faith Academy.
NATALIE CAUDILL/DMN
From left: Students Na'omei Walker, Brittney Swinton and Kaylor Sanders, all 8, perform a dance routine in a play area behind A+ Academy, one of the charter schools run by Rylie Faith Family.
During their early years, the millions of state education dollars that flowed into these charter schools, all operated by one family, produced little student achievement. Meanwhile, former employees accused their bosses of misusing funds, according to state and court records.
As lawmakers in Austin consider rewriting Texas charter school laws – including one proposal that could close dozens of them – the Rylie Faith Family charter offers a sober lesson on what it takes to reform troubled charter schools.
In 2000, as problems escalated at the Rylie charter schools, the state dispatched a retired public school superintendent to sort it all out.
Jack Ammons found the schools $400,000 in debt and operating without a budget. Family members and friends of the founders populated the payroll. There was no coherent curriculum, and no urgency to improve.
"They were basically running a $5 million ... [business] with just a checkbook," Dr. Ammons said. "And they were spending [taxpayer] money like it was their own."
Charter schools are public schools open to any student, but they're operated by businesses, parents and community groups through state contracts, called charters. For each student they enroll, the charters receive about $5,700 in taxpayer money.
To date, the state Board of Education has granted 238 charters, although fewer than 200 are currently in business. The groups that hold charters run about 275 schools enrolling about 61,000 students. Collectively, the state's charter schools received an estimated $350 million in taxpayer money last school year.
Rylie Faith Family, the nonprofit organization that operates Inspired Vision, A+ Academy and two charter campuses in El Paso, received a little more than $8 million in public funds last year.
Rylie Faith Family co-founder Karen Lewis Belknap said recently that the schools' early mistakes were the result of inexperience in accounting for public money.
"Charter schools want to do it right," said Mrs. Belknap, who began the charter with her husband, Don. "We're not just out here trying to scrape the system. We're finally at the point now where we're getting the advice we need."
Today, the schools are ready to stand on their own again, Dr. Ammons said. Finances are stable, achievement is improving, and former public school administrators are in charge.
Part of third wave
The Belknaps obtained their first contract with the state in September 1998, during a fractious Board of Education meeting that saw members approve 89 charters in one fell swoop. Many of the schools approved that day, called Generation Three charters, have been among the lowest-performing charters in the state. Many have been entangled in financial scandals; 23 had their contracts with the state revoked.
The Belknaps acknowledge the early going was rocky. They struggled to get their first school started and got in over their heads when they leased a dilapidated facility and had trouble hiring qualified staff.
The Belknaps deny any intentional wrongdoing and blame the state for giving them contracts but no support or training.
"We had no idea what we were getting into," Mrs. Belknap said. "We were basically given three days of training from the state and then told, 'Go start a charter school.' We had nothing."
There were no purchase orders, and there was no way to track expenses, no monitoring of cash flow. As a result, the schools racked up more than $7,000 in overdraft charges in three years, records show. More than $28,200 in checks were simply written to cash between 2000 and 2002. The Belknaps failed to deduct income taxes and workman's compensation withholdings from paychecks. Payments into teacher retirement accounts were constantly delinquent.
"We had a budget, but we struggled to stay on it," Mr. Belknap said, adding that he and his wife personally borrowed nearly $3 million to cover start-up costs.
In the early days of Texas' charter schools, there was little regulation of how they were to be operated. In the Rylie schools, state records show, public funds were spent quickly and without much accountability. The Belknaps set up their daughter's chiropractic office in the original school, paying her utility bills and charging no rent. The daughter, Shala White, also earned $40,000 as one of the school's top administrators.
School records show that the Belknaps and their children collected $420,000 in pay and reimbursements from the schools between September 2000 and August 2002.
The Belknaps hired friends and family, they said, because they couldn't get anybody else to work for them.
"We hired the most educated people we could find, and that was family," Mr. Belknap said. "Why would we fire them just because they're kin?"
More than three dozen family members and parishioners of the Belknaps' church were on the payroll in 2002, including a cousin who was in charge of special education. Her previous work was as a cashier at Kmart and McDonald's, records show.
Despite all the problems, the Belknaps continued to apply to start new schools. In May 2000, state officials gave them permission to open two more schools.
State gets involved
State education officials launched an investigation of the charters' books in 2000 and installed Dr. Ammons in a position advising the Belknaps. The results of the investigation were turned over to the Dallas County district attorney's office, but no charges were ever filed. The management problems continued, however, and in 2003, the state shut down the original Dallas school, leaving the family with two schools on three campuses.
The state education commissioner also expanded Dr. Ammons' authority, empowering him to overrule virtually any decision made by the Belknaps. He ordered the budget slashed and returned hundreds of thousands of dollars in misspent taxpayer money to the state. New policies were drafted to end nepotism, and a system of financial checks and balances was put into place. Teachers and administrators began meeting regularly to discuss programs and improvement.
Among the most important changes at the Rylie schools has been the infusion of professional educators into the operation. The Belknaps hired a retired public school superintendent, Gerald "Rosie" Rosebure, to run the daily operation.
Overall scores are still lagging at A+ Academy but results have been improving.
A new principal replaced the Belknaps' son, Brenton, who for years ran the 870-student A+ Academy despite having no administrative or managerial experience. Dr. Rosebure has also hired a respected public school business manager to oversee the organization's finances.
"It's been hard progress," Dr. Ammons said of the school's improvement, "and it's taken years."
He says the changes came only when the Belknaps realized their state contacts would soon expire – they're up in June – and that their past performance might doom their hopes for a renewal. The Bel-knaps are hopeful the new blood at the schools and their willingness to turn over the reins to professionals will result in a new contract with the state worth an estimated $84 million over 10 years.
"There is no doubt we would not be here today if [the state] had not stepped in," said Barbara Gibson, principal at one of the schools, A+ Academy. "I have been here four years, and I saw what we went through, the questions that were raised."
While most of Dr. Ammons' recommendations have been adopted, others have been met with resistance. There was a dust-up when he ordered the elimination of the school's Navy ROTC program. In addition to costing the school $17,000 a year, the Belknaps had hired their future son-in-law to run the program. The program was cut.
Adding to the tension was the fact that the state ordered the Bel-knaps to pay Dr. Ammons for his counsel – $400 a day plus expenses. Dr. Ammons estimated that his work with the Belknap charters have cost the schools – and taxpayers – about $80,000.
It was not the first time that Dr. Ammons, 66, had been called upon to mend a dysfunctional system of public schools. In the early 1980s, he oversaw the consolidation of six rural, nearly broke districts into Northwest ISD. When the Brownsville schools lost their accreditation in the early 1990s, Dr. Ammons was hired to restore it. He also spent several years as the chief in Melissa ISD after superintendents there abruptly resigned – twice.
Dr. Ammons said he knew nothing about charter schools when the state asked him to oversee the Belknap schools as well as two other charters. He said his initial impression of Texas charters (he's now overseen six of them) sticks with him: They're well-intentioned, but woefully amateurish.
"Basically, there needs to be much better monitoring of charter schools," Dr. Ammons said. "It's so easy to run into problems, debts, because they get in over their heads."
Dr. Ammons said every charter school should be paired with a state-sanctioned monitor for the first year or two. That way, charters will have access to an expert in public school financing, curriculum and administration.
Balanced budget
Rylie Faith Family's budget is, for the first time, in the black, thanks in part to a massive budget cut that included laying off 13 employees. Karen and Don Belknap have moved into off-campus administrative jobs, although they have retained their salaries. The nonprofit has repaid more than $300,000 in debts to vendors and paid the Internal Revenue Service more than $100,000 in overdue payroll taxes. Additionally, 10 percent of the charter's budget is earmarked for a contingency fund and future needs, also a first, said Dr. Rosebure, the new superintendent.
"The nepotism has stopped," Dr. Rosebure said. "We're making every effort to get top-quality people in here."
In the classroom, improvements also are under way, said Mrs. Gibson, the principal of A+ Academy. Although the school's overall test scores still lag, students have shown improvement. For example, the percentage of third-graders meeting state standards increased from 57 percent in 2003 to 80 percent last year.
"We're here for the kids," Mrs. Gibson said. "There is a great need here, and our teachers really care about the students."
Recently, the school's color guard won first place in a statewide competition. Required tutoring sessions take place on Saturdays, and there's an after-school character-building program.
Despite the housecleaning and newfound optimism, questions remain over how the reorganized schools will operate in the long term. For instance, Don and Karen Belknap serve two roles under Dr. Ammons' reorganization. Not only do they report to Dr. Rosebure as employees, they also hired him as members of the schools' board of directors.
"Sometimes when we sit down for a meeting, we're not sure who's the boss," acknowledged Dr. Rosebure.
Dr. Ammons said the schools have come a long way, but their operation is not perfect. He said he may recommend releasing the schools from his supervision in the next couple of months.
"As a taxpayer and as a former school administrator, I'm still not completely satisfied. But the schools are getting better every day," he said.
E-mail kfischer@dallasnews.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/education/stories/052205dnmetcharter1a.cf6eeec8.html
Friday, June 03, 2005
Forgotten but Not Quite Gone
Forgotten but Not Quite Gone
The 79th Legislature ends not with a bang, but lots of whimpers
BY AMY SMITH
June 3, 2005
Don't think for a moment that you've seen the last of the lawmakers, what with all the hints this week of a possible return engagement for another crack at school finance – or rather, property tax reduction. So enjoy the reprieve while you can. As with most sessions, the 79th Legislature had its share of highs and lows – the lowest point, the night Democratic Rep. Joe Moreno was killed driving back to Austin from a Rockets-Mavericks playoff game in Houston. As for the high points, that depends on where you stand. Many of us are still relishing that five-hour debate leading up to the death of private school vouchers. It provided one of those rare moments (these days) of Republicans and Democrats teaming up to defeat bad public policy. Another unpredictable alliance had reformist Dems and social conservatives coming together to successfully thwart persistent efforts (mostly from the GOP leadership) to expand the state's gambling footprint.
In his post-session assessment on Tuesday, Gov. Rick Perry put his best spin on his 2005 legislative agenda – which he had originally declared would be judged on property tax cuts and school finance reform. Oh, well. On other fronts, Perry got what he sought on lowering workers' compensation costs, curbing "frivolous" asbestos lawsuits, and requiring parental consent for minors seeking abortions. And he got some, but not all, of what he wanted in the way of funding for child and adult protective services, his pet Enterprise Fund, and his new Emerging Technology Fund (maybe next session we'll see an Emerging and Enterprising Video Slot Machine Fund). Concerning his losses – in addition to coming up short on school finance and vouchers, Perry lost his bid to lower the cap on property appraisals, in large measure because of loud and effective opposition from local municipalities and counties.
The big losers, of course, were neither Perry nor the Lege – but Texas schools, children, and teachers, who will spend yet another biennium waiting for the state "leadership" to recognize the obvious: that Texas public schools are woefully underfunded.
As of press time, Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn had not offered her own review of Perry's legislative performance. Rest assured we'll be hearing from her soon enough – in her official capacity, as she and her staff review the budget and assorted revenue bills to determine whether projected revenues will match planned expenditures. And in her unofficial capacity, as she (and perhaps Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison) determine whether Perry is now more vulnerable to a 2006 Republican primary challenge.
What follows in the "Lege Wrap-Up" is a quick recap by the Chronicle news staff of bills that lived and died this session.
Copyright © 2005 Austin Chronicle Corporation. All rights reserved.
The 79th Legislature ends not with a bang, but lots of whimpers
BY AMY SMITH
June 3, 2005
Don't think for a moment that you've seen the last of the lawmakers, what with all the hints this week of a possible return engagement for another crack at school finance – or rather, property tax reduction. So enjoy the reprieve while you can. As with most sessions, the 79th Legislature had its share of highs and lows – the lowest point, the night Democratic Rep. Joe Moreno was killed driving back to Austin from a Rockets-Mavericks playoff game in Houston. As for the high points, that depends on where you stand. Many of us are still relishing that five-hour debate leading up to the death of private school vouchers. It provided one of those rare moments (these days) of Republicans and Democrats teaming up to defeat bad public policy. Another unpredictable alliance had reformist Dems and social conservatives coming together to successfully thwart persistent efforts (mostly from the GOP leadership) to expand the state's gambling footprint.
In his post-session assessment on Tuesday, Gov. Rick Perry put his best spin on his 2005 legislative agenda – which he had originally declared would be judged on property tax cuts and school finance reform. Oh, well. On other fronts, Perry got what he sought on lowering workers' compensation costs, curbing "frivolous" asbestos lawsuits, and requiring parental consent for minors seeking abortions. And he got some, but not all, of what he wanted in the way of funding for child and adult protective services, his pet Enterprise Fund, and his new Emerging Technology Fund (maybe next session we'll see an Emerging and Enterprising Video Slot Machine Fund). Concerning his losses – in addition to coming up short on school finance and vouchers, Perry lost his bid to lower the cap on property appraisals, in large measure because of loud and effective opposition from local municipalities and counties.
The big losers, of course, were neither Perry nor the Lege – but Texas schools, children, and teachers, who will spend yet another biennium waiting for the state "leadership" to recognize the obvious: that Texas public schools are woefully underfunded.
As of press time, Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn had not offered her own review of Perry's legislative performance. Rest assured we'll be hearing from her soon enough – in her official capacity, as she and her staff review the budget and assorted revenue bills to determine whether projected revenues will match planned expenditures. And in her unofficial capacity, as she (and perhaps Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison) determine whether Perry is now more vulnerable to a 2006 Republican primary challenge.
What follows in the "Lege Wrap-Up" is a quick recap by the Chronicle news staff of bills that lived and died this session.
Copyright © 2005 Austin Chronicle Corporation. All rights reserved.
Comptroller Certifies Budget, Hands it to Perry
All should check out a piece in the June 2005 Texas Monthly on Carole Keeton Strayhorn. It provides a glimpse into not only her power but in so doing, the system of checks and balances in our government. -Angela
Bill-signing deadline is June 19; more trims expected from governor
08:13 PM CDT on Friday, June 3, 2005
By ROBERT T. GARRETT / The Dallas Morning News
AUSTIN – Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn declared the Legislature's new budget balanced Friday, handing the $139.4 billion spending plan to Gov. Rick Perry for expected trims.
"I am very comfortable and all my staff is very comfortable that this budget balances, that the revenue is there ... to pay for the spending," Mrs. Strayhorn said.
Austin American-Statesman
"I am very comfortable and all my staff is very comfortable that this budget balances," Carole Keeton Strayhorn said at a news conference Friday in Austin.
The comptroller said she hasn't analyzed a companion, $2.6 billion emergency appropriation bill because it hasn't been sent to her office yet.
Mr. Perry has until June 19 to sign or veto bills. On both the two-year budget and the emergency measure, he can wield a line-item veto.
Mr. Perry complained during the final weeks of the session, which ended Monday, that the spending was excessive.
The governor faces re-election next year, and some conservative activists have called on him to shave the budget. His office has declined to speculate, but he is expected to strip out far more spending than he did in 2001 or 2003.
Mrs. Strayhorn, often at odds with Mr. Perry and other fellow Republicans who control the Legislature, declined to discuss politics. And she offered only mild criticism of the budget.
"While I am certifying the budget, it does not mean I agree with all of the budget decisions," she said.
"I'm troubled by the fact that the decision was made to completely raid the state's rainy day fund," she said, referring to an account into which unspent money and certain oil and gas tax revenues are placed.
"We need to spend wisely and invest wisely and save for a rainy day," Mrs. Strayhorn said. "That's not the case here."
The comptroller also labeled as unconstitutional, as she did two years ago, a budget provision that she says allows lawmakers to be lax about their duty to pass a balanced budget. The provision is a self-correcting mechanism, which calls for across-the-board cuts in whatever amount she finds spending to exceed revenues.
"It is little more than a get-out-of-jail-free card for budget writers," she said.
Two years ago, Mrs. Strayhorn jolted lawmakers and Mr. Perry by initially rejecting the $117.4 billion budget as falling short of balancing. Within 24 hours of her rejection, Mr. Perry and the Legislature's top leaders threatened to sue the comptroller to force her to declare the budget balanced. They argued that with the automatic, across-the-board cuts, there was no problem.
Eventually a deal was reached that allowed Mrs. Strayhorn to certify the budget, after Mr. Perry agreed to use his veto pen to wipe out about $200 million in spending in two other bills. The measures increased her office's borrowing authority.
Mrs. Strayhorn said she didn't need it because lawmakers had reduced spending with a combination of cuts, accounting maneuvers and fee increases, thus closing a $10 billion shortfall.
On Friday, the comptroller complained that lawmakers in 2003 passed a law giving her just 10 days to certify or reject the budget. The clock begins when the chamber that started the budget – this year, the Senate – gives it final approval.
"The constitution clearly does not set such a limit, and I do not believe an unconstitutional limit would survive a court challenge," she said.
E-mail rtgarrett@dallasnews.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/legislature/stories/060405dntexbudget.2da8f957f.html
Bill-signing deadline is June 19; more trims expected from governor
08:13 PM CDT on Friday, June 3, 2005
By ROBERT T. GARRETT / The Dallas Morning News
AUSTIN – Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn declared the Legislature's new budget balanced Friday, handing the $139.4 billion spending plan to Gov. Rick Perry for expected trims.
"I am very comfortable and all my staff is very comfortable that this budget balances, that the revenue is there ... to pay for the spending," Mrs. Strayhorn said.
Austin American-Statesman
"I am very comfortable and all my staff is very comfortable that this budget balances," Carole Keeton Strayhorn said at a news conference Friday in Austin.
The comptroller said she hasn't analyzed a companion, $2.6 billion emergency appropriation bill because it hasn't been sent to her office yet.
Mr. Perry has until June 19 to sign or veto bills. On both the two-year budget and the emergency measure, he can wield a line-item veto.
Mr. Perry complained during the final weeks of the session, which ended Monday, that the spending was excessive.
The governor faces re-election next year, and some conservative activists have called on him to shave the budget. His office has declined to speculate, but he is expected to strip out far more spending than he did in 2001 or 2003.
Mrs. Strayhorn, often at odds with Mr. Perry and other fellow Republicans who control the Legislature, declined to discuss politics. And she offered only mild criticism of the budget.
"While I am certifying the budget, it does not mean I agree with all of the budget decisions," she said.
"I'm troubled by the fact that the decision was made to completely raid the state's rainy day fund," she said, referring to an account into which unspent money and certain oil and gas tax revenues are placed.
"We need to spend wisely and invest wisely and save for a rainy day," Mrs. Strayhorn said. "That's not the case here."
The comptroller also labeled as unconstitutional, as she did two years ago, a budget provision that she says allows lawmakers to be lax about their duty to pass a balanced budget. The provision is a self-correcting mechanism, which calls for across-the-board cuts in whatever amount she finds spending to exceed revenues.
"It is little more than a get-out-of-jail-free card for budget writers," she said.
Two years ago, Mrs. Strayhorn jolted lawmakers and Mr. Perry by initially rejecting the $117.4 billion budget as falling short of balancing. Within 24 hours of her rejection, Mr. Perry and the Legislature's top leaders threatened to sue the comptroller to force her to declare the budget balanced. They argued that with the automatic, across-the-board cuts, there was no problem.
Eventually a deal was reached that allowed Mrs. Strayhorn to certify the budget, after Mr. Perry agreed to use his veto pen to wipe out about $200 million in spending in two other bills. The measures increased her office's borrowing authority.
Mrs. Strayhorn said she didn't need it because lawmakers had reduced spending with a combination of cuts, accounting maneuvers and fee increases, thus closing a $10 billion shortfall.
On Friday, the comptroller complained that lawmakers in 2003 passed a law giving her just 10 days to certify or reject the budget. The clock begins when the chamber that started the budget – this year, the Senate – gives it final approval.
"The constitution clearly does not set such a limit, and I do not believe an unconstitutional limit would survive a court challenge," she said.
E-mail rtgarrett@dallasnews.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/legislature/stories/060405dntexbudget.2da8f957f.html
Study: Charter Schools Not Cheaper
They received more funds than traditional public schools in '03
08:01 AM CDT on Friday, June 3, 2005
By KENT FISCHER / The Dallas Morning News
Charter school advocates for years have said their schools survive on less money per student than regular public schools. Charter leaders have proclaimed the funding gap for so long that it is accepted as fact among educators.
But it's not true, according to a new report commissioned by the Texas Education Agency.
Charter schools receive more money – not less – than traditional public schools on a per-student basis, according to the Texas Center for Educational Research, a nonprofit group that recently released its seventh evaluation of Texas charter schools.
According to the report, the average charter school received $8,045 for each child it enrolled in 2003. Regular public schools received $8,028. The figures include state and federal aid, grants, donations and local taxes.
DallasNews.com/extra
Charter report: Read the 2003-04 evaluation of open-enrollment schools
The figures strike to the heart of the charter movement, which has presented itself to lawmakers as a cost-effective alternative to traditional public schools. Some charter advocates immediately questioned the legitimacy of the study.
"I disagree with that," said Patsy O'Neill of the Texas Charter School Resource Center. "We have data that shows significant differences – up to 30 percent – in the amount of funding" between charters and traditional schools.
A state education official, however, said the study is correct.
"This is something that we've noticed for the last several years, that charter school revenue per student has been increasing significantly," said Joe Wisnoski, a deputy associate commissioner of education.
In 2001-02, public schools were receiving $7,851 per student compared with $6,762 for charters, according to the research center, which is based in Austin.
Charter schools are tuition-free public schools, but they're operated independently of local school districts. Organizations of teachers, parents and entrepreneurs operate the schools through contracts with the state Board of Education. There are about 200 groups running about 275 charter campuses around the state, most of them in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Austin. They enroll more than 60,000 students.
Texas charters, first created in 1996, narrowly escaped a tough legislative session. Attached to the failed rewrite of the state's school finance system was a proposal that would have closed down perhaps dozens of charters that have struggled to post acceptable student test scores.
The bill also would have opened up new sources of revenue to charters whose test scores were satisfactory. During Senate testimony on the bill, several charter advocates cited the "funding gap" between charters and traditional schools as a problem lawmakers need to address.
Mr. Wisnoski said that in the charter movement's early days, the funding gap probably did exist. But under the Bush administration, large increases in federal money for charter schools have helped eliminate the gap. So too have growing charter enrollments of low-income and Spanish-speaking students, which bring with them more state funding than regular students do.
According to the study, charters receive 56 percent more federal aid than regular schools and twice as much money from the state. Charters, however, receive nothing from district collections of local property taxes.
The figures cited in the report are averages, and so there are lots of examples of Texas charters getting significantly less – or more – than the $8,045 cited.
Mike Feinberg, a co-founder of the well-regarded KIPP Academies, said the study was wrong to omit construction money from the analysis of traditional school revenue. Public school districts routinely pay for construction by selling bonds and by receiving state construction aid. Charter schools, generally, pay for their buildings out of their general operating budgets.
The study is "not an apples-to-apples comparison," said Mr. Feinberg, who has been one of the leading advocates for additional funding for Texas charters. "Charter schools do not have access to capital outlay [building] money, and for the public schools that's a huge chunk" of revenue.
Ms. O'Neill added that the year cited in the study included a one-time federal grant for facilities at some charter schools. Some of those schools received up to $1 million, possibly skewing the findings, she said.
Teresa Elliott, executive director of the NYOS Charter School in Austin, said money raised by PTOs and PTAs for traditional public schools is not included in the study. However, money raised through similar groups for charters is reported.
"This is a major discrepancy ...," Ms. Elliot wrote in an e-mail. "The local PTAs in Austin are ... being asked to fund programs such as art and Spanish. That revenue won't ever be in [the study] – but it impacts [the school's] operations significantly."
Dr. Kelly Shapley, the study's author, said that the analysis isn't perfect but that it's as good as can be done with what's available.
"All this information came directly from PEIMS," the state education database, Dr. Shapley said. "That's the best source of data there is" on Texas public schools.
E-mail kfischer@dallasnews.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/060305dnmetchartermoney.10cb1aba3.html
08:01 AM CDT on Friday, June 3, 2005
By KENT FISCHER / The Dallas Morning News
Charter school advocates for years have said their schools survive on less money per student than regular public schools. Charter leaders have proclaimed the funding gap for so long that it is accepted as fact among educators.
But it's not true, according to a new report commissioned by the Texas Education Agency.
Charter schools receive more money – not less – than traditional public schools on a per-student basis, according to the Texas Center for Educational Research, a nonprofit group that recently released its seventh evaluation of Texas charter schools.
According to the report, the average charter school received $8,045 for each child it enrolled in 2003. Regular public schools received $8,028. The figures include state and federal aid, grants, donations and local taxes.
DallasNews.com/extra
Charter report: Read the 2003-04 evaluation of open-enrollment schools
The figures strike to the heart of the charter movement, which has presented itself to lawmakers as a cost-effective alternative to traditional public schools. Some charter advocates immediately questioned the legitimacy of the study.
"I disagree with that," said Patsy O'Neill of the Texas Charter School Resource Center. "We have data that shows significant differences – up to 30 percent – in the amount of funding" between charters and traditional schools.
A state education official, however, said the study is correct.
"This is something that we've noticed for the last several years, that charter school revenue per student has been increasing significantly," said Joe Wisnoski, a deputy associate commissioner of education.
In 2001-02, public schools were receiving $7,851 per student compared with $6,762 for charters, according to the research center, which is based in Austin.
Charter schools are tuition-free public schools, but they're operated independently of local school districts. Organizations of teachers, parents and entrepreneurs operate the schools through contracts with the state Board of Education. There are about 200 groups running about 275 charter campuses around the state, most of them in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Austin. They enroll more than 60,000 students.
Texas charters, first created in 1996, narrowly escaped a tough legislative session. Attached to the failed rewrite of the state's school finance system was a proposal that would have closed down perhaps dozens of charters that have struggled to post acceptable student test scores.
The bill also would have opened up new sources of revenue to charters whose test scores were satisfactory. During Senate testimony on the bill, several charter advocates cited the "funding gap" between charters and traditional schools as a problem lawmakers need to address.
Mr. Wisnoski said that in the charter movement's early days, the funding gap probably did exist. But under the Bush administration, large increases in federal money for charter schools have helped eliminate the gap. So too have growing charter enrollments of low-income and Spanish-speaking students, which bring with them more state funding than regular students do.
According to the study, charters receive 56 percent more federal aid than regular schools and twice as much money from the state. Charters, however, receive nothing from district collections of local property taxes.
The figures cited in the report are averages, and so there are lots of examples of Texas charters getting significantly less – or more – than the $8,045 cited.
Mike Feinberg, a co-founder of the well-regarded KIPP Academies, said the study was wrong to omit construction money from the analysis of traditional school revenue. Public school districts routinely pay for construction by selling bonds and by receiving state construction aid. Charter schools, generally, pay for their buildings out of their general operating budgets.
The study is "not an apples-to-apples comparison," said Mr. Feinberg, who has been one of the leading advocates for additional funding for Texas charters. "Charter schools do not have access to capital outlay [building] money, and for the public schools that's a huge chunk" of revenue.
Ms. O'Neill added that the year cited in the study included a one-time federal grant for facilities at some charter schools. Some of those schools received up to $1 million, possibly skewing the findings, she said.
Teresa Elliott, executive director of the NYOS Charter School in Austin, said money raised by PTOs and PTAs for traditional public schools is not included in the study. However, money raised through similar groups for charters is reported.
"This is a major discrepancy ...," Ms. Elliot wrote in an e-mail. "The local PTAs in Austin are ... being asked to fund programs such as art and Spanish. That revenue won't ever be in [the study] – but it impacts [the school's] operations significantly."
Dr. Kelly Shapley, the study's author, said that the analysis isn't perfect but that it's as good as can be done with what's available.
"All this information came directly from PEIMS," the state education database, Dr. Shapley said. "That's the best source of data there is" on Texas public schools.
E-mail kfischer@dallasnews.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/060305dnmetchartermoney.10cb1aba3.html
10 Districts Sue State Over Testing
The school systems object to students with limited English skills being forced to take standardized exams in that language.
By Duke Helfand / Los Angeles Times
June 2, 2005
Ten California school districts sued the state Wednesday, accusing top officials of violating the federal No Child Left Behind education law by requiring students with limited English skills to take annual standardized tests in English rather than in their primary languages.
The lawsuit, filed in San Francisco Superior Court, alleges that such English-language tests produce invalid and unreliable test scores for California's 1.6-million students who are still learning the language.
The test results for math, English and other subjects are used to evaluate schools and districts under No Child Left Behind. Campuses can face sanctions, including the removal of staff, if they fail to adequately raise scores.
District superintendents and bilingual advocates say the state's testing system unfairly penalizes school systems that serve large numbers of immigrant and migrant students with a limited command of English.
The school officials want the state to comply with No Child Left Behind's guidelines that allow schools to wait up to five years before giving English-language tests to students who are not proficient in the language.
"California's testing of English learners is neither valid nor reliable. This has been disastrous and very painful for our community," Supt. Ruben H. Pulido of the Alisal Union Elementary School District in Salinas told a news conference in Los Angeles on Wednesday. "We are not educational failures."
In addition to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the suit names Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell, members of the state Board of Education and the state Department of Education.
A Schwarzenegger spokeswoman said the administration would not comment because it had not yet seen the lawsuit.
But O'Connell's spokesman defended the state's method of testing all students in English annually, saying the approach had won the blessing of the U.S. Department of Education.
The spokesman, Rick Miller, also said the state did not have a reliable alternative test in Spanish, or any other foreign language, that was acceptable to the federal government.
"We have more than 100 languages spoken in our schools," Miller said. "It's not practical to produce a test in every language. What they want is not possible."
Most California public school students are now taught in English, the result of a 1998 voter-approved initiative that sharply limited bilingual education. Still, it often takes students several years to become proficient in English, a factor that affects test results.
No Child Left Behind does not require states to measure academic proficiency in English until such students have been enrolled in a school in this country for three or more years. Districts can exempt students for an additional two years if they still are not proficient in English.
By contrast, all California students are tested annually in English on exams tied to the state's academic standards; the scores of first-time test takers with limited English skills are not counted against schools. In addition to conforming to the federal law, the districts want the state to modify the English tests to make them more comprehensible to students. Doing so, they said, would be fair to English learners as well as the schools and districts they attend.
"Our students are doing quite well, as long as they are given the opportunity to learn English," said Supt. Foch Pensis of the Coachella Valley Unified School District in Riverside and Imperial counties, which has been identified under No Child Left Behind as needing improvement based partly on the test scores of its English learners.
The Coachella Valley and Alisal school districts were joined in the lawsuit by school systems in Hawthorne, Oxnard and other urban and rural areas. Students, parents and advocacy organizations, including the California Assn. for Bilingual Education, also were part of the suit.
"We are defeating the purpose of No Child Left Behind when we don't test kids validly," said Mary Hernandez, one of the attorneys who filed the lawsuit.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/education/la-me-bilingual2jun02,1,1290479,print.story?coll=la-news-learning
By Duke Helfand / Los Angeles Times
June 2, 2005
Ten California school districts sued the state Wednesday, accusing top officials of violating the federal No Child Left Behind education law by requiring students with limited English skills to take annual standardized tests in English rather than in their primary languages.
The lawsuit, filed in San Francisco Superior Court, alleges that such English-language tests produce invalid and unreliable test scores for California's 1.6-million students who are still learning the language.
The test results for math, English and other subjects are used to evaluate schools and districts under No Child Left Behind. Campuses can face sanctions, including the removal of staff, if they fail to adequately raise scores.
District superintendents and bilingual advocates say the state's testing system unfairly penalizes school systems that serve large numbers of immigrant and migrant students with a limited command of English.
The school officials want the state to comply with No Child Left Behind's guidelines that allow schools to wait up to five years before giving English-language tests to students who are not proficient in the language.
"California's testing of English learners is neither valid nor reliable. This has been disastrous and very painful for our community," Supt. Ruben H. Pulido of the Alisal Union Elementary School District in Salinas told a news conference in Los Angeles on Wednesday. "We are not educational failures."
In addition to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the suit names Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell, members of the state Board of Education and the state Department of Education.
A Schwarzenegger spokeswoman said the administration would not comment because it had not yet seen the lawsuit.
But O'Connell's spokesman defended the state's method of testing all students in English annually, saying the approach had won the blessing of the U.S. Department of Education.
The spokesman, Rick Miller, also said the state did not have a reliable alternative test in Spanish, or any other foreign language, that was acceptable to the federal government.
"We have more than 100 languages spoken in our schools," Miller said. "It's not practical to produce a test in every language. What they want is not possible."
Most California public school students are now taught in English, the result of a 1998 voter-approved initiative that sharply limited bilingual education. Still, it often takes students several years to become proficient in English, a factor that affects test results.
No Child Left Behind does not require states to measure academic proficiency in English until such students have been enrolled in a school in this country for three or more years. Districts can exempt students for an additional two years if they still are not proficient in English.
By contrast, all California students are tested annually in English on exams tied to the state's academic standards; the scores of first-time test takers with limited English skills are not counted against schools. In addition to conforming to the federal law, the districts want the state to modify the English tests to make them more comprehensible to students. Doing so, they said, would be fair to English learners as well as the schools and districts they attend.
"Our students are doing quite well, as long as they are given the opportunity to learn English," said Supt. Foch Pensis of the Coachella Valley Unified School District in Riverside and Imperial counties, which has been identified under No Child Left Behind as needing improvement based partly on the test scores of its English learners.
The Coachella Valley and Alisal school districts were joined in the lawsuit by school systems in Hawthorne, Oxnard and other urban and rural areas. Students, parents and advocacy organizations, including the California Assn. for Bilingual Education, also were part of the suit.
"We are defeating the purpose of No Child Left Behind when we don't test kids validly," said Mary Hernandez, one of the attorneys who filed the lawsuit.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/education/la-me-bilingual2jun02,1,1290479,print.story?coll=la-news-learning
Craddick: Special Session May Wait for Ruling
Waiting makes sense to me. -Angela
Friday, June 3, 2005
Associated Press
MIDLAND, Texas – Gov. Rick Perry may wait until after the Texas Supreme Court rules on school funding to call a special session on the issue, House Speaker Tom Craddick said.
"There are a lot of talks along the line that we might wait until after the court rules," Craddick said Thursday in a news conference in his hometown of Midland.
Oral arguments in the state's appeal of a school finance lawsuit are set before the Texas Supreme Court July 6. A ruling would come some time after that.
Perry, a Republican like Craddick, earlier this week said he's continuing to work on an agreement among legislators and predicted he'll call a special legislative session by the end of June to achieve one. But Craddick indicated he thinks waiting for the court to make a decision could be the best course.
"Even if we went in tomorrow and passed a bill," Craddick said, "we don't know what the court is going to say is wrong with the system because the lower court didn't tell us what the specifics were – they just said it's broken."
Last fall, state district Judge John Dietz ruled Texas' public school finance system, which requires wealthier districts to share money with poorer ones, was unconstitutional. He gave the state until October to fix the problem or halt funding to public schools, but the state appealed.
Lawmakers attempted in their regular session that ended Monday to cut property taxes that currently fund schools and replace them with an expansion of the business and sales taxes. But House and Senate negotiators couldn't agree on specifics.
Funding public education with a broad-based business activity tax, one option considered earlier by lawmakers, is an unlikely special session solution, Craddick said.
Instead, Craddick said, he would like to see a decrease in property taxes offset by a mixture of sales tax increases and an expansion of the franchise tax.
As he had before the end of the regular session, Craddick again noted that the last time the Texas Legislature passed a school finance bill that was not in a special session was 1948.
Any special session on school finance also would require legislators to revisit appraisal caps and local tax revenue limits, Craddick said.
"They all go together," he said.
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http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/060405dntexschoolfinance.111276cac.html
Friday, June 3, 2005
Associated Press
MIDLAND, Texas – Gov. Rick Perry may wait until after the Texas Supreme Court rules on school funding to call a special session on the issue, House Speaker Tom Craddick said.
"There are a lot of talks along the line that we might wait until after the court rules," Craddick said Thursday in a news conference in his hometown of Midland.
Oral arguments in the state's appeal of a school finance lawsuit are set before the Texas Supreme Court July 6. A ruling would come some time after that.
Perry, a Republican like Craddick, earlier this week said he's continuing to work on an agreement among legislators and predicted he'll call a special legislative session by the end of June to achieve one. But Craddick indicated he thinks waiting for the court to make a decision could be the best course.
"Even if we went in tomorrow and passed a bill," Craddick said, "we don't know what the court is going to say is wrong with the system because the lower court didn't tell us what the specifics were – they just said it's broken."
Last fall, state district Judge John Dietz ruled Texas' public school finance system, which requires wealthier districts to share money with poorer ones, was unconstitutional. He gave the state until October to fix the problem or halt funding to public schools, but the state appealed.
Lawmakers attempted in their regular session that ended Monday to cut property taxes that currently fund schools and replace them with an expansion of the business and sales taxes. But House and Senate negotiators couldn't agree on specifics.
Funding public education with a broad-based business activity tax, one option considered earlier by lawmakers, is an unlikely special session solution, Craddick said.
Instead, Craddick said, he would like to see a decrease in property taxes offset by a mixture of sales tax increases and an expansion of the franchise tax.
As he had before the end of the regular session, Craddick again noted that the last time the Texas Legislature passed a school finance bill that was not in a special session was 1948.
Any special session on school finance also would require legislators to revisit appraisal caps and local tax revenue limits, Craddick said.
"They all go together," he said.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/060405dntexschoolfinance.111276cac.html
Recruiters Over Teachers and Students
May 16, 2005
Recruiters Over Teachers and Students
How Many Schools Left Behind?
By JESSIE MULDOON
THE NO Child Left Behind Act is the Bush
administration's deeply flawed legislation that claims
to be the solution to the many problems of public
education. Signed into law in January 2002, it won
bipartisan support--most notably, from liberal
Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy.
NCLB promised to close the achievement gap between
middle-class suburban students and those at
under-funded inner-city or rural schools. Bush and
others spoke of accountability and equity, but the
critics of NCLB saw through the rhetoric for what the
law really is--an attempt to privatize education and
transfer the responsibility and cost of educating our
children from the federal government to individual and
often impoverished school districts.
NCLB is built around the use of standardized
tests--with the promise that gaps in testing will be
gone by 2014. Progress toward this goal is to be
measured by Average Yearly Progress (AYP) scores, with
sanctions imposed on schools that don't make the
annual goals.
The law promises parents that their children will be
taught by "highly qualified" teachers and allows them
to request a transfer to a different school. The law
opens the door to vouchers and charter schools,
threatens to privatize services currently provided by
unionized public school employees and welcomes
faith-based groups into school programs. But the real
centerpiece of NCLB is standardized testing.
* * *
THE NATIONAL Education Association (NEA)--the
country's largest teachers union--has filed a lawsuit
against NCLB, charging that due to under-funding, the
law forces states and school districts to comply with
impossible demands. School districts are required to
implement curriculum, structure and restructure
programs, and hire or lay off employees.
Since 2002, shortfalls in federal funding for NCLB are
estimated at $27 billion. Ultimately, state
governments have made up the difference, putting a
further strain on their budgets. This burden has
caused a quiet rebellion against the law. The state
governments of Michigan, Texas and Vermont are
protesting the law and participating in the lawsuit.
However, teachers have a joke about this question:
"Republicans won't fund No Child Left Behind, and
Democrats say they will. We don't know which is
worse." The point underlying the joke is that there's
no reason to believe that NCLB, even fully funded,
would really improve the educational system.
For one thing, NCLB's overemphasis on testing forces
teachers to "teach to the test"--by focusing mainly on
areas covered in the standardized tests. Currently,
math and reading are the most-tested areas--so social
studies and science, and even more so, art and music,
are shoved to the side.
Most education experts believe that an educational
program has to be balanced. Cutting the arts or
history to make way for test prep will likely improve
a student's test scores--as will eliminating libraries
so that a school can buy required test prep materials
or replacing a literature class with a
one-size-fits-all scripted reading curriculum. But
this does little for students beyond helping them
"bubble in" answer sheets.
What does testing really tell us? Crudely, it shows
little more than how well a student takes a test and
how well a teacher prepared their class for the test.
In fact, testing is big business. Testing
companies--especially the ones that also publish
textbooks--make huge profits from the tests and
supplementary materials that schools are often forced
to purchase. According to the article "Testing
Companies Mine for Gold" from Rethinking Schools, the
two largest testing companies, Harcourt and
McGraw-Hill, are billion-dollar giants.
In the same article points out another profitable
element of the testing industry: scoring. The General
Accounting Office report on NCLB estimates that it
costs approximately $7 to score a test with open-ended
questions, compared to $1 each for scoring tests with
all multiple-choice questions. It is no surprise,
then, that under-funded school districts opt for the
cheaper, but less meaningful, multiple-choice tests.
Recruiters Over Teachers and Students
How Many Schools Left Behind?
By JESSIE MULDOON
THE NO Child Left Behind Act is the Bush
administration's deeply flawed legislation that claims
to be the solution to the many problems of public
education. Signed into law in January 2002, it won
bipartisan support--most notably, from liberal
Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy.
NCLB promised to close the achievement gap between
middle-class suburban students and those at
under-funded inner-city or rural schools. Bush and
others spoke of accountability and equity, but the
critics of NCLB saw through the rhetoric for what the
law really is--an attempt to privatize education and
transfer the responsibility and cost of educating our
children from the federal government to individual and
often impoverished school districts.
NCLB is built around the use of standardized
tests--with the promise that gaps in testing will be
gone by 2014. Progress toward this goal is to be
measured by Average Yearly Progress (AYP) scores, with
sanctions imposed on schools that don't make the
annual goals.
The law promises parents that their children will be
taught by "highly qualified" teachers and allows them
to request a transfer to a different school. The law
opens the door to vouchers and charter schools,
threatens to privatize services currently provided by
unionized public school employees and welcomes
faith-based groups into school programs. But the real
centerpiece of NCLB is standardized testing.
* * *
THE NATIONAL Education Association (NEA)--the
country's largest teachers union--has filed a lawsuit
against NCLB, charging that due to under-funding, the
law forces states and school districts to comply with
impossible demands. School districts are required to
implement curriculum, structure and restructure
programs, and hire or lay off employees.
Since 2002, shortfalls in federal funding for NCLB are
estimated at $27 billion. Ultimately, state
governments have made up the difference, putting a
further strain on their budgets. This burden has
caused a quiet rebellion against the law. The state
governments of Michigan, Texas and Vermont are
protesting the law and participating in the lawsuit.
However, teachers have a joke about this question:
"Republicans won't fund No Child Left Behind, and
Democrats say they will. We don't know which is
worse." The point underlying the joke is that there's
no reason to believe that NCLB, even fully funded,
would really improve the educational system.
For one thing, NCLB's overemphasis on testing forces
teachers to "teach to the test"--by focusing mainly on
areas covered in the standardized tests. Currently,
math and reading are the most-tested areas--so social
studies and science, and even more so, art and music,
are shoved to the side.
Most education experts believe that an educational
program has to be balanced. Cutting the arts or
history to make way for test prep will likely improve
a student's test scores--as will eliminating libraries
so that a school can buy required test prep materials
or replacing a literature class with a
one-size-fits-all scripted reading curriculum. But
this does little for students beyond helping them
"bubble in" answer sheets.
What does testing really tell us? Crudely, it shows
little more than how well a student takes a test and
how well a teacher prepared their class for the test.
In fact, testing is big business. Testing
companies--especially the ones that also publish
textbooks--make huge profits from the tests and
supplementary materials that schools are often forced
to purchase. According to the article "Testing
Companies Mine for Gold" from Rethinking Schools, the
two largest testing companies, Harcourt and
McGraw-Hill, are billion-dollar giants.
In the same article points out another profitable
element of the testing industry: scoring. The General
Accounting Office report on NCLB estimates that it
costs approximately $7 to score a test with open-ended
questions, compared to $1 each for scoring tests with
all multiple-choice questions. It is no surprise,
then, that under-funded school districts opt for the
cheaper, but less meaningful, multiple-choice tests.
Perry Calls on LULAC for a Push
Web Posted: 06/03/2005 12:00 AM CDT
Lisa Marie Gómez
Express-News Staff Writer
Gov. Rick Perry told members of the League of United Latin American Citizens on Thursday they should contact their state representatives and urge them to go back to Austin and finish what they started in January.
The Legislature adjourned its 140-day regular session Monday without reforming the way public schools are financed or lowering property taxes — both high priority items when the session began.
"Here's what I want you to do: send a message to both houses that you want education reform and property tax relief and you want it now," Perry told LULAC state convention attendees at the Hilton San Antonio Airport hotel.
Perry said Wednesday at a bill-signing ceremony in Tyler that he may call a special session by the end of the month. He said Thursday he believes the House and the Senate can agree on a solution if they had more time to work on it.
"I believe that the need for comprehensive education and tax reform did not expire with the previous legislative session and I know there are many legislators who feel the same way," Perry said. "Time may have run out on the session, but time hasn't run out on the need for more money for education and property tax relief for hardworking Texans."
About 150 people, mostly Hispanics, standing in the crowded ballroom responded by clapping and cheering, "Que viva Perry!"
Although Perry said he was disappointed the House and the Senate couldn't reach an agreement, he was pleased that other important legislation was passed, including a measure to reform Child Protective Services.
The governor said, "It's really heartbreaking" to read stories in the media about children who are starved to death or severely beaten due to a system that couldn't protect them.
Perry also talked about launching a series of educational summits around the state to help small-business owners "with the knowledge and tools they need to be successful in the long run."
The summits would be aimed at helping experienced and new business owners with help on issues such as learning how to qualify for tax credits, securing growth capital, and finding ways to bid opportunities with Fortune 500 companies.
lgomez@express-news.net
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Online at: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/MYSA060305.3B.perry_lulac.2d71a9ddd.html
Lisa Marie Gómez
Express-News Staff Writer
Gov. Rick Perry told members of the League of United Latin American Citizens on Thursday they should contact their state representatives and urge them to go back to Austin and finish what they started in January.
The Legislature adjourned its 140-day regular session Monday without reforming the way public schools are financed or lowering property taxes — both high priority items when the session began.
"Here's what I want you to do: send a message to both houses that you want education reform and property tax relief and you want it now," Perry told LULAC state convention attendees at the Hilton San Antonio Airport hotel.
Perry said Wednesday at a bill-signing ceremony in Tyler that he may call a special session by the end of the month. He said Thursday he believes the House and the Senate can agree on a solution if they had more time to work on it.
"I believe that the need for comprehensive education and tax reform did not expire with the previous legislative session and I know there are many legislators who feel the same way," Perry said. "Time may have run out on the session, but time hasn't run out on the need for more money for education and property tax relief for hardworking Texans."
About 150 people, mostly Hispanics, standing in the crowded ballroom responded by clapping and cheering, "Que viva Perry!"
Although Perry said he was disappointed the House and the Senate couldn't reach an agreement, he was pleased that other important legislation was passed, including a measure to reform Child Protective Services.
The governor said, "It's really heartbreaking" to read stories in the media about children who are starved to death or severely beaten due to a system that couldn't protect them.
Perry also talked about launching a series of educational summits around the state to help small-business owners "with the knowledge and tools they need to be successful in the long run."
The summits would be aimed at helping experienced and new business owners with help on issues such as learning how to qualify for tax credits, securing growth capital, and finding ways to bid opportunities with Fortune 500 companies.
lgomez@express-news.net
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Online at: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/MYSA060305.3B.perry_lulac.2d71a9ddd.html
Thursday, June 02, 2005
U.S. schools have record enrollment
By Ben Feller
The Associated Press / June 2, 2005
WASHINGTON — A record 49.6 million students filled U.S. schools in 2003, breaking a mark set by their baby-boomer parents and giving educators a new generation of challenges.
The growth is largely due to all the children who were born in the late 1940s to early 1960s and have since become parents themselves, the Census Bureau said yesterday. Rising immigration played a part, too, in pushing enrollment past the 1970 record of 48.7 million.
"You could have predicted this back in 1970 when we had all those kids," said Mark Mather, a demographer for the Population Reference Bureau, which assesses population trends. "We knew they were going to have kids of their own. We have this classic echo effect going on."
Even if it isn't surprising, the record tally of students in the first 12 grades poses steep challenges for schools: recruiting teachers, helping children who don't speak English, keeping class sizes manageable and coming up with enough financial aid for college students.
In population rings outside urban areas and in Western states such as Nevada and California, the growth has been intense, increasing demands on schools.
"They just really don't have the fiscal capacity to match this," said Scott Young, senior policy specialist in education for the National Conference of State Legislatures.
In districts outside Atlanta, Houston and Las Vegas, enrollment has soared more than 20 percent in the past five years, said Bruce Hunter, who directs lobbying for the American Association of School Administrators. His group has identified more than 400 such districts.
"The pressures are to stay up with it, to hire, to get the classrooms staffed, to find quality principals," Hunter said. "But the joy of it is you have this tremendous opportunity, because the communities have a real clear stake, so you have vibrant school systems."
In other parts of the country, such as the upper Midwest, the school population has declined in some counties, Mather said. "Some of those kids are driving an hour or two on a bus to get to school because there aren't enough kids to keep local schools open," he said.
Seattle, Portland and some other urban districts are experiencing flat or declining enrollments as families leave for more affordable places to live. Enrollment in Seattle Public Schools fell from a peak of nearly 100,000 in the early 1960s to a low of 41,000 in 1989; although enrollment has rebounded to about 46,000, the district expects enrollment to be flat or decline slightly over the next decade.
Immigration has helped fuel the national boom. Twenty-two percent of students had at least one foreign-born parent, including 91 percent of Asian children and 66 percent of Hispanic youngsters.
With the largest-ever high-school graduating class coming soon, colleges are being pressed to provide capacity for everyone while keeping tuition affordable.
"These kids are coming along at a time when, unlike the baby boomers, their chances of a middle-class life without college are almost nil," said Patrick Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. "It's going to drive higher-education policy over the next few years. This is a huge challenge."
Seattle Times staff reporter Sanjay Bhatt contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002296041_schools02.html
The Associated Press / June 2, 2005
WASHINGTON — A record 49.6 million students filled U.S. schools in 2003, breaking a mark set by their baby-boomer parents and giving educators a new generation of challenges.
The growth is largely due to all the children who were born in the late 1940s to early 1960s and have since become parents themselves, the Census Bureau said yesterday. Rising immigration played a part, too, in pushing enrollment past the 1970 record of 48.7 million.
"You could have predicted this back in 1970 when we had all those kids," said Mark Mather, a demographer for the Population Reference Bureau, which assesses population trends. "We knew they were going to have kids of their own. We have this classic echo effect going on."
Even if it isn't surprising, the record tally of students in the first 12 grades poses steep challenges for schools: recruiting teachers, helping children who don't speak English, keeping class sizes manageable and coming up with enough financial aid for college students.
In population rings outside urban areas and in Western states such as Nevada and California, the growth has been intense, increasing demands on schools.
"They just really don't have the fiscal capacity to match this," said Scott Young, senior policy specialist in education for the National Conference of State Legislatures.
In districts outside Atlanta, Houston and Las Vegas, enrollment has soared more than 20 percent in the past five years, said Bruce Hunter, who directs lobbying for the American Association of School Administrators. His group has identified more than 400 such districts.
"The pressures are to stay up with it, to hire, to get the classrooms staffed, to find quality principals," Hunter said. "But the joy of it is you have this tremendous opportunity, because the communities have a real clear stake, so you have vibrant school systems."
In other parts of the country, such as the upper Midwest, the school population has declined in some counties, Mather said. "Some of those kids are driving an hour or two on a bus to get to school because there aren't enough kids to keep local schools open," he said.
Seattle, Portland and some other urban districts are experiencing flat or declining enrollments as families leave for more affordable places to live. Enrollment in Seattle Public Schools fell from a peak of nearly 100,000 in the early 1960s to a low of 41,000 in 1989; although enrollment has rebounded to about 46,000, the district expects enrollment to be flat or decline slightly over the next decade.
Immigration has helped fuel the national boom. Twenty-two percent of students had at least one foreign-born parent, including 91 percent of Asian children and 66 percent of Hispanic youngsters.
With the largest-ever high-school graduating class coming soon, colleges are being pressed to provide capacity for everyone while keeping tuition affordable.
"These kids are coming along at a time when, unlike the baby boomers, their chances of a middle-class life without college are almost nil," said Patrick Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. "It's going to drive higher-education policy over the next few years. This is a huge challenge."
Seattle Times staff reporter Sanjay Bhatt contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002296041_schools02.html
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