Making Grade in U.S. Schools

This is another report of the earlier report posted today but provides info on 2 additional Pew Hispanic Studies. My own research in

Subtractive Schooling

confirms these trends on immigrant achievement. Variability within this group tracks back to socioeconomic class status (parental education) which translates not only into whether children had quality educational experiences, but continuous ones.

Yes, with population changes, this kind of evidence is of increasing significance. -Angela

Making Grade in U.S. Schools
Foreign-born children are far more likely to drop out if they had a poor educational record before immigrating, report says.
By Mitchell Landsberg
Times Staff Writer

November 2, 2005

A study released Tuesday confirms what many teachers have long suspected: The performance of immigrant children in U.S. schools may reflect the education they received — or didn't — in their home countries.

Foreign-born children, especially those from Mexico, are far more likely to drop out of high school if they had a spotty educational record before coming to the United States, according to the study by the Pew Hispanic Center. But those who start U.S. schools by the second grade are scarcely more likely than native-born American children to drop out, the findings show.

Adding to the debate, data also show that immigrant students from Asia, Eastern Europe and the Caribbean are far less likely than their American-born peers to leave school.

The report helps illuminate the challenges facing U.S. educators, particularly in states such as California, as they struggle to cope with the largest wave of immigration in the nation's history.

"There's no question that that rings true," said Kathleen O'Connell, an assistant principal at Belmont High School in Los Angeles, where district data show nearly half of 5,500 students are still learning English.

"You're talking about teaching them the whole notion of schooling, teaching them content that they've never had … giving them algebra and biology and history and geometry when they've never learned to read," she said.

The Pew study, which was based on census data, examined 15- to 17-year-olds who had come to the United States from more than 40 countries. Those from Mexico — by far the largest group of foreign students in California schools — were the most likely of any nationality to have left school, or never to have enrolled in a U.S. school.

Overall, nearly one-quarter of Mexican teens were dropouts (or had never enrolled), compared with 16% of those from El Salvador, 5% from Nicaragua, 3% from Jamaica, 2% from Ukraine and 1% from Hong Kong and India.

But for those Mexican students who immigrated no later than the second grade, the dropout rate was a relatively modest 8%. Those who came later than the second grade and had not attended school continuously in Mexico dropped out at a staggering 83% rate, the study found.

Andrew Conroy, a counselor at Belmont High's Newcomer Center, said his school struggles to educate students who arrive with little or no literacy skills in their native language. Differences among nationalities, he said, may tell more about where the immigrants come from within their own country than about the country itself.

Urban, middle-class students from any country probably arrive with grade-level skills in their own language, Conroy said, but students from some countries, including Mexico, are more likely to come from impoverished, rural areas where schools are rudimentary and attendance spotty.

For instance, Conroy said, while urban Chinese students tend to do very well in American schools, "We have some rural Chinese students who are very confused, just struggling, I think on a level with our Mexican students who come from the country."

Although the study suggests that American educators are not solely to blame when immigrants fail, another study by Pew raises questions on whether Latino students — both foreign-born and U.S. natives — have access to the same quality of education as their peers.

The second study says that Latinos, on average, attend far larger, more crowded high schools than non-Latino whites or African Americans. Other research has shown that large high schools do a significantly worse job than smaller schools at educating students. That has prompted many large school districts, including L.A. Unified, to begin breaking up big schools into smaller, quasi-independent "learning communities."

Richard Fry, who conducted the research for Pew, said the ideal high school size is 600 to 900 students, but more than half the Latinos in the United States attend schools that are larger than 1,800 students.

Most urban schools in California are far bigger than 1,800 students, and many are more than twice that size.

"This, in and of itself, will worsen their outcomes," he said in a telephone conference call to discuss the studies.

Fry's research showed that while Latino and African American students are equally likely to attend school in central cities — as opposed to white students, who are far more likely to attend suburban or rural schools — the Latino schools tend to be much bigger, with larger class sizes.

"This to me was one of the most startling findings," Fry said. He said he wasn't sure why Latinos tended to go to bigger schools than African Americans, but that the difference might be explained by immigration flows overwhelming schools.

A map of new schools under construction in L.A. Unified would correspond closely to the areas that have incurred a big surge in Latin American immigration, said Richard Alonzo, a local district superintendent, whose area includes the dense immigrant communities in the Pico-Union area.

A third study by Pew, also released Tuesday, said Latinos are more likely than ever to attend college, but that most attend two-year schools, whereas white students are increasingly likely to go straight to a four-year college.

Marta Tienda, a sociology professor at Princeton University who has done extensive research into ethnic and racial stratification, said she found the college study to be the most disturbing of the three, with profound implications for the U.S. economy. For the United States to remain competitive internationally, she said, the work force will have to become better educated than it is today.

The Pew Center, based in Washington, is a nonpartisan research organization supported by the Pew Charitable Trusts.

*

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Educating immigrants

Recently arrived teens* whose education in their native countries was interrupted before they came to the U.S. are very likely to drop out of school here. The average dropout rate for native-born U.S. teens is 3.3%.

Recent arrivals with interrupted schooling abroad: 71%

Recent arrivals with continuous schooling abroad: 10%

Early childhood arrivals: 5%

*15-17 years old

Source: Pew Hispanic Center

Hispanics' Schools Are Largest, Neediest

During the Baby Boom, our nation prepared for its changing demographics. Lots of universities and colleges got built back then as our state and national leadership anticipated the maturation of this demographic group. I am at the tail of the Baby Boom, a product of it. This was a time of expansion and optimism.

It's a shame that we are in an epoch of contraction and in a context where the stakes of high school graduation and college attendance have been significantly raised. Besides how I personally benefitted from Affirmative Action, it's a bit sobering to contemplate how my chance as a Mexican American girl from West Texas to go to college were also very much related to a more open context when simply put, it was "easier" to get into college. (Though it certainly didn't feel that way to me back then. (Born in 1959, I first entered college in 1977.)

Anyway, this history is important because it challenges notions of individual merit—which exists, but is also structurally manufactured through social policies and opportunities, including higher education expansion that occurred in another moment of time and for another generation of mostly white youth.

I'm sure that there are many folks out there who feel that such a stance even if it were championed today by visionary leadership would encounter extreme opposition. More pointedly, such a proposal would be viewed as nonsensical since those children who speak those languages from those communities are unteachable anyway. There are many exceptions, of course, but there should be many, many more exceptions. In fact, this should be an aberrant view.

I just got my copy of Kozol's THE SHAME OF THE NATION: THE RESTORATION OF APARTHEID SCHOOLING IN AMERICA. I'm sure that this one will be hotly debated. Read the piece below; it's about apartheid as well, obtaining expression through poor, over-crowded, segregated schooling for Latinos.

-Angela

by BEN FELLER, AP Education Writer
Tuesday, November 1, 2005

(11-01) 18:52 PST WASHINGTON (AP) --

Hispanic children are much more likely than white or black students to attend the nation's largest and poorest public high schools, a new analysis shows.

More than half of Hispanic teens, 56 percent, attend schools with enrollments of roughly 1,800 students — schools that rank in the 90th percentile in terms of size. Only 32 percent of black children and 26 percent of white children attend schools that large, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonprofit research group that studies the Latino population.

At the same time, Hispanics are more likely to be in high schools that have the highest concentrations of poverty and largest ratios of students for every teacher. Hispanics can be of any race, but in this report, the groupings of whites and blacks included no Hispanics.

The study also found that almost four in 10 Hispanics go to high schools with a student-teacher ratio of greater than 22 to 1, while less than two in 10 white students or black students go to such schools.

"Hispanic teens are more likely than any other racial or ethnic group to attend public high schools that have the dual characteristics of extreme size and poverty," said Richard Fry, senior associate at the center and the author of the new research.

The Pew Hispanic Center's data are from an Education Department survey that collects data on every public high school in the country. The figures come from the 2002-03 school year.

School size matters, Fry said, because research shows students in large schools have higher dropout rates and more trouble making academic gains.

As the president, Congress and governors give more attention to high school, Fry said, Hispanics may have the most to gain by efforts to reshape schools into smaller environments.

The number of Hispanics surpassed the number of black people in the U.S. in the 2000 Census, making them the largest minority group in the country.

Much of the research on the achievement gap between Hispanics and whites has focused on family income, parents' level of education and the ability of students to speak English.

But Fry said educators and policy-makers have significantly more control over changing the characteristics of the school buildings than they do the traits of the students themselves.

Most Hispanic students are concentrated in seven states that tend to have larger high schools: California, Texas, Florida, New York, Arizona, Illinois and New Jersey.

The number of young Hispanic students attending college is rising, according to another report released by the Pew Hispanic Center on Tuesday.

But that study, based on enrollment data from colleges, found that the number of whites enrolling in four-year college is growing even faster. "When it comes to college enrollment," Fry said, "Hispanics are chasing a target that is accelerating ahead of them."

___

On The Net:
Pew Hispanic Center:
http://pewhispanic.org/
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2005/11/01/national/a164828S52.DTL

©2005 Associated Press

It's Time to Focus on the Forgotten Middle

This is a timely piece that looks at the forgotten middle majority that is frequently not college ready. Consider joining the live chat on this with Swanson on Nov. 9. Swanson launches a critique that considers how current NCLB reform efforts negatively impact this very large segment of the student population. Instead, efforts focus on those at the top and bottom of the educational heirarchy. -Angela

Published: November 2, 2005

Commentary
It's Time to Focus on the Forgotten Middle
By Mary Catherine Swanson


Barbara Kiwak
Hearing that “all the children are above average” in Garrison Keillor's fictional town of Lake Wobegon elicits a knowing chuckle, not just because it's a mathematical impossibility, but also because most of us think our own children are special. No one wants to be considered “average,” even if you're often in good company.

But this aversion is one reason we neglect average students in education. In recent years, our focus on the top and bottom has become more glaring, and we have largely ignored the vast middle in our schools. We've returned to a tracking system by default.

See Also
Live Web chat: Join us on Wed., Nov. 9, 2 p.m., ET, for a live Web chat with the author of this Commentary on the topic of the "forgotten middle," those students students who attend school regularly, rarely say anything, don't cause trouble, and get by with mediocre grades. Who's looking out for them?

Submit questions now.
Who are these forgotten-middle students? Generally, they're the silent majority—the kids who come to school regularly, sit in the back of the class, rarely say anything, don't cause trouble, and get by with C's. They are not failing, nor are they the math whiz or star pupil. They are nearly invisible. Their parents and teachers are content that they are making it through and no alarm bells are going off.

They constitute a large part of the middle two quartiles of students. They'll graduate, but won't be prepared for college. And many of them will wander around for years in dead-end jobs.

It's time to re-energize the discussion on how to serve those “average” students. Today, we're consigning millions of students to low expectations, ignoring their true potential, and denying them the education they need to get ahead. Schools are not making the achievement gains they could. And we're contributing to greater economic and racial polarization in our country, while failing to address national workforce and economic realities.

The persistent and growing divide we saw so vividly following Hurricane Katrina—thousands of people, predominantly African-American, trapped by floodwaters and poverty—exists nationwide. For moral and economic reasons, no society should condone this unconscionably extreme division of its people's access to opportunity.

Making every child college-ready must start with giving students a clear sense of what they need to do to succeed.
The economic consequences of ignoring the middle majority of our students are sobering. The lifetime earnings of a typical college graduate are close to $1 million more than those of someone with only a high school diploma. And the education-related income gap is widening. In the 1990s, real earnings for workers with a bachelor's degree rose at three times the rate of high school graduates' wages. The differing prospects of getting and keeping a job also are striking: The unemployment rate among college graduates is about half the rate for high school graduates.

Beyond the individual income potential, our society and the nation's economy pay a price as well. While China and India surge ahead, and a quarter of the scientists and engineers in U.S. research and product development today are foreign-born, so few American students are going into science and engineering that business leaders are calling for doubling the number of Americans with degrees in these disciplines. Yet we restrict our search for a solution to the thin slice of highest achievers. Instead, we should introduce more students to such coursework, motivate and support them, and create a bigger pool going into these fields.

Likewise, we lament that our college campuses are getting less diverse as our society gets more diverse. But we neglect first-generation college students, minority students, and lower-income students.

Today, our school policies focus on the top and bottom quartiles to the exclusion of the huge middle. Federal programs are aimed at either gifted and talented students or special-needs and at-risk kids. The two ends of the spectrum understandably have demanding and costly needs, but they have gotten most of the attention and money.

As well-meaning as the goals of the federal No Child Left Behind Act may be, the law exacerbates this imbalance by focusing on basic skills and failing schools, not whether students are college-ready. Tutoring dollars go to low-income students in schools that are making insufficient progress. In essence, it's a retracking program focused on the academic bottom.

What's needed is an untracking program that makes college-readiness for all students, including the forgotten middle, a paramount goal and a strategy for improvement. We must start by abandoning the mind-set that labels so many students as not being college material. The expectation ought to be that all students, with few exceptions, will complete the rigorous course loads needed to get into a four-year college.

Not everyone will get a college degree, but having acquired essential skills and knowledge, students will be better off, whether they go to college, receive other training, or go right into the workforce. Employers, after all, are demanding the same critical-thinking, math, and communications skills required by college-admissions officers.

Making every child college-ready must start with giving students a clear sense of what they need to do to succeed. Most 9th graders say they want to go to college. But in two or three years, having remained forgotten in the background, most won't have taken the courses necessary to gain admission.

Addressing the needs of the forgotten middle isn't just a nice thing to do. Our nation's economic and moral position in the world depends on how effectively we respond to this challenge.
Raising achievement requires challenging our students to take more rigorous classes and providing the support they need to do so. Classes that stretch and stimulate the mind bring out the best in students. They rise to the challenge and become more driven and more focused. U.S. Department of Education research shows that a rigorous curriculum is the best preparation for college success, especially for Latino and African-American students. That's why colleges routinely place greater value on a C-plus grade in an Advanced Placement course than on a B-plus in a run-of-the-mill class.

But students need support to make it. That's especially true for those whose parents didn't go to college, who come from homes where English is a second language, or who face obstacles related to poverty. The support structures must be tailored to the different needs of individual students, and cannot be optional. They must be part of the regular school day, where they'll be a core part of learning and be recognized as essential.

We know that students can do it. Ninety-five percent of the students served by the Advancement Via Individual Determination, or AVID, program have gone on to college, enrolling at three times the rate of students without the rigor-and-support approach.

They show that Garrison Keillor's description of the children of Lake Wobegon is not really off. Most of the forgotten-middle students are really above average. We simply have defined our expectations and requirements for them too low. By raising the bar, instead of lowering it, and by providing the necessary support, we can ensure that students graduate ready to fulfill their potential.

Addressing the needs of the forgotten middle isn't just a nice thing to do. Increasingly, our nation's economic and moral position in the world depends on how effectively we respond to this challenge.

Mary Catherine Swanson created the Advancement Via Individual Determination, or AVID, system in 1980 to help prepare underachieving students for entry to four-year colleges. In 1992, she founded the nonprofit AVID Center to disseminate the program nationally and internationally (www.avidonline.org).
Vol. 25, Issue 10, Pages 31,33

© 2005 Editorial Projects in Education

New tests in high schools? They have enough already.

I disagree with the title in this USA Today piece. Other forms of accountability do--or can be made to exist at earlier levels. So the same rationale for minimizing test in the higher grades applies to the lower ones as well. -Angela

Page 10A
New tests in high schools? They have enough already.
Unlike in lower grades, other measures of accountability exist.
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20051020/edit20.art.htm

Wednesday's big education news was a promising uptick in fourth- and eighth-grade math scores, but mixed results in reading scores.

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings says those “encouraging” trends prove that accountability through testing works. Now, she adds, it's time to apply more testing requirements to high schools.

Time out. Ask students, parents and administrators what's wrong with America's high schools, and “not enough tests” isn't likely to top anyone's list.

Spellings has good reason to retain faith in the federal “No Child Left Behind” law's annual testing requirement for grades 3-8, with results broken out by race and income.

For too many years, poor and minority children, particularly, were allowed to drift along uneducated. They dropped out quietly or graduated with worthless diplomas. With its stiff accountability, the federal law has done an impressive job of exposing schools that educated only the easy-to-educate students.

So why not expand the federally required high school testing from one year to three years, as Spellings proposes?

The answer is that unlike younger students, high schoolers already suffer from testing overkill. While a certain amount of testing is needed to help measure progress and identify failing schools, too much of a good thing will undercut public support for reform.

Consider the students at Fairport High School outside Rochester, N.Y. They take the five state Regents tests: math, science, English and two in social studies. Nearly all take the SAT college placement test. Half of those take the ACT admissions test. By their senior year, most students will also have taken two Advanced Placement exams.

Wait. There's more. The 50 students in the prestigious International Baccalaureate (IB) program take all the above-mentioned tests plus demanding end-of-course IB exams.

“We're well beyond being awash in tests,” says Fairport Superintendent William Cala. “We're over our heads in tests.”

In Georgia, students take “End of Course” tests in English, math, science and social studies in every high school grade. Plus the 11th-grade state writing test. Many also take the SAT, the PSAT warm-up to the SAT and those AP exams.

There are better uses for the $250 million a year the U.S. Department of Education wants to spend on more high school testing.

Tracking what a student took in high school, and matching it to testing and college records, would give principals a way to assess which course loads are most effective. Or, the department could help states follow the California example of combining a state assessment with college placement exams. That way, students get an early read on whether they qualify for college coursework.

Improvements like those would add value — not another burden.

© Copyright 2005 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

The Education Reformation of NCLB and the Crusade to Kill Public Schools

This piece is by Jim Horn, PhD is a very worthwhile read. He writes a concise, powerful history on education reform in our nation in order to demonstrate how the educaction system is the scapegoat for our economic and social policy failures. I like his use of the term, "corporate socialism." It effectively responds to the ostensible free market, pro-voucher supporters who say that public education is "socialist" or an "education monopoly." Read on and also visit Dr. Horn's blog, "Schools Matter," a new link that I've added as well.

Angela

Parks showed us the power of one

This is an interesting tribute to Rosa Parks. It refers to the internalized racism that frican Americans suffer and suggests that this is more a determinant of life chances than racism itself. I know that internalized racism has a powerful impact on us. However, since it cannot exist without racism proper, it should still be seen as a very dynamic byproduct of racism (prejudice and discrimination) that exists outside of communities of color.

On the subject of Rosa Parks, what should also be understood is that she herself was an activist and how she received training in non-violent resistance through the NAACP and Highlander in Tennessee. Her life and actions therefore suggests strongly the impact of activism and social, as well as personal, change.

I posted MLK's powerful Letter from the Birmingham Jail on my blog this weekend. Scroll down the right-hand side-bar to link to it. It's incredible the amount and kind of discipline that these early activists had to engage in with respect to non-violent social protest. They literally had to be willing to lay down their lives and not fight back. It's a real treat to read MLK's letter as it remains pertinent to these times.

-Angela

Parks showed us the power of one
Leonard Pitts, MIAMI HERALD
Saturday, October 29, 2005
'Non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as cooperation with good" — Martin Luther King Jr.

Her feet were not tired. At least, no more so than usual.

She always hated that legend, so let us, in this, the week of her death at age 92, set the record straight. And while we're at it, let's correct another misconception: It's not precisely true that she refused to give up her seat to a white man. The seats next to her and across the aisle were empty, vacated by black people who had already heeded the bus driver's command to get up. So there were places for the white man to sit.

But under the segregation statutes of Montgomery, Ala., no white man was expected to suffer the indignity of sitting next to a black woman or even across from her. So driver J.F. Blake asked again. And Rosa Parks, this soft-spoken 42-year-old department store seamstress just trying to get home from work, gave him her answer again. She told him no.

Her feet were not tired. Her soul was exhausted.

On Dec. 1, it will be 50 years since that drama played out in Court Square in the capital of the Old Confederacy. Fifty years since police took her away. Fifty years since black Montgomery protested by boycotting the buses. Fifty years since community leaders tapped as their leader the boyish-looking new preacher at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Martin Luther King Jr.

That moment in Court Square was the birthplace of the 13-year epoch called the Civil Rights Movement. You could make a compelling argument that it was also a birthplace of the modern world.

None of which Rosa Parks could have foreseen that December evening half a century ago. All she knew was that she was tired, sick of acquiescing, accommodating, accepting foolish white laws and white people who said she wasn't good enough to occupy a bus seat. Something had gotten into her that wouldn't let her go along any more, something that turned a lifetime of yes into an electric moment of no.

In the world born from that moment, it is not uncommon for white men to sit next to black women. Or to work for them; be married to them; even get arrested by them. Indeed, any list of the most powerful women in America is likely to have two black women — Oprah Winfrey, Condoleezza Rice — at the top.

Racism that was once brazen enough to demand a black woman's bus seat is covert now, a throw-the-rock-and-hide-your-hand charade, its effects as visible as ever, its workings mostly hidden. But for all that, it is now only the second most worrisome threat to African American life.

African Americans are the first. Because many of us have internalized the lies of inferiority so deeply as to make racism superfluous. We don't need white people to destroy us; we happily destroy ourselves. Destroy our families by exiling fathers from them, destroy our futures by declaring education something only white people do, destroy our spirits with a culture that celebrates all that is seamy, soulless and material.

This is the threat that troubles most, simply because while racism strangles aspiration, nihilism renders it stillborn.

And in the face of this threat, too many of us do what Rosa Parks got sick of doing: acquiesce, accommodate, accept.

Indeed, let a white man call our children fatherless, ill-educated thugs and we will, justifiably, rip him an orifice God never intended. Let our children say the same thing of themselves and many of us call it music and look the other way.

The lesson of Rosa Parks' life is that you don't have to look the other way. That night on the bus, she wasn't a movement, wasn't an icon. She was just a woman; one woman who'd had enough, who refused to comply any longer with a system that dehumanized her.

Her death reminds us that there is no number more powerful than one, no word more potent than no.

And no force more compelling than a soul grown exhausted enough for change.

Pitts can be contacted at lpitts@herald.com.


http://www.statesman.com/opinion/content/editorial/stories/10/29pitts_edit.html

Texas leads nation in rate of households at risk for hunger

This is a tragic state of our state. -Angela

Texas leads nation in rate of households at risk for hunger

By LIZ AUSTIN
Associated Press Writer
AUSTIN — A higher percentage of Texas households were at risk of going hungry over the past three years than in any other state, according to data released Friday by the U.S. Agriculture Department.

Between 2002 and 2004, more than 16 percent of Texas households were food insecure, meaning that at some point they had trouble providing enough food for all their family members, the USDA report said.

In nearly 5 percent of Texas households, at least one family member went hungry at least one time during that period because they couldn't afford enough food. That's the fourth-highest rate in the country.

Nationwide, 11.4 percent of households were at risk of going hungry during that period, and 3.6 percent of U.S. households had at least one member go hungry, the USDA said.

While Texas has consistently ranked among the top five states, this is the first year it leads the nation, said Celia Hagert, a senior policy analyst at the Austin-based Center for Public Policy Priorities, which advocates more state spending on education and social programs.

The news didn't surprise Mildred Wauson, director of the St. Thomas Center in Angleton, about 40 miles south of Houston. Her nine-church ecumenical program runs a food pantry, helps people pay their rent and utility bills and provides other emergency services.

Wauson said she's seen a significant increase in the number of families seeking help from their food pantry and twice as many senior citizens.

"You hear all the time about how the United States is getting so much better off and I'm thinking, 'Wait a minute, how about us down here?'" she said.

Texas was one of just nine states to see statistically significant increases in food insecurity and hunger rates when the USDA compared three-year average rates for 1999-2001 and 2002-2004.

An average of nearly 14 percent of Texas households were at risk for hunger between 1999 and 2001, and an average of 3.6 percent of Texas households experienced hunger.

Nationally, an average of 10.4 percent of households were at risk for hunger between 1999 and 2001, and an average of 3.1 percent of households experienced hunger.

J. Larry Brown, the director of the Center on Hunger and Poverty at Brandeis University, pointed out that the increases came at a time when the economy actually was improving. While more people are working, they're getting paid less, he said.

"People are constantly having to make decisions when they get their small paychecks about whether they pay their rent or medical care or put groceries on the table," Brown said.

Because people often can't control their rent, utility and medical bills, their food budget often takes the first hit, he said. The worst off go hungry, he said, while others buy food that's cheap and filling but nutritionally empty.

Another problem is low rates of participation in federally-funded food stamp programs.

About 2.4 million Texans received food stamps in August, Texas Health and Human Services Commission spokeswoman Jennifer Harris said. (That number spiked after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita as the commission temporarily relaxed standards for families affected by the storms.)

An estimated 2 million more Texans are eligible for food stamps but don't get the help they need, Hagert said.

Some people don't know they're eligible, Hagert said, while others have gotten turned off by the complicated enrollment process or fear the stigma of applying for help.

"An unacceptable number of Texans and Texas families are suffering from hunger ... and there's no reason why with all this federal money out there to support the food stamp program," Hagert said.

Wauson said churches and schools in the Angleton area are doing everything they can to help the center's food pantry, but she's concerned the support could wane as time goes on and energy bills go up this winter.

"We have put such a plea out to everyone for so long now ... that I keep wondering are we going to overtax them and they're going to say I can't do anymore," she said. "That's a great concern."

http://www.statesman.com/metrostate/content/gen/ap/TX_Hunger_Study.html

Colleges Protest Call to Upgrade Online Systems

This is pretty big news for colleges and universities. According to this NYTimes piece, b Sam Dillon and Stephen Labaton, "The federal government, vastly extending the reach of an 11-year-old law, is requiring hundreds of universities, online communications companies and cities to overhaul their Internet computer networks to make it easier for law enforcement authorities to monitor e-mail and other online communications." Forunately, Universities themselves have opposed this, citing the huge cost and rapid timetable for this to occur. Civil liberties, however, should concern the rest of us. You may read this article here.

We're failing: Texas is losing teachers and students with its high-stakes tests

Texas gubernatorial candidate Chris Bell offers a critical statement on high-stakes testing. -Angela

by Chris Bell

Friday, October 21, 2005 /Dallas Morning News

The Texas Supreme Court is expected anytime now to hand down its ruling in the all-important school finance lawsuit, and, as a parent of two public-school students, I hope and pray that opinion prods our governor and state lawmakers into finding a way to put more money into public education.

But even if we fund our public schools at much higher levels, we will fail to get the results we seek because of a broken accountability system that looks at one test score as the sole measure of a student's and a school's success.

Dr. Linda McNeil, a Rice University professor, calls this "Enron-style accountability" because it clearly shows how a well-intentioned effort to raise education standards for all schoolchildren has instead corrupted the curriculum, created a school-to-prison pipeline, left fraud unchecked and driven teachers out of the classroom. She likens the corruption of accountability to the singular emphasis that Ken Lay placed upon the stock price of Enron to the exclusion of other factors, such as debt and whether the production matched the propaganda.

George W. Bush was at his best when he spoke out against the "soft bigotry of low expectations," but the promise of the Texas Miracle has gone unfulfilled under Rick Perry. Texas students continue to lose ground to their peers on the SAT; students who do graduate are faring worse and worse each year on the state's college readiness test.

Mr. Perry thinks he can use tests to make our kids smarter. A test won't make you smarter, just like a ruler won't make you taller. Tests aren't the answer; they're the best way to ask the question.

I want our state to answer Bill Gates' call for a fundamental redesign of the high school curriculum to adequately prepare children for the 21st century economy. Education is the best economic development program ever created, which is why we should commit to making Texas public schools the best in the country within 10 years.

Education trumps the economic development benefit of a toll road or a tax break for yet another big-box superstore.

But Mr. Perry continues to back an Enron-style accountability system that holds kids back to keep them out of the test pool. This "ninth-grade bulge," which education researchers say is a result of high-stakes testing, has pushed the state's effective dropout rate to nearly 40 percent, tops in the country.

The sad fact is that most residents of our prison system lack high school degrees. The perverse incentive to encourage kids to drop out of school has created a school-to-prison pipeline that is a silent moral crisis in Texas. Incredibly, Mr. Perry was one of only three governors not to sign a national agreement by the National Governors Association to accurately track dropouts. We can't keep using the prison system to hide our failures like Enron used offshore dummy corporations to hide its debt.

Another unfortunate, if avoidable, byproduct of Enron-style accountability is the silent crisis of teacher dropouts. We have a shortage of qualified, certified teachers because 60 percent of all teachers quit within their first five years.

Texas pays its teachers $6,100 less than the national average, but it costs more than $13,000 to replace each teacher. This is perhaps the best example of Enron-style accounting. Consequently, we have more certified teachers not teaching in Texas than are working in the classrooms. We need to bring their salaries up to the national average and then empower them to teach our kids something more important than how to take yet another standardized test.

A broad consensus of Texans is agitating for well-funded public schools. Standardized testing is an important tool for making sure this money is well spent, but it can't be the only tool. We need to make sure this investment is better placed than the retirement accounts of so many Enron employees.

Attorney Chris Bell, a Democratic candidate for governor, is a former at-large City Council member and congressman from Houston. Readers may contact him through his Web site at www.chrisbell.com

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Fed up, pro-education candidates step up

TEXAS LEGISLATURE

Fed up, pro-education candidates step up
Believing lawmakers won't give schools a fair shake, some educators will try to take their jobs instead.

Rodolfo Gonzalez/AMERICAN-STATESMAN
(enlarge photo)
Education activists with the Texas Parent PAC hope to raise $125,000 to support candidates in the March primaries, said Chairwoman Carolyn Boyle, right, here with Treasurer Staley Gray. 'Our hope is that a typical contribution will be $5,000 to $10,000 per candidate,' Boyle says.

By Jason Embry, Robert Elder
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, October 23, 2005
WAXAHACHIE — At a recent Rotary Club meeting in nearby Midlothian, Q.D. "Duke" Burge had planned to deliver an energetic speech for his campaign for the Texas House. The day before, he was told that the club doesn't allow political speeches. Undeterred, Burge sat down at the club's piano and knocked out a five-song set that featured indirect jabs at the Legislature.

"Whatever it takes," Burge said over lunch at the Applebee's near his computer services business.

Burge is in his sixth year on the Midlothian school board, so he's no political novice. But he's punching in a new weight class, challenging 13-year incumbent Jim Pitts, the well-funded chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, in the Republican primary in March.

An impossible dream? In most years, yes, and probably in 2006 as well.

But Burge hopes to tap a well of frustration over lawmakers' repeated failure to improve public schools while also lowering property taxes.

Burge, in fact, is just one of about 15 candidates with education ties, either as school board members, administrators or teachers, who are planning to run for House seats next year. That's an unusually high number, and more candidates are likely to emerge in the next couple of months. Many are counting on unprecedented turnout and financial support from education-minded voters.

Beyond the Legislature's lack of policy solutions, some educators are infuriated by what they see as lawmakers' disregard for their opinions and contempt for how they do their jobs. In August, for instance, House Speaker Tom Craddick characterized the school system as a "bottomless pit" in need of reform as much as new funds.

"The difficult thing for all of us is not to take this personally," says Mary Ann Whiteker, superintendent of the Hudson Independent School District and president of the Texas Association of Mid-Size Schools. "You just walk through the Capitol thinking, 'Why do they hate me so much?' "

"Of course," she adds, "I think there were times where legislators thought we hated them."

All this is more than name-calling. Control of the education agenda in the Legislature affects how much money schools have — and who is going to pay more taxes as a result. The state ranks near the bottom nationally in high-school graduation rates and Scholastic Assessment Test scores, and it's in the bottom 50 percent in teacher pay and per-student spending. School districts are plagued by reports of cheating on standardized tests and concealing dropout rates, among other governance issues.

Long term, the health of the state economy rides on the quality of public education. The friction between legislators and educators raises questions about the chances for reaching consensus on the way forward.

School lobbying groups of every stripe prided themselves on maintaining a solid front this year at the Capitol. They fought off proposals for private tuition vouchers, a plan to let voters veto tax increases by school districts and a funding proposal they deemed inadequate.

But a political campaign is a more individual pursuit, and the emergence of the new House candidates has been far less organized. Education groups seem unlikely to unify behind them, considering that these candidates stress varying issues — to the extent they've laid out agendas at all.

View from the top

State District Judge John Dietz last year declared the Texas system of paying for schools unconstitutional. His ruling that schools do not have the money to meet state and federal mandates emboldened school leaders, who have borne the weight of legislative funding cuts and tougher state tests.

Legislative leaders entered 2005 trying to comply with the part of Dietz's ruling that told the school finance system to rely less on property taxes.

But they largely ignored his calls for huge increases in state funding, instead offering a smaller funding boost — the House wanted $3 billion more over two years, about a 4.5 percent increase in total funding — paired with education reforms that made school leaders nervous, such as incentive pay for teachers and requiring school districts to hold elections in November instead of May. School officials regularly lined up at meetings of the House and Senate education committees to assail the school finance plans, pleading for more money with fewer strings attached.

Rep. Bill Keffer, a Dallas Republican on the House committee, says he tuned out education lobbyists who said they would rather have no funding increase than what the House was offering. "After I heard about the 10th person say that, it almost became pointless for those folks to come testify before the committee, as far as I was concerned personally, because I didn't feel like they were participating in the process in good faith," he says. The Senate fought off some of the most controversial elements of the House proposal, such as moving school board elections to November and capping the amount of money that districts with extremely high property values must share with the rest of the state.

In part because of educators' objections, the two chambers didn't complete a plan during their 140-day regular session or two 30-day special sessions. That made a total of five fruitless sessions since 2003.

Keffer likens education groups to the Luddites, English workers who destroyed manufacturing equipment to slow the Industrial Revolution.

"I imagine someone sitting around, hoisting a mug of ale after busting the printing press thinking, 'Well, we took care of that, didn't we?' " he says. "Well, that lasted for however long it lasted, but it didn't stop progress."

House Public Education Committee Chairman Kent Grusendorf, R-Arlington, says not all educators opposed the plan. House members behind the plan included former teachers Dianne Delisi and Glenda Dawson, former principal Martha Wong and Rob Eissler, a former school board member.

At least one of the educators now seeking a House seat says he, too, found the leadership plan "acceptable."

Republican Kelly Hancock has been on the Birdville school board near Fort Worth for 13 years; he also owns a chemical distribution company.

"I'm a businessman, strong conservative, that happened to be involved in education for 13 years," says Hancock, who is running for a seat being vacated by Bob Griggs, R-North Richland Hills.

The parent PAC

Carolyn Boyle is a former PTA president at Doss Elementary School in Austin. For eight years she coordinated the Coalition for Public Schools, a leading voice against vouchers, which would use public money to send students to private schools.

Vouchers failed again this year. Even with that victory, Boyle says she became fed up with what she saw as a Legislature that did not listen to educators or parents. She and a handful of like-minded parents formed the Texas Parent Political Action Committee to dole out campaign contributions to candidates whom they consider pro-education.

The PAC has received donations from 150 people. Boyle declines to give a total raised so far but has set a goal of $125,000 for the March primaries.

"Our hope is that a typical contribution will be $5,000 to $10,000 per candidate, plus a group of parent volunteers recruited by Texas Parent PAC," she says. Though Boyle's anti-voucher work had made her a thorn in the side of many Republicans, she expects GOP candidates to receive much of that support. That's different from the approach taken for the 2004 primaries by the state's four major teacher groups, whose political committees stuck to incumbents or gave most of their money to Democrats.

In heavily Republican districts, though, the GOP primary is the only race that matters.

The groups that focused their money on Democrats say that could change if they find the right candidates. "As Republican party politics mature, we probably will become increasingly involved in Republican primary races," says Richard Kouri, public affairs director for the Texas State Teachers Association. The other group is the Texas Federation of Teachers.

"Let's just come up with some new talent," Boyle says. "Clearly, the talent that's there couldn't get the job done."

Grass roots

If Boyle is a familiar insider at the Capitol, Frank "Bo" Camp is a field soldier. On a Tuesday night early this month, Camp, clad in sweat pants and a T-shirt, perspires mightily as he sets up tables and chairs inside the sweltering Former Students' Association Building in the small East Texas town of Gladewater. Camp's wife, Carmen Camp, is a special education teacher in the nearby Longview Independent School District.

Both are also brand-new political activists. They are two of the founders of a group called No Texas Teacher Left Behind, which is holding the fifth in a series of rally-the-troops meetings, mostly in East Texas.

Sitting on a folding chair, Bo Camp thumbs through thousands of pages of e-mails the group has received since June through its Web site. "We can't even answer them all," he says.

"We're degraded; we're laughed at by legislators," says Bo Camp, a former trustee of the Teacher Retirement System of Texas. "It just blows my mind that those people feel the way they do about public education."

Two middle-school teachers in Gladewater, Jan Doerr and Martha Wright, established the group as the regular legislative session endedin the spring.

"We're full-time educators who decided that just whining is not our style," Wright tells the group of about 70 people.

No Texas Teacher's agenda calls for a $4,000 teacher pay raise, a cost-of-living raise for retirees, who haven't had one since 2001, and more state money for the underfunded Teacher Retirement System.

Showing a PowerPoint slide on the generous pensions for veteran lawmakers — a lawmaker with just 12 years of service can draw a $34,000 annual pension — Wright peers over her glasses and says, "Let's help these legislators reach their retirement goals" by throwing them out of office.

The group is trying to marshal the votes and financial strength of the state's 1.1 million active and retired educators — roughly one of every 20 Texans.

Mesquite Fire Department Lt. Chuck Tull is there with his wife, Susan, a fourth-grade teacher. He is challenging two-term House member Dan Flynn of Van in the GOP primary.

Voters know "we've not really accomplished anything" on education at the Capitol, Tull says as his wife grades papers nearby. "I think we're going to have a few fresh faces" in the next Legislature.

Fighting history

In 2004, all 12 Republican House members who had primary challengers walloped them, each getting more than 60 percent of the vote.

Republican political consultant Craig Murphy predicts that no GOP candidate would win in 2006 running against the party's education position. "I don't know what the major issue is going to be in March, but it's not going to necessarily be the same one that was a major issue in July," Murphy says.

Retired Lewisville school Superintendent Clayton Downing ran for the House in 2002, saying he would use his experience to improve the school finance system. Incumbent Mary Denny beat him by 19 points in the Republican primary.

Downing figured he had a strong support base because the suburban Dallas district included part of the school district where he was superintendent for 18 years. He said longtime friends who were active in GOP politics told him they had to publicly support Denny because she had the support of the party establishment.

"I worked my tail off and could not get people to vote," said Downing, who today heads the Texas School Coalition, a group of districts with high property values. "It was just really hard to focus in and get people to really give it the attention that I thought it deserved."

Downing said a challenger running in the primary "doesn't have a prayer" without unifying all of the education groups, such as those representing teachers, parents and administrators, in their districts.

But pulling all of those forces together for a House campaign is unheard of, he said. "I think it could happen, but I sure haven't seen it happen," he said.

Groups that present a united front to all of the legislators in the Capitol see their influence diluted when it is spread among 254 counties and 150 House districts, and the burden falls to local officials and teachers who often do not have an interest in politics, he said.

Challengers are bound to be underfunded, as well. If the Texas Parent PAC, for example, were to contribute $10,000 to Burge, that would be small beer compared to Pitts' fundraising muscle. In 2004, against a 21-year-old Democratic opponent, Pitts raised about $300,000 and won 72 percent of the vote.

But former Republican Lt. Gov. Bill Ratliff said the school community could be a force.

"That is the great unanswered question, whether this sleeping giant of PTAs, school boards and teachers will ever organize enough to make their presence known" at the polls, says Ratliff, who advises the Texas Association of School Boards. "I do think it's a sleeping giant, though."

What the Legislature liked, educators didn't

Proposals that leading lawmakers supported, and many educators opposed, during this year's legislative sessions. Included in broader school finance legislation, they ultimately died when the Legislature failed to reach a consensus on the finance issue.

Voter-approved tax increases

Legislature: Wanted school boards to seek voter approval before boosting tax rates beyond the state cap, arguing that it would give taxpayers more control.

Educators: Said the elections would hurt children in areas that regularly defeat tax increases; said other political bodies, such as the Legislature, do not need voter approval to increase taxes.

Incentive pay for teachers

Legislature: Said principals should be able to reward teachers with higher salaries if they take challenging assignments or if their students show marked improvement.

Educators: Teacher groups say incentive-pay programs concentrate raises in the hands of a few teachers.

November school board elections

Legislature: House leaders said November elections would produce higher turnout in school board elections, giving more taxpayers a say in choosing their boards. Turnout is always higher in November, when there are more high-profile races than in May. Senate leaders showed much less enthusiasm than their House counterparts for November board elections.

Educators: Said school board candidates, now elected in May in most districts, would be lost among the many partisan races held in November and would be asked by voters' groups to answer questions on topics unrelated to education, such as gun control and abortion.

Instructional spending

Legislature: Said schools should spend at least 65 percent of their operating budgets on instruction, up from 63.8 percent.

Educators: Argued that the mandate, without a significant increase in overall funding, would tie school boards' hands and trigger cuts in areas such as counseling, transportation and food services.

(Note: After this failed to clear the Legislature, Gov. Rick Perry ordered the Texas Education Agency to write and implement a 65 percent rule.)

New to the game

Groups formed in the past 13 months to promote education issues.

Texas Parent PAC

Headquarters: Austin

Mission: political action committee for "pro-public-education" candidates

Goal: Raise $125,000 for 2006 primaries

Leader: Carolyn Boyle, former lobbyist for Coalition for Public Schools

Size: 150 donors to date

No Texas Teacher Left Behind

Headquarters: Gladewater

Mission: "Restore respect" from lawmakers and the governor for public educators

Goal: Generate widespread activism and voting among educators

Leaders: Martha Wright and Jan Doerr, middle-school teachers in Gladewater

Size: Undetermined; group is processing membership applications and sorting through 4,000-plus e-mails

Friends of Texas Public Schools

Headquarters: Rockwall

Mission: "Strengthen the public's faith in public schools"

Goal: Apolitical public relations campaign and polling to boost public support for school system

Leader: Scott Milder, vice president of an architectural firm that designs school facilities

Size: 500 individuals ($25 minimum contribution) and about 35 business ($500 minimum) have donated money

From schools to the campaign trail

Candidates with ties to education are emerging at a faster-than-usual pace to run for the Texas House. Many are frustrated by the political stalemate over school finance. But they're not a slate of candidates in the traditional sense, and they hold varying views on education and tax issues. Other candidates are likely to emerge before the end of the candidate filing period in January.

District Name Party Education tie Incumbent
2 Graham Sweeney Democrat Boles superintendent Rep. Dan Flynn, R-Van
2 Chuck Tull Republican Edgewood school board Rep. Dan Flynn, R-Van
10 Duke Burge Republican Midlothian school board Rep. Jim Pitts, R-Waxahachie
48 Donna Howard Democrat Formerly on Eanes school board Rep. Todd Baxter, R-Austin*
48 Kathy Rider Democrat Formerly on Austin school board Rep. Todd Baxter, R-Austin*
52 Kelly Felthauser Democrat Substitute teacher Rep. Mike Krusee, R-Williamson County
54 Jimmie Don Aycock Republican Formerly on Killeen school board Rep. Suzanna Hupp, R-Lampasas*
63 Anne Lakusta Republican Formerly on Lewisville school board Rep. Mary Denny, R-Aubrey
72 Drew Darby Republican school site management committee Rep. Scott Campbell, R-San Angelo
72 Kevin Housley Republican Christoval school board Rep. Scott Campbell, R-San Angelo
91 Kelly Hancock Republican Birdville school board Rep. Bob Griggs, R-North Richland Hills*
98 Bill Skinner Republican Retired teacher, administrator Rep. Vicki Truitt, R-Keller
129 Sherrie Matula Democrat Teacher Rep. John Davis, R-Houston
133 Barbara Larson Republican Formerly Spring Branch school board Rep. Joe Nixon, R-Houston*
* Incumbent is not seeking re-election


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Texas schools should be proud of progress

The question remains. Why can't we have an accountability system that doesn't place the burden of so much of the change on the children themselves when the playing field is an unlevel one?
Angela

Sandy Kress: Texas schools should be proud of progress

05:19 PM CDT on Sunday, October 23, 2005

The news concerning Texas students is very positive, according to statistics released this week by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which charts performance by fourth- and eighth-grade students nationwide in reading and math.

Texas is one of only three states that made significant gains in fourth-grade math, fourth-grade reading and eighth-grade math. White, black and Hispanic students in our state are performing better than their peers nationally in each subject and in each grade.

As an active participant in Texas school reform since 1990, I'd point to three reasons for this strong showing:

•The leadership at the state education agency and Board of Education, with the support of the governor, raised the bar steadily over the past four years regarding expectations for students on the annual state assessments. Legislative leaders endorsed this increased rigor, both in terms of consistent policy and targeted resources.

•Texas educators, local officials, parents and students met the challenge by working harder and smarter, thus lifting student performance. Some naysayers resisted accountability, saying it wouldn't work. Others pleaded to move more slowly. Happily, most Texans paid them no heed, and, as a result, we are all the beneficiaries of this good news.

•The Texas Reading Initiative, promoted by former Gov. George W. Bush with bipartisan support from the Legislature, is working. Texas was one of only eight states to see real progress in fourth-grade reading results.

Yet even with this good news of improvement, we must face the sober reality that we are still far from our goal of fully preparing all students and leaving "no child behind." For example, 31 percent of our eighth-graders are below basic standards in math, and 28 percent of our eighth-graders are below basic in reading. These youngsters are prone to drop out of school or to do so poorly in high school that they face a bleak future.

We must do more, and we must do better. First, we must vigorously implement the Student Success Initiative to assure that all students complete the eighth-grade ready for a rigorous high school education. By succeeding here and taking other key steps, we can drastically reduce dropouts. And then, by adding higher-level work and expectations in high school, we can better assure that high school graduates are prepared for quality jobs or higher education.

Further, we must no longer allow schools to fail year after year without fundamental restructuring or takeover. Schools – and teachers – that bring about substantial growth in achievement for their students, particularly the disadvantaged, must be rewarded. Taxpayers, educators and the public must have a better and keener sense of how public dollars are spent in education so that what works gets more funding and what doesn't work gets less or no funding.

We must devote more resources to improving teachers' skills and knowledge and utilizing intervention strategies that are proven by research and experience to be effective at boosting students' performance.

The climb is not over. There's a long way to the top, and we must think and work hard to get there. But today, let's take a moment to celebrate how and why we've come this far. The lessons that we have learned and the satisfaction that has been earned from productive work are the best resources we have to finish the climb.


Sandy Kress, former education adviser to President Bush, headed the committee that proposed Texas' educational accountability system in 1993. His e-mail address is skress@akingump.com.

Some Allege Bias In Voucher Program

This is an unfortunate, if predictable, effect of the voucher program in D.C. It reveals how a parent with a voucher doesn't pick a school. It's the school that picks the student (with a voucher). -Angela

By V. Dion Haynes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 21, 2005; B01

Parents of students in the D.C. school voucher program generally believe that they are benefiting academically from the private-school grants, but some think their children have been stigmatized by teachers and classmates, according to a new study.

The study by the Georgetown University Public Policy Institute, released yesterday, was based on focus group meetings with 45 parents and 23 students in fall 2004 and spring 2005, only a small fraction of the 1,027 children who participated in the voucher program in its initial year. Now in its second year and with an enrollment of about 1,700 students, the program provides federally funded scholarships of up to $7,500 for low-income District children to attend private or parochial schools.

Although the report is not a scientifically valid survey, it offers insights about issues that parents think should be addressed in the remaining years of the five-year federal experiment, said Patrick J. Wolf, an associate professor of public policy at Georgetown and one of the study's authors.

"The study sends a signal to the broader education community what low-income D.C. parents are looking for in their education environment," he said.

Wolf also is involved in a separate study that will analyze test score results to determine whether voucher students are outperforming their counterparts in public schools. That report, which is federally mandated, will not be completed until 2007.

The authors of yesterday's report, called "Parent and Student Voices on the First Year of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program," interviewed parents of students in grades 3 through 12. Although most parents thought their children were performing better academically than they had at their old public school, some thought the students were being treated unfairly, the study said.

The federal voucher law and the policies of the Washington Scholarship Fund, the nonprofit organization that runs the program, require that the identities of voucher students not be revealed to anyone at their school other than the principal and admissions staff. But some parents said they believed their children's status had been divulged to others, according to the study, which did not name any of the families or schools involved.

"When she first got there . . . she was having a little bit of adjustment problems and the teacher told her in front of the classroom, 'If you don't stop acting like this, remember, you are here on a scholarship and we could put you out,' " one parent was quoted as saying.

Another parent told the study's interviewers, "There is elitism in the parent organization 'cause I went to a meeting and I was pointing out some issues and a parent just said, 'Why don't you leave?' "

Wolf said such comments came from a small minority of the parents interviewed.

Shirell Simmons, a voucher parent who did not participate in the Georgetown study but spoke to a reporter yesterday about her child's experiences, agreed that stigmatization is a problem. Her 9-year-old daughter attends Rock Creek International School in Northwest Washington.

She said that other children shun her daughter and that last year another student told her child: "Why do you dress like that? You dress like a thug. . . . You look like one of those hoodlum rappers."

Simmons said that the school has been unresponsive to her concerns. "I feel the administration isn't supportive of voucher students," she said. "They're treated as second-class citizens."

Josh Schmidt, director of admissions and advancement at Rock Creek, denied Simmons's allegations. "Voucher students are no different from any other student," he said. "We are race-blind, income-blind and religion-blind. We support every student in every way possible."

Sally Sachar, president and chief executive of the Washington Scholarship Fund, declined to comment on Simmons's case. But she said the organization takes confidentiality breaches and conflicts between parents and the schools seriously.

Sachar said the organization added language this year to its contract with private schools that specifically calls for them to follow the confidentiality policy. She said the scholarship fund also has established a citywide "parent empowerment group" to help voucher parents resolve problems at schools.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

Kennedy's La. School Funding Plan Is Criticized

by Lois Romano
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 21, 2005; A07

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), long a champion of liberal causes, has infuriated longtime allies by introducing what advocacy groups are deriding as a voucher measure to assist Catholic schools in Louisiana.

The bill, which was introduced in the Senate yesterday, calls for both public and private schools hosting students displaced by Hurricane Katrina to receive $6,000 in aid per student. Most of the private schools in Louisiana are Roman Catholic.

Although the money would be distributed by the school districts, liberal advocacy groups say the bill sets a bad precedent, and does not offer enough anti-discrimination safeguards required of public institutions that receive federal money.

"This is a voucher -- it walks likes a voucher and quacks like a voucher. There's just no way to get around it," said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director Americans United for Separation of Church and State. "The money ends up in the treasury of religious schools. And religious schools are religious all the time. It's not only bad policy. It violates the Constitution."

Various advocacy groups are pressuring Democratic senators to put the brakes on the measure, which is part of larger emergency recovery bill. Kennedy, the ranking minority member on the Senate Education Committee, introduced the bill with Chairman Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) and Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.).

The senators had hoped to have the bill passed by unanimous consent no later than next week, but a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid said yesterday that Reid will take time to review the bill and "talk to his colleagues about whether and how to proceed."

Republicans and Democrats have long been at odds over school vouchers, which essentially provide public money for students to attend private schools. Kennedy has historically taken a strong stand against vouchers.

The Massachusetts senator's staff insisted yesterday that the measure is not a voucher but a "pragmatic" way to get much-needed funds to private schools that have taken in many victims of Katrina.

"This bill puts the interests of the children victimized by Katrina ahead of politics and ideological battles," Kennedy said in statement. "It puts in place an efficient and temporary system to get the necessary aid to the schools without further delay."

© 2005 The Washington Post Company
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/20/AR2005102001961.html

Cuts Weighed to Pay for Hurricane Relief

I knew this was coming. -Angela

October 19, 2005

GOP plan would end 14 education programs, but savings would be small.
By Michelle R. Davis

Congressional Republicans have proposed cutting some education programs to free up federal money for hurricane relief for schools. But Congress didn’t get any closer last week to approving a federal aid plan, so school districts continue to wait for such aid to flow to their schools.

Rep. John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, the chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, this month proposed eliminating 14 Department of Education programs—not just declining to fund them, but repealing them outright. The $250 million in funding for the same programs was eliminated in the fiscal 2006 appropriations bill for the Education Department that the House passed in June. A press release from Republicans on the House education panel called the programs, which range from literacy instruction for prisoners to arts in education, inefficient and duplicative.

“We have a responsibility to help those in need in the aftermath of two devastating hurricanes, but we also have a responsibility to cut unnecessary federal spending elsewhere to pay for it,” Rep. Boehner said in a statement. Though Mr. Boehner’s cuts would be significant, they would barely make a dent in the billions of dollars being proposed for hurricane-related school aid.

Congress has passed $62 billion in general federal hurricane relief, but none of that money has been allocated specifically for schools. Though several lawmakers have proposed bills that would provide direct school aid, those bills hadn’t made much progress as of last week.

Bush Plan Introduced
Last week Sens. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., the former chairman of the Senate education committee, and Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., the committee’s ranking minority member, proposed creating a new federal agency to oversee hurricane rebuilding, including education efforts.

And in the House on Oct. 7, Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Texas, introduced a bill modeled on an education relief package President Bush announced last month. The Hurricane Education Assistance Act includes nearly $1.9 billion for school districts taking in more than 10 students displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The bill proposes to provide public schools with as much as 90 percent of their states’ per-pupil expenditures, to a maximum of $7,500 per student. The bill also calls for $488 million that could be used by parents who want to send their children to secular or religious private schools, with the same $7,500 limit.

The same day, Rep. George Miller of California, the ranking Democrat on the House education committee, introduced a bill that would provide up to $8.2 billion for one year to public schools damaged by the hurricanes, including charter schools. Some of the money would be for direct aid to schools so they could rebuild facilities and pay teachers and other staff members. It would also provide $8,314 per student to districts taking in students displaced by the hurricanes and provide money for after-school programs serving those children.

As Republicans looked for education cuts, Democrats in Congress pressed hard for immediate aid to schools affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, particularly for those in the storm-damaged states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas. Districts were closed, schools were damaged or destroyed, and thousands of students were displaced by the August and September storms on the Gulf Coast.

In a late-night floor speech on Oct. 6, Sen. Mary L. Landrieu, D-La., urged lawmakers to pass direct aid for hurricane-ravaged states before leaving for a weeklong recess. She requested that $15 billion of the money already approved be used for schools.

“Please don’t abandon the people of Louisiana again, the people of Mississippi again, and the people of Alabama again by leaving before we do something to help them in a direct and concrete manner,” she said.

But Congress left town for a Columbus Day recess that lasted all last week without taking final action on any aid plan for schools.

Rep. Boehner’s proposed elimination of 14 programs includes the $42 million Parental Information and Resource Centers, which help educate parents about their rights under the No Child Left Behind Act; the $35.6 million Arts in Education program; and $21.8 million in state grants for incarcerated youths.

To groups like the Council of Chief State School Officers, the proposed cuts would go too deep.

“We understand the budget issues that are facing Congress, but we’re alarmed that the ongoing debate is about cutting education funding,” said Scott S. Montgomery, the Washington-based group’s chief of staff.

The Budget Resolution
Most of the programs proposed for elimination by Mr. Boehner are funded in the fiscal 2006 appropriations bill for education awaiting a vote by the full Senate, said Joel Packer, a lobbyist for the 2.7 million-member National Education Association. The likelihood that the programs will actually be eliminated is slim, he said.

“A lot of the programs that could potentially be cut are related to those [programs] that need increases to help victims of the hurricane,” he said. “It seems counterproductive to say let’s provide more aid to education, and then cut it.”

House Republican leaders, including the Budget Committee’s chairman, Rep. Jim Nussle of Iowa, have also proposed reopening the fiscal 2006 budget resolution passed earlier this year, which provides an outline for funding mandatory programs, and making severe cuts there.

“That’s a huge concern for us,” said Tom Kiley, a spokesman for the House education committee’s ranking Democrat, Rep. George Miller of California. “We would strongly oppose” reopening the budget resolution and making significant cuts there, he said.

Minorities closing gaps, but nation's progress small in math and reading

The NAEP scores are out. To say the least, they're underwhelming—as you can see from Feller's summary below. The results do reveal the results of failed reform. I bet our states could manage these results at least as well without the mind-numbing high-stakes tests that children are forced to take. We need bold leadership to recognize the failures of current policy and to suggest, at minimum, more holistic forms of assessment. We also need to re-visit culturally and linguistically relevant pedagogies and approaches, late-exit bilingual education and dual language education included. -Angela

By Ben Feller, AP Education Writer | October 19, 2005

WASHINGTON --Black and Hispanic students are narrowing the achievement gap with whites in reading and math, but overall the nation's progress is small or slipping.

The 2005 scores for grades four and eight come from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the most respected measure of how students perform nationwide. The results are noted in both academic and political circles because they cover math and reading -- the two building-block subjects that schools are scrambling to improve.

Across the country, math scores were up in grades four and eight. In reading, fourth-graders virtually held steady and eighth-graders declined.

The strongest results came in math, where black and Hispanic students in both grades posted their highest scores since the test began in the early 1990s. In reading and math, blacks and Hispanics either shrank their test-score gap with whites or lost no ground.

That's significant because schools face unprecedented pressure to improve achievement by minorities under President Bush's No Child Left Behind law. Black and Hispanic students lag behind whites in access to quality teaching, college degrees and other measures of success.

"This is an encouraging report," Bush declared from the Oval Office on Wednesday. "It shows there's an achievement gap in America that is closing."

In perspective, minorities still fall behind by sizable margins. Based on their average score in math, for example, many black fourth-graders don't have the skills to classify numbers as even or add, or to determine the next number in a given pattern.

"The absence of really bad news isn't the same as good news," said Ross Wiener, policy director for The Education Trust, which advocates for poor and minority students. "If you're concerned about education and closing achievement gaps, there's simply not enough good news."

The goal of the test is for students to show they can handle challenging subject matter and apply it to real-life situations, a skill level known as proficient. Less than four in 10 students in both grades have reached at least that level in either math or reading.

In reading, almost no state improved its performance significantly in either grade, and some states saw declines. In math, several states got better, especially at fourth grade.

"Congratulations to the states that showed progress," said John Castellani, president of the Business Roundtable, an association of corporate executives that is campaigning to improve math and science education. "But don't break out the champagne yet."

A total of 36 percent of fourth-graders were at least proficient in math, up 32 percent from 2003. Among eighth-graders, 30 percent were proficient or better, up from 29 percent.

In reading, the news was less promising, if not deflating.

The fourth-graders essentially held steady, as 31 percent scored at or above proficient, the same as last time. Their average test score did increase by one point.

Meanwhile, eighth-graders got a little worse in reading -- 31 percent showed mastery over challenging work, a one-point drop from 2003.

Much higher numbers of students in both subjects showed at least basic skills.

The results in reading mirror a long-term trend in which 9-year-olds posted their best scores ever in 2004 but 13-year-olds and 17-year-olds showed no improvement.

Schools must do more to teach older students sophisticated skills, such as taking ideas from different places and drawing a conclusion, said Cathy Roller, director of research and policy for the International Reading Association. "We need to put as much emphasis on that as we are basic comprehension skills," she said.

As usual, the numbers left much room for interpretation. Education analysts said the country's focus on early math and reading was paying dividends. But "there's no dancing around the flat eighth-grade performance in reading," said Darvin Winick, chairman of the National Assessment Governing Board, the bipartisan panel that oversees the test.

Scores for minorities rose. Among blacks, 13 percent of fourth-graders were proficient in math, up from 10 percent in 2003, when the test was last given. A total of 9 percent of black eighth-graders successfully handled challenging math, up from 7 percent.

Hispanic children showed a similar trend, with 19 percent of Hispanic fourth-graders reaching a proficient level or better in math, up from 16 percent; and 13 percent of Hispanic students in grade eight showing solid math skills, up from 12 percent last time.

Schools reported whether students were white, black, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander or American Indian. Students who identified with more than one group were listed as "Other."

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said the core principles of federal education law, including annual testing and reporting of scores for all groups of students, were working.

In math, students tackled measurement, geometry, data analysis and probability and algebra. The reading test measured whether students could form a general understanding, develop an interpretation, make connections to the text and examine content and structure.

------
On The Net:

Nation's Report Card: http://nationsreportcard.gov/

Analysis Finds Gains in Edison Schools, But Model Is No Quick Fix

October 19, 2005
Analysis Finds Gains in Edison Schools, But Model Is No Quick Fix
By Karla Scoon Reid
Edison Schools Inc., the nation’s largest for-profit manager of public schools, is posting achievement gains that are on par with, and sometimes exceed, the gains made by students attending comparable district-run schools, a study released last week concludes.

But the study, conducted for Edison by the Santa Monica, Calif.-based RAND Corp., found that it took Edison schools at least four years to match or exceed those average achievement gains in reading and mathematics.

For More Info
"Inspiration, Perspiration, and Time: Operations and Achievement in Edison Schools" is posted by RAND Corp.
And for “conversion schools”—previously run by a district and turned over to the company to manage—student achievement dropped during the inaugural year. It took five years, RAND found, for conversion Edison schools to post test-score gains that at least matched those of comparable schools.

Founded in 1992 by the entrepreneur Christopher Whittle, Edison runs both charter schools and what it calls “partnership” public schools under contracts with districts seeking to turn around low-performing schools. Its whole-school improvement design emphasizes research- based curricula, collaborative leadership, and the use of data to track student performance and hold teachers accountable.

The company managed 103 schools in the 2004-05 school year, enrolling roughly 65,000 students. About 60 percent of those schools were regular public schools converted to Edison schools; most of the others were charter schools, while a few were managed under contracts with states.

“Inspiration, Perspiration, and Time: Operations and Achievement in Edison Schools” is the most comprehensive evaluation to date of the New York City-based education management organization’s school improvement model. RAND, an independent think tank, began the $1.4 million review in 2000. Its researchers evaluated state test scores in reading and math in nearly all schools the company has operated and visited 23 elementary schools to see how the model was working.

John Chubb, Edison’s chief education officer, said that the report shows that under the right conditions—clear lines of responsibility for the company and the school district and a supportive partnership—Edison can improve student achievement.

“A district needs to understand that it could be very successful or very unsuccessful, depending on how they do the contract,” he said.

Fidelity a Plus
The study, released Oct. 11, looked at data on reading and math for nearly all Edison schools and a sample of schools identified by the researchers as comparison schools.

It found that achievement gains in some schools managed by the company were ahead of those in comparison schools. The study relied on school-level data, rather than data on individual students, because student-level information wasn’t available for most of the districts included in the analysis.

From 2002 to 2004, the study found, the average proficiency rates in Edison schools increased by 11 percentage points in reading and 17 percentage points in math, while a matched set of comparison schools serving similar student populations saw gains of 9 percentage points in reading and 13 percent in math. The Edison schools’ advantage was statistically significant only in math, the report says.

The researchers say that the challenges faced by schools under the first year of Edison’s management appeared, in some instances, to be partly attributable to local opposition to Edison.

According to the authors, the schools that were more faithful to the Edison model, with a broad curriculum that included fine arts and foreign languages, tended to get better results. Edison schools also were more successful if they operated free of constraints such as teachers’ union contracts, the report says.

“Given sufficient time, achievement trends in Edison schools generally move upwards, particularly when the approach is faithfully followed,” said Laura S. Hamilton, a co-author of the report.

Yet the report concludes: “We cannot make strong predictions for prospective clients about whether they will achieve better long-term results with Edison or with an alternative approach. Nevertheless, Edison’s improving trends are encouraging, and some schools have clearly done well under Edison management, making it clear that Edison is capable of producing favorable results.”

Nancy Van Meter, the director of the American Federation of Teachers’ Center on Privatization, said the study shows that Edison schools have produced unimpressive results.

Edison has billed itself as “the complete product” to boost achievement in struggling schools, she said, but the report shows that its model is inconsistently implemented and falls victim to common problems in education—the difficulty of hiring dynamic leaders and creating a positive culture for learning.

The RAND report’s findings put another “nail in the coffin” of the education-management-organization improvement model, said Marc Dean Millot, the editor of School Improvement Industry Weekly, a Web-based trade publication that favors the introduction of market forces in education.

Vol. 25, Issue 08, Page 6

Task force working on classroom spending is e-mailed a link to pro-voucher organization

This is interesting. My sense is that this stuff is purposefully contrived. -Angela

Task force working on classroom spending is e-mailed a link to pro-voucher organization
Agency says e-mail doesn't indicate support for political group

By Jason Embry

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Tuesday, October 18, 2005
The state education commissioner's office suggested last week that educators crafting a controversial new rule for classroom spending consult the Web site of a political group that quietly promotes private-school vouchers and creating chasms between teachers and administrators.

Commissioner Shirley Neeley's executive assistant told the educators to check the site of a group called First Class Education before meeting to discuss Gov. Rick Perry's recent mandate that schools spend at least 65 percent of their budgets on instruction.

Neeley asked superintendents and representatives of education groups to help her hammer out the specifics of the new rule after some school officials grumbled that Perry's August order could cause spending cuts in non-classroom areas, such as transportation and counseling.

The school officials' first meeting is scheduled for Wednesday.

"So that you might have resource materials prior to the meeting, the commissioner asked that I provide you with the following websites," Patti Foster, Neeley's assistant, wrote in a Friday e-mail to a few dozen officials from school districts and education groups.

Foster included in the e-mail links to the Web sites of First Class Education and the National Center for Education Statistics, which is part of the U.S. Department of Education.

First Class Education is a political organization pushing states to adopt a 65 percent law. Its Web site includes spending data for each state and footage from television commercials calling for the law in Minnesota and Arizona.

Texas Education Agency spokeswoman Suzanne Marchman said that the message from Neeley's office was not an endorsement of First Class Education; she was trying to provide any background information that she could.

"It wasn't any indication she supports or advocates their political movement," Marchman said. "It's my understanding that the list of Web sites was not advocating any particular direction for the committee to go in, it was just for-your-information."

In August, the Austin American-Statesman obtained a political memo from the group that shows it touts the 65 percent rule as a conduit to other, more controversial changes. That information is not included on the group's Web site.

The memo touts the political benefits of putting the 65 percent rule up for consideration on public ballots. Chief among those benefits, it says, is the "splitting of the education union." Proponents of school vouchers and other education proposals championed by conservatives are often at odds with unions and other groups representing educators.

"The First Class Education proposal naturally pits administrators and teachers at odds with one another with monies flowing from the former to the latter with its passage," the memo says. It says that will hurt education unions because most have teachers and administrators as members.

The memo also says the adoption of the proposal can help make charter schools and private-school vouchers more palatable to voters since it could increase Republicans' credibility on education issues. Public school officials largely oppose vouchers, saying public money should not go to private schools.

The group's Arizona-based political consultant, Tim Mooney, has declined to elaborate on the memo's contents or describe its audience. "I'm sure the opposition has political memos as well," he said Monday.

Richard Kouri of the Texas State Teachers Association called the e-mail from Neeley's office "strange."

"I'm not sure how anything on that Web site helps the conversation about how the rule gets defined," Kouri said.

Doug Rogers, executive director of the Association of Texas Professional Educators, said: "I don't think (the e-mail) was bad judgment. There are other information sources that probably could have been included, and hopefully we're going to hear some of those on Wednesday." Rogers and the heads of other professional groups are part of the task force working on the rule.

Mooney has said he talked to Perry's office before the governor announced the 65 percent proposal, but he said it was Perry's idea.

Perry named Neeley, a former superintendent in the Galena Park district in the Houston area, to the commissioner's post last year.

Mooney said Monday that it makes sense for the educators working on the rule to read up on his group. "The plan originated because of the work that we've been doing, so it's natural that you would link to our Web site," Mooney said. "I didn't know that it was linked to our Web site, but I'm pleased that it is."

Texas schools spend 60.4 percent of their budgets on instruction, according to the federal center's definition. That definition will be the starting point for officials writing the rule in Texas.


Find this article at:
http://www.statesman.com/metrostate/content/metro/stories/10/18neeley.html

School Segregation Is Back With 'Vengeance,' Author Says

Check out his Harper's piece as well. The book should be great, too. -Angela
By Nick Anderson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 17, 2005; B06


In a Connecticut Avenue bookstore, a bespectacled white man sounded an alarm yesterday evening about the public schools that serve black children in Washington and elsewhere. Segregation, he said, is alive and well a half-century after Brown v. Board of Education , depriving many urban black children of opportunities routinely afforded white students.

This divide, he said, compelled him to write "The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America."

Jonathan Kozol, a former Boston schoolteacher, has written 11 books over four decades in a crusade to help inner-city children that government policymakers gently label "disadvantaged." His critiques of their policies are anything but gentle, as one of his better-known titles, "Savage Inequalities," suggests.

His latest has a new target. In "Shame," Kozol, 69, denounces the No Child Left Behind education law that President Bush pushed through Congress in 2001 with help from such Democrats as Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (Mass.). The law prescribes too much testing, he writes, and not enough learning.

Plenty of Democrats and Republicans still support No Child Left Behind, which requires annual reading and math testing of public school students in grades 3 through 8. But the parties split on whether Bush has given schools enough money to fix problems that the test results spotlight.

Kozol's message, apparently, has a following. At Politics & Prose, he drew a crowd of hundreds last month for a promotional event just before the book's publication. He made an unusual encore visit yesterday at the store's invitation, drawing another standing-room audience. C-SPAN cameras were on hand to transmit the talk on cable television.

"Sorry to be so grim tonight," Kozol said as he launched into a plea for "elemental racial justice." He added: "In the inner-city schools I visit, I never see white children. Segregation has returned with a vengeance."

In the Washington area, many public schools serve populations that are mostly white or mostly black, a split typical of what Kozol describes in his book through observations of 60 schools in 11 states. In Prince George's County, for example, 77 percent of students are black, 12 percent are Latino and 7 percent are non-Hispanic white. In many of the county's schools, the racial and ethnic gaps are far wider. That is also true in the District's public schools.

Kozol notes that some of the most segregated schools in the country are named for civil rights leaders, including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Thurgood Marshall, 51 years after the Supreme Court ruled in Brown that separate educational facilities are "inherently unequal."

Few educators would dispute Kozol's central contention: that many mostly black schools are in worse shape, physically and academically, than their counterparts in mostly white neighborhoods.

"The main reason I wrote this book," Kozol said in an interview yesterday, "is to inspire Americans to look very hard at the virtually complete apartheid in increasing numbers of our school districts -- including in Prince George's County -- and to address it courageously. They should ask themselves honestly: Is this the kind of country they want to live in?"

To those who point out that segregation today is not imposed by law, Kozol replied: "Whether the causes of school segregation are residential, social factors, economic factors, whatever they may be, segregated schooling is the oldest failed experiment in American social history. It didn't work in the past century. It's not going to work in the century ahead."

Kozol's solution -- not likely, he conceded, to be enacted soon -- is to repeal No Child Left Behind, establish universal public preschool for needy children, drastically reduce class sizes in schools that serve the poorest children (to 18 or fewer students per teacher) and give white suburban schools financial incentives for a new racial integration initiative with massive, but voluntary, systems of crosstown transportation.

Kozol said he wanted to spark an urban-school uprising. "We need a movement by people who actually get chalk dust on their hands every day because they spend their lives with children," he said.

One woman at the bookstore last night said she was already enlisted. Mary Findley, a music teacher active in programs for D.C. youths, clutched a copy of "Savage Inequalities" as she waited for Kozol's talk. "He changed my life with this book," she said.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company