Santa Fe/ NM Land Office August Lease Sale Brings in $7.39 Million
The Associated Press
Alamogordo Daily News
August 27, 2012
The New Mexico State Land Office says this month's sale of oil and natural gas leases brought in nearly $7.4 million.
The August sales included 26 tracts of land that covered more than 8,000 acres. Revenues from the sales go toward public schools, universities and hospitals.
The agency says the highest sealed bid of $466,140 was made by Ronald Miles of Roswell for about 163 acres in Eddy County.
Miles also had the highest oral bid-$2 million for about 640 acres in Lea County.
The next lease sale will be Sept. 18.
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ABQ/ High School Diplomas at Risk for 10,000 in NM
By Hailey Heinz
ABQ Journal Staff Writer
August 25, 2012
More than 2,000 Albuquerque Public Schools seniors, and 10,000 statewide, will have to retake the state Standards-Based Assessment exam before they graduate.
This is the first year students are required to pass the exam, and
- 37 percent of APS students who are now seniors failed to do so last year.
- Statewide, the percentage is even higher, at 43 percent.
Retakes are scheduled for the first two weeks of October for the 10,000 affected students statewide. Of those, about 2,100 are APS students.
Students who aren't able to pass the test or meet alternative standards will receive a "certificate of completion" instead of a diploma, indicating they passed all the necessary classes to graduate from high school, but didn't pass the exit exam.
Students who don't pass the test on the second try will be able to demonstrate competency in other ways. Specifically, state education chief Hanna Skandera said students will be able to use their scores on the ACT, PSAT, SAT or final exams in their core classes. The details and formal guidelines for "alternate demonstration of competency" will be released Friday, Skandera said.
APS Chief Academic Officer Shelly Green told the school board Friday the district is in the process of distributing students' scores to students and families. She said all students who did not pass the test will be contacted directly by their schools.
"Passing" the SBA doesn't necessarily mean scoring "proficient" on both the math and reading sections. A composite score has been set as the "pass" bar, meaning a student could be proficient in one section and only "nearing proficient" in another, and still pass. For this reason, Green said the district is encouraging students to retake both sections of the test, even if they passed one section.
She said the rationale is, if students can raise their scores in their stronger area, they can improve their chances of reaching the composite score required to pass. Green said schools will offer after-school help for students, teaching them test-taking techniques and reviewing the standards that will be measured.
In fall 2010, state officials decided to adopt the SBA as the high school exit exam, replacing the High School Competency Exam that had been used since 1986. That test measured skills at about an eighth-grade level, while the SBA tests students on 11th-grade standards.
The APS board raised concerns Friday morning about whether the test is a good measure of high school success.
Board member David Peercy, a scientist by trade, took an SBA practice test available on the APS website. He said he doesn't think the test measures the things students really need to know.
- "I have a really hard time believing that an 11th-grader who took that test, that that's an indication of what you know about mathematics," he said.
The PED does not release previous test questions, so APS has developed a bank of practice questions that have been released by other states, which use the same test vendor as New Mexico and which test the same standards New Mexico tests in 11th grade.
Skandera said a challenging exit exam is important for raising expectations in New Mexico.
"Really, this is our state's commitment to ensure our kids are ready for success," she said. "We spend about $27 million a year on remediation, and that's for the kids who go on to college. Let's ensure our kids are ready for college and career when they finish high school."
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Casa Blanca/ Laguna-Acoma High School Staff Receive $160,000 in Merit Pay
By Bob Tenequer
Cibola Beacon Staff Writer
August 24, 2012
Ask the question: Does merit pay work in improving academic gains at low performing schools?
Just ask the Superintendent of the Grants/Cibola County School District that question.
He will quickly say it does.
Kilino Marquez, G/CCS superintendent, said, "Across the country they are looking at models when it comes to merit pay, and does it really work, and is there data to support it?"
He added, "If they want to see how it works, come here. We have an example of how it works."
Marquez, along with Gloria Chavez, district assistant superintendent, and Laguna-Acoma High School Principal, Tom Trujillo, talked with teachers and staff and acknowledged their accomplishments in raising the school's grade from a 'D' to a 'C.'
The school is a participant in the "School Turnaround Specialist Program," which is in partnership with the University of Virginia.
- The $3.5 million program, during the course of three years, provided principals and administrators with the skills needed to bring about deep change in low-performing schools through collaboration amongst teachers and to share productive practices in improving student achievement scores.
- As a part of the grant to implement and accomplish the school transformation model each full-time employee received a 7.5 percent bonus check based on the base salaries of their contracts. The amount awarded to the teachers and staff totaled: $160,000.
Trujillo said academic gains were attributed to all the staff and added, "It takes a team effort, and I think we have the best teams in the state."
- "We all work together, the teachers, the counselors and the custodians to make this a great environment that is conducive to learning," said Trujillo.
He particularly acknowledged the work of the teachers for contributing to the school's improvement.
The principal said, "The people in the classroom are the most important people at the school. We have had significant gains because of you."
Marquez told the staff, "When the Governor of the State of New Mexico congratulates Laguna-Acoma High School, it is a great compliment."
The superintendent added, "What you have been able to accomplish for the children and for this community, is unbelievable. You had the foresight of what it took to transform the school. "
"It wasn't one person or one department it was a unified effort," he said. "You have taken pride your work and your community."
"One of the main things we talked about when we started this journey was the L-AHS staff did not consider themselves a family," Chavez told the staff. "This school couldn't depend on each other to get things done."
"The question arose, 'How can we create a sense of family?' the assistant superintendent said. "Now, there is an understanding that every individual that works here is a critical part of the family. The custodians, the cafeteria staff and secretarial staff, everyone is important here," said Chavez.
The superintendent said, "Not only have you put together a family, but have put together a system and a process that we can use across the district."
"My challenge to you is when this money goes away, will you continue to strive forward from a 'C' to a 'B' to an 'A.' We sincerely hope that your heart remains with Laguna- Acoma," said Chavez.
The principal told the group before passing out the checks, "I know all of you are professionals, and now how much you care about the students. There is no doubt in my mind that you will continue to step up."
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Alamogordo/ Academic Opportunities Academy Proposes Alamogordo Charter School
Alamogordo Daily News
By Laura London, Staff Writer
August 24, 2012
The New Mexico Public Education Commission held a sparsely attended public hearing Thursday for a charter school applicant that wants to open schools in Alamogordo and four other New Mexico communities.
The PEC website advertised the hearing as taking place at the Sgt. Willie Estrada Memorial Civic Center in Alamogordo, but it was actually held at the Alamogordo Family Recreation Center in a small room with a large appliance running - which made listening to speakers at the public hearing a challenge.
Five out of 10 PEC commissioners attended the Alamogordo hearing: Gilbert Peralta, Dist. 6; Vince Bergman, Dist. 8; Carolyn Shearman, Dist. 9; Eugene Gant, Dist. 7; and Carla Lopez, Dist. 4.
Shearer, who is also vice chair of the PEC, said the hearings - held in communities from Aug. 20-24 - are to get information from the applicants and public input regarding the charter school applications. She explained the hearing in Alamogordo was the fourth with the same applicant, so PEC commissioners would have fewer questions. The applicant, Academic Opportunities Academy, wants to open charter schools in Alamogordo, Gadsden, Las Cruces, Deming and Carlsbad.
Shearer encouraged anyone interested in further information to visit the PEC website in a week, which is when the transcript will be available for the initial public hearing PEC held with AOA in Deming.
Mark Casavantes, co-founder of Academic Opportunities Academy, summarized their plan. The other co-founder, Rex Parks, was not present at the Alamogordo meeting.
Casavantes said:
- some students do not succeed in traditional classroom environments, such as some children who are recent immigrants, homeless, in foster care, Native American and others.
- AOA will seek out these students and prepare them to have a self-sustaining career right out of high school, fitting them with an associate's degree in either nursing or computer programming upon graduation.
- AOA will offer only nursing and computer programming because offering more programs at the charter is cost prohibitive, and they felt those two were good selections based on opportunities available in the workplace. He said a charter school has to "pick a niche."
AOA has a finite budget, and salaries are a large portion of it. He said they can't afford a ratio of one teacher for every 10 students, so they have an idea to supplement their teachers with tutors. He said AOA is trying to develop the best system they can, and are revising their plan to resubmit to the PEC based on input they received at the hearings so far.
"We all have the same goals ... improving education in New Mexico," Casavantes said.
- AOA will implement dual-credit programs differently than other schools, many of which enroll juniors and seniors only in their dual-credit programs. Such programs are to give high school students the opportunity to earn college credits while they are attending high school and earning credit toward graduation.
- AOA plans to spread that out, so students are not cramming all of their dual-credit courses into the last two years of high school.
- AOA will feature extended days rather than longer school years to fit in all the programming. He said that way students will not have homework to take home because all of their schoolwork will be done in school. He explained many parents of children in more vulnerable situations do not get involved with their children's schoolwork because they are not willing or possibly not able to help, so the longer school day with professional teachers to guide students solves that issue.
- a lot of grading can be done by clerks, which will free up teachers to focus more on teaching. He said AOA classrooms will be in conference room style with about 12 students each rather than the traditional classrooms with rows of desks.
Following Casavantes' presentation, Dr. George Straface, Alamogordo Public Schools superintendent, spoke for APS. He said:
- APS is a first choice school district, and a common sense choice.
- APS has specific concerns about AOA's application with the PEC - first that APS had no communication from AOA explaining the needs AOA was prepared to address in the community.
- Alamogordo High School offers dual-credit classes - students can get an associate's degree in nursing, computer science or a number of other areas. He added it is almost a seamless program.
"We don't believe that the specifics they are proposing is needed in Alamogordo," Straface said.
Straface also talked about APS' close relationship with Holloman Air Force Base and three grants the base has recently helped APS secure to enhance school programs:
- $1.2 million to implement the Power Up project, which provides instructional support using technology in the schools and additional counseling needs for military dependent students;
- a $600,000 grant for advanced placement in grades 6-12; and
- another grant for Connections, an online academics program.
"They (Connections) have 80 course offerings and there's going to be more," Straface said. "... We just had a student sign up for Mandarin Chinese."
Straface said APS has retained all of its programs in spite of losing $4 million in revenue over the past few years due to lower enrollment figures. He said finances are a concern, and didn't think introducing a charter school to Alamogordo would help matters because it would take away from APS' enrollment.
- "I think this would hurt all of us just to benefit a few students," Straface said.
Straface said for students who don't do well in traditional classroom settings, APS offers an alternative high school, Academy del Sol. He said the district will soon offer "street academies" for those students not succeeding at Academy del Sol. He said APS already offers all of the programs AOA could and more, and those should be sustained.
- "We are in opposition to this application," Straface said.
Following Straface's comments, the PEC invited public comment on the matter. Only one person offered public comments:
- Carlos Hernandez, who read a letter of support from a special education consultant who is also a member of the Navajo Nation. The letter stated charter schools are a much needed option as there is a 90 percent failure rate for students on Native American reservations, and New Mexico should allow charter schools like AOA to thrive.
With no others offering public comment, commissioners then asked questions about AOA. Gant noted the letter Hernandez read, and asked how AOA in Alamogordo could serve Mescalero students given the great distance to the reservation.
Casavantes said the letter of support was new to him, as was the prospect of serving Mescalero, but AOA would gladly serve that community. Gant said AOA in Alamogordo couldn't serve Mescalero because Mescalero falls under Tularosa's school district.
Gant observed AOA wants to open five charter schools in five communities at the same time, noting in particular that all five charter applications to the PEC are the same.
- "Don't you think each community is different?" Gant asked. "Don't you think they have different needs?"
Casavantes said AOA planned to develop community advisory groups for each location.
Gant pressed that each community has a very different culture - Alamogordo is closely linked to Holloman Air Force Base, and Carlsbad is closely associated with the oil fields, for instance.
"Shouldn't that drive you to have different concepts for each community?" Gant asked.
Casavantes said there will be about 300 students per school, and he felt AOA's plan was a suitable option for 300 students in each community.
Gant asked if Casavantes and fellow founder Parks are looking to make AOA a corporate organization with charter schools all over the U.S. since they had applications in Minnesota as well. Casavantes replied they are mainly interested in southern New Mexico and west Texas.
Shearer said she asked many questions at the hearing in Deming and noticed many areas of AOA's plan are not complete.
"Because of the incompleteness I see, I can't support your application," Shearer said.
Shearer encouraged anyone who wants to sound off on the issue to submit written comments on the state Public Education Department website at www.ped.state.nm.us/Comments, adding that comments will be accepted for three business days following the public hearing.
A news release issued by the PED on Aug. 3 states:
- handwritten comments may also be sent via mail to the Public Education Commission, c/o Beverly Friedman, 300 Don Gaspar, Santa Fe, NM 87501.
- Petitions are only accepted at the public hearings in each community.
- Public input for each charter application will be accepted for three business days after the charter school applicant's PEC hearing.
- The deadline for input is 5 p.m. of the third business day after each hearing.
The release states PEC members will vote on the applications for charter schools at their next meeting, scheduled for Sept. 19-20 in Santa Fe.
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Santa Fe/ Public Education Commission Seeks to Tighten Appeals on State Charter Schools
By Robert Nott
The New Mexican
August 25, 2012
For some six years, the state's Public Education Commission has served as the determining body for authorizing the opening of a state-chartered school.
But in recent years, the leaders of several proposed charter schools whose applications were rejected have succeeded in getting the rejections overturned through the state's secretary of education. In December 2010, for instance, Secretary of Education-designate Hanna Skandera reversed a commission decision and gave three state charters permission to open.
The Public Education Commission wants to see that practice, which it feels is diminishing its authority, come to a halt. On Friday, commission Chairman M. Andrew Garrison asked the Legislative Education Study Committee to support legislation making the commission an independent entity - one with the authority to enact all statutory duties and responsibilities relevant to state-authorized charter schools.
That request comes with an axing of much of the appeal process, leaving it to the aggrieved to appeal the commission's decision at the District Court level.
"There are two major issues: the appeal process and the lack of rule-making authority," Garrison told the committee Friday, noting that one option is to put the state's Charter School Division under the commission's control to "make it the final administrative appeal authority."
- The Charter School Division can find itself caught between the Public Education Commission and the public education secretary during the appeal process, and can become unsure of its position or mission, Garrison said.
Last year, the two men said, the Public Education Commission fielded 21 applicants and approved 11. Of the remaining 10, three made appeals. Back in 2007, only 10 charters applied and two were approved. That year, the Charter School Division recommended to the commission that it OK the application of Cottonwood Classical Preparatory School, but the commission instead declined the application. Cottonwood Classical then appealed to Secretary of Education Veronica Garcia, who reversed the commission's action.
"In the appeal hearing, the staff of the CSD found themselves in the position of representing the PEC for an action taken against the staff recommendation," Garrison told the Legislative Education Study Committee on Friday.
Garrison was joined in his argument by Commissioner Jeff Carr, who works as a high school teacher in Taos Public Schools. Between the two, they estimated that about six charters have managed to win appeals by going to the secretary of education over the past six years - including the three that Skandera approved.
The state currently has 52 state-approved charters, including two based in Santa Fe: New Mexico School for the Arts and The MASTERS Program.
- It is fielding 14 more this year, including two that want to start up in Santa Fe: New Mexico Connections (Virtual School) and the Starshine Lisa Law Peace School. The 10-member Public Education Commission will make its final vote in a public meeting in mid-September in Santa Fe.
After Friday's meeting, Rep. Rick Miera, D-Albuquerque, said the Legislative Education Study Committee will likely discuss the potential of introducing a piece of legislation in support of the commission's mission in December, before next January's legislative session.
- "The appeal process needs to be strengthened," he said.
- "We've always had concerns that when you do a charter-school appeal, you end up appealing to the same entity that you started working with in the beginning [the Charter School Division]. So, is that really an appeal?"
Former Gov. Bill Richardson created the Public Education Commission in 2003 to take over some of the duties previously performed by the New Mexico State Board of Education, which was disbanded that year. The 10 elected members represent various regions within New Mexico and serve staggered four-year terms. Garrison and Carr's terms both end this coming December, as do those of members Vince Bergman of Roswell, Carla Lopez of Santa Fe, Michael Canfield of Albuquerque and Carolyn Shearman of Artesia.
Attempts to reach a representative of the State Charter Division were unsuccessful. The New Mexico Coalition for Charter Schools did not return a call seeking comment.
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ABQ/ EDITORIAL: Familiar Blame Game Hasn't Fixed Truancy
ABQ Journal
August 25, 2012
A decade ago then-Gov. Bill Richardson made reducing truancy a million-dollar priority. Four years ago new Albuquerque Public Schools Superintendent Winston Brooks set a goal of cutting it to 2.4 percent by 2011.
So much for the rhetoric of good intentions. In 2012 students not attending class is a huge problem in the metro area and across the state.
According to a study from the University of New Mexico's Center for Education Policy Research, APS' overall truancy rates range from 8.5 percent in elementary schools to 29.2 percent in high schools. Truancy is defined as the percentage of students with 10 or more unexcused absences in a year.
Individual campuses have numbers even more shocking - 23 percent of students are habitually truant at Atrisco Elementary School in the South Valley; 48 percent at Highland High School in the Southeast Heights. The Gallup-McKinley school district has an overall 48 percent truancy rate for all grade levels.
And there can be no comfort in the constancy that while the problem of truancy hasn't changed, neither have the recommended solutions. There is certainly a continued need for truancy intervention, for parent-administration conferences, referrals to social service providers, prosecutor visits to recalcitrant parents, etc. Some problems will always have to be addressed each new school year - the children who don't have clean clothes to wear to school, who don't have a parent who will get them up and out of bed.
But in many cases students just don't want to go to school. And putting up billboards around town saying school is mandatory isn't going to change that.
Brooks said back in 2008 that in addition to partnering with school board members, city councilors, county commissioners and the mayor, "we also need to look at ourselves and see what we're doing internally."
So what are districts doing to make school more interesting and available? If a student has a trade in mind, are there enough options for that? Are they accessible in terms of location and time? If he/she has to work to help support a family, is the district accommodating? The recent negative APS reaction to proposed charter schools certainly wasn't encouraging.
It's easy to blame parents and students for New Mexico's horrible truancy problem. Without a doubt, they deserve a good chunk of it. But in 10 years that approach hasn't improved things when it comes to compliance with New Mexico's compulsory school law, and it hasn't improved things for New Mexico's school kids, workforce, taxpayer base or economy.
It's time to rethink this problem, including how to make the product more appealing.
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ABQ/ OPINION: APS Engaging Families to Partner Against Truancy
By Robert A. Heckman [Families United for Education, also signed by Vernon Butler, Cyndee Gustke, Hahn Nguyen, Stephanie Varoz and Elesha Fentrow of Families United for Education]
August 26, 2012
On the front page article of last Sunday's Albuquerque Journal, "Skipping Class," Hailey Heinz cites disturbing data on truancy rates in Albuquerque Public Schools.
Proposed solutions include partnerships between APS personnel and law enforcement to address barriers families face to sending their children to school.
Indeed, many of our families face challenges to keep their housing, put food on the table and stretch their wages to cover the expenses of daily living. Many have trouble coping with myriad health issues such as hypertension, obesity and diabetes that come with a lack of access to healthy foods, lighted streets, safe places to exercise and well-paying jobs.
There are other barriers to education that often go overlooked, however, and in combination with the above factors keep families from flourishing.
The Albuquerque Public Schools Board recently passed a groundbreaking family engagement policy that, once implemented, can have a profound effect on truancy rates and community health. This policy, developed with a group of 400 family and community members and 43 local supporting organizations called Families United for Education, calls for APS to engage our community and utilize the histories and cultures of families as a foundation for education.
The four elements of the policy - safe and welcoming environments; building relationships and capacity between school staff and family and community members; expanded communication between home and school, and equitable and effective systems - lay the foundation for the kinds of partnerships that are needed between schools and communities to decrease truancy and eliminate what is commonly known as the achievement gap.
When every school makes local cultures and histories an integral part of instruction, students will be more eager to go to school.
When school and district personnel build partnerships with parents and other family members based on mutual respect, more families will help students do well in school.
And perhaps most important, when family and community members organize to shape their educational system in ways that are important and meaningful to them, schools and communities get healthier.
Families United for Education formally thanks the APS Board for adopting the new family engagement policy and looks forward to partnering with the board and APS administration on developing the procedural directives that will ensure the policy is implemented in each of our schools.
A new day is dawning in Albuquerque Public Schools that calls for equity, respect and collaboration. Let's welcome it together.
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Santa Fe/ COLUMN: Seeking Solutions to Nation's Math Problem
By Robert Nott [Learning Curve column]
The New Mexican
August 26, 2012
I still experience the occasional nightmare where I am asked to step up to the front of the class and perform some algebra problems on the blackboard - and of course, I don't know what I am doing.
I'm surely not alone. Of the 194,000 New Mexico students who took the Standards Based Assessments last year, only some 43 percent proved they were proficient in math. (Just slightly more than half are proficient in reading.) A recent New York Times editorial by Andrew Hacker - emeritus professor of Queens College, City University of New York and a co-author of Higher Education? How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids - And What We Can Do About It" - questions whether algebra should even be taught in the schools.
"Making mathematics mandatory prevents us from discovering and developing young talent," Hacker argues. "In the interest of maintaining rigor, we're actually depleting our pool of brainpower. I say this as a writer and social scientist whose work relies heavily on the use of numbers." He goes on to question whether "the math we learn in the classroom has any relation to the quantitative reasoning we need on the job." (He does make it clear that students should learn basic math skills.)
New Mexico teachers and math-game creators Scott Laidlaw and Jennifer Lightwood have made a documentary that also addresses the problems students are having with algebra.
- The Biggest Story Problem: Why America's Students Are Failing at Math is a roughly 80-minute film that, like Hacker's editorial, maintains that one subject - math - has the potential to determine a student's educational fate for better or worse.
Relying on national statistics, the film points out that:
- most 4th-graders manage to do a little better than proficient in math;
- most 8th-graders do a little worse than proficient, and
- by the 10th grade, nearly all of our students are fed up with variables, coefficients, constants and irrationals and start heading over the waterfall into the dropout pool below.
Unlike Hacker's piece, Laidlaw and Lightwood believe that math can be taught in a fun way by relying on pretend-play exercises (getting the kids to act as bankers, gold miners and outlaws in an Old West town) or via the now-popular math game Ko's Journey, which the duo of educators created in an attempt to turn kids onto math.
I like the part in the film where math educator and author Marilyn Burns admits she shouldn't be known as a math expert, since the only way she passed her classes was through sheer memorization and not because she understood what she was doing with algebraic problems or why she needed to solve them.
That said, the film sometimes feels like a promotional commercial for Ko's Journey. Google the film's title or Ko's Journey for more information on either; you can also find Hacker's editorial and the hundreds of responses it generated online.
The Biggest Story Problem screens at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at the South Broadway Cultural Center, 1025 Broadway SE, in Albuquerque. There is no charge, but donations will be accepted to sponsor distribution of the film in schools. Seating is limited, so RSVP to 575-224-1480. As for me, maybe I'll go and take an algebra class at the community college to help eliminate those nightmares.
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Washington DC/ Big-City Districts Bail on Teacher-Incentive Grants
U.S. Education Department revises TIF requirements
By Jaclyn Zubrzycki
Education Week, Vol. 32, Issue 1 [Edweek.org]
August 22, 2012 [posted online 8/27/12]
Three big-city districts-Chicago, Milwaukee, and New York-have terminated federal grants aimed at promoting performance-based compensation plans and professional development for teachers and principals.
Overall, the 2010 Teacher Incentive Fund grants to the three districts would have provided an $88 million payout over five years-nearly 20 percent of the federal program's five-year budget of $442 million.
- All three districts aimed to secure union support while meeting grant requirements during the yearlong planning period permitted by the grant, but none was ultimately able to accomplish that task.
In a time of fiscal austerity and attacks on teachers' unions, getting districts and unions to work together and agree on teacher compensation and evaluation is a challenging task.
Recognizing that challenge, the U.S. Department of Education has adjusted its requirements for the 2012 version of the TIF grant, which were published in June.
- The new set of rules notably does not include the planning period that allowed districts to receive grants without acquiring sign-off from their teachers' unions in 2010.
"We've been identifying challenges and moving forward to improve the program," said Michael Yudin, formerly the principal deputy assistant secretary for the office of elementary and secondary education, who recently became the acting assistant secretary in the office of special education.
"None of these [2010 grant terminations] is a surprise, and all could have been predicted at the time the projects were submitted," said William J. Slotnik, the founder and executive director of the Community Training and Assistance Center, a Boston nonprofit leadership and management organization that has worked with many TIF grantees to develop compensation plans. "There's a lot more that goes into incentivizing results than money alone. A lot of folks are applying to TIF but not doing the base-building you need to do to do this well. "
Evolving Priorities
As the Teacher Incentive Fund moves into its fourth round, the program's priorities have shifted, partly reflecting challenges faced by several grantees in the third round.
The National Education Association, the nation's largest union, said that while it was not necessarily opposed to performance-based compensation plans, teachers' needs and voices should be included in any conversation about compensation schemes.
- "We want to make sure folks have a clear understanding of the system, and that it's not imposed. If the goal is to recruit and retain the best and brightest, how does this compensation system help you do that better?" said James P. Testerman, the director of collective bargaining and member advocacy for the 3 million-member NEA.
But union support for performance-based compensation, especially when the plan involves student test scores, is anything but a given.
- "Even the best testing system provides you with just a snapshot," he said, pointing out that many educators teach subjects that are not covered by the tests often used to evaluate them.
Challenges in Chicago
Trust and collaboration-or the lack thereof-were at the core of the termination of Chicago's grant last month. The Chicago Teachers Union had a change of leadership soon after being awarded the 2010 grant in September of that year, and its current president, Karen Lewis, is adamantly opposed to the program described in the grant application, which ties teacher compensation directly to student test scores. The union never signed off on the grant application, though its previous president had worked with the district on it.
In a letter dated July 18, Albert Sanchez, the director of competitive grants for the 402,000-student Chicago school system, wrote that the district would terminate its grant as of July 30. "Despite collaboration with the Chicago Teachers Union during the development of [the district's] winning TIF proposal, the CTU has informed [the district] that it does not intend to support the TIF program. ... We are extremely disappointed by this outcome."
Chicago had been part of the first cohort of the Teacher Incentive Fund grantees. It had used the funds to implement the Teacher Advancement Program, or TAP. Many TIF grantees employ that model, which combines performance-based compensation, a system of mentor and master teachers, and professional development in an effort to improve teacher performance. Chicago TAP was the subject of two major research studies, which indicated that it did not raise student achievement in the city's schools.
Robyn Ziegler, a spokeswoman for the district, emphasized that terminating the grant meant teachers would not receive "enhanced feedback and reflection tools, peer observers, mentor coaching, career-ladder opportunities, and additional compensation to reward teachers for their good work."
The CTU's Ms. Lewis said that she was "horrified" by the teacher-compensation system proposed in the 2010 grant application when she came into office.
"It goes against what we fundamentally believe in, which is that education and experience count and matter, regardless of who tells you it doesn't," she said. "That's money they should never have counted on. We never agreed to this."
The grant to the Chicago school district would have been worth $35 million over five years. The school system had received $21 million, or three years of funding, and all of that was refunded to the U.S. Treasury except $469,000, which does not have to be returned.
Shifting Priorities in NY?
In the 1.1 million-student New York school system, on the other hand, collaboration between the district and the union was thrown off course when the federal Education Department determined that the district's grant application, which delineated a system of increasing teacher responsibility tied to increased pay, did not put sufficient emphasis on student test scores to meet grant priorities.
"The U.S. Department of Education indicated that this did not meet their model because our proposal combined compensation for performance with compensation for additional roles and responsibilities," said Marge Feinberg, a spokeswoman for the New York City department of education.
The 2010 program's "absolute priority 1" required districts to set up performance-based compensation systems tied closely-though exactly how closely was not specified-to student growth as measured by performance on standardized tests.
The New York City school district returned the $24 million it had received from its $46 million, five-year grant to the U.S. Treasury on March 31. The district was reimbursed $155,000 for expenses through the end of March.
Despite the fact that the district was awarded the grant, "we made it very clear with the district that they had to meet our requirements in order to get funding," said Mr. Yudin of the federal Education Department.
The district did not reach an agreement with the United Federation of Teachers and withdrew from the program. Representatives from the UFT and its parent organization, the American Federation of Teachers, did not return multiple requests for comment from Education Week.
But the New York City system applied for the 2012 grant, which allows districts to differentiate pay for teachers who take on new responsibilities, and Ms. Feinberg, the district spokeswoman, said officials believe their proposal would pass muster with the Education Department's 2012 rules for the competition.
The Milwaukee district's application for the 2010 TIF outlined a program based on TAP that also did not have the support of the district's union.
"We returned the prior grant because it required adoption of the TAP model, which was not a model fully embraced by our teachers, and which we ultimately found was not consistent with our vision of teacher-effectiveness efforts," said Tony Tagliavia, a media manager for the 80,000-student Milwaukee school system. The district had already been piloting a separate teacher-evaluation program that puts as much emphasis on teacher observations as it does on student growth.
"Both the district and META were surprised by [winning the grant]," said Bob Peterson, the president of the Milwaukee Teachers' Education Association, an affiliate of the NEA. But the district has joined with the state in applying for the 2012 TIF program. Even though the school system returned the 2010 grant, Mr. Peterson said, "many people are enthusiastic about the possibility of us getting that grant and completely revamping our teacher-evaluation program here in Milwaukee."
The district returned $1.2 million last winter; if Milwaukee's TIF grant had been funded for the full five years, the district would have received $7.6 million.
'A Tricky Balance'
Other grantees have also struggled to balance grant requirements with union and teacher preferences, even if they haven't had to terminate their grants.
- In Seattle, for instance, a collective bargaining agreement reached after the district accepted a 2010 TIF grant reflects some but not all of the grant requirements.
- In Massachusetts, the Lawrence school district replaced Boston in the state agency's TIF program because of difficulty reaching consensus with the Boston union.
"We're trying to think about how can we, as creatively as possible, still deliver on the grant and yet deliver on what we in Seattle believe is respectful to the educators," said Clover Codd, the director of the Teacher Incentive Fund for the district. "We know that if we don't have that partnership, we won't be able to implement this grant."
She said that despite the challenges in navigating between the grant officials and the union, the program had benefits. "I don't know that a system will ever be 'ready' for innovation," Ms. Codd said. "I don't think that pushing from the department was a bad thing."
Moving Beyond for 2012
Officials from the federal Education Department said that many districts had successfully implemented their TIF grants, and anticipated that no other grantees would choose to terminate their agreements. Even so, they adjusted the program to accommodate some of the challenges that led Milwaukee, Chicago, and New York City to withdraw from the program and reflect the results of TIF evaluations from prior years.
- The 2012 iteration of the Teacher Incentive Fund has expanded the components of teacher-evaluation systems to include extra compensation for new responsibilities, as in New York's 2010 proposal.
- The 2012 program also eliminates the yearlong period in which districts could obtain stakeholder buy-in, instead requiring applicants to produce evidence of teacher and principal collaboration from the start.
- While the 2010 grants allowed districts to implement the program in individual schools, the 2012 program requires that the evaluation systems being developed be applied to entire districts, in order to facilitate some of the systemic changes needed to make a performance-pay system viable.
"Differentiated pay is still a critical element of TIF, but we want to create greater opportunities to improve teaching and learning," said Elizabeth Utrup, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Education Department.
Representatives from Milwaukee, New York, and Seattle all discussed the broader guidelines for the 2012 grants favorably. "Hopefully, this program will tap into collaborative union partnerships to come up with a range of incentives to improve teaching and learning and won't be tied necessarily to what I see as a fairly narrow set of test-driven incentives," said Mr. Peterson of Milwaukee.
Milwaukee and New York were among the 120 or so applicants for the 2012 grant. The applications, which were due July 27, are being reviewed, and winners will be announced before Sept. 30.
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Westminster CO/ Adams County School District 50: Innovative Framework Showing Results After 3 Years
By Yesenia Robles
The Denver Post
August 27, 2012
After three years of stressful first days of school - with loads of new materials and curriculum - teachers in Westminster's Adams County School District 50 are feeling some relief Monday.
- "We had done all sorts of these things before but had never really seen the same results," said Sally Brass, a veteran teacher at Francis Day Elementary School. "One year you start with one thing, and the next year you were on to something else," Brass said. "I'm thrilled. I had hoped to live long enough to see this happening."
This time, the district stayed the course with what its calls its "competency-based system" that was implemented districtwide in the 2009-10 school year.
- Francis Day was one of seven schools in 2009 designated as a "turnaround," but its performance has enabled it to climb two ranks. It will start Monday as a "performance" school.
- In the same way, the Adams 50 school district said preliminary reports show it has moved from a "turnaround" district to one with "priority improvement."
Other measures are also looking good.
- Enrollment has started slowly climbing back up, and the district said its had no principal turnover this year.
- The new competency-based system in the district has eliminated traditional grade-level placement.
- Instead, students are grouped based on proficiency per subject and are allowed to advance to the next level as quickly as they can within the school year.
"Just because two kids are in first grade, they're not all at the same place at the same time," said Pamela Swanson, Adams 50 superintendent. "This is about moving kids on a content-level mastery."
"It has really elevated instruction in classrooms," said Oliver Grenham, chief education officer. "The teachers know what it is they want to see from each student to prove they have reached proficiency."
Program adaptations over the past three years have, among other things, created more content levels for students to master.
"The amount of teacher preparation and just the stress level has dramatically increased," said Melissa Duran, president of the Westminster Education Association.
This year, changes are minimal. One will allow teachers to customize the way they report student data to lighten their workloads.
Teachers who want to collect and track lots of data for a struggling student can do so, but if they need less data for another student who moves through material quickly, they can do that too.
"Our data recording had become so specialized that we had teachers spending incredible amounts of time recording and entering data," Swanson said. "I believe teachers should spend the majority of their time teaching. This way, it's really individualized."
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New York NY/ 6 Weeks to Adapt to America
By Kirk Semple
New York Times
August 25, 2012
Twenty-four days after he arrived in the United States, Mamadou Fadja Diallo, 13, showed up for summer school in Manhattan looking wary and confused. The building itself was disorienting: big and imposing, with polished floors, nothing like his school back home in Guinea. He was surrounded by students from all over the world. He could not understand a word anyone was saying.
In June, he had left his home in the West African nation with his mother and 12 siblings. The family drove to the airport and flew to New York. None of the children had been on a plane before, and only one could speak any English. They were met by their father, Abdoulaye Diallo, a Muslim imam who had fled Guinea in 2007 and sought asylum in the United States after becoming entangled in his nation's volatile and violent politics.
That first day of summer school, July 9, began early in the morning, with Mr. Diallo bustling Mamadou and 11 of his siblings, ages 5 to 22, out of their apartment in the Bronx and onto a subway train downtown to Murry Bergtraum High School by the Brooklyn Bridge in Lower Manhattan.
It was a difficult morning. "I was confused because everybody else was understanding what was being said and I wasn't understanding," Mamadou recalled, his father translating.
The Diallos were far from alone in their bewilderment. Their classmates were other young immigrants who, to varying degrees, were feeling the same sense of dislocation.
The Refugee Youth Summer Academy, as the program is called, was created for recently arrived refugees and asylum recipients. The academy, started in 1999 by the International Rescue Committee, a refugee resettlement agency based in New York City, tries to help its students find a footing in their new country and prepare them for school.
This year, more than 100 students enrolled in the six-week program, which offered an academic curriculum supplemented by creative-arts classes, field trips and other activities.
- They hailed from at least 13 countries, including Nepal, Burkina Faso, Iran, Iraq and Cameroon.
- Some had been in the country for a couple of years; others, like the Diallos, had just arrived.
- They spoke at least 17 native languages.
- Some could speak and read English fluently; others could not write their own name in any language. S
- ome had attended school in their home countries; others had never been in a classroom.
If there was any commonality in their experience, it was that their families had been driven from their homelands and were seeking a better life in the United States.
- The mixed-race father of two Russian boys was compelled to leave his country after suffering brutal racially motivated attacks.
- A Bhutanese family, granted refugee status by the United States, left a Nepalese refugee camp that they had called home for 22 years.
- The mother of an Afghan boy had suffered unspeakable treatment by his father and fled with her son to New York, where they live in a shelter for women and children.
The Diallos arrived late on that first morning. The other students sat at long tables in the cafeteria, mostly silent, nervousness and fear on their faces. They made no eye contact with one another and answered questions from enthusiastic staff members with mumbles or gestures - if they answered at all. One small Tibetan child, a SpongeBob SquarePants knapsack strapped to his back and a fedora on his head, put his chin on the table and seemed to disappear under the hat's brim.
The students were separated into six classes, grouped by age, school experience and English proficiency. Academic courses were held in the morning, with arts and recreation classes in the afternoon. The lead teachers came from the public school system, assisted by volunteer teachers and counselors, many of whom were college and graduate students in education, and some of whom were alumni of the academy.
Bassirou Kaba, 18, one those alumni volunteers, spoke about the importance of such an environment.
- "When I came, I didn't even know how to introduce myself," he said. Mr. Kaba, who is now a high school senior, recalled his first few days at the academy two years ago, shortly after he arrived from Abidjan, Ivory Coast, where his father had been murdered in the country's political violence. "I felt really good here because nobody laughed at me," he said.
One of the main goals of the academy is to acculturate the students to the American school system. All intend to enroll at schools in New York City next month; but the administrators and teachers tried to set realistic goals.
- "I wasn't going to send them out speaking fluent English," explained Matthew Tully, the upper school English teacher. "I was going to get them to a place where they could have the confidence to talk."
The Diallos were spread across five of the six classes, and the faculty initially could not tell how much schooling they had received in Guinea. Most of them spoke at least some French in addition to their native tongue of Fulani, but the two youngest children - Ramatoulaye, 5, and Aissata, 6 - spoke no French and did not know how to hold a pencil or a crayon properly. Ramatoulaye, in a pink frilly dress and gold-colored sandals, spent much of the first day in tears. A few days into the program, the faculty deduced that one of the Diallo brothers in high school was partly deaf.
Mamadou, placed in the junior high class, seemed particularly withdrawn and adrift. He said almost nothing, never raised his hand to answer a question and participated in collective activities only reluctantly. His face was perpetually cast in sternness.
In an English class on the second day, Mr. Tully had all the students stand in front of their desks. "Take a step forward if you like drawing!" he beckoned. The students leapt forward enthusiastically, even those who didn't speak English. Mamadou, however, did not move and made no attempt to catch up with the others.
The staff at the International Rescue Committee, which provided services to about 1,200 New Yorkers last year, was familiar with most of the families in the program. Many had resettled in the United States with help from the organization. But the Diallos had come to the organization's attention so recently that staff members had not had time to get to know them. The academy's teachers were learning on the fly who was sitting in their classrooms.
Mr. Diallo refused to discuss his difficulties in Guinea except to say that the horrors he suffered were sufficient to drive him out of the country, separating him for years from his children. But family members offered a picture of their life back home. They had lived in a large house in Conakry, where, in addition to his religious duties, Mr. Diallo ran a clothing-import business. He had his 13 children with five women.
He settled in New York City in 2007 and petitioned for visas for his children and wife under a law that allows those who have received asylum to bring close family members to the United States. While he waited, Mr. Diallo supported himself and his family in Guinea by working as a dishwasher at an upscale restaurant in SoHo.
On June 15, his children, accompanied by his wife, Oumou, arrived in New York. Several of the children were essentially meeting a stranger: Ramatoulaye was only 2 months old when Mr. Diallo left West Africa. The family moved into a subsidized three-bedroom apartment on the third floor of a walk-up building in the Norwood section of the Bronx, near Van Cortlandt Park.
In an interview, Tiguidanke, 22, Mr. Diallo's eldest daughter and the only one of his children who did not attend the summer academy, said the transition had been dizzying for many of her younger siblings. It was a little easier for her: She had grown up with her mother and grandmother, away from her siblings, in Sierra Leone, where she learned English and attended college.
"I don't think most of them know where they are right now," she said early this month, while sitting on a small couch in the family's living room. The apartment was otherwise bare, except for a small wooden table with no chairs and several sets of bunk beds. "But they look like they're coping," she continued. "They're getting acquainted."
AS the summer unfolded, students settled quickly into their routines and the academy's classroom scenes came to resemble those at a more typical school. Children formed friendships and alliances, sometimes brokered along language and cultural lines. French-speaking Guineans found comfort in the company of French-speaking Cameroonians and Ivorians. Refugees of Tibetan and Bhutanese descent spoke to each other in Nepali.
But teachers also sought to shake up those cultural cliques.
"New class rule: You must sit with someone from a different country," said a sign posted in one classroom. The sign was later amended to discourage students who spoke the same language from sitting together.
The Diallos adjusted slowly but steadily; their teachers celebrated each breakthrough.
Ramatoulaye, the youngest Diallo, remained mostly quiet for the next few days. But at the end of the first week, she stood up during lunch in the cafeteria and spontaneously started to dance in front of her classmates, said Xuefei Han, an assistant teacher in the lower school.
By the fifth week, she and Aissata, her sister and classmate, had learned their colors and shapes, were talkative and active, and were putting their hands up in class in response to questions - even if they did not know the answer.
Ramatoulaye also started to bicker with another classmate, a Pakistani girl. But Ms. Han said she did not view that development as entirely negative. "Where before they might conceal their emotions," Ms. Han said, "they now feel more comfortable showing them."
An older sister, Fatoumata, 10, was also seized by shyness during the first couple of weeks of the academy. But a pivotal moment came during the third week, when she mustered the courage to raise her hand and ask the teacher, in English, if she could use the bathroom.
"It almost made me cry," recalled Barbara Cvenic, the assistant teacher of Fatoumata's junior high school class. "This was a victory, having that confidence to ask for something you really need instead of being uncomfortable all day."
Mamadou remained among the most withdrawn of the academy's students. But in a soccer match during a field trip to Central Park at the end of the first week, he briefly came alive, aggressively playing both ends of the field and demonstrating deft ball-handling skills. He played without uttering a sound, however - until about 15 minutes into the game, when he burst through a scrum of defenders and blasted a shot past a bewildered goalie.
Mamadou yelled in celebration and sprinted in a victorious semicircle across the field, smiling for the first time all day as his teammates swarmed him in congratulations. "He's from my country!" another Guinean student, Djely Bacar Kouyate, exclaimed.
Just as suddenly, however, Mamadou's smile disappeared and he sank into himself, crossing his arms tightly around his body, as if embarrassed by his outburst.
Ms. Cvenic, his assistant teacher, said a particularly significant moment for Mamadou came during the fifth week.
He had been especially reluctant that week to participate in the creative-arts classes, she said. But one day, while the others were taking a dance class, he approached Ms. Cvenic with a book "and gestured for us to read together," she recalled. This was a boy, she pointed out, who had avoided eye contact with her for the first three weeks.
"I was floored," she said.
The two sat outside the classroom, and Ms. Cvenic read aloud with him. These sessions became a regular feature of their remaining afternoons.
Sailesh Naidu, the academy's principal, said these seemingly small steps were "big victories" for the students.
"What they've had to battle in order to raise their hand in class, in order to sing a song with their classmates, in order to get up and dance on stage, in order to take an exam, these are huge things that they have to face, and they're by no means small battles," Mr. Naidu said. "Every day these victories are meaningful to them in ways that are immeasurable."
The academy drew to a close on Aug. 17 with a graduation ceremony. "There will be some tears," Eleanor Oxholm, the academy's program coordinator, had predicted several days earlier. Indeed, as the students braced for their transition into other schools, it was also a time of reflection for the teachers.
"Look, they're going to have a very tough time, but at least they had a soft landing," said Livia Rurarz-Huygens, an assistant teacher in the upper school, quickly adding: "And it's not even a soft landing." The children have had to contend with a new country and with classmates from different cultures speaking different languages, she pointed out. "But at least it's a more gentle entry," she said.
All of the academy's students were planning to attend schools in the city next month.
- High school students who spoke limited English would probably attend specialized schools for English-language learners.
- And the International Rescue Committee would work to place primary and junior high school students with limited English in schools with strong programs in English as a second language, Mr. Naidu said.
- The organization would also assign academic coaches to more than 70 students and help serve as intermediaries between the students, their schools and their parents.
With "Pomp and Circumstance" playing, and with parents and donors to the program in attendance, the students, hopped up on excitement and graduation-day candy, filed in.
"Coming to a new country, learning a new language, making new friends: That's really scary," Mr. Naidu said in a speech to the students. "But you did it."
Student dance, music and drama performances followed, each punctuated by wild clapping and euphoric hooting by classmates.
The eldest of the Diallos, Thierno, 22, read a poem in French that he had written and presented to Ms. Oxholm. ("He just came up to me one day and said, 'Miss Eleanor, I wrote this,' " she recalled.) Called "Prayer Poem," it was a paean to the International Rescue Committee and to the enduring hope of the refugee."The sun is calling its children/To work! To work! To work!" he wrote. "Tomorrow's rainbow is not unwell./Bless you!"
As the ceremony ended, the students and faculty members clustered in the aisles in a knot of embraces and tears. Even Mamadou shed his usual stoicism and broke down. "When I leave here," he murmured sadly in French, "I'll no longer be able to see my friends." The friends he named were teachers. He tried to hide behind a pair of sunglasses, but he could not stop weeping, digging his fingers behind the frames to drag away the tears.
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