By SAM DILLON | NY Times
Published: February 17, 2010
Dozens of public high schools in eight states will introduce a program next year allowing 10th graders who pass a battery of tests to get a diploma two years early and immediately enroll in community college.
Students who pass but aspire to attend a selective college may continue with college preparatory courses in their junior and senior years, organizers of the new effort said. Students who fail the 10th-grade tests, known as board exams, can try again at the end of their 11th and 12th grades. The tests would cover not only English and math but also subjects like science and history.
The new system of high school coursework with the accompanying board examinations is modeled largely on systems in high-performing nations including Denmark, England, Finland, France and Singapore.
The program is being organized by the National Center on Education and the Economy, and its goals include insuring that students have mastered a set of basic requirements and reducing the numbers of high school graduates who need remedial courses when they enroll in college. More than a million college freshmen across America must take remedial courses each year, and many drop out before getting a degree.
“That’s a central problem we’re trying to address, the enormous failure rate of these kids when they go to the open admission colleges,” said Marc S. Tucker, president of the center, a Washington-based nonprofit. “We’ve looked at schools all over the world, and if you walk into a high school in the countries that use these board exams, you’ll see kids working hard, whether they want to be a carpenter or a brain surgeon.”
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has provided a $1.5 million planning grant to help the national center work with states and districts to get the program running, Mr. Tucker said. He estimated that start-up costs for school districts would be about $500 a student, to buy courses and tests and to train teachers.
To defray those costs, the eight states intend to apply for some of the $350 million in federal stimulus money designated for improving public school testing, Mr. Tucker said.
High school students will begin the new coursework in the fall of 2011 in Connecticut, Kentucky, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont. The education commissioners of those states have pledged to sign up 10 to 20 schools each for the pilot project, and have begun to reach out to district superintendents.
The project’s backers hope it will eventually spread to all schools in those states, and inspire other states to follow suit. Supporters include the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union.
Kentucky’s commissioner of education, Terry Holliday, said high school graduation requirements there had long been based on having students accumulate enough course credits to graduate.
“This would reform that,” Dr. Holliday said. “We’ve been tied to seat time for 100 years. This would allow an approach based on subject mastery — a system based around move-on-when-ready.”
The new system aims to provide students with a clear outline of what they need to study to succeed, said Phil Daro, a consultant based in Berkeley, Calif., who is a member of an advisory committee for the effort.
School systems like Singapore’s promise students that if they diligently study the material in their course syllabuses, they will do well on their examinations, Mr. Daro said. “In the U.S., by contrast, all is murky,” he said. “Students do not have a clear idea of where to apply their effort, and the system makes no coherent attempt to reward learning.”
Its backers say the new system would reduce the need for community colleges to offer remedial courses because the passing score for the 10th-grade tests would be set at the level necessary to succeed in first-year college courses. Failure would provide 10th graders with an early warning system about the knowledge and skills they need to master in high school before seeking to enroll in college.
Currently, many high school graduates enrolling in community colleges are stunned to find that they cannot pass the math and English exams those colleges use to determine who need remediation.
Four years ago, a bipartisan panel of national education and other policy experts, assembled by the national center, recommended a far-reaching redesign of the American educational system, including the adoption of board examinations in high schools.
Other recommendations of the 2006 panel included giving states, rather than local districts, control over school financing, and starting school for most children at age 3. Mr. Tucker said the board examination project was the broadest effort at putting the panel’s proposals into effect so far.
“One hope is that this board exam system can prepare students to move on to careers, to higher ed and technical colleges and the workplace, sooner rather than later,” said Howard T. Everson, a professor of educational psychology at the City University of New York, who is co-chairman of the advisory committee.
In that respect, the effort is similar to the growing early college high school movement, in which students begin taking college-level courses while they are still in high school and earning college credit through nearby community colleges.
States that participate in the pilot project on board examinations will pick up to five programs of instruction, with their accompanying tests, for use by the participating high schools. Those programs already approved by the national center include the College Board’s Advanced Placement, the International Baccalaureate Diploma, ACT’s QualityCore and the International General Certificate of Secondary Education programs offered both by Cambridge International and by Edexcel, part of Pearson Education.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
HISD pilot program would extend school year
By ERICKA MELLON HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Feb. 17, 2010
Some students could see their summer breaks slashed and their academic year stretched as part of the Houston Independent School District's effort to overhaul poor-performing campuses.
The district is designing a pilot program to allow a handful of struggling schools to adopt an extended-year calendar starting this fall. The reform effort — estimated to cost around $500,000 per school — includes two more weeks of class for students. The schools, which have not been chosen, also could see a staff shake-up.
HISD Superintendent Terry Grier said he plans to ask teachers and principals to re-apply to work at the campuses to ensure top-notch instruction during the longer year.
“It's not just about time,” Grier said. “It's not about doing the same thing the same way and expecting different results.”
The alternative calendar, which the school board approved last week, divides the year into quarters, with two-week breaks about every two-and-a-half months. Summer vacation would span three weeks instead of the typical three months.
“As educators, we know that the summer's way too long,” said Peter Heinze, the principal of Briarmeadow, a combined elementary and middle school in HISD.
Losing ground in summer
Research is clear that students, particularly those from low-income families, lose significant ground during the traditional summer break, said Ron Fairchild, chief executive officer of the National Summer Learning Association in Baltimore. Studies are less conclusive about the best way to keep students from regressing, though some data show that a quality six-week program can counteract summer learning loss, he said.
“We definitely need more studies on the issue, but I think it's encouraging to see more districts like Houston that are willing to experiment,” Fairchild said.
Bertie Simmons, the principal of Furr High School, said she would love to adopt the new calendar, even though her campus earned the state's “recognized” academic rating last year. Students lose so much class time — about 22 days — taking mandatory exams during the year, she said, and few have computer access at home during the summer.
“We need more time to teach them,” Simmons said.
Nelly White, who has two sons at Furr, said she strongly supports a longer school year but worries what single or working parents would do with younger children during the scattered two-week breaks. “With the little ones,” she said, “that would be a little difficult because they would have to find adequate child care.”
The popular charter schools KIPP and YES both have an extended school year, though they still follow a more traditional calendar and also lengthen the school day by about two hours.
“If you give a thoughtful approach to what that extra time's going to be used for and you make sure it's with high-performing people, I think it can have a huge impact,” said YES Prep founder Chris Barbic.
Students at YES used to attend for 215 days, but Barbic said the schools have scaled back to 190 — the same as HISD's plan — to keep staff from burning out and because of the expense.
Middle school students at KIPP attend for 220 days, including about two Saturdays a month and 18 days over the summer, according to spokesman Steve Mancini. Younger students have a two-week summer program.
“It gives us a nice bridge (to the next year) and still allows our kids to have that summer time with their families and rest,” said Aaron Brenner, who oversees primary schools for KIPP Houston.
HISD estimates that covering salaries for the longer year would cost as much as $450,000 more for an elementary school and $650,000 for a middle school. High school figures weren't available. The additional bus runs also would be an expense.
Covering the costs
Grier, who acknowledges the extended-year plan is a response to YES and KIPP, said the district might be able to use federal funds to cover some extra costs if it targets low-performing campuses. The state funds districts and charters for only 180 days.
Charles Ballinger, the emeritus executive director of the National Association for Year-Round Education, estimates that 400 to 500 schools across the country have an extended year and expects the number to grow, if districts can afford it. Resistance often comes from the recreation and camp industry, particularly in Texas, and from some parents, Ballinger said.
“There's a strong philosophical drive going on at the highest levels — even President Obama has spoken to this once or twice — to have a longer school year so our students are more competitive with students from China, Germany, France, Britain,” Ballinger said.
Feb. 17, 2010
Some students could see their summer breaks slashed and their academic year stretched as part of the Houston Independent School District's effort to overhaul poor-performing campuses.
The district is designing a pilot program to allow a handful of struggling schools to adopt an extended-year calendar starting this fall. The reform effort — estimated to cost around $500,000 per school — includes two more weeks of class for students. The schools, which have not been chosen, also could see a staff shake-up.
HISD Superintendent Terry Grier said he plans to ask teachers and principals to re-apply to work at the campuses to ensure top-notch instruction during the longer year.
“It's not just about time,” Grier said. “It's not about doing the same thing the same way and expecting different results.”
The alternative calendar, which the school board approved last week, divides the year into quarters, with two-week breaks about every two-and-a-half months. Summer vacation would span three weeks instead of the typical three months.
“As educators, we know that the summer's way too long,” said Peter Heinze, the principal of Briarmeadow, a combined elementary and middle school in HISD.
Losing ground in summer
Research is clear that students, particularly those from low-income families, lose significant ground during the traditional summer break, said Ron Fairchild, chief executive officer of the National Summer Learning Association in Baltimore. Studies are less conclusive about the best way to keep students from regressing, though some data show that a quality six-week program can counteract summer learning loss, he said.
“We definitely need more studies on the issue, but I think it's encouraging to see more districts like Houston that are willing to experiment,” Fairchild said.
Bertie Simmons, the principal of Furr High School, said she would love to adopt the new calendar, even though her campus earned the state's “recognized” academic rating last year. Students lose so much class time — about 22 days — taking mandatory exams during the year, she said, and few have computer access at home during the summer.
“We need more time to teach them,” Simmons said.
Nelly White, who has two sons at Furr, said she strongly supports a longer school year but worries what single or working parents would do with younger children during the scattered two-week breaks. “With the little ones,” she said, “that would be a little difficult because they would have to find adequate child care.”
The popular charter schools KIPP and YES both have an extended school year, though they still follow a more traditional calendar and also lengthen the school day by about two hours.
“If you give a thoughtful approach to what that extra time's going to be used for and you make sure it's with high-performing people, I think it can have a huge impact,” said YES Prep founder Chris Barbic.
Students at YES used to attend for 215 days, but Barbic said the schools have scaled back to 190 — the same as HISD's plan — to keep staff from burning out and because of the expense.
Middle school students at KIPP attend for 220 days, including about two Saturdays a month and 18 days over the summer, according to spokesman Steve Mancini. Younger students have a two-week summer program.
“It gives us a nice bridge (to the next year) and still allows our kids to have that summer time with their families and rest,” said Aaron Brenner, who oversees primary schools for KIPP Houston.
HISD estimates that covering salaries for the longer year would cost as much as $450,000 more for an elementary school and $650,000 for a middle school. High school figures weren't available. The additional bus runs also would be an expense.
Covering the costs
Grier, who acknowledges the extended-year plan is a response to YES and KIPP, said the district might be able to use federal funds to cover some extra costs if it targets low-performing campuses. The state funds districts and charters for only 180 days.
Charles Ballinger, the emeritus executive director of the National Association for Year-Round Education, estimates that 400 to 500 schools across the country have an extended year and expects the number to grow, if districts can afford it. Resistance often comes from the recreation and camp industry, particularly in Texas, and from some parents, Ballinger said.
“There's a strong philosophical drive going on at the highest levels — even President Obama has spoken to this once or twice — to have a longer school year so our students are more competitive with students from China, Germany, France, Britain,” Ballinger said.
Districts refusing reforms could hurt California's chances for grant money
The state hopes to win up to $700 million in Race to the Top funds. But a large portion of districts and teachers unions eschew California's proposed changes and refuse to sign its grant application.
February 17, 2010|By Jason Song
A large number of California school districts and teachers unions have refused to accept education reforms being pushed by the Obama administration, and that could hamper the state's chances of winning hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants, some officials fear.
The money would come from a $4.3-billion set of competitive school-improvement grants that Washington plans to begin awarding to states this spring under the administration's Race to the Top program. California officials are hoping to win up to $700 million of that money.
Federal officials have outlined four main areas of reform to be considered in awarding Race to the Top grants: more sophisticated data systems to track student progress, common education standards, intervention in low-achieving schools, and improved efforts to train teachers and principals.
But a majority of California school districts and about three-quarters of its teachers unions, as well as some charter schools and other education agencies, have declined to sign agreements that require them to abide by those changes.
"It's not what I would have hoped for," said state Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles), who sponsored legislation aimed at qualifying California for the federal money.
Many states amended or rewrote education laws to meet the administration's reform agenda. In California, this included a change that was vigorously opposed by unions and others: linking teacher evaluations to their students' test scores.
States will be judged on a 500-point scale, and federal officials have said that only a few will get funding, although there will be a second round this year. Nearly 10% of the total score depends on securing commitments from school districts.
It will be up to the states to distribute the money, but only districts that have agreed to participate will receive a share. Winning states will be notified in April.
California does have some advantages going into the competition. Ten states, including Texas and Washington, didn't apply for the first round. And some states with a high level of participation from districts and unions don't embrace key reforms encouraged by the Obama administration, according to some experts. Every school district in Kentucky, for example, agreed to participate in reforms, but legislators there did not approve a plan to allow charter schools, a key component of Race to the Top.
Some California officials say they are comfortable with the level of participation in the state, pointing out that the districts that have signed agreements serve nearly 60% of the state's students.
"Based on what I've seen, it makes us highly competitive," said Rick Miller, deputy state superintendent for education.
Some parts of California's application could set it apart, especially since legislators voted to take down a firewall between test score data and teacher identities, and gave parents the ability to demand that low-performing schools be taken over.
"A few months ago, no one was talking about California having a chance," said Andy Smarick, an education expert with the Thomas B. Fordham Institute in Washington, D.C.
That changed when the state Senate and Assembly approved legislation that met the administration's requirements. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had made the state's Race to the Top application a priority, signed those bills into law last month.
Federal officials have declined to handicap California's chances of receiving a grant. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has said that states with weak applications will not boost their chances even if they have a high percentage of districts signed on.
Teachers unions have been leery of California's Race to the Top application from the beginning, primarily because of the link between teacher evaluations and student achievement data. Union leaders have argued that the state's standardized tests are too flawed to be used for high-stakes decisions.
After the application was approved, the powerful California Teachers Assn. sent an e-mail to local unions, urging them not to sign.
"It was extremely vague and had very serious problems," said David Sanchez, president of the 340,000-member group.
San Diego Unified, the state's second-largest district, came to a similar conclusion. District officials refused to sign on, even though that made the district ineligible for grant money.
"The state was asking the district to sign onto something that's completely undefined," said Richard Barrera, the San Diego school board president.
Barrera said he was also concerned that San Diego Unified officials would lose flexibility and instead be obligated to follow directives from state lawmakers if California won a grant.
"It's a bad idea for folks in Sacramento to make education decisions in San Diego," he said.
Education officials, however, say there could be a two-tiered system with some school districts complying and others continuing to operate as usual.
Los Angeles Unified Supt. Ramon C. Cortines and school board President Monica Garcia signed the application, but the city teachers union declined, saying the grant money would provide only a short-term fix for long-term problems.
A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, estimated that the district could receive $35 million if the state succeeds in receiving $700 million from the federal government.
"We don't believe that would do anything" in the long run, Duffy said.
Cortines said that it remains unclear how the district would use the money, and that he would convene a panel, including union leaders, to discuss the best uses for it.
The L.A. superintendent said California has a good shot at the initial round of funding, but added that he plans to apply for later rounds when school districts may be allowed to compete on their own.
President Obama recently said he would ask Congress for an additional $1.35 billion in funding for Race to the Top in 2011.
The prospect of winning the money was especially enticing to districts in California and elsewhere that have been hard-hit by budget cuts and declining enrollment. Districts here are planning for more cuts in the next school year that could include more teacher layoffs, class-size increases and program reductions.
"The economic situation is we have to go after any way to get money," Cortines said.
February 17, 2010|By Jason Song
A large number of California school districts and teachers unions have refused to accept education reforms being pushed by the Obama administration, and that could hamper the state's chances of winning hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants, some officials fear.
The money would come from a $4.3-billion set of competitive school-improvement grants that Washington plans to begin awarding to states this spring under the administration's Race to the Top program. California officials are hoping to win up to $700 million of that money.
Federal officials have outlined four main areas of reform to be considered in awarding Race to the Top grants: more sophisticated data systems to track student progress, common education standards, intervention in low-achieving schools, and improved efforts to train teachers and principals.
But a majority of California school districts and about three-quarters of its teachers unions, as well as some charter schools and other education agencies, have declined to sign agreements that require them to abide by those changes.
"It's not what I would have hoped for," said state Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles), who sponsored legislation aimed at qualifying California for the federal money.
Many states amended or rewrote education laws to meet the administration's reform agenda. In California, this included a change that was vigorously opposed by unions and others: linking teacher evaluations to their students' test scores.
States will be judged on a 500-point scale, and federal officials have said that only a few will get funding, although there will be a second round this year. Nearly 10% of the total score depends on securing commitments from school districts.
It will be up to the states to distribute the money, but only districts that have agreed to participate will receive a share. Winning states will be notified in April.
California does have some advantages going into the competition. Ten states, including Texas and Washington, didn't apply for the first round. And some states with a high level of participation from districts and unions don't embrace key reforms encouraged by the Obama administration, according to some experts. Every school district in Kentucky, for example, agreed to participate in reforms, but legislators there did not approve a plan to allow charter schools, a key component of Race to the Top.
Some California officials say they are comfortable with the level of participation in the state, pointing out that the districts that have signed agreements serve nearly 60% of the state's students.
"Based on what I've seen, it makes us highly competitive," said Rick Miller, deputy state superintendent for education.
Some parts of California's application could set it apart, especially since legislators voted to take down a firewall between test score data and teacher identities, and gave parents the ability to demand that low-performing schools be taken over.
"A few months ago, no one was talking about California having a chance," said Andy Smarick, an education expert with the Thomas B. Fordham Institute in Washington, D.C.
That changed when the state Senate and Assembly approved legislation that met the administration's requirements. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had made the state's Race to the Top application a priority, signed those bills into law last month.
Federal officials have declined to handicap California's chances of receiving a grant. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has said that states with weak applications will not boost their chances even if they have a high percentage of districts signed on.
Teachers unions have been leery of California's Race to the Top application from the beginning, primarily because of the link between teacher evaluations and student achievement data. Union leaders have argued that the state's standardized tests are too flawed to be used for high-stakes decisions.
After the application was approved, the powerful California Teachers Assn. sent an e-mail to local unions, urging them not to sign.
"It was extremely vague and had very serious problems," said David Sanchez, president of the 340,000-member group.
San Diego Unified, the state's second-largest district, came to a similar conclusion. District officials refused to sign on, even though that made the district ineligible for grant money.
"The state was asking the district to sign onto something that's completely undefined," said Richard Barrera, the San Diego school board president.
Barrera said he was also concerned that San Diego Unified officials would lose flexibility and instead be obligated to follow directives from state lawmakers if California won a grant.
"It's a bad idea for folks in Sacramento to make education decisions in San Diego," he said.
Education officials, however, say there could be a two-tiered system with some school districts complying and others continuing to operate as usual.
Los Angeles Unified Supt. Ramon C. Cortines and school board President Monica Garcia signed the application, but the city teachers union declined, saying the grant money would provide only a short-term fix for long-term problems.
A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, estimated that the district could receive $35 million if the state succeeds in receiving $700 million from the federal government.
"We don't believe that would do anything" in the long run, Duffy said.
Cortines said that it remains unclear how the district would use the money, and that he would convene a panel, including union leaders, to discuss the best uses for it.
The L.A. superintendent said California has a good shot at the initial round of funding, but added that he plans to apply for later rounds when school districts may be allowed to compete on their own.
President Obama recently said he would ask Congress for an additional $1.35 billion in funding for Race to the Top in 2011.
The prospect of winning the money was especially enticing to districts in California and elsewhere that have been hard-hit by budget cuts and declining enrollment. Districts here are planning for more cuts in the next school year that could include more teacher layoffs, class-size increases and program reductions.
"The economic situation is we have to go after any way to get money," Cortines said.
Grier names 2 outsiders to HISD leadership team
By ERICKA MELLON | Houston Chronicle
Feb. 15, 2010
Houston ISD Superintendent Terry Grier announced Monday that his leadership team will include a charter school executive, a former leader of a suburban Dallas district and an award-winning HISD administrator.
Grier, who came to Houston five months ago from the San Diego school system, has hired the three men as his chief school officers.
One will oversee elementary campuses. Another will supervise middle schools. The other will manage high schools.
National search
Grier said he purposefully conducted a national search to fill the positions, rather than promoting only from within the district.
“We wanted to find candidates who had shared values and beliefs around all students being able to learn,” Grier said. “These are important positions, and we wanted to cast a wide net.”
The lone internal candidate to get the job — overseeing elementary schools — is Sam Sarabia, the interim east region superintendent. He was an executive principal in that area and was principal of Roberts and Port Houston elementary schools. In 2005, he was named principal of the year by the Association of Hispanic School Administrators, according to HISD.
KIPP administrator
The new chief officer for middle schools is Terence Johnson, a former HISD principal who oversees leadership training for the KIPP charter school chain.
To supervise high schools, Grier hired David Simmons, who in August abruptly resigned as superintendent of Richardson ISD, a diverse district outside Dallas.
The district earned the state's “recognized” rating during his tenure, but the school board wanted a leader with a “more strategic vision,” according to the Dallas Morning News.
Simmons has run four other districts, including Texas City ISD. Grier said he was not concerned about Simmons' departure from Richardson.
Salary plus bonus
The chief school officers each will earn annual salaries of $165,000 plus a potential bonus, which has not been determined, according to district spokesman Norm Uhl.
The chiefs will replace HISD's five regional superintendents, who can apply for other jobs in the district but are not guaranteed positions.
Grier said he hopes the new organization will help schools across the city share best practices.
Houston Federation of Teachers President Gayle Fallon said the new structure will help with continuity in the curriculum, but she has some concerns.
“There is a danger that the community will find the district to be more distant and will have a feeling of less ownership and increased alienation,” she said.
Feb. 15, 2010
Houston ISD Superintendent Terry Grier announced Monday that his leadership team will include a charter school executive, a former leader of a suburban Dallas district and an award-winning HISD administrator.
Grier, who came to Houston five months ago from the San Diego school system, has hired the three men as his chief school officers.
One will oversee elementary campuses. Another will supervise middle schools. The other will manage high schools.
National search
Grier said he purposefully conducted a national search to fill the positions, rather than promoting only from within the district.
“We wanted to find candidates who had shared values and beliefs around all students being able to learn,” Grier said. “These are important positions, and we wanted to cast a wide net.”
The lone internal candidate to get the job — overseeing elementary schools — is Sam Sarabia, the interim east region superintendent. He was an executive principal in that area and was principal of Roberts and Port Houston elementary schools. In 2005, he was named principal of the year by the Association of Hispanic School Administrators, according to HISD.
KIPP administrator
The new chief officer for middle schools is Terence Johnson, a former HISD principal who oversees leadership training for the KIPP charter school chain.
To supervise high schools, Grier hired David Simmons, who in August abruptly resigned as superintendent of Richardson ISD, a diverse district outside Dallas.
The district earned the state's “recognized” rating during his tenure, but the school board wanted a leader with a “more strategic vision,” according to the Dallas Morning News.
Simmons has run four other districts, including Texas City ISD. Grier said he was not concerned about Simmons' departure from Richardson.
Salary plus bonus
The chief school officers each will earn annual salaries of $165,000 plus a potential bonus, which has not been determined, according to district spokesman Norm Uhl.
The chiefs will replace HISD's five regional superintendents, who can apply for other jobs in the district but are not guaranteed positions.
Grier said he hopes the new organization will help schools across the city share best practices.
Houston Federation of Teachers President Gayle Fallon said the new structure will help with continuity in the curriculum, but she has some concerns.
“There is a danger that the community will find the district to be more distant and will have a feeling of less ownership and increased alienation,” she said.
More Latino students are going away to college
Many find it difficult to break from cultural traditions, but they and their families can see benefits.
By Larry Gordon | LA Times
February 15, 2010
It took months for her homesickness to ease and the benefits of life in a new city to become apparent. But Jeanny Fuentes said she now has few regrets about leaving Los Angeles and her close-knit family to attend college nearly 3,000 miles away.
By enrolling at Boston College, the 18-year-old freshman became part of a national trend in which Latinos are increasingly attending colleges farther from home.
That is bending some cultural traditions but creating what education experts say is a significant and often welcome demographic change to college admissions across the country.
"It's very important to stay out of your comfort zone," said Koreatown resident Fuentes, whose parents emigrated from El Salvador. "If you are just stuck in one place, how can you learn from that? It's important to learn and grow."
Since 1975, the share of Latino freshmen at four-year colleges who choose schools more than 50 miles from home has risen to nearly 59% from about 46%, and the share who attend such colleges within 10 miles of home dropped to 15% from 30%, according to a study by UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute. At the same time, the proportion of white freshmen who went away to school stayed unchanged, at about 66%.
The researchers say the change is partly the result of growth of the Latino middle class and a rising educational confidence among children and grandchildren of immigrants.
Another factor is that many colleges and universities, especially in the Midwest and New England where local populations are shrinking, are stepping up recruitment of college-age Latinos in California, Texas and Florida. And some are offering increased financial aid.
At Boston College, for example, undergraduate admission director John L. Mahoney said his school in recent years has boosted its recruiting of Latinos in the West and has succeeded partly because the Jesuit school has special appeal to Roman Catholic Latinos.
"The fact that they are more mobile is certainly encouraging to us," he said, adding that the college is spending more on financial aid to enroll academically qualified Latino students who need the help.
Latinos make up about 10% of Boston's current freshman class, Mahoney said. Since 2003, the number of California Latinos who applied to the school has doubled, to 386, and their numbers among the freshman class also doubled, to 33, he said.
Nationally, however, Latino students still lag other groups in high school completion and college-going rates. A 2007 U.S. Department of Education survey showed that 27% of Latinos ages 18 to 24 were enrolled in college, up significantly from the 1980s but still low compared with whites, at 43%, and blacks, 33%. And of the Latinos in college, more than half are in two-year community colleges, compared with 36% of white students and 42% of blacks, according to federal figures.
Nevertheless, more Latino parents nowadays have at least some college experience of their own, and they are more willing and able than previous generations to loosen family ties and "help their children achieve the next level, a bachelor's degree," said Sylvia Hurtado, director of UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute. She is the coauthor of the 2008 report, "Advancing in Higher Education: A Portrait of Latina/o College Freshmen at Four-Year Institutions."
Hurtado said the recession may slow the shift to colleges away from home but "not enough to kill the trend."
The change is welcomed by Antonio R. Flores, president of the Hispanic Assn. of Colleges and Universities, a San Antonio organization of schools with significant Latino enrollments.
"It's a healthy and good thing for young people to do, and I think Latino parents increasingly understand that reality," said Flores, who was raised in Mexico and attended graduate schools in Michigan. "Ultimately students who remain grounded in their home communities are deprived of the opportunity of learning about other places and other people and expanding their horizons."
Parents "are not giving up the old values entirely but are less apprehensive about that part of their children's development," Flores said.
Ruth N. Lopez Turley, an assistant sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said her research suggests that Latino students who go away to school earn degrees at higher rates than those who stay home for college and bear family responsibilities there. But Lopez Turley, who left her hometown of Laredo, Texas, to attend Stanford as an undergraduate, said such moves may come with financial and emotional drawbacks for the family.
"In general, it's a good thing . . . but it's not uniformly good for everybody involved," she explained.
The growing mobility of Latino students is a "very positive trend," said William McClintick, of the National Assn. for College Admission Counseling. Colleges seeking to boost enrollments and ethnic and geographic diversity "want to tap into that population," said McClintick, a former president of the association.
Often the key is financial aid, he and other experts said.
Such assistance was important to Julio Suastegui, who graduated from Compton High School and is now a freshman at Colby College in Maine. A physics major and track runner, he went east with a hefty scholarship but no winter coat. In the beginning, he said, he felt homesick and awkward as one of a small number of Latinos at Colby, but he now enjoys college in New England.
Suastegui, 18, is the first in his family to attend college; his mother works in a clothing factory and his father is in Mexico, trying to resolve immigration problems. Latino families like his find it "very hard to let go of a child," said Suastegui, who says he phones his mother every other day.
"I feel personally I've gotten an entirely new experience, interacting with students who are not just geographically but also culturally different," Suastegui said.
Boston College freshman Fuentes, a Los Angeles High School graduate, traveled east after receiving grants from the college and a Gates Millennium Scholars award for high-achieving minority students. That aid took the burden off her father, who works as a valet parker, and her mother, a housekeeper.
After some family debate about whether she should leave California for college, the final decision was hers, and her parents were supportive during her initial bouts of homesickness, said Fuentes, who plans to major in Hispanic studies and possibly become a Spanish literature professor.
"It's weird," she said. "The relationship with my parents is stronger now. I think the distance is what is bringing us more together."
So what would she advise this year's high school seniors about leaving home for college?
"I would be very honest with them," she said. "I would tell them it's not easy, but if you have the opportunity and don't take it, you will regret it the rest of your life."
By Larry Gordon | LA Times
February 15, 2010
It took months for her homesickness to ease and the benefits of life in a new city to become apparent. But Jeanny Fuentes said she now has few regrets about leaving Los Angeles and her close-knit family to attend college nearly 3,000 miles away.
By enrolling at Boston College, the 18-year-old freshman became part of a national trend in which Latinos are increasingly attending colleges farther from home.
That is bending some cultural traditions but creating what education experts say is a significant and often welcome demographic change to college admissions across the country.
"It's very important to stay out of your comfort zone," said Koreatown resident Fuentes, whose parents emigrated from El Salvador. "If you are just stuck in one place, how can you learn from that? It's important to learn and grow."
Since 1975, the share of Latino freshmen at four-year colleges who choose schools more than 50 miles from home has risen to nearly 59% from about 46%, and the share who attend such colleges within 10 miles of home dropped to 15% from 30%, according to a study by UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute. At the same time, the proportion of white freshmen who went away to school stayed unchanged, at about 66%.
The researchers say the change is partly the result of growth of the Latino middle class and a rising educational confidence among children and grandchildren of immigrants.
Another factor is that many colleges and universities, especially in the Midwest and New England where local populations are shrinking, are stepping up recruitment of college-age Latinos in California, Texas and Florida. And some are offering increased financial aid.
At Boston College, for example, undergraduate admission director John L. Mahoney said his school in recent years has boosted its recruiting of Latinos in the West and has succeeded partly because the Jesuit school has special appeal to Roman Catholic Latinos.
"The fact that they are more mobile is certainly encouraging to us," he said, adding that the college is spending more on financial aid to enroll academically qualified Latino students who need the help.
Latinos make up about 10% of Boston's current freshman class, Mahoney said. Since 2003, the number of California Latinos who applied to the school has doubled, to 386, and their numbers among the freshman class also doubled, to 33, he said.
Nationally, however, Latino students still lag other groups in high school completion and college-going rates. A 2007 U.S. Department of Education survey showed that 27% of Latinos ages 18 to 24 were enrolled in college, up significantly from the 1980s but still low compared with whites, at 43%, and blacks, 33%. And of the Latinos in college, more than half are in two-year community colleges, compared with 36% of white students and 42% of blacks, according to federal figures.
Nevertheless, more Latino parents nowadays have at least some college experience of their own, and they are more willing and able than previous generations to loosen family ties and "help their children achieve the next level, a bachelor's degree," said Sylvia Hurtado, director of UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute. She is the coauthor of the 2008 report, "Advancing in Higher Education: A Portrait of Latina/o College Freshmen at Four-Year Institutions."
Hurtado said the recession may slow the shift to colleges away from home but "not enough to kill the trend."
The change is welcomed by Antonio R. Flores, president of the Hispanic Assn. of Colleges and Universities, a San Antonio organization of schools with significant Latino enrollments.
"It's a healthy and good thing for young people to do, and I think Latino parents increasingly understand that reality," said Flores, who was raised in Mexico and attended graduate schools in Michigan. "Ultimately students who remain grounded in their home communities are deprived of the opportunity of learning about other places and other people and expanding their horizons."
Parents "are not giving up the old values entirely but are less apprehensive about that part of their children's development," Flores said.
Ruth N. Lopez Turley, an assistant sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said her research suggests that Latino students who go away to school earn degrees at higher rates than those who stay home for college and bear family responsibilities there. But Lopez Turley, who left her hometown of Laredo, Texas, to attend Stanford as an undergraduate, said such moves may come with financial and emotional drawbacks for the family.
"In general, it's a good thing . . . but it's not uniformly good for everybody involved," she explained.
The growing mobility of Latino students is a "very positive trend," said William McClintick, of the National Assn. for College Admission Counseling. Colleges seeking to boost enrollments and ethnic and geographic diversity "want to tap into that population," said McClintick, a former president of the association.
Often the key is financial aid, he and other experts said.
Such assistance was important to Julio Suastegui, who graduated from Compton High School and is now a freshman at Colby College in Maine. A physics major and track runner, he went east with a hefty scholarship but no winter coat. In the beginning, he said, he felt homesick and awkward as one of a small number of Latinos at Colby, but he now enjoys college in New England.
Suastegui, 18, is the first in his family to attend college; his mother works in a clothing factory and his father is in Mexico, trying to resolve immigration problems. Latino families like his find it "very hard to let go of a child," said Suastegui, who says he phones his mother every other day.
"I feel personally I've gotten an entirely new experience, interacting with students who are not just geographically but also culturally different," Suastegui said.
Boston College freshman Fuentes, a Los Angeles High School graduate, traveled east after receiving grants from the college and a Gates Millennium Scholars award for high-achieving minority students. That aid took the burden off her father, who works as a valet parker, and her mother, a housekeeper.
After some family debate about whether she should leave California for college, the final decision was hers, and her parents were supportive during her initial bouts of homesickness, said Fuentes, who plans to major in Hispanic studies and possibly become a Spanish literature professor.
"It's weird," she said. "The relationship with my parents is stronger now. I think the distance is what is bringing us more together."
So what would she advise this year's high school seniors about leaving home for college?
"I would be very honest with them," she said. "I would tell them it's not easy, but if you have the opportunity and don't take it, you will regret it the rest of your life."
Diploma Plus approach specializes in educating dropouts
Julia Stiney
February 14, 2010
A class of Charlestown (Mass.) High School students are riveted to their teacher’s lesson about plotting negative slopes. And smiling, to boot. With long dreadlocks pulled into a loose pony tail, Hayden Frederick-Clarke talks to the kids with a fascinating blend of rich, well-educated vocabulary and street syntax. He’s cool.
Gesticulating effusively at the slope on the white board, he says, “When I’ve got a negative slope, I’m riding my bike down the hill, DOWN the hill. Make sense?” The kids are with him. “Cool. Now, how do we read?” “Left to right” is correct, but a few kids elaborate to show they’re really getting his point. He exults, “Thank you! You have been here. I am actually your teacher.” The kids laugh and assure him he’s the teacher. The lesson is information-rich, but it’s work to keep every kid engaged.
A girl, heavy with the end of a pregnancy, enters the room and drops hard into a chair. She’s not the only one. And actually, most of these kids seem older than typical high-school juniors and seniors. Which they are.
They attend the Diploma Plus Academy, one of five small learning communities at Charlestown High in Boston. Diploma Plus’ 29 schools and programs, dotted around the country, specialize in educating recent dropouts or those who are over-aged and under-credited, meaning they’re already 17 with maybe a couple of ninth-grade credits.
The principal, Margaret Bledsoe, fought to get Diploma Plus into Charlestown High because about 30 percent of her school’s 1,000 students are at least one grade level behind. “A kid comes in and says, ‘If you put me in the ninth grade again, I’m out of here.’ We wanted to have a program that was not just another year to fail. Diploma Plus has high rigor and challenging class work. If a kid wants an easy way to get out of high school ASAP, it isn’t that.”
Charlestown identified 50 students who were beginning to age out. “Project Reconnect,” a Boston drop-out initiative, sent 10 more students who had already dropped out. Enrollment will double next year, and top out at 180 students the year after.
Nationally, America’s 70-percent graduation rate often drops to 50 percent or below in urban areas. As early as middle school, kids start losing grades when their family moves a lot, or they just blow off school. In high school, kids leave to take care of a sick family member, or get pregnant, involved with drugs, or just bored. And one day a kid realizes there’s no way he can graduate while still in his teens.
Diploma Plus offers these kids options.
A student, Vlad, says, “Here it’s flexible. Most of us have jobs, and work is not easy with school and stuff.” Never mind adding a baby to the workload.
Betsy Roter, the Academy’s coordinator, explains, “We don’t use the language of grade levels. Here we use skills and products of mastery,” to determine when a student matriculates.
The students in the “Foundations Phase” have literacy and numeracy skills at the sixth to eighth grade level. By the “Presentation Phase,” they’ve improved to ninth to 11th grade levels. The “Plus Phase” gets them ready to transition into the world beyond high school. Some Diploma Plus programs are on college campuses, where kids finish high school and are supported through the beginnings of college itself. “Plus” students enroll in college courses, participate in internships, do major projects and participate in seminars geared toward applying to college or developing a plan for the future.
“Personal competencies” count for 35 percent toward each phase. So a kid who’s soaring academically but not showing up on time, with a civil tongue in her head, doesn’t matriculate.
Roter says, “We have students who passed the MCAS (the Massachusetts state tests) and did really well, but who have never passed a class. So they have the content, but school didn’t work at all well for them. The kids tell us they feel connected to the adults here, and that was what was missing in their earlier education.”
The Diploma Plus Academy’s discipline system is “restorative,” meaning only rarely do they use traditional suspensions and detentions to control kids’ unwanted behaviors. On Friday afternoons, and some Saturday mornings, errant students sit in circles with adults and peers to discuss their behavior. Sometimes the group helps them make a plan to make amends for their rude ways.
Roter says, “With these kids, traditional discipline has created a really negative history with authority. So we use conferencing and restorative justice. The kids say, ‘No, Miss, give me the days of suspension, I don’t want to come in on Saturday or do a circle.’ The circles hold kids accountable for the specific behaviors,” which is a whole lot more effective as a teaching technique for “personal competencies” than suspensions.
On average, across the East Coast sites, Diploma Plus graduates 90.2 percent of their kids. These are all kids who would have dropped out. The reality of kids’ chaotic modern lives today is that a ton of them fall behind. Diploma Plus has figured out a way to reverse the course of sure failure.
See www.diplomaplus.net for more information.
February 14, 2010
A class of Charlestown (Mass.) High School students are riveted to their teacher’s lesson about plotting negative slopes. And smiling, to boot. With long dreadlocks pulled into a loose pony tail, Hayden Frederick-Clarke talks to the kids with a fascinating blend of rich, well-educated vocabulary and street syntax. He’s cool.
Gesticulating effusively at the slope on the white board, he says, “When I’ve got a negative slope, I’m riding my bike down the hill, DOWN the hill. Make sense?” The kids are with him. “Cool. Now, how do we read?” “Left to right” is correct, but a few kids elaborate to show they’re really getting his point. He exults, “Thank you! You have been here. I am actually your teacher.” The kids laugh and assure him he’s the teacher. The lesson is information-rich, but it’s work to keep every kid engaged.
A girl, heavy with the end of a pregnancy, enters the room and drops hard into a chair. She’s not the only one. And actually, most of these kids seem older than typical high-school juniors and seniors. Which they are.
They attend the Diploma Plus Academy, one of five small learning communities at Charlestown High in Boston. Diploma Plus’ 29 schools and programs, dotted around the country, specialize in educating recent dropouts or those who are over-aged and under-credited, meaning they’re already 17 with maybe a couple of ninth-grade credits.
The principal, Margaret Bledsoe, fought to get Diploma Plus into Charlestown High because about 30 percent of her school’s 1,000 students are at least one grade level behind. “A kid comes in and says, ‘If you put me in the ninth grade again, I’m out of here.’ We wanted to have a program that was not just another year to fail. Diploma Plus has high rigor and challenging class work. If a kid wants an easy way to get out of high school ASAP, it isn’t that.”
Charlestown identified 50 students who were beginning to age out. “Project Reconnect,” a Boston drop-out initiative, sent 10 more students who had already dropped out. Enrollment will double next year, and top out at 180 students the year after.
Nationally, America’s 70-percent graduation rate often drops to 50 percent or below in urban areas. As early as middle school, kids start losing grades when their family moves a lot, or they just blow off school. In high school, kids leave to take care of a sick family member, or get pregnant, involved with drugs, or just bored. And one day a kid realizes there’s no way he can graduate while still in his teens.
Diploma Plus offers these kids options.
A student, Vlad, says, “Here it’s flexible. Most of us have jobs, and work is not easy with school and stuff.” Never mind adding a baby to the workload.
Betsy Roter, the Academy’s coordinator, explains, “We don’t use the language of grade levels. Here we use skills and products of mastery,” to determine when a student matriculates.
The students in the “Foundations Phase” have literacy and numeracy skills at the sixth to eighth grade level. By the “Presentation Phase,” they’ve improved to ninth to 11th grade levels. The “Plus Phase” gets them ready to transition into the world beyond high school. Some Diploma Plus programs are on college campuses, where kids finish high school and are supported through the beginnings of college itself. “Plus” students enroll in college courses, participate in internships, do major projects and participate in seminars geared toward applying to college or developing a plan for the future.
“Personal competencies” count for 35 percent toward each phase. So a kid who’s soaring academically but not showing up on time, with a civil tongue in her head, doesn’t matriculate.
Roter says, “We have students who passed the MCAS (the Massachusetts state tests) and did really well, but who have never passed a class. So they have the content, but school didn’t work at all well for them. The kids tell us they feel connected to the adults here, and that was what was missing in their earlier education.”
The Diploma Plus Academy’s discipline system is “restorative,” meaning only rarely do they use traditional suspensions and detentions to control kids’ unwanted behaviors. On Friday afternoons, and some Saturday mornings, errant students sit in circles with adults and peers to discuss their behavior. Sometimes the group helps them make a plan to make amends for their rude ways.
Roter says, “With these kids, traditional discipline has created a really negative history with authority. So we use conferencing and restorative justice. The kids say, ‘No, Miss, give me the days of suspension, I don’t want to come in on Saturday or do a circle.’ The circles hold kids accountable for the specific behaviors,” which is a whole lot more effective as a teaching technique for “personal competencies” than suspensions.
On average, across the East Coast sites, Diploma Plus graduates 90.2 percent of their kids. These are all kids who would have dropped out. The reality of kids’ chaotic modern lives today is that a ton of them fall behind. Diploma Plus has figured out a way to reverse the course of sure failure.
See www.diplomaplus.net for more information.
State exam results to help determine whether 700 teachers win tenure
BY Rachel Monahan | NY DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Friday, February 12th 2010
It's teachers who now have to sweat student test scores.
State exam results will help determine whether 700 teachers win tenure this year, city officials announced yesterday, prompting the teachers union to threaten a lawsuit.
"It is clearly bad educational policy to evaluate teachers through the use of state test scores that the state itself has deemed unreliable," said teachers union president Michael Mulgrew.
City Education officials fired back, defending the plan. "It's hard to imagine how anyone could object to looking at a teacher's impact on student progress as a part of a comprehensive evaluation," said spokesman David Cantor.
Fourth- through eighth-grade teachers who are up for tenure and have two years' worth of state math and English scores under their belts will be stacked up against educators at schools with similar demographics.
They will then be ranked based on how much students improved their test scores, with the top 25% of the teachers considered "tenure likely" and the bottom 25% deemed "tenure in doubt."
In each case, a principal "will be asked for additional rationale" if they overrule the recommendation, a letter from Schools Chancellor Joel Klein stated.
State officials have announced plans to overhaul the state exam this year because of criticism the exam was too easy and too similar year to year, making it easier for educators to teach to the test.
Friday, February 12th 2010
It's teachers who now have to sweat student test scores.
State exam results will help determine whether 700 teachers win tenure this year, city officials announced yesterday, prompting the teachers union to threaten a lawsuit.
"It is clearly bad educational policy to evaluate teachers through the use of state test scores that the state itself has deemed unreliable," said teachers union president Michael Mulgrew.
City Education officials fired back, defending the plan. "It's hard to imagine how anyone could object to looking at a teacher's impact on student progress as a part of a comprehensive evaluation," said spokesman David Cantor.
Fourth- through eighth-grade teachers who are up for tenure and have two years' worth of state math and English scores under their belts will be stacked up against educators at schools with similar demographics.
They will then be ranked based on how much students improved their test scores, with the top 25% of the teachers considered "tenure likely" and the bottom 25% deemed "tenure in doubt."
In each case, a principal "will be asked for additional rationale" if they overrule the recommendation, a letter from Schools Chancellor Joel Klein stated.
State officials have announced plans to overhaul the state exam this year because of criticism the exam was too easy and too similar year to year, making it easier for educators to teach to the test.
HISD passes teacher dismissal plan
By ERICKA MELLON | HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Feb. 12, 2010
At a contentious meeting pitting parents against teachers, the Houston school board gave final approval on Thursday to a policy allowing the firing of instructors whose students fall short on standardized tests.
Dozens of parents spoke in favor of the decision, while more than 750 teachers packed the school district's headquarters to protest the policy, considered among the most aggressive efforts in the nation to improve teacher quality.
Starting next year, the Houston Independent School District will include a measure of student progress, called value-added, in teachers' job evaluations. Those teachers whose students fall far below expectations for multiple years could be at risk of losing their jobs.
HISD Superintendent Terry Grier and the school board, which passed the policy on a 7-0 vote, have promised to provide training and mentoring to struggling teachers and to use termination as a last resort. Trustees Carol Mims Galloway and Manuel Rodriguez Jr. were absent.
District data show that more than 400 teachers — about 3 percent of the teaching corps — could be at risk if they don't improve. The policy affects only teachers of core academic subjects in grades three through eight.
Teachers have complained that the value-added system, a complex statistical measure of their effectiveness, is unfair and unreliable.
“I agree our system has room to grow,” HISD Trustee Anna Eastman told the crowd, which spilled into the hall where televisions broadcast the meeting. “Our data has room to grow, but our kids deserve to have an effective teacher in every single classroom.”
Policy called ‘unjust'
The district has used this same statistical measure of student progress for the last three years to determine which teachers receive performance bonuses. The district's two largest employee groups, the Houston Federation of Teachers and the Congress of Houston Teachers, oppose using the data for rewards or punishment.
A middle school special education teacher, Tuesdey Neal, called the new evaluation and dismissal policy “unjust.”
“We deal with children in poverty. We deal with lack of parental support. We do the best with what we can,” Neal said, before a district police officer approached because she exceeded the one-minute time limit for each speaker. “I do not want to suffer and lose my job because I love what I do.”
Grier has said the district plans to target those teachers with the lowest marks and to make principals defend putting them on permanent contracts.
Parents and business leaders who addressed the board at the meeting uniformly supported the policy.
“I'm here to applaud you for taking a stand for our children,” mother Beth Brown said.
Bill Perkins, a prominent venture capitalist, compared teaching to other professions with high stakes.
“We have bad pilots. We know the results can be disastrous,” he said. “We don't have that many bad teachers, but we need to get rid of them.”
Teachers in the hallways, many of them union members, reacted with boos.
HISD's new policy has drawn national attention – good and bad. A growing number of states have begun tying student test scores to teachers' evaluations to meet the mandates of President Barack Obama's $4.3 billion Race to the Top grant contest. But few districts have been as clear that teachers who repeatedly fall short should be dismissed.
‘Better teachers'
Ellen Winn, director of the Education Equality Project, a national advocacy group that includes educators, policymakers and politicians, praised HISD's move.
“Think of the doors that will be open to these students with better teachers and better chances at a good education,” she said.
Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, said HISD's plan is too narrowly focused.
“Houston is a perfect example of what not to do,” said Weingarten, who recently gave a well-publicized speech supporting the use of student data in teachers' evaluations. “The plan has all the wrong components, and it's one of the reasons why teachers and parents are opposed to standardized testing.”
Feb. 12, 2010
At a contentious meeting pitting parents against teachers, the Houston school board gave final approval on Thursday to a policy allowing the firing of instructors whose students fall short on standardized tests.
Dozens of parents spoke in favor of the decision, while more than 750 teachers packed the school district's headquarters to protest the policy, considered among the most aggressive efforts in the nation to improve teacher quality.
Starting next year, the Houston Independent School District will include a measure of student progress, called value-added, in teachers' job evaluations. Those teachers whose students fall far below expectations for multiple years could be at risk of losing their jobs.
HISD Superintendent Terry Grier and the school board, which passed the policy on a 7-0 vote, have promised to provide training and mentoring to struggling teachers and to use termination as a last resort. Trustees Carol Mims Galloway and Manuel Rodriguez Jr. were absent.
District data show that more than 400 teachers — about 3 percent of the teaching corps — could be at risk if they don't improve. The policy affects only teachers of core academic subjects in grades three through eight.
Teachers have complained that the value-added system, a complex statistical measure of their effectiveness, is unfair and unreliable.
“I agree our system has room to grow,” HISD Trustee Anna Eastman told the crowd, which spilled into the hall where televisions broadcast the meeting. “Our data has room to grow, but our kids deserve to have an effective teacher in every single classroom.”
Policy called ‘unjust'
The district has used this same statistical measure of student progress for the last three years to determine which teachers receive performance bonuses. The district's two largest employee groups, the Houston Federation of Teachers and the Congress of Houston Teachers, oppose using the data for rewards or punishment.
A middle school special education teacher, Tuesdey Neal, called the new evaluation and dismissal policy “unjust.”
“We deal with children in poverty. We deal with lack of parental support. We do the best with what we can,” Neal said, before a district police officer approached because she exceeded the one-minute time limit for each speaker. “I do not want to suffer and lose my job because I love what I do.”
Grier has said the district plans to target those teachers with the lowest marks and to make principals defend putting them on permanent contracts.
Parents and business leaders who addressed the board at the meeting uniformly supported the policy.
“I'm here to applaud you for taking a stand for our children,” mother Beth Brown said.
Bill Perkins, a prominent venture capitalist, compared teaching to other professions with high stakes.
“We have bad pilots. We know the results can be disastrous,” he said. “We don't have that many bad teachers, but we need to get rid of them.”
Teachers in the hallways, many of them union members, reacted with boos.
HISD's new policy has drawn national attention – good and bad. A growing number of states have begun tying student test scores to teachers' evaluations to meet the mandates of President Barack Obama's $4.3 billion Race to the Top grant contest. But few districts have been as clear that teachers who repeatedly fall short should be dismissed.
‘Better teachers'
Ellen Winn, director of the Education Equality Project, a national advocacy group that includes educators, policymakers and politicians, praised HISD's move.
“Think of the doors that will be open to these students with better teachers and better chances at a good education,” she said.
Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, said HISD's plan is too narrowly focused.
“Houston is a perfect example of what not to do,” said Weingarten, who recently gave a well-publicized speech supporting the use of student data in teachers' evaluations. “The plan has all the wrong components, and it's one of the reasons why teachers and parents are opposed to standardized testing.”
400 teachers may face firing over test scores
By ERICKA MELLON | HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Feb. 10, 2010
More than 400 teachers in the Houston school district have performed so poorly that their students have lost ground, according to HISD, and those educators' jobs could be on the line if they don't improve.
HISD Superintendent Terry Grier is asking the school board to give final approval today to a policy that would allow the district to fire teachers whose students don't make enough progress on standardized tests.
Opposed to the move, the Houston Federation of Teachers is trying to rally 1,000 educators to protest at the board meeting, though union president Gayle Fallon acknowledges the policy likely will pass. Trustees voted 8-0, with one absent, to give their initial approval last month.
With teachers on edge, Grier and board members have emphasized that the Houston Independent School District will provide training and mentoring to those who are struggling and will not oust them based solely on a year of bad test scores.
“We have an obligation to provide assistance to teachers who are not meeting the needs of their students,” Grier said, adding that staff training will focus on strategies for improving instruction.
But, Grier said, “teachers who cannot or will not meet district standards could lose their positions with the district.”
Data provided by HISD show that, over the last three years, 421 teachers have gotten far lower-than-expected progress from their students on standardized tests. That represents about 12 percent of the teachers the policy could affect and 3 percent of all teachers in the district.
“Don't forget that we have approximately 13,000 teachers in HISD,” Grier said. “The vast majority are doing a good job.”
Some of the teachers may have poor scores in one subject but rate highly in another. In those cases, Grier has suggested that principals could switch teaching assignments instead of turning to termination.
Grier said he is particularly focused on the 100 or so less experienced teachers who are on probationary contracts and have a track record of severely poor performance. Principals, he said, will have to defend decisions to put those teachers on more permanent contracts next year.
The district only tracks the individual performance of teachers in grades three through 8 in the subjects of math, science, social studies and language arts. These 3,500 or so teachers would be the ones affected by HISD's plan to include so-called value-added scores in formal job evaluations and as a potential reason for dismissal.
Standardized test data is not available for teachers of lower grades or elective classes. High school teachers get rated on the performance of their entire department, such as math or science.
Principals confused
The district's two largest employee groups, the HFT and the Congress of Houston Teachers, have questioned the accuracy and fairness of the value-added data since the district began using it a few years ago to decide who gets performance bonuses.
Put simply, the value-added analysis by North Carolina statistician Bill Sanders looks at a student's test score history to project his or her scores the next year. Teachers are rated on whether their students met, exceeded or fell short of expectations.
Sanders has repeatedly defended his method, which he pioneered in Tennessee in the 1990s.
Fallon, the HFT president, said she plans to ask the school board at least to clarify the policy to say teachers will get training and will not be dismissed based on a year of low value-added scores. The policy as is says simply that teachers can be fired for “insufficient student academic growth as reflected by value added scores.”
“We have Grier shooting his mouth off saying, ‘We're going to do assistance. We're never going to fire a teacher based on a single test score,' ” Fallon said. “What he says won't mean a thing once the policy is adopted.”
Ray Reiner, the executive director of the Houston Association of School Administrators, said principals — those charged with evaluating teachers and recommending them for termination — are confused about the policy changes. Grier's administration sent out conflicting memos on the topic last week.
“Principals — their job is to carry out the policies of the school district, and those policies need to be clear,” Reiner said.
Feb. 10, 2010
More than 400 teachers in the Houston school district have performed so poorly that their students have lost ground, according to HISD, and those educators' jobs could be on the line if they don't improve.
HISD Superintendent Terry Grier is asking the school board to give final approval today to a policy that would allow the district to fire teachers whose students don't make enough progress on standardized tests.
Opposed to the move, the Houston Federation of Teachers is trying to rally 1,000 educators to protest at the board meeting, though union president Gayle Fallon acknowledges the policy likely will pass. Trustees voted 8-0, with one absent, to give their initial approval last month.
With teachers on edge, Grier and board members have emphasized that the Houston Independent School District will provide training and mentoring to those who are struggling and will not oust them based solely on a year of bad test scores.
“We have an obligation to provide assistance to teachers who are not meeting the needs of their students,” Grier said, adding that staff training will focus on strategies for improving instruction.
But, Grier said, “teachers who cannot or will not meet district standards could lose their positions with the district.”
Data provided by HISD show that, over the last three years, 421 teachers have gotten far lower-than-expected progress from their students on standardized tests. That represents about 12 percent of the teachers the policy could affect and 3 percent of all teachers in the district.
“Don't forget that we have approximately 13,000 teachers in HISD,” Grier said. “The vast majority are doing a good job.”
Some of the teachers may have poor scores in one subject but rate highly in another. In those cases, Grier has suggested that principals could switch teaching assignments instead of turning to termination.
Grier said he is particularly focused on the 100 or so less experienced teachers who are on probationary contracts and have a track record of severely poor performance. Principals, he said, will have to defend decisions to put those teachers on more permanent contracts next year.
The district only tracks the individual performance of teachers in grades three through 8 in the subjects of math, science, social studies and language arts. These 3,500 or so teachers would be the ones affected by HISD's plan to include so-called value-added scores in formal job evaluations and as a potential reason for dismissal.
Standardized test data is not available for teachers of lower grades or elective classes. High school teachers get rated on the performance of their entire department, such as math or science.
Principals confused
The district's two largest employee groups, the HFT and the Congress of Houston Teachers, have questioned the accuracy and fairness of the value-added data since the district began using it a few years ago to decide who gets performance bonuses.
Put simply, the value-added analysis by North Carolina statistician Bill Sanders looks at a student's test score history to project his or her scores the next year. Teachers are rated on whether their students met, exceeded or fell short of expectations.
Sanders has repeatedly defended his method, which he pioneered in Tennessee in the 1990s.
Fallon, the HFT president, said she plans to ask the school board at least to clarify the policy to say teachers will get training and will not be dismissed based on a year of low value-added scores. The policy as is says simply that teachers can be fired for “insufficient student academic growth as reflected by value added scores.”
“We have Grier shooting his mouth off saying, ‘We're going to do assistance. We're never going to fire a teacher based on a single test score,' ” Fallon said. “What he says won't mean a thing once the policy is adopted.”
Ray Reiner, the executive director of the Houston Association of School Administrators, said principals — those charged with evaluating teachers and recommending them for termination — are confused about the policy changes. Grier's administration sent out conflicting memos on the topic last week.
“Principals — their job is to carry out the policies of the school district, and those policies need to be clear,” Reiner said.
States Rethink Policies on National-Board Teachers
By Stephen Sawchuk | Ed Week
February 9, 2010
Since the nation plunged into economic turmoil, a handful of states have scaled back pay bonuses and subsidies for teachers who earn certification through the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.
But factors other than the economy have also played into the cuts, too. Officials in Georgia, for instance, contend that the state wants to turn its teacher-quality focus toward output-based measures of teacher effectiveness, rather than credentials.
Both phenomena are leading some experts to urge districts, teacher associations, and the NBPTS itself to think strategically about how to structure incentives so that board-certified teachers’ expertise is used effectively in school systems, and thus recognized by a wider cross section of stakeholders.
“We see some national-board-certified teachers leading as a collective and spreading their expertise, but it’s more as a result of accident, as opposed to a policy framework,” said Barnett Berry, the president of the Center for Teaching Quality, a Hillsborough, N.C., research group. “As a result, states have lost a bit of their commitment and passion to this strategy for improving teaching and learning in this country.”
Read on
February 9, 2010
Since the nation plunged into economic turmoil, a handful of states have scaled back pay bonuses and subsidies for teachers who earn certification through the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.
But factors other than the economy have also played into the cuts, too. Officials in Georgia, for instance, contend that the state wants to turn its teacher-quality focus toward output-based measures of teacher effectiveness, rather than credentials.
Both phenomena are leading some experts to urge districts, teacher associations, and the NBPTS itself to think strategically about how to structure incentives so that board-certified teachers’ expertise is used effectively in school systems, and thus recognized by a wider cross section of stakeholders.
“We see some national-board-certified teachers leading as a collective and spreading their expertise, but it’s more as a result of accident, as opposed to a policy framework,” said Barnett Berry, the president of the Center for Teaching Quality, a Hillsborough, N.C., research group. “As a result, states have lost a bit of their commitment and passion to this strategy for improving teaching and learning in this country.”
Read on
The misguided race to federalize education
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste" because, he continued, it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before.
Pretty concerning quote. Acting based on a threat or a sense of fear doesn't seem very authentic.
-Patricia
David Davenport,Gordon Lloyd | SF Gate
Sunday, February 7, 2010
President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan call their $4 billion program of education reform grants the Race to the Top. A more accurate title would be the Race to Washington, because their program culminates a stunning decade in which school policy decisions have been wrested from local and state control to become matters of federal oversight. With the possible exception of Texas - where Gov. Rick Perry is resisting federal education grants with all their strings - no state has been left behind in the race to federalize education.
It's easy to miss this important power shift because few of us notice, much less worry about, constitutional processes during a crisis. But, as presidential Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel famously said, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste" because, he continued, it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before. And that's precisely what is happening in education as we complete a transfer of money and power to Washington to oversee our schools, in violation of the 10th Amendment, a couple of hundred years of history and common sense.
There is a disturbing pattern of Washington using crises to consolidate power. First we declare war on a problem, which shifts things into crisis mode. Remember the war on poverty, the war on drugs, the war on illiteracy, the war on terror? Now we have a war on underperforming schools, so naturally Washington needs to step in and nationalize standards and tests.
It started when two former "education governors," Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, took some of their education ideas to the White House and now, in the name of spending stimulus money and curing the ailing economy, we spend billions in federal grants on schools, all with policy strings attached.
You could call it bribery, offering cash-starved states extra billions if only they would follow federal curricular standards and testing regimes. You could definitely call it unconstitutional, because nothing in the Constitution gives the federal government a role in education, and the 10th Amendment says powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved to the people and the states. Even the highly elastic commerce clause doesn't stretch far enough to cover education. To make matters worse, these federal grants are permitted to go directly to school districts, further eroding the role of states.
But beyond the constitutional question, why would we object to shifting educational control from local and state governments to Washington? For one thing, most of the promising experiments in K-12 educational reform - charter schools, parent councils or the creation of regional sub districts - shift power down toward local principals and parents, not up toward a more distant bureaucracy. For another, needing to win over local and state leaders one at a time slows the embrace of policy fads. For example, after the celebration when Sen. Edward Kennedy and Bush joined hands to "leave no child behind," we were left instead with a problematic testing regime now desperately in need of repair. Further, education experts who have examined federal education standards say they are more lax than the ones most states now employ.
One of the problems with education, health care, federal regulation of banks and executive compensation: It's an enormous expansion of the federal enterprise. And, like the New Deal enacted in the crisis of the Great Depression, it will never be turned back. The era of big government isn't over; it's just beginning.
David Davenport is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. Gordon Lloyd is professor of public policy at Pepperdine University.
Pretty concerning quote. Acting based on a threat or a sense of fear doesn't seem very authentic.
-Patricia
David Davenport,Gordon Lloyd | SF Gate
Sunday, February 7, 2010
President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan call their $4 billion program of education reform grants the Race to the Top. A more accurate title would be the Race to Washington, because their program culminates a stunning decade in which school policy decisions have been wrested from local and state control to become matters of federal oversight. With the possible exception of Texas - where Gov. Rick Perry is resisting federal education grants with all their strings - no state has been left behind in the race to federalize education.
It's easy to miss this important power shift because few of us notice, much less worry about, constitutional processes during a crisis. But, as presidential Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel famously said, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste" because, he continued, it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before. And that's precisely what is happening in education as we complete a transfer of money and power to Washington to oversee our schools, in violation of the 10th Amendment, a couple of hundred years of history and common sense.
There is a disturbing pattern of Washington using crises to consolidate power. First we declare war on a problem, which shifts things into crisis mode. Remember the war on poverty, the war on drugs, the war on illiteracy, the war on terror? Now we have a war on underperforming schools, so naturally Washington needs to step in and nationalize standards and tests.
It started when two former "education governors," Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, took some of their education ideas to the White House and now, in the name of spending stimulus money and curing the ailing economy, we spend billions in federal grants on schools, all with policy strings attached.
You could call it bribery, offering cash-starved states extra billions if only they would follow federal curricular standards and testing regimes. You could definitely call it unconstitutional, because nothing in the Constitution gives the federal government a role in education, and the 10th Amendment says powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved to the people and the states. Even the highly elastic commerce clause doesn't stretch far enough to cover education. To make matters worse, these federal grants are permitted to go directly to school districts, further eroding the role of states.
But beyond the constitutional question, why would we object to shifting educational control from local and state governments to Washington? For one thing, most of the promising experiments in K-12 educational reform - charter schools, parent councils or the creation of regional sub districts - shift power down toward local principals and parents, not up toward a more distant bureaucracy. For another, needing to win over local and state leaders one at a time slows the embrace of policy fads. For example, after the celebration when Sen. Edward Kennedy and Bush joined hands to "leave no child behind," we were left instead with a problematic testing regime now desperately in need of repair. Further, education experts who have examined federal education standards say they are more lax than the ones most states now employ.
One of the problems with education, health care, federal regulation of banks and executive compensation: It's an enormous expansion of the federal enterprise. And, like the New Deal enacted in the crisis of the Great Depression, it will never be turned back. The era of big government isn't over; it's just beginning.
David Davenport is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. Gordon Lloyd is professor of public policy at Pepperdine University.
Thursday, April 08, 2010
Bilingual (Higher) Ed
Bilingual (Higher) Ed
April 8, 2010
Puerto Rico’s Sistema Universitario Ana G. Méndez attracted thousands of adult students to an accelerated degree program, AHORA, by stressing the kind of flexibility and practicality that one would expect from a program called “now.”
But when administrators and faculty started considering how to expand into the continental United States they realized it wouldn’t work to simply shift their program a few hundred miles north.
“Offering a program all in Spanish wouldn’t do the best for our students and there are plenty of English programs out there,” says Luis J. Zayas, the university system’s vice president for U.S. and Latin American affairs. “We had to think about how to serve a Spanish-speaking population living in a predominantly English-speaking place.”
What they created is what Zayas and his colleagues believe to be the first-ever discipline-based, dual-language postsecondary degree program. Both languages are used equally in instruction and assignments; faculty and staff are all bilingual; and, Zayas says, “the courses are designed so that you can have a native English speaker or a native Spanish speaker go through with the same level of comfort."
In its sixth year of operation in Orlando and its fourth in the Miami suburb of Miramar, the mainland AHORA program has an enrollment totaling 1,700 and has awarded 373 bachelor’s degrees and 303 master’s degrees. Enrollment numbers continue to grow, and a third location, in Tampa, is set to open in the fall. Online courses are also in development.
The effort is the result of an unusual partnership. Ana Méndez, a private nonprofit university system, teamed up with Regis University, a nonprofit in Denver with extensive experience in online education for adults, to create AGMUS Ventures, a for-profit unit through which they run these programs. It is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, which doesn't normally oversee programs in Florida, but which is the accreditor for Puerto Rico.
Almost all classes are scheduled for nights or weekends, and students are almost exclusively working adults over the age of 23. Most are more comfortable speaking and writing in Spanish than in English. Though they may have earned college credit or even a degree in their home countries, Zayas says, they “don’t know the language well enough” to do well in courses that are offered exclusively in English.
Deborah A. Santiago, vice president for policy and research at Excelencia in Education, could point to only one program like Ana Méndez’s – a dual-language associate’s degree in Miami Dade College’s honors college. But the students in that program, which enrolled its first class in 2006, are generally traditional-age and headed toward transfer.
While rare in higher education, the dual language model of instruction is more established in American elementary and secondary schools, where it’s sometimes used to help students whose families speak another language learn English, but is often used to develop fully bilingual students.
Ana Méndez’s Spanish-language and dual-language courses are based on Regis University’s modular curriculum for accelerated adult learning. Regis’s New Ventures arm -- which helps other colleges and universities adapt to their cultures and course offerings – worked with Ana Méndez officials in the mid-1990s to create the Spanish-language program used on its home campuses. It now enrolls more than 8,000 students.
The two universities each made an initial investment of $500,000 and share profits equally. The operation’s annual budget has grown to $13 million.
The chair of AGMUS’s board of directors, Thomas R. Kennedy, who is also CEO of New Ventures and Regis’s vice president for institutional partnerships, describes the program as “not just a bilingual program where you help Spanish-speaking people learn English” but “a wonderful way to bring people along in both languages.”
The campuses offer degrees that are awarded by Ana Méndez’s three universities – Universidad del Este, Universidad del Turabo and Universidad Metropolitana. There are offerings in education, criminal justice, psychology, business, nursing and hotel management, among other fields.
Kennedy said that the average student is about 35 years old. In Orlando, the enrollment is 70 percent female. In Miramar, it’s about 60 percent female. These students, like so many other adult learners, are “really pulling themselves up, to create a better life,” Kennedy says. “They’re fulfilling a dream.” In all, 93 percent of students receive financial aid of some kind.
For native Spanish speakers, the dual-language curriculum helps ease them into English. For native English speakers, the curriculum helps them ease into Spanish. Courses generally meet for five weeks and the four-hour class sessions alternate languages each week. When a week’s class is in English, all the reading and other assignments to prepare are in English. When a class is set to be in Spanish, all work is in Spanish.
Students aren’t required to buy books or other materials; they receive a module booklet that includes their reading and assignments. Other resources are available through course Blackboard sites and a web-based virtual library where students can access journal articles and e-books. Many modules are in the process of being revised.
Syndia Nazario-Cardona, director of the Miramar campus, describes the adjunct instructional workforce as “facilitators, because what they’re doing is facilitating the learning process” rather than simply lecturing for the entirety of a four-hour class session. Many have day jobs as high school or college teachers or professors.
Alexander Easdale, a facilitator who teaches social sciences and history courses, worked as a high school teacher and college-level tutor before joining Ana Méndez but still went through extensive training before entering the classroom two and a half years ago.
“This university does a very good job screening and training professors before sending them out there,” he says. “Unlike a lot of the other people, I haven’t been a teacher my whole life, so I went through numerous workshops before leading a class.” His day job is in fundraising at a Hispanic-serving nonprofit.
His classes “are in many ways similar to a graduate school seminar,” he says. “As opposed to a traditional format of the lecture, where you stand in front of the class and teach, this is a mix of activities.” Though he may lecture a bit at the start of a session, classes generally include discussions, group projects and oral presentations.
Though he alternates between Spanish and English from week to week, “because most students are Latino and most are immigrants, and their stronger language tends to be Spanish,” Easdale says he “tends to have to push them a lot harder when it’s English week.” He’ll occasionally have a student whose English is stronger than his or her Spanish.
Students’ language struggles are most apparent “when you have a student one week and they can’t shut up and the next they’re not talking at all.” It’s his job, he says, “to help students lose that fear of speaking the language.”
The vast majority students at the Orlando campus are of Puerto Rican heritage. The Miramar campus has students and faculty from 25 countries.
Most students, Kennedy says, “would never have gone to another college or university … where it’s all English or just a smattering of Spanish and not a welcoming situation for them.” The dual-language program offers them an opportunity to develop language skills while learning subject area content, rather than having to first spend months or years in a non-credit ESL class before being able to work toward a degree.
Though there are some students who are more comfortable with English than with Spanish, he concedes they’re a very small group. “We don’t have very many people at all who are English speakers trying to bring up their Spanish,” he says. “We have a very high percentage of students who speak Spanish at home.”
Roxanna Pietri, associate director for corporate relations, thinks the major factor deterring students with strong English skills from enrolling at Ana Méndez is price. “If a student in Orlando or South Florida is comfortable speaking English, it’s easier and cheaper for them to go to a state university than [it is] to pay more for a credit with us,” she says.
Undergraduate credits cost $310 and graduate credits are $360 each. At Miami Dade, for instance, associate's degree credits are $67.60 and bachelor's degree credits cost $74.95 each.
Applicants are generally required to have attempted at least 24 college credits, but if a student were to take the full 126 credits needed to earn an Ana Méndez bachelor’s degree at the institution, it would cost a total of $39,060. That's more than a degree from a Florida public institution, but less than full freight at many other privates. Students without prior college experience or who are under the age of 23 can start out by taking eight eight-week transitional courses.
Easdale says that the focus on developing language skills has yielded some “unbelievable” results in just the five- or eight-week period of a semester. “I give my students good, honest feedback. I tell them, don’t expect roses in the feedback I’ve given,” he says. “And it makes a difference in the end.”
Zayas says he’s received “lots of anecdotal feedback from the students that it was really the only way they could have done it – they couldn’t have done a whole degree in English.”
Despite its success, AGMUS has resisted rapid expansion. “We’ve been approached by some investors but so far we’ve not done anything along those lines,” Kennedy says. “They see dollar signs. But the number one priority is not just making money. The number one priority is serving our students.”
But Kennedy and Zayas have met with administrators at colleges in New York, Illinois, Texas, Pennsylvania, Texas and the Washington, D.C., area who might want to work with AGMUS to introduce their own dual-language programs. “We know there are universities that would benefit from the possibility of turning some of their own programs into dual-language,” Zayas says. “There really has to be a strong desire of students, a way to reach out to students who aren’t being served, a space – not only a building but also a space within the college -- for these programs, and hiring or having a bilingual staff.”
Kennedy adds that while AGMUS sees “so many opportunities, we need to pick and choose what’s going to make the most sense. We can’t reach all the students out there who need us.”
He’s expected to see competitors crop up, but none have. “By now, we thought the University of Phoenix or someone would’ve picked up on this,” he says. “I don’t think they know how to fully reach out to the Hispanic population yet, but there's a whole lot of it that needs to be served.”
— Jennifer Epstein
April 8, 2010
Puerto Rico’s Sistema Universitario Ana G. Méndez attracted thousands of adult students to an accelerated degree program, AHORA, by stressing the kind of flexibility and practicality that one would expect from a program called “now.”
But when administrators and faculty started considering how to expand into the continental United States they realized it wouldn’t work to simply shift their program a few hundred miles north.
“Offering a program all in Spanish wouldn’t do the best for our students and there are plenty of English programs out there,” says Luis J. Zayas, the university system’s vice president for U.S. and Latin American affairs. “We had to think about how to serve a Spanish-speaking population living in a predominantly English-speaking place.”
What they created is what Zayas and his colleagues believe to be the first-ever discipline-based, dual-language postsecondary degree program. Both languages are used equally in instruction and assignments; faculty and staff are all bilingual; and, Zayas says, “the courses are designed so that you can have a native English speaker or a native Spanish speaker go through with the same level of comfort."
In its sixth year of operation in Orlando and its fourth in the Miami suburb of Miramar, the mainland AHORA program has an enrollment totaling 1,700 and has awarded 373 bachelor’s degrees and 303 master’s degrees. Enrollment numbers continue to grow, and a third location, in Tampa, is set to open in the fall. Online courses are also in development.
The effort is the result of an unusual partnership. Ana Méndez, a private nonprofit university system, teamed up with Regis University, a nonprofit in Denver with extensive experience in online education for adults, to create AGMUS Ventures, a for-profit unit through which they run these programs. It is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, which doesn't normally oversee programs in Florida, but which is the accreditor for Puerto Rico.
Almost all classes are scheduled for nights or weekends, and students are almost exclusively working adults over the age of 23. Most are more comfortable speaking and writing in Spanish than in English. Though they may have earned college credit or even a degree in their home countries, Zayas says, they “don’t know the language well enough” to do well in courses that are offered exclusively in English.
Deborah A. Santiago, vice president for policy and research at Excelencia in Education, could point to only one program like Ana Méndez’s – a dual-language associate’s degree in Miami Dade College’s honors college. But the students in that program, which enrolled its first class in 2006, are generally traditional-age and headed toward transfer.
While rare in higher education, the dual language model of instruction is more established in American elementary and secondary schools, where it’s sometimes used to help students whose families speak another language learn English, but is often used to develop fully bilingual students.
Ana Méndez’s Spanish-language and dual-language courses are based on Regis University’s modular curriculum for accelerated adult learning. Regis’s New Ventures arm -- which helps other colleges and universities adapt to their cultures and course offerings – worked with Ana Méndez officials in the mid-1990s to create the Spanish-language program used on its home campuses. It now enrolls more than 8,000 students.
The two universities each made an initial investment of $500,000 and share profits equally. The operation’s annual budget has grown to $13 million.
The chair of AGMUS’s board of directors, Thomas R. Kennedy, who is also CEO of New Ventures and Regis’s vice president for institutional partnerships, describes the program as “not just a bilingual program where you help Spanish-speaking people learn English” but “a wonderful way to bring people along in both languages.”
The campuses offer degrees that are awarded by Ana Méndez’s three universities – Universidad del Este, Universidad del Turabo and Universidad Metropolitana. There are offerings in education, criminal justice, psychology, business, nursing and hotel management, among other fields.
Kennedy said that the average student is about 35 years old. In Orlando, the enrollment is 70 percent female. In Miramar, it’s about 60 percent female. These students, like so many other adult learners, are “really pulling themselves up, to create a better life,” Kennedy says. “They’re fulfilling a dream.” In all, 93 percent of students receive financial aid of some kind.
For native Spanish speakers, the dual-language curriculum helps ease them into English. For native English speakers, the curriculum helps them ease into Spanish. Courses generally meet for five weeks and the four-hour class sessions alternate languages each week. When a week’s class is in English, all the reading and other assignments to prepare are in English. When a class is set to be in Spanish, all work is in Spanish.
Students aren’t required to buy books or other materials; they receive a module booklet that includes their reading and assignments. Other resources are available through course Blackboard sites and a web-based virtual library where students can access journal articles and e-books. Many modules are in the process of being revised.
Syndia Nazario-Cardona, director of the Miramar campus, describes the adjunct instructional workforce as “facilitators, because what they’re doing is facilitating the learning process” rather than simply lecturing for the entirety of a four-hour class session. Many have day jobs as high school or college teachers or professors.
Alexander Easdale, a facilitator who teaches social sciences and history courses, worked as a high school teacher and college-level tutor before joining Ana Méndez but still went through extensive training before entering the classroom two and a half years ago.
“This university does a very good job screening and training professors before sending them out there,” he says. “Unlike a lot of the other people, I haven’t been a teacher my whole life, so I went through numerous workshops before leading a class.” His day job is in fundraising at a Hispanic-serving nonprofit.
His classes “are in many ways similar to a graduate school seminar,” he says. “As opposed to a traditional format of the lecture, where you stand in front of the class and teach, this is a mix of activities.” Though he may lecture a bit at the start of a session, classes generally include discussions, group projects and oral presentations.
Though he alternates between Spanish and English from week to week, “because most students are Latino and most are immigrants, and their stronger language tends to be Spanish,” Easdale says he “tends to have to push them a lot harder when it’s English week.” He’ll occasionally have a student whose English is stronger than his or her Spanish.
Students’ language struggles are most apparent “when you have a student one week and they can’t shut up and the next they’re not talking at all.” It’s his job, he says, “to help students lose that fear of speaking the language.”
The vast majority students at the Orlando campus are of Puerto Rican heritage. The Miramar campus has students and faculty from 25 countries.
Most students, Kennedy says, “would never have gone to another college or university … where it’s all English or just a smattering of Spanish and not a welcoming situation for them.” The dual-language program offers them an opportunity to develop language skills while learning subject area content, rather than having to first spend months or years in a non-credit ESL class before being able to work toward a degree.
Though there are some students who are more comfortable with English than with Spanish, he concedes they’re a very small group. “We don’t have very many people at all who are English speakers trying to bring up their Spanish,” he says. “We have a very high percentage of students who speak Spanish at home.”
Roxanna Pietri, associate director for corporate relations, thinks the major factor deterring students with strong English skills from enrolling at Ana Méndez is price. “If a student in Orlando or South Florida is comfortable speaking English, it’s easier and cheaper for them to go to a state university than [it is] to pay more for a credit with us,” she says.
Undergraduate credits cost $310 and graduate credits are $360 each. At Miami Dade, for instance, associate's degree credits are $67.60 and bachelor's degree credits cost $74.95 each.
Applicants are generally required to have attempted at least 24 college credits, but if a student were to take the full 126 credits needed to earn an Ana Méndez bachelor’s degree at the institution, it would cost a total of $39,060. That's more than a degree from a Florida public institution, but less than full freight at many other privates. Students without prior college experience or who are under the age of 23 can start out by taking eight eight-week transitional courses.
Easdale says that the focus on developing language skills has yielded some “unbelievable” results in just the five- or eight-week period of a semester. “I give my students good, honest feedback. I tell them, don’t expect roses in the feedback I’ve given,” he says. “And it makes a difference in the end.”
Zayas says he’s received “lots of anecdotal feedback from the students that it was really the only way they could have done it – they couldn’t have done a whole degree in English.”
Despite its success, AGMUS has resisted rapid expansion. “We’ve been approached by some investors but so far we’ve not done anything along those lines,” Kennedy says. “They see dollar signs. But the number one priority is not just making money. The number one priority is serving our students.”
But Kennedy and Zayas have met with administrators at colleges in New York, Illinois, Texas, Pennsylvania, Texas and the Washington, D.C., area who might want to work with AGMUS to introduce their own dual-language programs. “We know there are universities that would benefit from the possibility of turning some of their own programs into dual-language,” Zayas says. “There really has to be a strong desire of students, a way to reach out to students who aren’t being served, a space – not only a building but also a space within the college -- for these programs, and hiring or having a bilingual staff.”
Kennedy adds that while AGMUS sees “so many opportunities, we need to pick and choose what’s going to make the most sense. We can’t reach all the students out there who need us.”
He’s expected to see competitors crop up, but none have. “By now, we thought the University of Phoenix or someone would’ve picked up on this,” he says. “I don’t think they know how to fully reach out to the Hispanic population yet, but there's a whole lot of it that needs to be served.”
— Jennifer Epstein
Wednesday, April 07, 2010
Reforming Teacher Ed
Jennifer Epstein | Inside Higher Ed
March 12, 2010
WASHINGTON – A group representing colleges of teacher education on Thursday called for its member institutions to work with the rest of their universities, as well as schools, states and the federal government to emphasize and improve in-school preparation for teachers-to-be.
Leaders of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education and other experts gathered for what was intended to be a high-profile opportunity – including a speech by a Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) – to inform state and national policy debates on K-12 school reform as states look to cut costs and raise standards, and Congress prepares for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
In the first of several news conferences scheduled to be held throughout the spring at the National Press Club, panelists stressed the importance of what's being called clinical training, a more robust in-school teaching and learning option than the student teaching of yore. “You can’t learn to swim on the sidewalk and you can’t learn to teach outside the classroom,” said Sharon Feiman-Nemser, a professor of Jewish education at Brandeis University who has for decades studied how teachers learn.
The world of teacher education, said Sharon Robinson, AACTE president and CEO, “is at a crucial and deciding moment where we can declare a real trend in the right direction” as consensus forms that clinical practice is the best way to teach future teachers.
In a policy brief released at the discussion, the association asks education colleges and states to require that new teachers spend at least 450 hours in clinical settings before earning their degrees or certifications. It also calls for increased attention and funding for successful residency partnerships between schools districts and universities.
Despite the shift toward increasing the time future teachers spend in the classroom and the disparaging words U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has had for some teacher preparation colleges, panelists insisted that reform movements shouldn’t diminish the role that colleges and universities play in getting teachers ready for the classroom
Arthur Levine, president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation and former president of Columbia University’s Teachers College said that, although alternative routes to certification have gained a sizable following, higher education is “still preparing 90 percent of all teachers” and is better able to fund teacher preparation than government on its own. Colleges and universities also offer instruction in content areas, another key component of preparing teachers.
He added: “There’s no research that indicates that any other provider is any better than universities, so why not go there?”
But colleges of teacher preparation are not without their challenges. Within their institutions, they’re often neglected by presidents, provosts and other faculty members. “They can’t been seen as cash cows; they can’t be [given] short shrift,” said Gene Wilhoit, director of the Council of Chief State School Officers. To build up teacher preparation programs, colleges and universities are “going to have to make commitments as institutions similar to what they made to medicine and to law and to business schools.”
March 12, 2010
WASHINGTON – A group representing colleges of teacher education on Thursday called for its member institutions to work with the rest of their universities, as well as schools, states and the federal government to emphasize and improve in-school preparation for teachers-to-be.
Leaders of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education and other experts gathered for what was intended to be a high-profile opportunity – including a speech by a Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) – to inform state and national policy debates on K-12 school reform as states look to cut costs and raise standards, and Congress prepares for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
In the first of several news conferences scheduled to be held throughout the spring at the National Press Club, panelists stressed the importance of what's being called clinical training, a more robust in-school teaching and learning option than the student teaching of yore. “You can’t learn to swim on the sidewalk and you can’t learn to teach outside the classroom,” said Sharon Feiman-Nemser, a professor of Jewish education at Brandeis University who has for decades studied how teachers learn.
The world of teacher education, said Sharon Robinson, AACTE president and CEO, “is at a crucial and deciding moment where we can declare a real trend in the right direction” as consensus forms that clinical practice is the best way to teach future teachers.
In a policy brief released at the discussion, the association asks education colleges and states to require that new teachers spend at least 450 hours in clinical settings before earning their degrees or certifications. It also calls for increased attention and funding for successful residency partnerships between schools districts and universities.
Despite the shift toward increasing the time future teachers spend in the classroom and the disparaging words U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has had for some teacher preparation colleges, panelists insisted that reform movements shouldn’t diminish the role that colleges and universities play in getting teachers ready for the classroom
Arthur Levine, president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation and former president of Columbia University’s Teachers College said that, although alternative routes to certification have gained a sizable following, higher education is “still preparing 90 percent of all teachers” and is better able to fund teacher preparation than government on its own. Colleges and universities also offer instruction in content areas, another key component of preparing teachers.
He added: “There’s no research that indicates that any other provider is any better than universities, so why not go there?”
But colleges of teacher preparation are not without their challenges. Within their institutions, they’re often neglected by presidents, provosts and other faculty members. “They can’t been seen as cash cows; they can’t be [given] short shrift,” said Gene Wilhoit, director of the Council of Chief State School Officers. To build up teacher preparation programs, colleges and universities are “going to have to make commitments as institutions similar to what they made to medicine and to law and to business schools.”
Race Matters
Inside Higher Ed
March 11, 2010
A constant theme of reports about math and science is that the United States will have a large enough supply of scientists only if it does a better job of attracting black and Latino scientists -- and not just relying on Asian American, white and foreign talent. Many of these reports note that large shares of black and Latino high school students don't receive the kind of preparation they should in math and science.
A new study points to another factor: the role of black college instructors in encouraging black science students to persist as science majors. The study finds a statistically significant relationship between black students who plan to be a science major having at least one black science instructor as freshmen and then sticking to their plans. The finding could be significant because many students (in particular members of under-represented minority groups) who start off as science majors fail to continue on that path -- so a change in retention of science majors could have a major impact.
At the same time, the study did not find a similar impact based on gender.
The study was released by Cornell University's Higher Education Research Institute, which is sponsoring a conference this month on this research and other studies focused on why some students are more likely than others to persist as science and mathematics majors. The research on the impact of race and gender was conducted by Joshua A. Price, a doctoral student at Cornell who in the fall will join the economics faculty at the University of Texas at Arlington.
Price analyzed data on more than 157,000 students who enrolled as first-time freshmen in one of the 13 four-year universities in Ohio between 1998 and 2002 and who said that they intended to major in science, technology or mathematics. He then examined whether those black students who had a black instructor and female students who had a female instructor were more likely to stick with their planned STEM major than those who did not. For purposes of the study, "instructor" had to be the person -- typically but not always a professor -- who was responsible for a course. A black teaching assistant working for a white professor who ran a course would not count.
In doing his analysis, Price controlled for academic preparation using ACT scores so that the students of various races and genders were compared to those who shared their race and gender characteristics as well as their level of academic preparation.
And here he found that black students who had at least one black science instructor as freshmen were statistically more likely to continue on as STEM majors than those who did not. (He tried to see if there was an additional gain by having two math or science instructors taught by black instructors, but there were too few black science instructors to allow a large enough pool of students to have taken courses from two of them.)
On the issue of female students taking STEM courses from female instructors, Price found that these students were slightly less likely than others to continue as STEM majors, but the decline was so small that it was not statistically significant. He found no impact on the persistence rates of white students who took a course with a black instructor or male students who took a course with a female instructor.
One other finding was that black STEM students were more likely than white students to end up in STEM courses or sections led by black instructors, again suggesting a key role for these black science professors. Price writes in his study that he tried to control for this by factoring in the overall odds of students ending up with black and white instructors.
In the paper, Price writes that while previous studies have found positive educational benefits for minority students having same-race teachers in elementary and secondary schools, this paper goes further than other previous research in higher education. "These results suggest that policies to increase the minority representation among faculty members might be an effective means of increasing the representation of minorities who persist and ultimately graduate within STEM fields," he writes.
In an interview, Price said that much more research was needed before trying to base public policy on these or similar findings. He said that there are some key questions that still need to be explored that could have an impact on any policies. He said, for example, that the impact of having a black instructor could come from a "role model effect" or from a mentoring effect.
If the impact is from role models, it would be essential to have more black scientists around -- even if students aren't enrolled in their courses, they might benefit from seeing black professors, he said. If, however, the impact is from black instructors being better mentors of black students, that would raise questions of whether all professors could be taught to be better mentors to black students.
He also said that he was not sure his findings on women should be seen as questioning the need to hire more female scientists. He said that some recent research about the impact of instructor gender on students suggests that the greatest impact of same-gender instructors is on high-achieving female students, and he said his pool did not have enough differentiation to see if there was more of an impact on this group of students.
— Scott Jaschik
March 11, 2010
A constant theme of reports about math and science is that the United States will have a large enough supply of scientists only if it does a better job of attracting black and Latino scientists -- and not just relying on Asian American, white and foreign talent. Many of these reports note that large shares of black and Latino high school students don't receive the kind of preparation they should in math and science.
A new study points to another factor: the role of black college instructors in encouraging black science students to persist as science majors. The study finds a statistically significant relationship between black students who plan to be a science major having at least one black science instructor as freshmen and then sticking to their plans. The finding could be significant because many students (in particular members of under-represented minority groups) who start off as science majors fail to continue on that path -- so a change in retention of science majors could have a major impact.
At the same time, the study did not find a similar impact based on gender.
The study was released by Cornell University's Higher Education Research Institute, which is sponsoring a conference this month on this research and other studies focused on why some students are more likely than others to persist as science and mathematics majors. The research on the impact of race and gender was conducted by Joshua A. Price, a doctoral student at Cornell who in the fall will join the economics faculty at the University of Texas at Arlington.
Price analyzed data on more than 157,000 students who enrolled as first-time freshmen in one of the 13 four-year universities in Ohio between 1998 and 2002 and who said that they intended to major in science, technology or mathematics. He then examined whether those black students who had a black instructor and female students who had a female instructor were more likely to stick with their planned STEM major than those who did not. For purposes of the study, "instructor" had to be the person -- typically but not always a professor -- who was responsible for a course. A black teaching assistant working for a white professor who ran a course would not count.
In doing his analysis, Price controlled for academic preparation using ACT scores so that the students of various races and genders were compared to those who shared their race and gender characteristics as well as their level of academic preparation.
And here he found that black students who had at least one black science instructor as freshmen were statistically more likely to continue on as STEM majors than those who did not. (He tried to see if there was an additional gain by having two math or science instructors taught by black instructors, but there were too few black science instructors to allow a large enough pool of students to have taken courses from two of them.)
On the issue of female students taking STEM courses from female instructors, Price found that these students were slightly less likely than others to continue as STEM majors, but the decline was so small that it was not statistically significant. He found no impact on the persistence rates of white students who took a course with a black instructor or male students who took a course with a female instructor.
One other finding was that black STEM students were more likely than white students to end up in STEM courses or sections led by black instructors, again suggesting a key role for these black science professors. Price writes in his study that he tried to control for this by factoring in the overall odds of students ending up with black and white instructors.
In the paper, Price writes that while previous studies have found positive educational benefits for minority students having same-race teachers in elementary and secondary schools, this paper goes further than other previous research in higher education. "These results suggest that policies to increase the minority representation among faculty members might be an effective means of increasing the representation of minorities who persist and ultimately graduate within STEM fields," he writes.
In an interview, Price said that much more research was needed before trying to base public policy on these or similar findings. He said that there are some key questions that still need to be explored that could have an impact on any policies. He said, for example, that the impact of having a black instructor could come from a "role model effect" or from a mentoring effect.
If the impact is from role models, it would be essential to have more black scientists around -- even if students aren't enrolled in their courses, they might benefit from seeing black professors, he said. If, however, the impact is from black instructors being better mentors of black students, that would raise questions of whether all professors could be taught to be better mentors to black students.
He also said that he was not sure his findings on women should be seen as questioning the need to hire more female scientists. He said that some recent research about the impact of instructor gender on students suggests that the greatest impact of same-gender instructors is on high-achieving female students, and he said his pool did not have enough differentiation to see if there was more of an impact on this group of students.
— Scott Jaschik
Lumina launches $8 million effort to help adults complete college degrees
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 01, 2010
Lumina launches $8 million effort to help adults complete college degrees
Foundation to support large-scale efforts to increase degree completion among adults who have earned some college credits
Indianapolis—Lumina Foundation for Education announced today that it will provide up to $8 million in grants during the next four years to support large-scale efforts to increase degree completion among adults who have already earned some college credits.
Through the just-announced Adult Degree Completion program, Lumina will expand its efforts to achieve the Foundation's "Big Goal" of increasing the proportion of Americans with high-quality degrees and credentials to 60 percent by the year 2025.
"Given demographic trends and attainment rates among young adults, it is highly unlikely that the nation can meet its growing need for college-educated workers by focusing primarily on recent high school graduates," said Jamie P. Merisotis, Lumina's President and Chief Executive Officer. "All states need to increase the postsecondary participation and success of adults, many of whom have some college credits but lack a degree."
The current economic downturn is already funneling hundreds of thousands of over-25 Americans into postsecondary education—and that trend is sure to intensify as the global, knowledge-based economy demands workers with ever-higher levels of education and training. Overall, this adult-learning boom is a positive trend, and one that holds tremendous promise for individual Americans and the nation as a whole. It is a trend we must embrace if we hope to return the U.S. to a position of global leadership in college degree attainment. We must increase the number of degree-seeking adults, and we must do everything possible to ensure their success.
A Request for Proposal is available on the Lumina website. Pre-proposals are due May 14, 2010.
About Lumina Foundation
Lumina Foundation for Education is committed to enrolling and graduating more students from college—especially low-income students, students of color, first-generation students and adult learners. Our goal is to increase the percentage of Americans who hold high-quality degrees and credentials to 60 percent by 2025. Lumina pursues this goal in three ways: by identifying and supporting effective practice, through public policy advocacy, and by using our communications and convening power to build public will for change.
For more information, contact Lumina Media Relations at 317.517.3675.
Related tags: News, News Release
April 01, 2010
Lumina launches $8 million effort to help adults complete college degrees
Foundation to support large-scale efforts to increase degree completion among adults who have earned some college credits
Indianapolis—Lumina Foundation for Education announced today that it will provide up to $8 million in grants during the next four years to support large-scale efforts to increase degree completion among adults who have already earned some college credits.
Through the just-announced Adult Degree Completion program, Lumina will expand its efforts to achieve the Foundation's "Big Goal" of increasing the proportion of Americans with high-quality degrees and credentials to 60 percent by the year 2025.
"Given demographic trends and attainment rates among young adults, it is highly unlikely that the nation can meet its growing need for college-educated workers by focusing primarily on recent high school graduates," said Jamie P. Merisotis, Lumina's President and Chief Executive Officer. "All states need to increase the postsecondary participation and success of adults, many of whom have some college credits but lack a degree."
The current economic downturn is already funneling hundreds of thousands of over-25 Americans into postsecondary education—and that trend is sure to intensify as the global, knowledge-based economy demands workers with ever-higher levels of education and training. Overall, this adult-learning boom is a positive trend, and one that holds tremendous promise for individual Americans and the nation as a whole. It is a trend we must embrace if we hope to return the U.S. to a position of global leadership in college degree attainment. We must increase the number of degree-seeking adults, and we must do everything possible to ensure their success.
A Request for Proposal is available on the Lumina website. Pre-proposals are due May 14, 2010.
About Lumina Foundation
Lumina Foundation for Education is committed to enrolling and graduating more students from college—especially low-income students, students of color, first-generation students and adult learners. Our goal is to increase the percentage of Americans who hold high-quality degrees and credentials to 60 percent by 2025. Lumina pursues this goal in three ways: by identifying and supporting effective practice, through public policy advocacy, and by using our communications and convening power to build public will for change.
For more information, contact Lumina Media Relations at 317.517.3675.
Related tags: News, News Release
Jaime Escalante didn't just stand and deliver. He changed U.S. schools forever.
Jaime Escalante didn't just stand and deliver. He changed U.S. schools forever.
By Jay Mathews
Sunday, April 4, 2010; B02
From 1982 to 1987 I stalked Jaime Escalante, his students and his colleagues at Garfield High School, a block from the hamburger-burrito stands, body shops and bars of Atlantic Boulevard in East Los Angeles. I was the Los Angeles bureau chief for The Washington Post, allegedly covering the big political, social and business stories of the Western states, but I found it hard to stay away from that troubled high school.
I would show up unannounced, watch Jaime teach calculus, chat with Principal Henry Gradillas, check in with other Advanced Placement classes and in the early afternoon call my editor in Washington to say I was chasing down the latest medfly outbreak story, or whatever seemed believable at the time.
Escalante, who died Tuesday from cancer at age 79, did not become nationally famous until 1988, when the feature film about him, "Stand and Deliver," was released, and my much-less-noticed book, "Escalante: The Best Teacher in America," also came out. I had been drawn to him, as filmmakers Ramón Menéndez and Tom Musca were, by the story of a 1982 cheating scandal. Eighteen Escalante students had passed the Advanced Placement Calculus AB exam. Fourteen were accused of cheating by the Educational Testing Service, based on similarities in their answers. Twelve took the test again, this time heavily proctored, and passed again.
Whether they cheated was an intriguing mystery, but not the one that kept me hanging around Garfield. I wanted to know how there could be even one student at that school taking and passing AP Calculus, perhaps the hardest course in American secondary education. Garfield offered the worst possible conditions for learning: 85 percent of the students were low income, most of the parents were grade-school dropouts, faculty morale was bad, expectations were low.
Yet the school had produced phenomenal results that would challenge widespread rules barring average and below-average students from taking AP classes. The stunning success at Garfield led U.S. presidents to endorse Escalante's view that impoverished children can achieve as much as affluent kids if they are given enough extra study time and encouragement to learn.
In 1987, 26 percent of all Mexican American students in the country who passed the AP Calculus exams attended a single high school: Garfield. That meant that hundreds of thousands of overlooked students could probably do as well if they got what Escalante was giving out. But what was that?
Whenever I suggested that the great teaching I was seeing at Garfield might be the reason so many students were succeeding in AP, people at parties dismissed me as romantic and naive. I was living in Pasadena, where my children, like my neighbors' children, attended private schools. People there didn't believe in teaching; they believed in sorting. The idea that the sons and daughters of immigrant day laborers and seamstresses could be made to comprehend calculus, the intellectual triumph of Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz, made no sense to them.
"I bet if you checked out their backgrounds, you will find those teachers are skimming off the few kids whose parents went to college," one professor told me. More common was the assertion that Escalante, and the school's splendid history and government teachers, drilled enough facts and formulas into their kids to fool the AP tests but had no chance of giving them the conceptual understanding that well-prepared suburban students developed.
These theories quickly fell apart. I surveyed 109 Garfield calculus students in 1987 and found that only nine had even one parent with a college degree, and that only 35 had a parent with a high school diploma. The engineering and science professors at USC, Harvey Mudd and the other California colleges recruiting Garfield grads laughed at the "no conceptual understanding" myth, as did the Escalante students I started running into who had become doctors, lawyers and teachers.
It took me several years to understand how Garfield's AP teachers, and the many educators who have had similar results in other high-poverty schools, pulled all this off. They weren't skimming. It wasn't a magic trick of test results. They simply had high expectations for every student. They arranged extra time for study -- such as Escalante's rule that if you were struggling, you had to return to his classroom after the final bell and spend three hours doing homework, plus take some Saturday and summer classes, too. They created a team spirit, teachers and students working together to beat the big exam.
Escalante celebrated "ganas," a Spanish word that he said meant the urge to succeed. He was so convinced of the power of teaching that he lied to keep students with him. He said school rules forbade dropping his class. He told the parents of absent students that if he did not see their children in his classroom the next day, he would call the immigration authorities to check on their status.
I left Pasadena and moved to Scarsdale, N.Y., in 1992. At Scarsdale High School, I had a shock. My younger son wanted to take AP U.S. history. I assumed that, like Garfield, the school would welcome anyone with the gumption to take such hard course. Instead, he was told he could get in if he passed an entrance test. Once again I was in a land ruled by sorting, not teaching.
There are fewer schools like that now, largely because of a change in teacher attitudes. My annual surveys of AP participation for Newsweek magazine show schools like Garfield emerging all over the country, particularly in the Washington area. Low-income students are being offered a chance to challenge themselves. Those schools are full of educators who tell me they have read everything about Escalante.
When I discovered that his vocabulary was spreading even to grade schools, I knew that he had triumphed over those who wouldn't even open the AP door to some students. In 2001, a fifth-grade teacher in Southeast Washington told me that she had instituted "ganas points" for students who took an extra step to help themselves and others prepare for college. That school became the KIPP DC: KEY Academy, the city's top-performing public middle school.
Escalante liked that story when I called him in Bolivia. It was amazing, he said, what teachers could do if they believed in their kids. He said he was still teaching. He was never going to stop.
When I got a call a couple of days after his death about another school planning to open AP to all, I decided he was exactly right.
Jay Mathews is the education columnist for The Washington Post.
© 2010 The Washington Post Company
By Jay Mathews
Sunday, April 4, 2010; B02
From 1982 to 1987 I stalked Jaime Escalante, his students and his colleagues at Garfield High School, a block from the hamburger-burrito stands, body shops and bars of Atlantic Boulevard in East Los Angeles. I was the Los Angeles bureau chief for The Washington Post, allegedly covering the big political, social and business stories of the Western states, but I found it hard to stay away from that troubled high school.
I would show up unannounced, watch Jaime teach calculus, chat with Principal Henry Gradillas, check in with other Advanced Placement classes and in the early afternoon call my editor in Washington to say I was chasing down the latest medfly outbreak story, or whatever seemed believable at the time.
Escalante, who died Tuesday from cancer at age 79, did not become nationally famous until 1988, when the feature film about him, "Stand and Deliver," was released, and my much-less-noticed book, "Escalante: The Best Teacher in America," also came out. I had been drawn to him, as filmmakers Ramón Menéndez and Tom Musca were, by the story of a 1982 cheating scandal. Eighteen Escalante students had passed the Advanced Placement Calculus AB exam. Fourteen were accused of cheating by the Educational Testing Service, based on similarities in their answers. Twelve took the test again, this time heavily proctored, and passed again.
Whether they cheated was an intriguing mystery, but not the one that kept me hanging around Garfield. I wanted to know how there could be even one student at that school taking and passing AP Calculus, perhaps the hardest course in American secondary education. Garfield offered the worst possible conditions for learning: 85 percent of the students were low income, most of the parents were grade-school dropouts, faculty morale was bad, expectations were low.
Yet the school had produced phenomenal results that would challenge widespread rules barring average and below-average students from taking AP classes. The stunning success at Garfield led U.S. presidents to endorse Escalante's view that impoverished children can achieve as much as affluent kids if they are given enough extra study time and encouragement to learn.
In 1987, 26 percent of all Mexican American students in the country who passed the AP Calculus exams attended a single high school: Garfield. That meant that hundreds of thousands of overlooked students could probably do as well if they got what Escalante was giving out. But what was that?
Whenever I suggested that the great teaching I was seeing at Garfield might be the reason so many students were succeeding in AP, people at parties dismissed me as romantic and naive. I was living in Pasadena, where my children, like my neighbors' children, attended private schools. People there didn't believe in teaching; they believed in sorting. The idea that the sons and daughters of immigrant day laborers and seamstresses could be made to comprehend calculus, the intellectual triumph of Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz, made no sense to them.
"I bet if you checked out their backgrounds, you will find those teachers are skimming off the few kids whose parents went to college," one professor told me. More common was the assertion that Escalante, and the school's splendid history and government teachers, drilled enough facts and formulas into their kids to fool the AP tests but had no chance of giving them the conceptual understanding that well-prepared suburban students developed.
These theories quickly fell apart. I surveyed 109 Garfield calculus students in 1987 and found that only nine had even one parent with a college degree, and that only 35 had a parent with a high school diploma. The engineering and science professors at USC, Harvey Mudd and the other California colleges recruiting Garfield grads laughed at the "no conceptual understanding" myth, as did the Escalante students I started running into who had become doctors, lawyers and teachers.
It took me several years to understand how Garfield's AP teachers, and the many educators who have had similar results in other high-poverty schools, pulled all this off. They weren't skimming. It wasn't a magic trick of test results. They simply had high expectations for every student. They arranged extra time for study -- such as Escalante's rule that if you were struggling, you had to return to his classroom after the final bell and spend three hours doing homework, plus take some Saturday and summer classes, too. They created a team spirit, teachers and students working together to beat the big exam.
Escalante celebrated "ganas," a Spanish word that he said meant the urge to succeed. He was so convinced of the power of teaching that he lied to keep students with him. He said school rules forbade dropping his class. He told the parents of absent students that if he did not see their children in his classroom the next day, he would call the immigration authorities to check on their status.
I left Pasadena and moved to Scarsdale, N.Y., in 1992. At Scarsdale High School, I had a shock. My younger son wanted to take AP U.S. history. I assumed that, like Garfield, the school would welcome anyone with the gumption to take such hard course. Instead, he was told he could get in if he passed an entrance test. Once again I was in a land ruled by sorting, not teaching.
There are fewer schools like that now, largely because of a change in teacher attitudes. My annual surveys of AP participation for Newsweek magazine show schools like Garfield emerging all over the country, particularly in the Washington area. Low-income students are being offered a chance to challenge themselves. Those schools are full of educators who tell me they have read everything about Escalante.
When I discovered that his vocabulary was spreading even to grade schools, I knew that he had triumphed over those who wouldn't even open the AP door to some students. In 2001, a fifth-grade teacher in Southeast Washington told me that she had instituted "ganas points" for students who took an extra step to help themselves and others prepare for college. That school became the KIPP DC: KEY Academy, the city's top-performing public middle school.
Escalante liked that story when I called him in Bolivia. It was amazing, he said, what teachers could do if they believed in their kids. He said he was still teaching. He was never going to stop.
When I got a call a couple of days after his death about another school planning to open AP to all, I decided he was exactly right.
Jay Mathews is the education columnist for The Washington Post.
© 2010 The Washington Post Company
Thursday, April 01, 2010
MIT junior Ruben Alonzo, who has been awarded a 2010 Harry S. Truman Scholarship
massachusetts institute of technology
Amazing story of Representative Roberto Alonzo's nephew.
Angela
MIT junior Ruben Alonzo, who has been awarded a 2010 Harry S. Truman Scholarship.
March 30, 2010
Ruben Alonzo, an MIT junior who wants to use his own escape from poverty as a model for improving the lives of at-risk youth through education, has been awarded a 2010 Harry S. Truman Scholarship.
Alonzo, an economics major from Crystal City, Texas, is among approximately 60 students nationwide selected as winners of the $30,000 graduate scholarship. Awarded each year, the scholarships aim to find and recognize college juniors with exceptional leadership potential who are committed to careers in public service.
Alonzo seeks to use his talent and skills to help address the U.S. high-school dropout crisis and to empower young students to become role models — issues with which he is all too familiar.
“Ruben’s story goes far beyond that of just an impressively informed and passionate student at MIT,” Professor Anne McCants, chair of MIT’s Truman Selection Committee, and Kimberly Benard, MIT’s program advisor for distinguished fellowships, wrote in their letter of nomination. “Ruben’s story is one about overcoming the odds of a background that suggested he would not, perhaps even could not succeed. What has put him at the top of our Truman Scholarship nominee cohort this year is the same drive that led him from the depths of poverty: an abiding reverence for education and dedication to helping others.”
Alonzo grew up in rural Zavala County, Texas, whose per-capita income of $10,034 in 1999 put it among the 25 poorest counties in the United States. Alonzo’s family still skirted the fringes of poverty despite his father’s job as a math teacher; to supplement their income, Alonzo and his family members worked as migrant farmers in North Dakota and Minnesota during the summer months. This was when Alonzo developed an appreciation for math; to help the time pass, his father promised him a few cents for every vegetable he picked. Very quickly, Alonzo learned to track and then to estimate how much money he could make over the course of a hot day in the sun. His father recognized Alonzo’s native quantitative skills and strove to encourage them.
Alonzo’s world was transformed dramatically when he was 14 and his father passed away. Before dying, Alonzo’s father told him to take care of his two sisters and mother, a pledge that he takes extremely seriously. His brother had already succumbed to the cycle of poverty and desperation in Zavala County and is currently serving a six-year prison sentence for drug dealing. Alonzo and his sisters supported each other and clung to education as a way to rise above poverty. His older sister will graduate this year from Texas A&M in Ocean Engineering, and his younger sister just started her degree program at Texas A&M International University.
At MIT, Alonzo has maintained a solid 4.5 GPA while engaging in numerous activities focused on improving literacy among disadvantaged youths both locally and abroad. As a freshman, Alonzo was a founding member of Real Men Read, an organization that pairs strong male role models from MIT with struggling students from disadvantaged schools in Boston. The program inspired Alonzo to partner with friends to create Project LEAD (Leadership Enrichment and Ambassador Development), which provides both original programming and individual mentorship for underperforming youths in the Cambridge public schools. In the summer between his sophomore and junior years, Alonzo worked in Thailand, helping a school implement a new computer-based system for teaching math.
After he gets his MIT degree, Alonzo plans to serve in Teach for America for two years — preferably returning to the troubled Southwest Texas school system from which he graduated. Eventually, he hopes to pursue a doctorate in educational leadership before returning to the Southwest, where he wants to start a nonprofit that will help improve education.
“I made it this far because I had people who believed in me. They believed in me just like I believe in every single young student in America. I am dedicated to bridging the gaps between the academically/economically privileged and the disenfranchised,” Alonzo said. “Change has to start somewhere, and for me it starts back home. It starts in Texas. I am a community servant and a crusader for social change. The Truman Scholarship will open up doors for me to make this change possible.”
History professors part with State Board over proposed standards
History professors part with State Board over proposed standards
March 31, 2010
"Rep. MALC Chairman Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio, pokes the SBOE for mistaking the author of "Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See?" with another author who wrote about ethical Marxism.
A controversial and ever-growing list of social studies standards for Texas school children to learn is too complicated, the former state historian said Wednesday.
"We have an overwrought set of standards. There is way too much for teachers to cover adequately," said Jesus Francisco de la Teja, history professor at Texas State University and one of six experts appointed by the State Board of Education to help write new social studies curriculum standards.
The proposed standards also lag too far behind scholarly literature and standards for college material, said Emilio Zamora, a history professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
The two history experts will be invited to participate in a special hearing on April 28 scheduled by the Mexican American Legislative Caucus that has lost confidence in the State Board of Education's attempt to develop new social studies curriculum standards. Those standards will shape the next round of history, government, and geography and economics textbooks for more than 4.7 million Texas public school children. The textbooks will arrive for the 2011-2012 school year and last for at least a decade.
Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio, chairman of the 44-member Mexican American Legislative Caucus, accused the State Board of Education of hijacking the process, injecting ideology into the standards and creating "a national circus."
He suggested that textbook publishers pay attention to the caucus hearing since lawmakers hold the purse strings for the next textbooks that could cost close to $500 million.
"Textbook publishers should be on notice that they might not want to start printing these books without getting some kind of down payment because you don't know what can happen in the Legislature when you adopt textbooks that don't conform to standards," Martinez Fischer said.
The state's changing demographics is creating some tension between the 15-member elected State Board of Education and minority lawmakers. About 49 percent of the public school children are Hispanic. A majority of the children will be Hispanic before the next textbooks hit the halfway mark of their decade-long shelf life.
"We have to teach the children that we have in our classrooms," said de la Teja, former state historian and former president of the State Historical Association.
"We can no longer teach a curriculum that is 50-60 years old in terms of it's thinking and addresses a population that is the old Texas of the early 20th century.
A history that romanticizes the 19th century and that is male-dominated "does not serve the interests of our school children," de la Teja said.
Instead of a long list of specific standards for teachers to drill students, the history professor says students would be better served if Lubbock-area schoolteachers could teach Texas history "with the West Texas experience in mind."
Houston-area classrooms should focus more on the Gulf coast experience, he said, and border communities would discuss and teach cross-border experiences.
The professors appeared with Martinez Fischer at a Capitol news conference to talk about the April 28 hearing. There is no precedent for lawmakers to conduct a parallel hearing in an effort to undermine or fix the actions of another elected body.
"The circus-like effort of right-wing board members to impose their own religious and political beliefs on public school curriculum continues to be a national embarrassment for us," Texas State Teachers Association President Rita Haecker said at the press conference.
Martinez Fischer complained that some board members use Wikipedia and Google searches to come up with standards - and even then do a poor job of that. The board earlier this year booted children's author Bill Martin Jr. after confusing him with a different Bill Martin, who wrote about the ethical Marxism.
Martinez Fischer said his 15-month-old daughter, Francesca, "would be mad because that's one of her favorite books." Martin Jr. wrote "Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See?"
The upcoming hearing will be bipartisan and anyone willing to focus on policy and solutions is welcomed to participate, he said.
Rep. Wayne Christian, R-Center, chairman of the House Conservative Coalition, doesn't plan to attend.
He supports the State Board of Education's process. Texas should not and will not change history, Christian said.
"You can add to the curriculum. We have had no objections to that, nor have I seen the State Board of Education have an objection to that," he said.
Posted by Gary Scharrer at March 31, 2010 06:17 PM
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March 31, 2010
"Rep. MALC Chairman Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio, pokes the SBOE for mistaking the author of "Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See?" with another author who wrote about ethical Marxism.
A controversial and ever-growing list of social studies standards for Texas school children to learn is too complicated, the former state historian said Wednesday.
"We have an overwrought set of standards. There is way too much for teachers to cover adequately," said Jesus Francisco de la Teja, history professor at Texas State University and one of six experts appointed by the State Board of Education to help write new social studies curriculum standards.
The proposed standards also lag too far behind scholarly literature and standards for college material, said Emilio Zamora, a history professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
The two history experts will be invited to participate in a special hearing on April 28 scheduled by the Mexican American Legislative Caucus that has lost confidence in the State Board of Education's attempt to develop new social studies curriculum standards. Those standards will shape the next round of history, government, and geography and economics textbooks for more than 4.7 million Texas public school children. The textbooks will arrive for the 2011-2012 school year and last for at least a decade.
Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio, chairman of the 44-member Mexican American Legislative Caucus, accused the State Board of Education of hijacking the process, injecting ideology into the standards and creating "a national circus."
He suggested that textbook publishers pay attention to the caucus hearing since lawmakers hold the purse strings for the next textbooks that could cost close to $500 million.
"Textbook publishers should be on notice that they might not want to start printing these books without getting some kind of down payment because you don't know what can happen in the Legislature when you adopt textbooks that don't conform to standards," Martinez Fischer said.
The state's changing demographics is creating some tension between the 15-member elected State Board of Education and minority lawmakers. About 49 percent of the public school children are Hispanic. A majority of the children will be Hispanic before the next textbooks hit the halfway mark of their decade-long shelf life.
"We have to teach the children that we have in our classrooms," said de la Teja, former state historian and former president of the State Historical Association.
"We can no longer teach a curriculum that is 50-60 years old in terms of it's thinking and addresses a population that is the old Texas of the early 20th century.
A history that romanticizes the 19th century and that is male-dominated "does not serve the interests of our school children," de la Teja said.
Instead of a long list of specific standards for teachers to drill students, the history professor says students would be better served if Lubbock-area schoolteachers could teach Texas history "with the West Texas experience in mind."
Houston-area classrooms should focus more on the Gulf coast experience, he said, and border communities would discuss and teach cross-border experiences.
The professors appeared with Martinez Fischer at a Capitol news conference to talk about the April 28 hearing. There is no precedent for lawmakers to conduct a parallel hearing in an effort to undermine or fix the actions of another elected body.
"The circus-like effort of right-wing board members to impose their own religious and political beliefs on public school curriculum continues to be a national embarrassment for us," Texas State Teachers Association President Rita Haecker said at the press conference.
Martinez Fischer complained that some board members use Wikipedia and Google searches to come up with standards - and even then do a poor job of that. The board earlier this year booted children's author Bill Martin Jr. after confusing him with a different Bill Martin, who wrote about the ethical Marxism.
Martinez Fischer said his 15-month-old daughter, Francesca, "would be mad because that's one of her favorite books." Martin Jr. wrote "Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See?"
The upcoming hearing will be bipartisan and anyone willing to focus on policy and solutions is welcomed to participate, he said.
Rep. Wayne Christian, R-Center, chairman of the House Conservative Coalition, doesn't plan to attend.
He supports the State Board of Education's process. Texas should not and will not change history, Christian said.
"You can add to the curriculum. We have had no objections to that, nor have I seen the State Board of Education have an objection to that," he said.
Posted by Gary Scharrer at March 31, 2010 06:17 PM
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On Cesar Chavez's Birthday
On Cesar Chavez's Birthday
Response from Chavez Family & UFW President Following White House Meeting with President Obama
United Farm Workers President Arturo S. Rodriguez and Paul F. Chavez, Cesar Chavez's middle son and president of the Cesar Chavez Foundation, issued these statements following a meeting at the White House with President Obama and members of the Chavez family plus Rodriguez and UFW co-founder Dolores Huerta on what would have been the farm labor and civil rights leader's 83rd birthday.
From Arturo S. Rodriguez, President, United Farm Workers of America:
We thank President Obama for honoring Cesar Chavez on this important day for millions of Americans. We thank the President for his concern for the farm workers who feed our nation every day, and for his strong support of immigration reform. No other change is more urgently needed, and would be more lasting. We will share with President Obama 10 letters written to him by farm workers from across the country, telling him about the realities and challenges of their lives.
Cesar Chavez has been honored in hundreds of communities across the nation. His birthday is an official holiday in 11 states. But the best way to honor Cesar is by helping the farm workers to whom he dedicated his life, and by using our lives to serve others less fortunate than us.
From Paul F. Chavez, President, Cesar Chavez Foundation:
We thank President Obama for having the Chavez family and farm worker movement join him today. We recognize how his dedication to community and public service parallels my father's. Cesar Chavez's message was not just for farm workers or Latinos; it was universal: By helping ordinary people do extraordinary things, he inspired farm workers and millions of others from all walks of life who never worked on a farm to believe in themselves, to do things they would never have thought possible.
It was epitomized by the words from my father's 1972 fast in Arizona, "Si Se Puede!" ("Yes We Can"), which have been adopted by activists worldwide.
But my dad was also convinced we have a moral duty to give ourselves selflessly for others in a cause that's bigger than we are. He said, "Our ambitions must be broad enough to include the aspirations and needs of others, for their sakes and our own."
That's how a man with an eighth grade education who adopted a life of self-imposed poverty nonviolently challenged, and overcame, one of the richest industries in California and in the process inspired millions to social and political activism.
- end -
Check out our website at: www.ufw.org and keep up with the latest news.
Response from Chavez Family & UFW President Following White House Meeting with President Obama
United Farm Workers President Arturo S. Rodriguez and Paul F. Chavez, Cesar Chavez's middle son and president of the Cesar Chavez Foundation, issued these statements following a meeting at the White House with President Obama and members of the Chavez family plus Rodriguez and UFW co-founder Dolores Huerta on what would have been the farm labor and civil rights leader's 83rd birthday.
From Arturo S. Rodriguez, President, United Farm Workers of America:
We thank President Obama for honoring Cesar Chavez on this important day for millions of Americans. We thank the President for his concern for the farm workers who feed our nation every day, and for his strong support of immigration reform. No other change is more urgently needed, and would be more lasting. We will share with President Obama 10 letters written to him by farm workers from across the country, telling him about the realities and challenges of their lives.
Cesar Chavez has been honored in hundreds of communities across the nation. His birthday is an official holiday in 11 states. But the best way to honor Cesar is by helping the farm workers to whom he dedicated his life, and by using our lives to serve others less fortunate than us.
From Paul F. Chavez, President, Cesar Chavez Foundation:
We thank President Obama for having the Chavez family and farm worker movement join him today. We recognize how his dedication to community and public service parallels my father's. Cesar Chavez's message was not just for farm workers or Latinos; it was universal: By helping ordinary people do extraordinary things, he inspired farm workers and millions of others from all walks of life who never worked on a farm to believe in themselves, to do things they would never have thought possible.
It was epitomized by the words from my father's 1972 fast in Arizona, "Si Se Puede!" ("Yes We Can"), which have been adopted by activists worldwide.
But my dad was also convinced we have a moral duty to give ourselves selflessly for others in a cause that's bigger than we are. He said, "Our ambitions must be broad enough to include the aspirations and needs of others, for their sakes and our own."
That's how a man with an eighth grade education who adopted a life of self-imposed poverty nonviolently challenged, and overcame, one of the richest industries in California and in the process inspired millions to social and political activism.
- end -
Check out our website at: www.ufw.org and keep up with the latest news.
Students playing catch-up as they hit college
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Students playing catch-up as they hit college
12:14 AM CDT on Sunday, March 21, 2010
By HOLLY K. HACKER / The Dallas Morning News
hhacker@dallasnews.com
Nelda Contreras stood at the whiteboard and wrote: I like bananas and apples.
"Does this sentence need a comma?" she asked her students.
No, they said.
Also Online
Database: Search to see how many graduates need remedial classes
Graphic: College-ready or not
Next, she wrote: I like bananas apples and grapes.
"What about this sentence?"
Students learn that punctuation rule in grade school. But this is college. A few months earlier, most of these freshmen graduated from high schools in Dallas, Lewisville, Carrollton and elsewhere. They passed their TAKS exams.
Yet here they were at Brookhaven Community College in Farmers Branch taking remedial writing. Over the semester, they'd review "your" vs. "you're," how to craft a two-page essay, and other fundamentals they should have already mastered.
Each year, tens of thousands of Texas students land in this academic purgatory – no longer in high school but not ready for college. About 40 percent of recent high school graduates in the state's public universities and colleges need at least one remedial class.
Statistics show those students take longer to earn a college degree, if they do at all.
The job of remediation falls mainly to community colleges, which open their doors to all students. Texas taxpayers will spend more than $80 million this year to subsidize remedial classes that don't carry college credit.
State figures show some improvement in recent years, with more students graduating ready for college. But the problem persists.
Comparable national statistics are not available, partly because states define the need for remediation differently. But churning out high school graduates unprepared for college is a national issue.
In Washington, the Obama administration is pushing for kids to be college-ready so they don't need remediation. Nonprofit organizations that support education, such as the Gates Foundation, are pouring money into the problem. The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board is funding projects to find the best ways of teaching developmental education and helping students succeed.
The problem reveals a glaring disconnect between what high schools and colleges expect of students. People also point fingers at high schools for graduating under-prepared students, at colleges for not moving more remedial students into college-level classes, and at state policies that put students in semester-long remedial courses instead of shorter, tailored instruction.
"It's really a combination of all of this together," said Diane Troyer, a former Houston-area community college president who's a senior program officer at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. "It adds up to a situation that now is getting really strong national attention. I think for the first time we really have the light shone upon this in a way that's going to make a difference."
A rude surprise
In the Dallas County Community College District, which includes Brookhaven, about 70 percent of recent high school graduates need remedial help in at least one subject – reading, writing or math. In more affluent Collin County, about 40 percent of graduates enrolled in the local community college need remediation.
The school districts that send the area's highest proportions of graduates who need extra help include Dallas, Irving, Carrollton-Farmers Branch, Cedar Hill and Lancaster.
Yet those high school graduates have passed the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills. And most must take a college-prep curriculum.
"I couldn't believe it. I just thought I'd be more prepared for [college work] and obviously I wasn't," said Brookhaven student Justin Rudder, who graduated last year from Creekview High School in Carrollton and needed one semester of developmental writing.
Rudder said he wrote lots of papers his freshman and sophomore years of high school, but not many after that. Senior year was pretty much a blow off, he said.
Like most community colleges in Texas, Brookhaven offers three levels of developmental classes, 090, 091 and 093. Students must pass a test at the end of the series to move on toward earning a degree.
Instructors can find themselves with a roomful of knocked-down egos. They're not just teaching skills, they're restoring confidence levels.
"One of the reasons I teach developmental writing is to give everybody in the classroom hope that they can go on and do this, that they can succeed in college and fulfill their career goals," Contreras said.
Not all remedial college students make it to college-level work. In Texas, only 38 percent of community college students who need remediation either graduate or are still in school after three years, vs. 57 percent of college-ready students.
At Brookhaven, Nelda Contreras' developmental writing 091 class started with about 20 students. She lost two after one week and a few more mid-semester.
One of those students turned in his first essay without a single punctuation mark. Maybe he didn't take the assignment seriously, Contreras thought. "We really need to work on your sentence structure and punctuation," she told him.
His earnest response: "I'll try. I'm not really sure where that punctuation goes."
At Collin College, Math 0300 begins with grade-school math – the addition of whole numbers in columns – and concludes with the most basic algebra. "Something along the lines of 4 + x = 5," said instructor Barbara Wilson.
On a recent Wednesday, Wilson reviewed division of fractions – "Don't be shy! Flip the second fraction, then multiply!" – and moved on to percentages and decimals.
Wilson's classes include older students who haven't been in school in years. But many are recent high school graduates who struggle so much with multiplication that she encourages them to use flash cards.
Jeff Strickland, 19, didn't take math his senior year at Wylie High and "bombed" the Collin College placement test. He's OK with being in Wilson's Math 0300 class.
"It's helped me," he said. "I needed to be refreshed."
'I just want a page'
The first day of class frustrated Contreras. She felt like she was teaching high schoolers. When she called roll, they bellowed "Heeere!" and laughed. They interrupted.
She made it clear she wasn't going to waste her time if they weren't serious. After a few classes, they settled down. But sometimes she struggled to get them to take on even easy writing assignments.
"Every time I ask you to write, it's like I ask you for blood," she told one student, with a laugh. "I just want a page."
Those who make it to English 1301, the first college-level English course, will have to write four- and five-page essays. In English 1302, they'll be expected to produce even longer papers.
"Some students say they just didn't have the educational foundation with writing," Contreras said. "They'll tell me, 'I've never seen any of this. I don't understand any of this.' "
The college works to hang on to students. Brookhaven's developmental writing instructors keep strict attendance. They know who's in class, they call when students don't show up, and they have case managers help track them down.
Still, colleges in Dallas County and elsewhere lose students along the way.
In 2008, 1,000 recent high school graduates enrolled in Dallas County community colleges were found to need remedial writing at the 091 level. Only 540 took it (a marked improvement from past years). And of those, only 308 successfully completed the course (a slight improvement).
But there has been improvement overall. Consider DCCCD, where 69 percent of recent high school graduates needed remediation in 2008, down from 82 percent in 2004.
Among the theories: With the recession and rising tuition, more students are starting at community college instead of four-year universities, and those students tend to be better prepared. The state requires students to take more rigorous classes in high school.
Solutions
Colleges, school systems, nonprofit groups and others across the country are seeking solutions. Many efforts target black, Hispanic and poor students because they're more likely to need extra help.
High school and college leaders say they need to keep talking to each other about what they expect of their students.
In El Paso, the colleges and schools have worked more closely. For instance, students take college placement exams while they're still in high school, so teachers can try to bring them up to speed. Officials report that while most students still need remediation, they need less of it.
Another popular idea is doing away with semester-long, comprehensive remedial classes and replacing them with a few hours of tailored instruction. If one student needs help with punctuation and another needs help organizing essays, why make both sit through the same class?
It could just keep students in college longer, DCCCD Chancellor Wright Lassiter said. "When they don't see any light at the end of the tunnel, they leave," he said.
But that approach costs a lot. Last year, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board asked lawmakers for $30 million to offer that kind of tailored instruction but received only $5 million.
Educators are also optimistic about college-readiness standards that Texas adopted in 2008. The standards spell out what students should know in math, English, social studies and science to succeed in entry-level college classes or the workforce.
'I can do it'
The 15 students who stuck with Contreras' 091 class passed. Next up: developmental writing 093. Instead of writing basic essays to describe and explain something, they'll have to write persuasive essays, which take a position and argue it convincingly.
Contreras met with each student to review the final essay and grade. She told Aida Kolenovic, a Coppell High graduate, that she passed. Kolenovic let out a whoop.
Contreras said: You've got your organization down. You've got good supporting information in your paragraphs. Just proofread more carefully and catch those stray commas and run-on sentences.
Kolenovic said she plans to take the next and final level of developmental writing next semester.
"It's going to be a tough class," Contreras said. "But what's the positive of that?"
"I can do it," Kolenovic said.
Staff writer Sam Hodges contributed to this report.
Students playing catch-up as they hit college
12:14 AM CDT on Sunday, March 21, 2010
By HOLLY K. HACKER / The Dallas Morning News
hhacker@dallasnews.com
Nelda Contreras stood at the whiteboard and wrote: I like bananas and apples.
"Does this sentence need a comma?" she asked her students.
No, they said.
Also Online
Database: Search to see how many graduates need remedial classes
Graphic: College-ready or not
Next, she wrote: I like bananas apples and grapes.
"What about this sentence?"
Students learn that punctuation rule in grade school. But this is college. A few months earlier, most of these freshmen graduated from high schools in Dallas, Lewisville, Carrollton and elsewhere. They passed their TAKS exams.
Yet here they were at Brookhaven Community College in Farmers Branch taking remedial writing. Over the semester, they'd review "your" vs. "you're," how to craft a two-page essay, and other fundamentals they should have already mastered.
Each year, tens of thousands of Texas students land in this academic purgatory – no longer in high school but not ready for college. About 40 percent of recent high school graduates in the state's public universities and colleges need at least one remedial class.
Statistics show those students take longer to earn a college degree, if they do at all.
The job of remediation falls mainly to community colleges, which open their doors to all students. Texas taxpayers will spend more than $80 million this year to subsidize remedial classes that don't carry college credit.
State figures show some improvement in recent years, with more students graduating ready for college. But the problem persists.
Comparable national statistics are not available, partly because states define the need for remediation differently. But churning out high school graduates unprepared for college is a national issue.
In Washington, the Obama administration is pushing for kids to be college-ready so they don't need remediation. Nonprofit organizations that support education, such as the Gates Foundation, are pouring money into the problem. The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board is funding projects to find the best ways of teaching developmental education and helping students succeed.
The problem reveals a glaring disconnect between what high schools and colleges expect of students. People also point fingers at high schools for graduating under-prepared students, at colleges for not moving more remedial students into college-level classes, and at state policies that put students in semester-long remedial courses instead of shorter, tailored instruction.
"It's really a combination of all of this together," said Diane Troyer, a former Houston-area community college president who's a senior program officer at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. "It adds up to a situation that now is getting really strong national attention. I think for the first time we really have the light shone upon this in a way that's going to make a difference."
A rude surprise
In the Dallas County Community College District, which includes Brookhaven, about 70 percent of recent high school graduates need remedial help in at least one subject – reading, writing or math. In more affluent Collin County, about 40 percent of graduates enrolled in the local community college need remediation.
The school districts that send the area's highest proportions of graduates who need extra help include Dallas, Irving, Carrollton-Farmers Branch, Cedar Hill and Lancaster.
Yet those high school graduates have passed the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills. And most must take a college-prep curriculum.
"I couldn't believe it. I just thought I'd be more prepared for [college work] and obviously I wasn't," said Brookhaven student Justin Rudder, who graduated last year from Creekview High School in Carrollton and needed one semester of developmental writing.
Rudder said he wrote lots of papers his freshman and sophomore years of high school, but not many after that. Senior year was pretty much a blow off, he said.
Like most community colleges in Texas, Brookhaven offers three levels of developmental classes, 090, 091 and 093. Students must pass a test at the end of the series to move on toward earning a degree.
Instructors can find themselves with a roomful of knocked-down egos. They're not just teaching skills, they're restoring confidence levels.
"One of the reasons I teach developmental writing is to give everybody in the classroom hope that they can go on and do this, that they can succeed in college and fulfill their career goals," Contreras said.
Not all remedial college students make it to college-level work. In Texas, only 38 percent of community college students who need remediation either graduate or are still in school after three years, vs. 57 percent of college-ready students.
At Brookhaven, Nelda Contreras' developmental writing 091 class started with about 20 students. She lost two after one week and a few more mid-semester.
One of those students turned in his first essay without a single punctuation mark. Maybe he didn't take the assignment seriously, Contreras thought. "We really need to work on your sentence structure and punctuation," she told him.
His earnest response: "I'll try. I'm not really sure where that punctuation goes."
At Collin College, Math 0300 begins with grade-school math – the addition of whole numbers in columns – and concludes with the most basic algebra. "Something along the lines of 4 + x = 5," said instructor Barbara Wilson.
On a recent Wednesday, Wilson reviewed division of fractions – "Don't be shy! Flip the second fraction, then multiply!" – and moved on to percentages and decimals.
Wilson's classes include older students who haven't been in school in years. But many are recent high school graduates who struggle so much with multiplication that she encourages them to use flash cards.
Jeff Strickland, 19, didn't take math his senior year at Wylie High and "bombed" the Collin College placement test. He's OK with being in Wilson's Math 0300 class.
"It's helped me," he said. "I needed to be refreshed."
'I just want a page'
The first day of class frustrated Contreras. She felt like she was teaching high schoolers. When she called roll, they bellowed "Heeere!" and laughed. They interrupted.
She made it clear she wasn't going to waste her time if they weren't serious. After a few classes, they settled down. But sometimes she struggled to get them to take on even easy writing assignments.
"Every time I ask you to write, it's like I ask you for blood," she told one student, with a laugh. "I just want a page."
Those who make it to English 1301, the first college-level English course, will have to write four- and five-page essays. In English 1302, they'll be expected to produce even longer papers.
"Some students say they just didn't have the educational foundation with writing," Contreras said. "They'll tell me, 'I've never seen any of this. I don't understand any of this.' "
The college works to hang on to students. Brookhaven's developmental writing instructors keep strict attendance. They know who's in class, they call when students don't show up, and they have case managers help track them down.
Still, colleges in Dallas County and elsewhere lose students along the way.
In 2008, 1,000 recent high school graduates enrolled in Dallas County community colleges were found to need remedial writing at the 091 level. Only 540 took it (a marked improvement from past years). And of those, only 308 successfully completed the course (a slight improvement).
But there has been improvement overall. Consider DCCCD, where 69 percent of recent high school graduates needed remediation in 2008, down from 82 percent in 2004.
Among the theories: With the recession and rising tuition, more students are starting at community college instead of four-year universities, and those students tend to be better prepared. The state requires students to take more rigorous classes in high school.
Solutions
Colleges, school systems, nonprofit groups and others across the country are seeking solutions. Many efforts target black, Hispanic and poor students because they're more likely to need extra help.
High school and college leaders say they need to keep talking to each other about what they expect of their students.
In El Paso, the colleges and schools have worked more closely. For instance, students take college placement exams while they're still in high school, so teachers can try to bring them up to speed. Officials report that while most students still need remediation, they need less of it.
Another popular idea is doing away with semester-long, comprehensive remedial classes and replacing them with a few hours of tailored instruction. If one student needs help with punctuation and another needs help organizing essays, why make both sit through the same class?
It could just keep students in college longer, DCCCD Chancellor Wright Lassiter said. "When they don't see any light at the end of the tunnel, they leave," he said.
But that approach costs a lot. Last year, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board asked lawmakers for $30 million to offer that kind of tailored instruction but received only $5 million.
Educators are also optimistic about college-readiness standards that Texas adopted in 2008. The standards spell out what students should know in math, English, social studies and science to succeed in entry-level college classes or the workforce.
'I can do it'
The 15 students who stuck with Contreras' 091 class passed. Next up: developmental writing 093. Instead of writing basic essays to describe and explain something, they'll have to write persuasive essays, which take a position and argue it convincingly.
Contreras met with each student to review the final essay and grade. She told Aida Kolenovic, a Coppell High graduate, that she passed. Kolenovic let out a whoop.
Contreras said: You've got your organization down. You've got good supporting information in your paragraphs. Just proofread more carefully and catch those stray commas and run-on sentences.
Kolenovic said she plans to take the next and final level of developmental writing next semester.
"It's going to be a tough class," Contreras said. "But what's the positive of that?"
"I can do it," Kolenovic said.
Staff writer Sam Hodges contributed to this report.
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