NCLR's position on English Lang Learners and Critics' Responses

Here is the latest on NCLR's position on their position on NCLB with respect to English language learners and critics' response to it--all posted to the listserv of the Institute for Language and Education Policy (ELLADVOC@ASU.EDU.

You may direct questions either to Raul Gonzalez at NCLR or Melissa Lazarín, Senior Policy Analyst, NCLR Education Reform at Melissa Lazarin . My next two posts are Raul Gonzaelz' response to critics and a more elaborated response by Jim Crawford, Stephen Krashen, and Kate Menken.

-Angela

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sep 13, 2006


NCLR APPLAUDS U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION'S POLICY ON ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS

Washington, DC – The National Council of La Raza (NCLR), the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the U.S., today expressed strong support for the U.S. Department of Education's final regulations for states in addressing the needs of English language learners (ELLs). The final regulations will ensure that ELLs' academic achievements are taken into account, while providing some flexibility to states in how they are held accountable for helping ELLs.

"Getting the No Child Left Behind law (NCLB) right is critical for Latino students, nearly half of whom are ELLs," stated Janet Murguía, NCLR President and CEO. "The Department's regulations strike a balance which ensures that ELLs get the attention they deserve but have often not received, while at the same time giving states time to help ELLs learn English and improve in other important subjects."

U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings today announced two final NCLB regulations related to ELLs. First, schools may continue to count ELL students who become English proficient as ELL students under the NCLB-mandated accountability system. Without this important change, many schools that are successful in helping ELLs become English proficient would be unable to demonstrate this progress and may be unfairly punished under the law.

Secretary Spellings also announced that ELLs who have attended public schools for less than one year may be exempt from taking English-language reading tests for one year. This ensures that schools have an opportunity to help ELLs improve their English-language and reading skills before they are held accountable for their progress in reading/language arts.

In addition to increasing flexibility, the Department has also established a partnership with states, NCLR, and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) to provide states with technical assistance and other tools for developing better tests to measure ELL student achievement.

Murguía concluded, "We deeply appreciate the Department's efforts to provide states with the right tools to implement NCLB. This law and our schools will not be successful if NCLB does not work to address the needs of all students, including those who are learning English. We call on Congress to further support our schools by adequately funding this important law."

All Content © 2006 NCLR. All Rights Reserved
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
From: Discussion Group for Organizational Alternatives for ELL Research and Advocacy [mailto:ELLADVOC@ASU.EDU ] On Behalf Of Luis O. Reyes
Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2006 11:10 PM
To: ELLADVOC@ASU.EDU
Subject: NCLR APPLAUDS U.S. DoE'S POLICY ON ELLs

Excerpt:

"Secretary Spellings also announced that ELLs who have attended public schools for less than one year may be exempt from taking English-language reading tests for one year. This ensures that schools have an opportunity to help ELLs improve their English-language and reading skills before they are held accountable for their progress in reading/language arts."

What do our assessment experts have to say about the "science-based" justification for only a one-year exemption from ELA testing for recently arrived ELLs? I'm assuming the reality that ELA testing of ELLs will continue this coming year and beyond, absent any legislative changes in the NCLB reauthorization process.

Under the rubric of doing no harm or mitigating harm, what do the experts say? The July GAO report on ELL assessment included an appendix with the names of such assessment experts who were involved in reviewing the states' ELL assessment plans and instruments. Among the experts cited were Jamal Abedi, Patricia Gandara and Richard Duran.

Any ideas about how to respond to this issue.? It seems like a clearly political decision with MALDEF and NCLR playing the role of enablers of the US DoE's accountability agenda. Local and national ELL advocates need expert advice about how to question these two final NCLB regulations related to ELLs.

Any takers?

Luis O. Reyes
New York City
luisoreyes@aol.com
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
On 9/14/06, Alex Poole wrote:
I'll take this one. Briefly, we all know that there is no evidence
that even a minority of ELLs can become proficient in academic English
in a year. Where they get this notion of one year is beyond my
imagination.

But something more concrete to consider is this: In many parts of
rural America, we have ELLs in school districts that have zero
experience with such students, have a hard time developing programs,
and have an even harder time getting teachers. However, in one year,
they may go from having no ELLs to 50 or more.

In fact, in many of these districts, it takes a year even to find a
teacher, and many times they are given emergency certification
contingent upon completing the necessary coursework to receive ESL
certification. Frequently, the students have little formal schooling
in their first language, and thus are behind on content, and so they
must catch up on that while learning English. If the district has more
than one school, the ESL teacher will most likely have to drive long
distances, and the students will receive about an hour a day of pull-
out.

I see this situation regularly in Kentucky. Holding these students and
their teachers "accountable" is terribly unfair, highly stressful for
all involved, and scientifically unjustifiable.

Thus, if we're talking about specific questions, I would ask whether
or not there are different standards for districts that have
established ELL programs and those which have recently developed them,
or are in the process of doing so.

Alex Poole (West Kentucky University)
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Alex is right. Our research in Israel showed that Russian immigrant children took as long as 7 years to reach native norms in Hebrew and Math. So it is clear that to hold the children accountable is unreasonable. But the related question is how to encourage schools to offer assistance during this period.

Bernard Spolsky
Professor emeritus, Bar-Ilan University
Editor, LANGUAGE POLICY
Mail: 32 Habad Street, 97500 Jerusalem, Israel
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Petrovic, John wrote:
It is unfortunate that the NCLR has abandoned its critical stance on most issues. NCLR has embraced various forms of vulgar multiculturalism (e.g., giving kudos to Spellings as below for continuing to do harm to children) just because lip-service is paid to Latino children and has operated within the horrific limits of identity politics (e.g., applauding the appointment of Alberto Gonzalez as Attorney General).

Perhaps this is a bit too shrill, but it some ways recent NCLR actions remind me of what Manning Marable once wrote about the Reagan administration (an administration identical to Bush's in its opposition to women's rights, civil rights, gay and lesbian rights, ad nauseum). Marable argued that that administration "pursue[d] what objectively amount[ed] to an unprecedented racist assault against minorities while simultaneously appointing blacks to prestigious positions and disclaiming any racist intentions. Thomas Sowell, Ralph D. Abernathy, Tony Brown, Walter Williams, Nathan Wright ... therefore became essential to the destruction of the black community."
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

John,

I share your disappointment with the rightward drift of NCLR and its efforts to ingratiate itself with the Bush administration. It was amazing to see Karl Rove giving a keynote at the recent NCLR conference.

Unfortunately, with NCLR and its allies -- including the Education Trust and now apparently MALDEF -- we're dealing with something more complicated. They espouse a "civil rights" justification for No Child Left Behind that is effective with liberal Democrats like George Miller and Ted Kennedy. It's an ideological approach that essentially says that if ELLs (and other "left behind" subgroups) are doing poorly in school, it must be because the schools are neglecting them. Forget about poverty and its effects, which don't get much attention in today's political climate. It's easier to join with rightwingers to pick on the schools and race-bait critics.

So NCLR et al. have fixated on the principle of "inclusion" of ELLs in accountability systems, however bad those systems may be. They're willing to acknowledge the almost complete lack of valid & reliable assessments for ELLs: http://www.nclr.org/content/publications/detail/37365/. Nevertheless, these groups continue to push for high-stakes use of those assessments. Who cares if public schools are treated unfairly -- after all, they're the enemy. (It may be no coincidence that NCLR is heavily into charter schools.)

This ideology is a holdover from the 1970s, when it was clear that most school districts were resisting an obligation to do anything different for ELLs. In fact, the so-called Citizens Committee for Civil Rights, which works closely with NCLR, is made up of litigators who worked on some of those lawsuits. A great deal has changed, following Lau v. Nichols, the Aspira consent decree, and the development of the field of bilingual education. But the ideologues just don't recognize these changes. It's easier to fall back on faux militancy and wrap yourself in the flag of civil rights. A high staffer at NCLR once told me that "nothing good" had ever happened for ELLs before No Child Left Behind.

This is the mentality we're dealing with.

Jim Crawford
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

NEBRASKA WINS FEDERAL OK ON ASSESSMENT SYSTEM, NO FINE

This is really good news for Nebraska. -Angela

NEBRASKA WINS FEDERAL OK ON ASSESSMENT SYSTEM, NO FINE

Nebraska was notified today by the U.S. Department of Education that it has reversed its earlier decision. The Nebraska assessment system has moved into an “approval” status.

“While we still have work to do with two more steps to complete, our system has been validated as we knew it should have been from the beginning,” Nebraska Education Commissioner Doug Christensen said Friday after talking to U.S.D.E. officials by telephone. “We expect to complete all the requirements by the end of the school year for the highest level of approval. We are pleased that all penalties and fines announced earlier have been removed so no money will be withheld and no penalties applied.”

“We can now get on with fully implementing our system,” Christensen said, “which includes completing the review of local school district assessments during this school year and, once we know what is required, assessing our students who are learning English for the first time in school.”

“The U.S.D.E. decision today was consistent with what the Nebraska Department of Education had said all along,” Christensen said. “The confusion has ended. This whole issue revolved around meeting timelines, not about our local assessment system.”

The review of local assessments will begin in October.

“We are pleased that U.S.D.E. officials were impressed with the process we designed for the review of local assessments,” said Pat Roschewski, state assessment administrator.

Nebraska educators as well as national assessment experts will visit all 254 school districts this year to review how schools assess students on state reading and mathematic standards. The results of those reviews will help districts assess student learning and also meet U.S.D.E. documentation requirements.

Study says English is alive, well

This restates what my book is about. Schooling is subtractive. -Angela
Sept. 14, 2006, 6:04AM

Study says English is alive, well
Offspring of immigrants are increasingly losing touch with their native tongues
By ERICKA MELLON
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

The English language is not an endangered species in the United States, despite an influx of immigrants, according to a study published Wednesday.

Researchers from the University of California at Irvine, and Princeton University found that even in Southern California, which counts the nation's largest Spanish-speaking population, third-generation Americans are rarely fluent in their immigrant ancestors' native tongue.

"If there's one thing that can come out of our study, it's, 'Relax, there's nothing to fear,' " said Ruben Rumbaut, a professor of sociology at the University of California, who co-authored the article in the journal Population and Development Review.

History has shown that the children of immigrants tend to abandon their native language for English, and that is also the case now among Hispanics, Rumbaut said ˜ despite a recent book by Harvard professor Samuel Huntington that argues Latinos today are different.

"People worried when the Italians and the Jews came to New York and when the Irish came before them. But the fact of the matter is ... English is not threatened in the United States today or in the world."

Factor in global economy

What's threatened, Rumbaut said, is Spanish. According to his study, the likelihood that a great-grandchild of a Mexican immigrant will speak Spanish is 3 percent. And that inevitable language loss has serious implications for lawmakers, corporate executives and educators, he said, as they debate how the English language fits into an increasingly global economy.

Massey Villarreal, the president and chief executive officer of Houston-based Precision Task Group, said he has struggled to find skilled technology workers who can speak both English and Spanish.

"I want to 'Amen' the study," said Villarreal, who is vice chairman of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. "By the time I get a third-generation American, they can no longer speak the language. And I think for us to compete in a global economy, our kids need to be bilingual."

Villarreal, whose father was born in Mexico, said he has experienced the loss of language in his family. He described himself as "99 percent fluent in Spanish" but said his writing skills fall short. And the situation is worse for his children.

"My daughter can speak Spanish," he said, "but she could not work for Halliburton and talk about doing business in Colombia. She could not negotiate a contract."

Schools in a quandary

To some who oppose bilingual education, the California study sends a troubling message.

"No one's saying that language preservation is not a noble goal," said Don Soifer, an education analyst at the conservative Lexington Institute, which supports immersing immigrant children in English-only classes. "The problem is when it comes at the expense of these kids' only opportunity to learn English."

School districts across the nation, especially those in border states, find themselves in a tricky situation. On one hand, the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 pushes immigrant children to learn English as fast as they can. At the same time, businesses struggling to compete internationally want bilingual employees.

In 1998, California led the nation in pushing English-only instruction, rather than using a bilingual program that teaches students in their native language and gradually incorporates English. Texas uses the bilingual approach, though the State Board of Education discussed moving toward an immersion, or mostly English, approach earlier this year.

Tougher high school requirements up for vote

I agree with Ed Fuller quoted below. More math and science requirements without adding new quality teachers and filling current teacher spots taken by teachers who aren't certified to teach the courses they're teaching--is problematic.
Putting the cart before the horse again. -Angela

Tougher high school requirements up for vote
Board may force students to take math their senior year.
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/09/14/14highschool.html
By Jason Embry
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Thursday, September 14, 2006

High school seniors often have some flexibility in deciding which classes to take, and many choose not to take math. But that option would disappear under a plan that the State Board of Education will consider over the next two days.

The Legislature said earlier this year that students must have four years of math and science, instead of three, to comply with the state's "recommended" graduation plan, which schools strongly encourage but do not require. Officials at the Texas Education Agency interpreted that to mean that students could continue to pick up one of those math requirements in middle school, as many students do when they take high school algebra in the eighth grade.

The education board will consider a proposal today and Friday that would take the Legislature's action one step further and require students to take a math class every year of high school, even if they get a head start with algebra in the eighth grade. In addition, the board will spell out which courses students can take to meet the new math and science requirements, and it is poised to leave out at least one previously accepted class that is not considered tough enough.

"It does raise the bar substantially for students," education agency spokeswoman Debbie Graves Ratcliffe said of the proposed graduation plan, which would take effect for ninth-graders in August.

In the Austin school district, half of the students in the class that graduated in 2004 had four math credits, and a third had four science credits.

Although few dispute the need for more math and science instruction, some educators and researchers question the plan's practicality at a time when schools are facing a teacher shortage, particularly in science.

Ed Fuller, an education researcher at the University of Texas, said 25 percent of Texas science teachers and 13 percent of math teachers last year taught classes for which they were not certified, according to data that he received from the state.

Fuller said he worries that Texas is moving to the tougher requirements without taking steps to quickly attract and retain the needed teachers.

"My fear is that when we do this, we're going to create an opportunity for qualified teachers to move from less desirable schools to more desirable schools, thus exacerbating the problem we have with achievement in less-desirable schools," Fuller said.

Education board member Don McLeroy, a Republican from Bryan, said he suggested requiring four years of math in high school so students would not be rusty when they reach college. "A lot of students don't take any math at all in their senior year, and then when they get to college, they have a tough time," he said.

Cherie Brune, a senior at Crockett High School in the Austin district, earned her four credits from eighth to 11th grade, stopping after taking pre-calculus, and isn't taking a math class this year. She wants to be an occupational therapist, so she's taking anatomy and physiology and interns at a hospital. She also plays volleyball and takes Advanced Placement classes in government, economics and English.

"I take my science classes because I love it and I'm good at it," said Brune, who said she is in the top 5 percent of her class. "If I would have taken calculus, I would have spent my whole senior year worrying about whether I'm going to pass."

Schools encourage students to follow the recommended graduation plan, and most of them do. But they have the option of taking a different path that requires fewer credits.

Scores on state tests indicate that math and science are the subjects giving students the most trouble. Earlier this year, 77 percent of high school juniors passed the math section of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills exam, and 74 percent passed science. But 88 percent of those students passed the English section of the test, and 94 percent passed social studies.

The education board will consider requiring students who follow the recommended graduation plan to take algebra, geometry, algebra II and at least one upper-level class such as pre-calculus, calculus or statistics, Ratcliffe said.

In science, students would need biology, chemistry, physics and one other lab-based science, such as astronomy, engineering or an advanced course in physics, chemistry or biology. They no longer would get graduation credit for a less-rigorous class called integrated physics and chemistry.

The board also will consider allowing students to take computer science to fulfill a math or science requirement.

The Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce vouched for the proposed course choices Wednesday.

In health care, "we face long-term challenges in recruiting enough medical technicians, administrators and particularly nurses," said Dr. Norman Chenven, CEO of Austin Regional Clinic and chairman of the chamber's math/science task force. "Our future work force must be ready."

With the new math and science requirements, students would need 26 credits to graduate under the recommended plan, instead of 24. Ratcliffe said that most schools have at least seven classes a day, so they would not need to expand the school day. But the requirements could make it more difficult to squeeze in electives such as band and agriculture.

Another concern is how much taxpayers would have to spend to add school lab space to meet the requirements. The cost is difficult to estimate because science programs differ from school to school, Ratcliffe said.

Austin school district Superintendent Pat Forgione supports the proposed requirements but said he would like to see a phase-in of the science requirements so schools can recruit and train more physics teachers. "When you set expectations and you build a system that supports children, they can do it," Forgione said. "But again, it might take resources."

jembry@statesman.com; 445-3654

Changes in class?

Current and proposed requirements for students to graduate under the recommended high school plan:

Current plan

Math: algebra, algebra 2 and geometry

Science: biology and two other courses

Proposed plan

Math: algebra, algebra 2, geometry and an upper-level course

Science: biology, chemistry, physics and one other lab-based class


Find this article at:
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/09/14/14highschool.html

Immigration no threat to English use in U.S.: study

On conservative talk radio, they express concern over the so-called "reconquista." It's not something I hear in my circles and I'm in Mexican American Studies! This rhetoric is clearly about boundary maintenance and stoking the fear of whites and others in order to promote reactionary policies. Studies like the one mentioned should help quell such concerns. -Angela

Wed Sep 13, 12:46 AM ET
U.S. citizens concerned that Latino immigrants will
have them singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" in
Spanish can rest easy, according to an academic study
published on Wednesday.

A report in the Population and Development Review
found that far from threatening the dominance of
English, most Latin American immigrants to the United
States lose their ability to speak Spanish over the
course of a few generations.

The study by sociologists Frank Bean and Ruben Rumbaut
of the University of California, Irvine, and Douglas
Massey from Princeton, drew on two surveys
investigating adaptation by immigrant communities in
California and south Florida.

It concluded that by the third generation, most
descendants of immigrants are "linguistically dead" in
their mother tongue.

"Based on an analysis of language loss over the
generations, the study concludes that English has
never been seriously threatened as the dominant
language in America, nor is it under threat today,"
the researchers said.

"Although the generational life expectancy of Spanish
is greater among Mexicans in Southern California than
other groups, its demise is all but assured by the
third generation," it added.

Third-generation immigrants are American-born with
American-born parents, but with three or four
foreign-born grandparents.

The study, which also included some data from
immigrant groups from Asian countries, weighs into a
polarizing debate in the United States on the
desirability, or otherwise, of linguistic assimilation
for immigrant minorities.

Differences flared earlier this year when a group of
Latino and Caribbean artists recorded a version of the
"The Star-Spangled Banner" in Spanish, prompting
condemnation from some public figures including
President George W. Bush.

"The national anthem ought to be sung in English,"
Bush said of the version, dubbed "Nuestro Himno" by
the artists. "And I think people who want to be
citizens of this country ought to learn it in
English."

National School Testing Urged

This is an interesting push given the opposition throughout the nation to NCLB. -Angela
National School Testing Urged
Gaps Between State, Federal Assessments Fuel Call for Change
By Jay Mathews
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 3, 2006; A01

Many states, including Maryland and Virginia, are reporting student proficiency rates so much higher than what the most respected national measure has found that several influential education experts are calling for a move toward a national testing system.

The growing talk of national testing and standards comes in the fifth year of the No Child Left Behind era. That federal law sought to hold public schools accountable for academic performance but left it up to states to design their own assessments. So the definition of proficiency -- what it means for a student to perform at grade level -- varies from coast to coast.

Maryland recently reported that 82 percent of fourth-graders scored proficient or better in reading on the state's test. The latest data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as "the nation's report card," show 32 percent of Maryland fourth-graders at or above proficiency in reading.

Virginia announced last week that 86 percent of fourth-graders reached that level on its reading test, but the NAEP data show 37 percent at or above proficiency.

Some experts say it's time to be more clear about how well American schoolchildren are doing.

"The more discontented the public is with confusing and dumbed-down standards, the more politically feasible it will be to create national standards of achievement," said Diane Ravitch, a New York University professor who was an assistant U.S. education secretary under President George H.W. Bush.

The political obstacles are formidable, including a long tradition of local control over public education. But the approaching presidential campaign, a pending debate over congressional reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind law and the wide gaps between assessments have raised hopes among proponents that the issue will gain steam. Some say gradual steps toward a national system would be better than none.

A recent study by Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and public policy at the University of California at Berkeley, found that states regularly inflate student achievement. In 12 states studied, the percentage of fourth-graders proficient in reading climbed by nearly two percentage points a year, on average.

The NAEP (pronounced "Nape") data show a decline on average in the percentage who were proficient over the same period, Fuller said.

Another Fuller-led study found only three states -- Massachusetts, Missouri and South Carolina -- with proficiency standards that come close to NAEP's. (A similar rating by the journal Education Next showed that D.C. school standards have been stringent. It showed 14 percent of D.C. elementary school children reading proficiently on the D.C. scale and 11 percent on NAEP's.)

Unlike state tests, which are used to help rate public schools and measure achievement of all students in certain grades, NAEP has a more limited mission. It tests selected pools of students in key subject areas to produce data on long-term educational trends.

NAEP standards were designed to establish what students ought to know to do well in the next grade and beyond, said Mark D. Musick, former president of the Southern Regional Education Board, who helped draft them. State standards, he said, more typically reflect what teachers say are the levels good students reach in their classes.

Although classroom experience varies across the country, Musick said, what students should know to be proficient in Algebra I is clear to most educators, and a national test would help set that standard.

The argument over national standards splits both major political parties. Many Republicans defend each state's right to set its own standards, but the Bush administration includes advocates for a stronger federal role.

No Child Left Behind, which President Bush signed into law in 2002, struck a balance: It required a major expansion of state testing programs but left standard-setting authority to the states.

Many Democrats supported President Bill Clinton's effort in the 1990s to encourage national standards, which was blocked by a Republican-led Congress. Other Democrats, particularly those allied with teachers unions, oppose judging schools by standardized tests.

Charles E. Smith, executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees NAEP, said many state officials tell him they are moving toward the national benchmarks.

A senior Maryland education official, for instance, said the state's standards are aligned with some of the NAEP benchmarks. Some, he said, but not all.

"The gaps will generate differences in performance," said Ronald A. Peiffer, Maryland's deputy superintendent for academic policy. "If NAEP were the national test to which all states taught and tested, then there would be no gaps, and I would expect Maryland students to do much better on NAEP."

Last week, the Washington-based Thomas B. Fordham Foundation released a report from several experts, including advisers to Republican and Democratic administrations, that outlined ways to move toward national standards.

First, the federal government could order a new national testing program. The report said that surely would raise standards but would be unlikely to win congressional approval. Second, Washington could fund an expanded, voluntary national testing system. The report said that probably would raise standards and could be passed.

Third, states could build on efforts to share test items among themselves. That would be less likely to raise standards but politically feasible, the report said. Fourth, the federal government could take steps to ensure that state standards and test results could be easily compared with one another and with NAEP.

The experts in the report include Texas lawyer Sandy Kress and former deputy U.S. education secretary Eugene W. Hickok, both key education advisers to Bush, as well as Ravitch and former Clinton advisers Michael Cohen and Andrew J. Rotherham.

Chester E. Finn Jr., president of the Fordham Foundation, a former Reagan administration official and one of the architects of the NAEP standards in 1990, said creating a national test would be difficult. "But I think it's a manageable hurdle, especially with presidential leadership," he said.

"There's an assumption around that national standards are political suicide even if they make educational sense," Finn said. "We need to bust through that."

Musick said he believes the best way to introduce national tests would be in a few high school subjects, such as first- and second-year algebra.

Some educators see comparisons with NAEP as unrealistic. Gerald W. Bracey, an educational psychologist who writes frequently on testing, noted that 1996 NAEP results found only 30 percent of fourth-graders to be proficient or better in science, even though an international study that year ranked American fourth-graders third in science among 26 nations.

Others want to cut back on standardized testing entirely.

Deborah Meier gained fame for starting schools in low-income areas of New York City's Manhattan that had experts rate students by viewing their schoolwork and discussing it with them. The schools did not rely on standardized tests. Instead of a national test, Meier said, the country should adopt "a combination of in-depth local instruments, independent review of schools and student work."

She also said there is value in limited testing to sample student progress.

Skeptics of national testing have long noted the influence of politics on proficiency standards. Put simply, how many kids will voters allow to score below proficiency? Some policymakers are tempted to keep standards low so that schools will look successful; others seek to set them high to spur schools to improve.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

U.S. education chief backs panel's call for college reforms

Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings was in Austin this past weekend. She provides more detail on what the DOE wants with respect to higher education accountability. She's calling for increased needs-based financial aid, but "any increase in financial aid would be linked to greater information disclosure by colleges and new measures intended to enhance quality and contain ever-rising higher education costs."

-Angela

U.S. education chief backs panel's call for college reforms
Margaret Spellings, visiting Austin, supports financial aid boost, increased accountability

By Ralph K.M. Haurwitz
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Monday, September 11, 2006

U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, visiting Austin over the weekend, all but endorsed a special panel's sweeping recommendations to increase financial aid for college students, measure student learning with standardized tests and require colleges to disclose data on graduation rates, spending and other matters.

Spellings, in town to address community leaders at a luncheon and attend the football game between the University of Texas and Ohio State University, said that none of the panel's recommendations had given her pause, including a much-criticized proposal to create a national database for tracking individual students' progress through higher education. She said she was prepared to seek a significant increase in the federal government's $80 billion annual outlay for financial aid, provided that colleges and universities become more trans- parent about their operations.

The remarks were the most detailed Spellings has offered publicly on the recommendations since the Commission on the Future of Higher Education issued the last in a series of draft reports a month ago. A final report with only minor changes is expected shortly, and Spellings said she plans to outline a plan for acting on the recommendations at a news conference in Washington on Sept. 26.

"I think the commission's work obviously was high quality, very much on point," she said. "It did exactly what it was supposed to do, and that is frame the big issues and precipitate discussion and interest. I consider this kind of the beginning of the beginning of all the discussion on higher education. And it's high time and overdue."

Spellings formed the commission a year ago in an effort to improve the affordability, accessibility and consumer friendliness of higher education. She named Charles Miller, a Houston investor and former chairman of the UT System Board of Regents, to lead the panel. A friend of President Bush's, Miller was something of a mentor to Spellings when she served as Bush's education adviser during his term as governor of Texas.

Miller, who accompanied Spellings in Austin, said he took issue with some leaders of private colleges and universities who have criticized the report, especially a provision calling for a national "unit record" database to track students' progress and thereby hold schools more accountable for fulfilling their educational mission. Critics say such a system would endanger students' privacy.

Miller and Spellings rejected that argument, asserting that names and Social Security numbers would be protected. Miller said private colleges "are afraid of transparency, and yet they take a huge amount of federal money. What do they have to hide? A private college doesn't have any more right to that data than the government does."

Spellings said the database would help assess higher education outcomes, because current records only track first-time, full-time, degree-seeking students. The proposed database would also track cross-state transfer students and returning students.

"That's fewer and fewer learners in America," she said, referring to the growing tendency of students to transfer among institutions or suspend their studies temporarily. "What is important here is that we use information in a protected way to better manage the system and to aid parents and families. And we're not doing that now."

Of the commission's call for a significant increase in need-based financial aid, Spellings said, "Don't look for me on September 26th to give a specific amount. Obviously, I hope that we will find ways to do more. And obviously, this is going to be a discussion that we'll ultimately have with Congress."

But any increase in financial aid would be linked to greater information disclosure by colleges and new measures intended to enhance quality and contain ever-rising higher education costs — "all of the sorts of things you would expect public policymakers to ask," she said.

The U.S. Education Department might be able to overhaul other aspects of the financial aid system without congressional approval. Making the lengthy federal aid application shorter and simpler, as the commission recommended, is a case in point.

"That's one of the things that the commission has recommended that I can certainly take action on administratively," Spellings said.

She expressed support for the commission's recommendation that higher education institutions measure student learning. Various standardized tests are intended to assess the growth of learning during a student's time in college. An early draft by the commission called for states to require such testing, but in response to criticism that the panel was being too intrusive, the final draft says they simply "should" measure learning.

"Is it appropriate and right and righteous to ask, 'What value was added for the tens of thousands of dollars invested by parents and families and the government — federal, state and local?' You bet," Spellings said.

The education secretary said it's important to remember that the federal government is but one player in higher education.

"We need to inspire and spur innovation and effort from the private sector and from states and localities as well," she said. "I'm very encouraged by the flavor of that in the commission's report. I do not want to be — and I'm pretty sure my successors would feel the same way — the national czarina of higher education in America."

rhaurwitz@statesman.com; 445-3604

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/09/11/11spellings.html

Latino Students Receive Less Financial Aid for Higher Ed

The evidence is mounting that we're headed toward an economic crisis if we don't alter this trend (see other posts from today). -Angela

Latino Students Receive Less Financial Aid for Higher Ed
by Marisa Trevino, http://latinalista.blogspot.com/
September 1, 2006

An interesting survey in a recent study conducted by USA Today found that financial aid at public flagship universities aren’t keeping pace with tuition increases.

Though tuition increased by about 34 percent, the increase in aid only amounted to 17 percent.

According to Jamie Merisotis, president of the Institute for Higher Education Policy, a Washington D.C. think tank, the findings are especially troubling because it indicates that the ability to pay is eroding – especially among the low-income students.

That’s an interesting point since Latino students have always had to struggle with the high cost of education – even with financial aid.

Among all the ethnicities, Latinos receive the lowest average amount of financial aid awarded—by type and source of aid.

In a breakdown found at the Hispanic Scholarship Fund , Latinos were found to receive:
the least financial aid ($5,999) of any ethnic group.
Sector: Latinos received the least federal aid ($4,644) and the least non-federal aid ($3,328) of any ethnic group.
Grants: Latinos received the smallest grant awards ($3,486) for their education of any ethnic group. Latinos received the smallest federal grants ($2,113) of any ethnic group, except whites, and received by far the smallest non-federal grants ($3,017) of any ethnic group.
Loans: Latinos received larger loans ($4,168) than African Americans ($4,070) or Asian/Pacific Islanders ($4,073).
Work-Study: Latinos received the lowest work-study awards ($1,152) of any ethnic group.
“Other aid”: Latinos received higher awards ($4,527) than African Americans ($4,147), but less than whites ($5,070) or Asian/Pacific Islanders ($5,364). This disparity is consistent in “other” federal aid ($6,047) and non-federal aid ($3,475).
So, today’s news that there is even less money to help students realize their suenos for the future is doubly worse for Latino students.

And to think some would have us believe that Latino students get preferential treatment when it comes to higher education.

Schools rising to meet needs

All of these data help put the recent massive mobilizations in Dallas in perspective. Steve Murdock, our state demographer indicates the following about demographic trends: "And state demographics show that Hispanics in Texas, on average, are a full decade younger than the state's Anglos. (Blacks fall near the middle, and figures for Asians are not available.) It's not just that Hispanics are having more kids – it's that a much greater percentage of Hispanics are having kids now....while Hispanics now make up 36 percent of the state's total population, they account for nearly half of its infants."

"Dallas ISD enrollment grew by 30,000 students, to 160,000 during the 1990s.

"First it was Dallas. ... Now it's the inner-ring suburbs, places like Garland and Irving and Grand Prairie," Mr. Harner said. "In a couple of years, it's going to be McKinney and Carrollton-Farmers Branch and Rockwall ..."

More school construction in different places is what's needed.

-Angela


Schools rising to meet needs

Influx of Hispanics driving construction in aging neighborhoods
08:03 AM CDT on Tuesday, September 5, 2006

By ANDREW D. SMITH / The Dallas Morning News
Daugherty Elementary School sits on Miller Road in Garland amid a forest of 50-year-old bungalows. For decades, its 800 seats sufficed to serve the whole neighborhood, but no longer.

These days, with nearly 1,300 elementary-school-age children living right around the school, the Garland school district must bus hundreds of them elsewhere.

New houses? No, new Texans.

Old schools are overflowing – and school districts are building – in many of the region's aging neighborhoods, thanks largely to the influx of Hispanic families, which tend to be larger and younger than their black, Asian and Anglo counterparts.

"It's a classic American story. Immigrants always have higher fertility rates than natives. The Irish did. The Germans did. The Italians did. And the Eastern Europeans did," said Steve Murdock, the state demographer of Texas.

"The differences have always disappeared in two or three generations, and I'd expect them to in this case. But until that happens, school districts should probably anticipate more construction costs than they otherwise would."

U.S. census data and studies released by Dr. Murdock's office show that in Texas, Hispanic women have an average of three children, while Anglo women have an average of two. Black women average 2.25 children. Figures for Asian women in Texas are not available, though the national average is 1.9.

And state demographics show that Hispanics in Texas, on average, are a full decade younger than the state's Anglos. (Blacks fall near the middle, and figures for Asians are not available.) It's not just that Hispanics are having more kids – it's that a much greater percentage of Hispanics are having kids now.

Size and age matter
These two phenomena – the size and age of Hispanic families – explain why school demographics are changing far faster than the overall numbers.

In Dallas County, the total number of Hispanics increased 26 percent from 2000 to 2005, but the number of Hispanic students enrolled in Dallas County school districts jumped 35 percent.

In just those five years, percentages of Hispanic students jumped from 27 to 37 in the Garland ISD, 46 to 57 in the Grand Prairie ISD and 45 to 61 in the Irving ISD. And the trend will continue, because while Hispanics now make up 36 percent of the state's total population, they account for nearly half of its infants.

"The fertility rate alone is slightly more than 50 percent higher, but the other factors are probably just as important," said Dr. Murdock, who went on to highlight the 10-year age gap.

"In demographic terms, that's a world of difference," he said.

Imelda and Leoncio Zavala happily typify the trend.

Mr. Zavala works for a window company. His wife works from their Garland home and keeps an eye on the couple's three daughters, two of whom go to Daugherty.

Mr. and Mrs. Zavala say they live in a quiet and pleasant neighborhood, and aside from their disappointment that Garland now allows some alcohol sales, they're happy with the city.

As for the school district: "They try their best to educate our kids. The teachers really seem to care," Mrs. Zavala said. "Garland is a nice place to live."

Other factors
There are, to be sure, other factors driving school construction, even in established neighborhoods.

Developers have squeezed in new houses here and there. Landlords have several families sharing some single-family homes. Development elsewhere can change school attendance zones. But changing demographics are a bigger consideration, demographers say, in districts such as Dallas, Garland, Mesquite, Grand Prairie, Irving and Richardson.

Surging student numbers in Garland's older areas helped necessitate expansions at elementary schools including the aging Davis and Cooper. This summer alone, the Garland district expanded four more.

With other old neighborhoods changing, further expansions are likely.


MELANIE BURFORD / DMN
Classrooms are being built onto Roach Elementary School in Garland as surging student numbers in the city's older areas necessitate expansions.
"The issue is how ... [the neighborhoods] are going to transition," said Marvin Roden, an administrative assistant who projects Garland enrollment. "Are they going to transition into higher-density families or into families that are still low in the numbers of people they have per household?"

Adding on
Administrators across North Texas are asking similar questions. They are also building lots of classrooms in unexpected places.

In 2003, voters in the Grand Prairie district approved an $86 million bond package. The plan was to build three elementary schools near new developments in the southern end of town, but the district wound up building one in and one near central Grand Prairie, where student numbers shot up despite a lack of new construction. The third is being built now, in the south.

"In many housing units where you may have had two kids per housing unit, you are now seeing far more children per housing unit," said Sue Harris, the district's executive director of planning.

Also Online
The changing classroom (.pdf)

En español

The trend has extended deep into some suburbs.

"We have a couple of schools that have been impacted," said Brant Buck, the Lewisville district's assistant superintendent for student services.

"They were the second- and third-oldest schools in the district. By adding an addition and extensive renovations, we were able to continue to serve the neighboring population."

Lewisville ISD has added about 250 seats to Central Elementary, built Lillie Jackson Early Childhood Center for pre-kindergarten programs and is rebuilding an elementary school to add a couple hundred seats.

Other districts have done much more.

The Dallas district has built several schools to serve older neighborhoods that suddenly produced record student numbers, said Dennis Harner, an Austin-based demographer who has worked with 75 school districts, including Dallas, Fort Worth, Plano, Garland, Grand Prairie, Rockwall, McKinney and Red Oak.

Most of the Dallas construction took place around Love Field and in the Five Points area of northeast Dallas.

Officials in area districts, while acknowledging the importance of family size, say the population influx is just one of several growth drivers.

"We've built three new schools over the past five years," said Whit Johnstone, the Irving district's director of planning, evaluation and research.

"One of those schools was needed, primarily, because of increasing family density in the southern part of town. The other schools had more to do with new construction."

Anglo numbers fall
State figures show that while hundreds of thousands of Anglos moved to the Dallas area in the last decade, the number of Anglo students in area public schools declined.

Texas Education Agency figures show that in 1995, there were 393,875 Anglo students attending 65 school districts around Dallas and Fort Worth. In 2005, the number was 393,385. Black student enrollment simultaneously climbed 40,000, to 179,410, while Asian student enrollment grew 20,000, to 47,443.

In those same years, the number of Hispanic students more than doubled to 324,438, agency figures show. The growth in Hispanic student numbers accounted for 70 percent of enrollment growth in the region over that decade.

"Excepting very unusual places like Highland Park, there are two types of Dallas-area districts: those where immigrant family size is currently a big issue and places where it will soon be a big issue," Mr. Harner said.

Dallas ISD enrollment grew by 30,000 students, to 160,000 during the 1990s.

"First it was Dallas. ... Now it's the inner-ring suburbs, places like Garland and Irving and Grand Prairie," Mr. Harner said. "In a couple of years, it's going to be McKinney and Carrollton-Farmers Branch and Rockwall ...

"Districts like that should be ready to see more children per house than they've ever seen before, and they should be ready to build a lot of new classrooms to accommodate them."

E-mail asmith@dallasnews.com

AVERAGE NUMBER OF CHILDREN PER WOMAN
U.S.
Anglo 1.9
Asian 1.9
Black 2.2
Hispanic 2.7

Texas*
Anglo 2.0
Black 2.3
Hispanic 3.1

*Asian fertility rates were not calculated for Texas

SOURCES: 2000 figures from the U.S. Census Bureau; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Texas State Data Center

Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/education/stories/090506dnmetmoreschools.33d50a2.html

Report: Texas failing in higher ed affordability

This piece cites a report titled, Measuring Up in Higher Education, by the nonpartisan, nonprofit National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. Texas gets an F in educating its young population. -Angela


Report: Texas failing in higher ed affordability
Thursday, September 7, 2006

Associated Press
HOUSTON - Sending a student to a public university costs low- to middle-income families in Texas almost half of their annual earnings, according to a report released Thursday.

The nonprofit, nonpartisan National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education gave the Lone Star State an "F" for higher education affordability. The state also received low grades for its college enrollment numbers and degree completion rates.

"Texas' underperformance in educating its young population could limit the state's access to a competitive work force and weaken its economy over time," the report card concluded.

For state legislators and education leaders, the report echoes what they already know.

"It's a very real threat to the state," said Ray Grasshoff, spokesman for the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, which advises the Legislature. Without an educated work force, the state will see personal incomes and quality of life drop, and demand on social services jump, he said.

Other findings of the report include:

-- 14 percent of students complete a certificate or degree; Texas' higher education graduation rate is lower than those of the Czech Republic and Hungary

-- a third of high school students are likely to enroll in college by age 19, an improvement for Texas but still low when compared to other states

-- adult whites are more than twice as likely to have a bachelor's degree than nonwhites; this is one of the widest gaps in the country

-- 36 percent of young adult whites are enrolled in higher education, versus 26 percent of nonwhites

"The good news," Grasshoff said, "is that it's not a secret and we're out there doing some things."

The state, for example, created the Texas Grant program for needy students who take college preparation courses in high school. However, Texas doesn't have enough money to award every student who qualifies, so this year, it started accepting private donations to the fund, Grasshoff said.

Texas has made progress in enrolling more students in colleges and universities, but it hasn't made much progress in the numbers of Hispanics, the largest minority group in the state, Grasshoff added. "That's a very big concern across the state."

Democratic Sen. Royce West, who serves on the state Legislature's higher education subcommittee, said he was very disappointed in Texas' performance.

"What it comes down to is whether we're going to prioritize higher education, not just in words but also in our deeds," said West, of Dallas.

The state hasn't kept its promises to make college more affordable. hasn't aligned its high school and college curriculums and hasn't figured out why students are dropping out, he added.

As the population changes, higher education has to change with it, West said. If minorities aren't represented in universities' leadership it will be difficult to understand the perspectives and meet the challenges of minority groups, he said.

Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/education/stories/090706dntexhighered.76be40b6.html

The Wages of Teaching

Check out this quote: "According to the Department of Education, one in every five teachers leaves after the first year, and almost twice as many leave within three. If any business had that rate of turnover, someone would do something smart and strategic to fix it." Quindlen expresses concern here about teacher incentive pay schemes and refers to the NEA's call for a minimum $40,000.00 salary for teachers. -Angela

The Wages of Teaching
No school administrator should ever receive a percentage raise greater than the raise teachers get. Neither should state legislators.


By Anna Quindlen

Newsweek
Nov. 28, 2005 issue - A couple of years ago I spent the day at an elementary school in New Jersey. It was a nice average school, a square and solid building with that patented classroom aroma of disinfectant and chalk, chock-full of reasonably well-behaved kids from middle-class families. I handled three classes, and by the time I staggered out the door I wanted to lie down for the rest of the day.

Teaching's the toughest job there is. In his new memoir, "Teacher Man," Frank McCourt recalls telling his students, "Teaching is harder than working on docks and warehouses." Not to mention writing a column. I can stare off into the middle distance with my chin in my hand any time. But you go mentally south for five minutes in front of a class of fifth graders, and you are sunk.

The average new teacher today makes just under $30,000 a year, which may not look too bad for a twentysomething with no mortgage and no kids. But soon enough the newbies realize that they can make more money and not work anywhere near as hard elsewhere. After a lifetime of hearing the old legends about cushy hours and summer vacations, they figure out that early mornings are for students who need extra help, evenings are for test corrections and lesson plans, and weekends and summers are for second and even third jobs to try to pay the bills.

According to the Department of Education, one in every five teachers leaves after the first year, and almost twice as many leave within three. If any business had that rate of turnover, someone would do something smart and strategic to fix it. This isn't any business. It's the most important business around, the gardeners of the landscape of the human race.

Unfortunately, the current fashionable fixes for education take a page directly from the business playbook, and it's a terrible fit. Instead of simply acknowledging that starting salaries are woefully low and committing to increasing them and finding the money for reasonable recurring raises, pols have wasted decades obsessing about something called merit pay. It's a concept that works fine if you're making widgets, but kids aren't widgets, and good teaching isn't an assembly line.

McCourt's book is instructive. Early in his 30-year career, he's teaching at a vocational high school and realizes that his English students are never more inspired than when forging excuse notes from their parents. So McCourt assigns the class to write excuse notes, the results ranging "from a family epidemic of diarrhea to a sixteen-wheeler truck crashing into the house." Pens fly with extravagant lies. You can almost feel the imaginations kick in.

The point about tying teaching salaries to widget standards is that it's hard to figure out a useful way to measure the merit of what a really good teacher does. You can imagine the principal who would see McCourt's gambit as the work of a gifted teacher, and just as easily imagine the one who would find it unseemly. Tying raises to pass rates is a flagrant invitation to inflate student achievement. Tying them to standardized tests makes rote regurgitation the centerpiece of schools. Both are blind to the merit of teachers who shoulder the challenging work of educating those less able, more troubled, from homes where there are no pencils, no books, even no parents. A teacher whose Advanced Placement class sends everyone on to top-tier colleges; a teacher whose remedial-reading class finally gets through to some, but not all, of a student group that is failing. There is merit in both.

The National Education Association has been pushing for a minimum starting salary of $40,000 for all teachers. Why not? If these people can teach 6-year-olds to add and get adolescents to attend to algebra, surely we can do the math to get them a decent wage. Since the corporate world is the greatest, and richest, beneficiary of well-educated workers, maybe a national brain trust might be set up that would turn a tax on corporate profits into an endowment to raise teacher salaries. Maybe states and communities could also pass regulations with this simple proviso: no school administrator should ever receive a percentage raise greater than the raise teachers get. Neither should state legislators.

In recent years teacher salaries have grown, if they've grown at all, at a far slower rate than those of other professionals, often lagging behind inflation. Yet teachers should have the most powerful group of advocates in the nation: not their union, but we the people, their former students. I am a writer because of the encouragement of teachers. Surely most Americans must feel the same, that there were women and men who helped them levitate just a little above the commonplace expectations they had for themselves.

At the end of his book McCourt, who is preparing to leave teaching with the idea of living off his pension and maybe writing—and whose maiden effort, "Angela's Ashes," will win the Pulitzer—is giving advice to a young substitute. "You'll never know what you've done to, or for, the hundreds coming and going," he says. Yeah, but the hundreds know, the hundreds who are millions who are us. They made us. We owe them.

URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10116331/site/newsweek/

© 2006 MSNBC.com

Experts predict grim future for state if leaders don't address gap among students

These trends should concern us deeply. -Angela

Sept. 3, 2006, 11:33AM

Education the elephant in the room
Experts predict grim future for state if leaders don't address gap among students

By GARY SCHARRER
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau

AUSTIN — Imagine a Texas with declining household incomes, tax revenues that can't keep up with growing demands for services and children growing up worse off than their parents.

That's what Texans can expect unless government does a better job educating the rapidly growing Hispanic population, which could become the state's majority by 2025.

It's a crisis in the making, said Steve Murdock, the state's top population expert, and it comes at a time when state services for low-income people, including hundreds of thousands of Hispanics, already are strained.

And whether the warning bells ring too distantly into the future or sound the alarm for problems that are too abstract, there's little indication the major gubernatorial candidates will invest much time responding to them before the November election.

"I'd like to say that I saw lots of signs that everything was changing, but I don't see it yet," Murdock said.

Without changes, starting with education, Murdock projects that within 35 years, the average Texas household will earn $6,500 less than it does now, more than that if the number is adjusted for inflation.

Unless education achievement improves — leading to better-paying jobs for more people — tax revenues will fall in the coming decades even as demands for health care, social services and prisons increase, Murdock said.

Last year, Hispanic students made up 45 percent of the public school enrollment, and they are on the verge of becoming the majority.

Yet the dropout rate for Latino students continues to hover around 48 percent, according to the San Antonio-based Intercultural Development Research Association.

The gubernatorial candidates say an improved education system and better economic opportunities are priorities, but they aren't clear how they would accomplish either goal.

And so far, candidates have spent as much time attacking one another as they have discussing the future.

After repeatedly failing to do so, the Legislature and Gov. Rick Perry claim to have complied this year with a Texas Supreme Court order to find a way to equitably fund public education. But their critics contend Perry and state leaders made incremental changes in public education only after the Supreme Court threatened to close the schools if they did not do so.

Because all revenue from a new business tax is dedicated to cutting property taxes, they say the new school law ignores Murdock's warnings.


'The highest priority'

These candidates and other state leaders are paying only "lip service" to educational attainment, said Mike Moses, formerly the state's education commissioner and the former superintendent in the Lubbock and Dallas school districts.
"If we don't really give it the highest priority to every child, I think we can safely say that Murdock's predictions will probably come true," Moses said.

The numbers bear him out.

The Hispanic population in Texas grew by nearly 1.2 million people between 2000 and 2004, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

That same year saw an increase of only 147,678 whites.

Over the next 34 years, Hispanics will account for about 78 percent of the state's population growth and whites only 4 percent, said Murdock, who is director of the Institute for Demographic and Socioeconomic Research at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Hispanics and other minorities now make up at least 90 percent of student enrollment in the state's major urban school districts.

That transformation also is reaching into suburban school districts, such as Cypress-Fairbanks outside Houston and North East in San Antonio, where minorities have become the majority student enrollment.

And it is in the schools, where the fight to stave off Murdock's dire predictions begin.

"Unless Texas changes course, we doom an entire generation of kids," said Rep. Pete Gallego, D-Alpine, the state House Mexican American Caucus chairman. "We don't doom them to mediocrity. It's worse than that because we take away their opportunity."

Children from low-income families continue to pour into the state's public school system. Not quite a majority six years ago, low-income children now represent nearly 56 percent of the state's 4.5 million public schoolchildren. The number of limited English-proficient children also continues to grow by about 30,000 a year.

And test scores for 2004-05 show a significant achievement gap. On the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills tests in the fifth, seventh, ninth and 11th grades, the gap between white children and limited-English students was nearly 60 points.

"The numbers are astonishing to me," said professor Angela Valenzuela, director of the Texas Center for Education Policy at the University of Texas at Austin. "We need more school funds, and we need equitable school funding. The ones who most zealously protect their status are the representatives of the wealthiest districts. I think that unmasks their motives."

She called the trend line "unjust and polarizing."


Clashing policy

The new school finance law adopted by the Legislature this spring after five sessions over the past three years will make it harder for school districts to generate revenue because voter approval, not school board action, will generally dictate future school tax increases. And those voters with the most discretionary income will be older whites without children in schools.
"Everything that we have done is designed to exacerbate these trends," said Gallego, the Alpine Democrat. "We raise tuition at colleges and universities, and we cut the amount of money available for financial aid. And we made it more difficult for school districts to raise revenue."

But spending more for education investment collides with the clamor for tax cuts and stiffer property appraisal caps.

"The political body that is most vocal at this point in time is the 'no tax' groups, and they are vicious in their zeal to hold the line on taxes," said Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock. "They are voting their principles, whether you agree with them or not.

"The biggest problem is that it's a short-term popular view. If we don't make investments today, then it will cost us more to correct the course later," Duncan said.

There is also strong resistance among some quarters in the state against increasing funding for public education.

"Unaccountable, bureaucratic government schools clearly aren't currently lifting the minority population out of poverty and improving educational outcome," said Peggy Venable, state director for Americans for Prosperity, a group that supports lower taxes and less government.

Her organization supports vouchers for private schools and giving parents more school choices.

"Hispanic parents recognize that education is a way out of poverty," Venable said. "We think that parents know more about their children and where they might have the greatest success in education, certainly more than the government does."

Population experts and some lawmakers also are concerned about the trend in higher education.

The need to increase college enrollment inspired Texas higher education officials six years ago to adopt a "Closing the Gaps" initiative, which includes a focus on enrolling more Hispanic students.

But the gap is not closing.

The state "is not on track to meet the participation goal," according to a progress report issued earlier this year by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.

By 2015, the plan calls for about 5,000 more Hispanic students to be enrolled in college than whites.

But as of last year, the state's college enrollment included 319,459 Hispanics and 629,211 whites.

The enrollment numbers put Hispanics 20,000 under the state's goal.

Adding to the problems, lawmakers have allowed tuition rates to soar 62 percent on average after they deregulated tuition three years ago but have not increased financial aid to middle- and low-income students.

Funding for the TEXAS Grant scholarship program aimed at these students has remained flat from $324.4 million in the 2004-05 budget to $332.2 million for 2006-07.

"The statistics are alarming," said Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, the program's author. "Closing the Gaps says that we will fall far short of meeting the educational needs of our young people — especially young Hispanic students. Texas ranks last among the six largest states in the amount of student financial aid and grants that are available to students."


Widespread impact

Ruben Martinez, a professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio, is skeptical that Texas can make the necessary changes to avoid Murdock's projections.
"We're living in a time of great fear, and during times of fear, people are very reluctant to engage in change," said Martinez, interim department chair of the college of public policy.

Some Texans don't see the changing demographics as impacting them, state demographer Murdock said.

"But the reality is that they impact all of us because it will impact the tax revenues that support services," he said. "They will impact the consumer expenditures that drive our private-sector market. It's more than just problems for a set of people who may not look like us or be like us.

"If we don't do something, it's a problem that will impact all of us and the quality of life for all of us."

Chronicle reporter R.G. Ratcliffe contributed to this report.

gscharrer@express-news.net
This article is: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/chronicle/4158588.html

At 2-Year Colleges, Students Eager but Unready

September 2, 2006
At 2-Year Colleges, Students Eager but Unready

By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO
Correction Appended
DUNDALK, Md. — At first, Michael Walton, starting at community college here, was sure that there was some mistake. Having done so well in high school in West Virginia that he graduated a year and a half early, how could he need remedial math?

Eighteen and temperamental, Mickey, as everyone calls him, hounded the dean, insisting that she take another look at his placement exam. The dean stood firm. Mr. Walton’s anger grew. He took the exam a second time. Same result.

“I flipped out big time,’’ Mr. Walton said.

Because he had no trouble balancing his checkbook, he took himself for a math wiz. But he could barely remember the Pythagorean theorem and had trouble applying sine, cosine and tangent to figure out angles on the geometry questions.

Mr. Walton is not unusual. As the new school year begins, the nation’s 1,200 community colleges are being deluged with hundreds of thousands of students unprepared for college-level work.

Though higher education is now a near-universal aspiration, researchers suggest that close to half the students who enter college need remedial courses.

The shortfalls persist despite high-profile efforts by public universities to crack down on ill-prepared students.

Since the City University of New York, the largest urban public university, barred students who need remediation from attending its four-year colleges in 1999, others have followed with similar steps.

California State set an ambitious goal to cut the proportion of unprepared freshmen to 10 percent by 2007, largely by testing them as high school juniors and having them make up for deficiencies in the 12th grade.

Cal State appears nowhere close to its goal. In reading alone, nearly half the high school juniors appear unprepared for college-level work.

Aside from New York City’s higher education system, at least 12 states explicitly bar state universities from providing remedial courses or take other steps like deferred admissions to steer students needing helping toward technical or community colleges.

Some students who need to catch up attend two- and four-year institutions simultaneously.

The efforts, educators say, have not cut back on the thousands of students who lack basic skills. Instead, the colleges have clustered those students in community colleges, where their chances of succeeding are low and where taxpayers pay a second time to bring them up to college level.

The phenomenon has educators struggling with fundamental questions about access to education, standards and equal opportunity.

Michael W. Kirst, a Stanford professor who was a co-author of a report on the gap between aspirations and college attainment, said that 73 percent of students entering community colleges hoped to earn four-year degrees, but that only 22 percent had done so after six years.

“You can get into school,” Professor Kirst said. “That’s not a problem. But you can’t succeed.’’

Nearly half the 14.7 million undergraduates at two- and four-year institutions never receive degrees. The deficiencies turn up not just in math, science and engineering, areas in which a growing chorus warns of difficulties in the face of global competition, but also in the basics of reading and writing.

According to scores on the 2006 ACT college entrance exam, 21 percent of students applying to four-year institutions are ready for college-level work in all four areas tested, reading, writing, math and biology.

For many students, the outlook does not improve after college. The Pew Charitable Trusts recently found that three-quarters of community college graduates were not literate enough to handle everyday tasks like comparing viewpoints in newspaper editorials or calculating the cost of food items per ounce.

The unyielding statistics showcase a deep disconnection between what high school teachers think that their students need to know and what professors, even at two-year colleges, expect them to know.

At Cal State, the system admits only students with at least a B average in high school. Nevertheless, 37 percent of the incoming class last year needed remedial math, and 45 percent needed remedial English.

“Students are still shocked when they’re told they need developmental courses,’’ said Donna McKusik, the senior director of developmental, or remedial, education at the Community College of Baltimore County. “They think they graduated from a high school, they should be ready for college.’’

Across the nation, federal and state education officials are pressing for a K-16 vision of education that runs from kindergarten through college graduation. Such an approach, they say, would help high schools better prepare students for college.

In Florida, Gov. Jeb Bush appointed a Board of Regents to oversee education at all public institutions, from elementary through bachelor’s programs. At Cal State, professors are advising 12th-grade teachers on preparing students to succeed in college.

Starting at a Deficit

As the debate rages, nearly half of all students seeking degrees begin their journeys at community colleges much like the Dundalk campus of the Community College of Baltimore County, two-story no-frills buildings named by letters, not benefactors or grateful alumni. The college’s interim vice chancellor for learning and developmental education, Alvin Starr, said he saw students who passed through high school never having read a book cover to cover.

“They’ve listened in class, taken notes and taken the test off of that,’’ Dr. Starr said.

Though remedial needs are high, Dr. Starr said, the courses offer something invaluable, the chance to overcome basic deficiencies in reading, writing or math.

“You have to figure the cost to society on the other side if you don’t educate these students,’’ he said.

Most of the students expect the transition to community college to be seamless. But the first, and sometimes last, stop for many are remedial math classes.

“It’s the math that’s killing us,’’ Dr. McKusik said.

The sheer numbers of enrollees like Mr. Walton who have to take make-up math is overwhelming, with 8,000 last year among the nearly 30,000 degree-seeking students systemwide. Not all those students come directly from high school. Many have taken off a few years and may have forgotten what they learned, Dr. McKusik said.

More than one in four remedial students work on elementary and middle school arithmetic. Math is where students often lose confidence and give up.

“It brings up a lot of emotional stuff for them,’’ Dr. McKusik said.

She told of 20 students who had just burst into tears on receiving their math entrance exam scores and walked out on college. Mr. Walton remembers a fellow student who failed to hand in a math assignment for the fourth time in the last week of class and learned that he would fail. The student lunged toward the professor and said, “I’ll kill you.”

“You can say whatever you want, but this really isn’t helping your grade,” the professor replied, Mr. Walton said.

The student stormed out the door with a final expletive, leaving the professor shaken.

Fear of Appearing Ignorant

The biggest challenge, professors say, is trying to engage students, to persuade them that ideas matter. Dr. McKusik suspects that behind the apathy is a fear of appearing ignorant.

“Everything in society is geared to celebrate, to value, the winner,” she said. “These are students who haven’t been at the top. They won’t show themselves as vulnerable at all.’’

With most students having commitments to jobs and families, community colleges typically offer little in the way of a social life or school spirit. So they need to find ways to reach their less traditional audience.

“That’s why we’re trying to use pop culture in the classroom, to get their attention,’’ said Betsy Gooden, an English teacher who, in a remedial reading class one day last spring, tried to coax students to discuss a television documentary.

Two or three students in a class of 10 women carried most of the discussion, which seemed more like Ricky Lake than Lit 101, with students reacting to the film almost exclusively in terms of their personal experiences.

They covered love, sex and cheating boyfriends. Before the class was over, two women disclosed that they had been raped. About half the students said nothing at all.

Karen Olson, a history professor, and David Truscello, who teaches English, are trying another common strategy, mixing remedial work with other subjects. They are co-teachers of a course that combines African-American history with composition.

Professor Olson says teachers should stop making “unrealistic assignments’’ like chapters from “600-page textbooks’’ and should meet students at their level, raising abilities by degrees.

In her class, she assigns more manageable readings and carves up the load, so no student is responsible for doing it all.

“It’s not like they’re living four years in a dorm,’’ Professor Truscello said.

Most are working, sometimes at more than one job.

“That impinges on everything,’’ he added. “I have students who take two buses to come to school. It’s amazing that they do it.’’

Solutions and Successes

Another part of the solution at community colleges is in Student Success Centers. They are actually tutoring centers. Dundalk’s is open 63 hours a week.

Along a wall is a rack of handouts explaining points of grammar that might have last been explicitly taught in middle school, a measure of the immense ground to be made up. One covers comparative adjectives, explaining “more” vs. “most” or “smarter” vs. “smartest.” Another discusses using pronouns and verb tenses.

At one table, Kirn Shahzadi, 20, once an A student at Parkville High School, was being tutored a few hours before her final in remedial algebra. In addition to math, Ms. Shahzadi needed remedial courses in reading and one in helping with basic skills like note taking, researching and organizing schedules. By the second week of that course, she said, half the students had dropped out.

Still, the school has winners who make it through and feel that they have to fit into the changing workplace.

Mr. Walton said careers like his father’s as a welder for a major construction company were now harder to find. His father rose to foreman, putting Mr. Walton’s older brother through Johns Hopkins University.

Mr. Walton, who married soon after high school, put himself through the Baltimore community college working as a security guard at $7.80 an hour. He has had shoplifters pull knives on him and spray him with Mace, he said.

His salary covered the utilities and phone bills, and left his wife, an administrative assistant at Johns Hopkins, to pay the mortgage. He added that at times he suspected that she had felt more like a caretaker than a wife, and he worried for their future.

“I know she’s sick and tired of taking care of me,’’ he said in May. “It’s rip-your-hair-out-at-night difficult.’’

But Mr. Walton made it through that remedial math class four years ago, ultimately praising the dean for standing firm. In June, he crossed a stage to receive an associate’s degree in computer science. Next year, he plans to earn another degree in, of all things, math.

He said he would like to earn a full bachelor’s, but hesitates.

“I’m scared to death of going to college,’’ he said. “I’ll be up to my eyeballs in debt.’’

This summer he sent his résumé even to employers demanding bachelor’s degrees and several years’ experience, hoping that his enthusiasm would compensate where credentials fell short. He sought positions that included tuition breaks for employees.

His strategy paid off with two offers, one in data entry at the community college here, a job he held on work study before graduating, and another as a technician repairing copying machines. Mr. Walton went for the second.

It offers benefits, tuition reimbursement and a salary of $22,850 a year, with extra money toward buying a new car every few years.

“I feel a little bit more — I don’t want to say confident — but maybe worthy,’’ Mr. Walton said. “Now, I feel like I’m all that, and a bag of chips.’’

Correction: Sept. 9, 2006
A front-page article last Saturday about the lack of preparation among some students applying for community college misspelled the surname of an official at the Community College of Baltimore County, who said students were shocked to learn they needed remedial courses. She is Donna McKusick, not McKusik. The article also misspelled the given name of a former talk show star, whose habit of personalizing issues on her program was likened to students in a remedial reading class who discussed a television documentary in personal terms. She is Ricki Lake, not Ricky.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

An exchange between Professor Bill Ayers at UI, Chicago and a colleague regarding his exclusion from a conference involving progressives

This is a different kind of posting. Many of us know and respect . It's an exchange between Professor Bill Ayers at UI, Chicago and a colleague (minus identifiers) regarding his exclusion from a conference involving progressives. I’m sharing it here with his permission. First, there is opening commentary by him; second, the letter to him; and third, Bill’s written response to this person. It provides though-provoking commentary on the very important topic of what it means to be a progressive educator. I believe that Ayers rescues this term by realigning it with radical thought that rests at the heart of American social activism. -Angela

Upon returning from summer break I found a surprising letter awaiting me written by three colleagues from another university, two of whom I’d known and worked with for decades. The letter simultaneously informed me about a conference my friends were organizing and explained--- with some anguish I think--- that I would not be welcome there.
They note that we’re living in troubled times, that calculated appeals to fear rule the day, and that they hope to counter all of that. Ironically, fear is stamped all over the letter.

I’m reminded of when Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin were hauled before the fearsome House Committee on Un-American Activities, refused to bow, and helped to laugh it out of existence. Or when the universities were cowed by a bullying government into banning the DuBois Clubs--- a handful of students in the youth-wing of the CP who were attacked by Richard Nixon for intentionally creating a front group that would dupe people because it rhymed with the Boys Clubs--- and we members of Students for a Democratic Society signed up en masse and swelled their membership a hundred-fold.
I find myself sitting here humming Phil Ochs’ brilliant "Love Me, I'm a Liberal".

Different times demand different responses of course, but to claim the mantle of 'social justice' while practicing this kind of exclusion is unacceptable.
Their letter to me and my response to them are reproduced below. I’ve edited out identifiable references to my colleagues in order to protect the…well, you decide, let’s just say their privacy. I can be reached at billayers.org, or bayers@uic.edu. Onward!


William Ayers
Distinguished Professor
University of Illinois at Chicago

___________________________________________________________
This is an unusual letter for us to be writing and for you to receive. We count you among the most noted progressive educators in the country with a deep commitment to teaching for social justice. Yet, after extended deliberation and discussion, we find ourselves in a real quandary. Because of current…times, we cannot invite you to an event we are planning for progressive educators. Because we know and deeply respect you and your commitment to teaching for social justice, we felt that an explanation was in order.

Next spring, we will host an event…to honor Bob Moses and progressive education. Bob is to receive the…John Dewey Prize for Progressive Education. This prize is… “to honor significant achievement in progressive education for the purpose of making society more just.” In an era of increasing standardization and heightened inequities, we want to shine a bright light on the ideals of progressive education and remind the public that there is another model for education that attends well to the needs of every child. It is our intention to invite other progressive educators to this convening and to create a significant news and media event honoring the ideals of progressive education [and] the work of Bob Moses…

It is because of our commitment to educate the public and to undertake what is primarily a symbolic project that we cannot risk a simplistic and dubious association between progressive education and the violent aspects of your past. We believe, of course, in your right to express your views, then and now. This is not about curtailing your expression. Rather, in this age when Google summarizes instantly, and often shallowly, who we are, it is about trying to say as clearly as possible what we are arguing for. If we, as educators, want to engage the learner, in this case the public, where they are, then we have to find ways for the public to see progressive education not as radical or threatening but as nurturing and familiar, connected to the very best aspects of their own learning experiences. For the last five years local and regional news organizations have taken the “liberal”…faculty…to task. It is an environment that we have challenged when key principles were involved, defending and maintaining our…commitment to social justice against the state bureaucracy. This event, however, is a celebration honoring two educators’ accomplishments and positively promoting progressive education. We don’t want a shallow press to prevail. We want to engage the public with as little interference as possible.

One major reason for presenting a prize at this time is that progressivism, and progressive education in particular, have been greatly weakened by a broad and calculated appeal to our fears in this changing world. We want to reinsert into the civil dialogue that progressive education stands upon its proven record and can be a viable alternative when our mood turns away from fears and towards hopes. First, we need to get ourselves back to the table, and then position ourselves as polite in our discourse before celebrating the breadth of expression within progressive education. Coming from behind may well demand such strategic thinking, whether is satisfies all of our passion or not.

We hope this letter finds you well and that you understand and possibly appreciate this decision.

Sincerely,
"Lauren" and the organizers
__________________________________________________________



August 29, 2006

Dear Lauren,

You have, of course, no obligation to include me in the progressive education conference you’re organizing, certainly not in your deliberations about my suitability to attend. I’m tempted to say, with apologies to Groucho Marx, that I wouldn’t want to attend any progressive education conference that would have me.

Chances are I’d have never heard of the conference had you not written, and in any case wouldn’t have given a second thought to my presence on or absence from the guest list. But since you’ve opened this in the way you have, since you’ve outlined your thinking on the matter and invited me to understand and possibly appreciate your decision, I feel I must respond.
Your hope to position progressive education "not as radical or threatening but as nurturing and familiar," is in some ways a fool’s errand. Of course, no one argues that the progressive movement should threaten students or teachers or citizens--progressive education does indeed hold the hope of realizing a humane and decent education for all within a revitalized politics and a more authentically democratic society. But progressive education, if it means anything at all, must embody a profound threat to the status quo. It is a direct challenge, for example, to all the policy initiatives that deskill and hammer teachers into interchangeable cogs in a bureaucracy, all the pressure to reduce teaching to a set of manageable and easily monitored tasks, all the imposition of labels and all the simple-minded metrics employed to describe student learning and rank youngsters in a hierarchy of winners and losers. It’s a threat to all that, and more.

But here we face a contradiction at the heart of our efforts: the humanistic ideal and the democratic injunction tell us that every person is an entire universe, that each can develop as a full and autonomous person engaged with others in a common polity and an equality of power; the capitalist imperative insists that profit is at the center of economic, political, and social progress, and develops, then, a culture of competition, elitism, and hierarchy. An education for democracy fails as an adjunct to capitalism just as an education for capitalism fails to build either a democratic ethos or a participatory practice. We must engage, then, in the arena of school and education reform as we struggle toward a world fit for all children--a place of peace and justice, joy and balance. The two are inseparable.

And so I believe that progressive education must be part of a radical movement if it is to be worthy of the hopes and dreams of those who fight to bring humanistic alternatives to life. I mean radical in the sense that Ella Baker, one of the unsung mothers of the Civil Rights Movement, used the word. She called herself a radical, and she explained that radical meant "going to the root." Little reforms here and there never add up unless we get to the core of the problems we face, she argued, analyze our situations, connect the struggles as we work for more fundamental change.

Charlie Cobb, who co-wrote Radical Equations, was also the author of the original proposal for Freedom Schools in the South more than forty years ago. The brief he wrote claimed that while Black children were denied many things--decent school facilities, honest and forward-looking curriculum, fully qualified teachers--the fundamental injury was "a complete absence of academic freedom, and students are forced to live in an environment that is geared to squashing intellectual curiosity, and different thinking." Cobb called the classrooms of Mississippi "intellectual wastelands," and he challenged himself and others "to fill an intellectual and creative vacuum," and to encourage people "to articulate their own desires, demands and questions." He was urging students to confront the circumstances of their lives, to wonder about how they got to where they were, and to think of how they might change things. He was crossing hard lines of propriety and tradition, convention and common sense, of course, poised to break the law and overthrow a system. His proposal was
designed to plow a deep and promising furrow toward the new--- more than radical, this was insurrection itself, progressive education linked to radical politics.

Of course, we are required now to make our own contributions in our own time and place; the pathway, the content, and the curriculum must be of, by and for this moment and this community. We might take inspiration and attitude, sustenance and stance from the Mississippi experience, but only as an orientation toward launch, toward imagining and trying to bring to life something entirely new.

Finally, you refer to "the violent aspects" of my past. As you know I’ve written extensively about politics and protest as well as my own involvements, about the dual responsibilities to act and to doubt, and about the impossibility of claiming a high moral stance while sitting on the sidelines. I’ve accounted for my actions during the US assaults on Vietnam and against the Black Freedom Movement--which is what I assume you’re referring to--and paid the price asked of me by the legal system. And I’ve said often that our society ought to engage in a truth-and-reconciliation process concerning those terrible and wondrous times; in other words, I'm happy to stand up, tell my story, admit my mistakes, and take responsibility--shoulder-to-shoulder with everyone else, including war criminals, politicians, soldiers, officers, frat boys, students, scholars, citizens. Absent that, you seem to say that I have some uniquely dreadful behavior to account for, and I politely disagree.

I worry that you’re imagining a progressivism divorced from politics, the larger world, and any real hope of transformation--a timid, tepid, soft and servile thing. And I worry that your attempt to cleanse your conference of the likes of me has no end: you’ll have to cut out the Marxists and the socialists, of course, anyone who writes critically about capitalism and education, then the militants, the noisy anti-racists, the pushy feminists, the gays and lesbians, anyone who refers to "social justice"--a term under steady attack from the powerful just now. I’m reminded of the last presidential election when several presumably well-meaning liberals asked, in effect, if women would please stop talking so loudly about (or getting) abortions, if gays would please get back in the closet, and if Black people and Mexicans might stay out of sight for a few months so that "we" can win this thing, and then everything will somehow be alright. It’s not only unprincipled, deeply cynical and cowardly, it's suicidal, a slippery slope with lots of miserable historical precedent.

So, while I think I understand what you’ve said, no, I don't appreciate it. I don't rationalize it. I don't endorse it. And I refuse to participate in portraying myself as a pariah. So invite me.

Sincerely,

Bill