Clovis/ Middle School Redistricting Plan Approved
By Benna Sayyed. Staff Writer
Clovis News Journal
August 28, 2012
The Clovis Municipal Schools board of education voted unanimously Tuesday for a redistricting option to fill the city's new middle school that kept students from the elementary feeder schools together as much as possible.
Option C was selected from four options considered by the board and members of the public July 24 and Aug. 2.
- The mission of redistricting was based on keeping elementary school classmates together and balancing ethnicity when W.D. Gattis Middle School opens in August 2013.
- All the redistricting plans included shifting students from Yucca and Marshall middle schools to the new facility.
W.D. Gattis Middle School, located at the corner of Wilhite and Thornton on the city's north side, was added to address a growing student population in district's grade schools. The move includes shifting sixth-graders from the district's 12 elementary schools to middle school, which now houses seventh- and eighth-graders..
Option C has long been favored by the board.
- "Each of these board members had to make up their own mind but they were each with us at each of the meetings," Clovis Municipal Schools Superintendent Terry Myers said. "As we looked at the options there were even comments from the people there that option C appeared to be the best option."
Myers, who recommended option C, believes the vast majority of parents will be happy with the board's decision.
School board president Max Best believes option C was the best way for the board to address the redistricting issue but was concerned that the board may have to revisit the issue in the future.
Best believes new subdivisions being developed in northeast Clovis such as Almond Ranch and Sandstone could cause overcrowding at Yucca Middle School at some point, which could necessitate redistricting in two or three years.
"I think it (option C) made the most sense as far as recognizing the existing school boundaries and how our city is growing right now, but we may have to revisit the issue," Best said.
View the redistricting options at the Clovis Municipal Schools website at http://www.cms.k12.nm.us/
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Washington DC/ New Laws, Programs Expand E-Learning Options
Several states now require districts to give students more choices
By Michelle R. Davis
Education Week, Vol. 32, Issue 2 [Edweek.org]
August 29, 2012
- Lawmakers in Utah recently mandated that school districts allow high school students to take online courses from state-approved providers.
- In Florida, large districts must give students online-course options from at least three different providers.
- Recent legislation in Georgia altered the funding structure for students who take virtual courses; the action provides an incentive for districts to encourage students to try online classes.
In recent years, several states have enacted laws that require more choices for students who want to try taking courses online, outside the offerings of brick-and-mortar school districts. In some cases, such legislation-as in Florida and Utah-is a companion to requirements that students take at least one online course before graduating from high school.
The new reality of such requirements, however, means that districts are often facing a significant change in the way they provide options to students.
- In some places, the legislation has even introduced a level of competition among providers-which sometimes are the districts themselves-in an effort to boost the quality of offerings.
- At times, the measures have spawned new methods of cooperation and collaboration.
"States are starting to recognize there are a variety of ways that online courses can be provided, and there's a desire to make sure students can access those," said Matthew Wicks, the chief operating officer for the International Association for K-12 Online Learning, or iNACOL, in Vienna, Va. "There's now a very strong motivation to provide choice options, which is certainly very different from the dominant way things are currently set up."
Utah state lawmakers adopted legislation in 2011 mandating that high school students be permitted to take individual online courses from any local education agency in the state, said Sean Thomas, an audit and finance specialist for the state office of education. But it's up to students and their parents to seek out the options and request a course.
- "This bill really put the control in the hands of the parents and the students to go to their district or charter school and say, 'I want to take courses in this online program,' " Mr. Thomas said.
The state pays a fee, which varies based on the type of course, to the provider; the average one-credit course is $549, said Cory Kanth, a statewide online education program specialist for the Utah education department. The fee spurred many districts to seek out ways to keep their students in-house, Ms. Kanth said, and since the law's enactment, some districts have formed consortia in an effort to attract students seeking online courses.
- "A really positive outcome of this law is that, as a result, districts are developing their own programs, giving students a lot more options," she said.
That's what happened in the 66,000-student Davis school district in Farmington, Utah. The district formed a coalition with seven other districts to provide online education to students, said Sue Winkler, the district's online schools administrator, who also oversees the Utah Students Connect consortium.
- "When the law came through, there was a group [of districts] that got together to figure out how to use what we already had," she said. "We realized we already had great teachers and great curricula here."
Through the consortium,
- each district contributes teachers, time, and curricula, and no money changes hands for services.
- The contributions are based on a percentage of students from each district using the consortium's resources.
- The consortium has only been around for one school year, but so far has worked well, according to Ms. Winkler, who pointed out that it has had an added benefit: the collaboration with educators from other districts.
During the 2011-12 school year, 1,300 students took courses through the consortium. Only eight students went outside the consortium to seek out other online-course providers. "So really, [the consortium] is doing what was intended," Ms. Winkler said.
Florida's Growing Options
Florida in the past few years has passed numerous laws boosting online learning, including a requirement that students take at least one online course before graduation; over time, state lawmakers have made it easier to do just that.
In addition to opening the door for the state's largest virtual school, the Florida Virtual School, to provide online courses to students in elementary through high school, the state has forbidden districts to deny a student access to a FLVS class-even if the district offers the same one-and a district may not limit the number of classes a student can take through FLVS.
But students' choices aren't restricted to FLVS, the largest state-sponsored virtual school in the country, which had nearly 260,000 half-credit enrollments during the 2011-12 school year.
- Florida's larger districts must give students at least three options for providers of online courses, said Patricia Levesque, the executive director of the Foundation for Excellence in Education, a Tallahassee-based organization founded by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
One of those options is often the districts themselves, FLVS, or one of a handful of other providers approved by the state, said Sally Roberts, an educational policy consultant for the Florida education department. The goal was to give students more online educational options, but the enactment of the requirements in 2011 didn't prompt a huge surge in online enrollments, Ms. Roberts said. "It wasn't like the top blew off a volcano," she said, though online enrollments have continued to rise.
At first, Ms. Roberts said, districts were concerned about meeting the requirements. However, "as districts gain experience, they've embraced this," she said.
Melissa Carr, the coordinator of online learning for the 60,000-student Volusia County, Fla. schools, said that in the past her district did offer limited online options, which have expanded since the passage of the new online-choice laws.
- The district has contracted with the online-course provider Compass Learning, based in Austin, Texas, to build the district's own courses for a future option, but currently offers online courses through FLVS, for-profit course provider K-12 Inc., and
- the Pasco eSchool, a virtual school operated by the 67,000-student Pasco County district, based in Land O'Lakes, Fla.
The Volusia County district is also trying to satisfy students who want some online learning by creating a new pilot program for high school focused on blended learning, which mixes online learning and face-to-face instruction. In the 2012-13 school year, the district will be trying to extend the reach of outstanding teachers through technology in an effort have them work with a greater number of students, Ms. Carr said.
The law "has given us a little catalyst to have perhaps some more freedom and some more ambitious goals," she said.
Recruiting Virtual Students
Online-choice legislation may have another consequence as well, one that is just starting to percolate in Florida districts, said Ms. Levesque of the Foundation for Excellence in Education.
Part of the law says that districts can't bar their students from seeking out online courses from other districts.
- "Kids can take virtual courses across district lines," Ms. Levesque said. "Some districts are just starting to understand they can now recruit students to their district by offering innovative courses online."
Adam Emerson, a school choice analyst for the Washington-based Thomas B. Fordham Institute, said online-choice legislation over the past few years has had a direct impact on offerings for students, particularly in Florida.
"We've seen a lot more efforts to customize education and to think of virtual school as less of a unitary thing, or just one option," he said. "You're seeing a greater menu of options opening up for students in Florida to get an online education."
But, of course, in most cases, wherever the student goes, the money follows.
So in Georgia, when lawmakers wanted the option of online courses to be seen as positive-and not a penalty-for school districts, they passed new legislation. The law, which takes effect for the 2012-13 school year, means districts lose significantly less money when students take courses through virtual schools.
- Typically, districts are paid between $360 and $800 per student, per course, said Bob Swiggum, the chief information officer for the Georgia education department, but the Georgia Virtual School needs only about $250 to teach each course.
- The new legislation allows districts to keep the difference when a student takes an online class, Mr. Swiggum said.
The state-run Georgia Virtual School is not designed to be a full-time option, and districts are allowed to deny a student access to a virtual course if the district offers a competing class.
"It was a way to make the state virtual school more attractive," Mr. Swiggum said. "The hope is that more people will utilize virtual courses when they're not available through brick-and-mortar schools."
Quality Choices
The e-learning advocacy group Digital Learning Now! has created a report card for each state, rating digital-friendly policies and practices from coast to coast.
- Each report card provides numerical ratings in 10 different categories or "elements of high-quality digital learning."
- Each element is scored based on a number of metrics-72 over all the categories.
The quality-choices category evaluates states on measures such as whether state law authorizes digital providers; whether a state offers public options for digital learning; whether funding is equitable for any form of virtual school (public, charter, or for profit); and whether a state has a website to provide the public with information about digital learning opportunities.
http://digitallearningnow.com/nations-report-card/
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Washington DC/ New 'STEMworks Database' Aims to Identify Strong Programs
By Erik Robelen
Education Week [Edweek.org]
August 28, 2012
Plenty of education programs make grand claims to boost learning and even help transform the lives of young people, but it's not always easy to sort out the wheat from the chaff. A new STEMworks Database seeks to provide this service for STEM learning initiatives at the preK-12 level.
http://changetheequation.org/improving-philanthropy/stemworks.
Developed by Change the Equation, a coalition of corporate CEOs working to improve education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, the initiative has turned to expert researchers at WestEd to evaluate programs and (potentially) give them a stamp of approval.
- A pilot phase wrapped up last month with 20 out of 40 programs showing enough promise to be included. And now
- Change the Equation is trying to spread the word far and wide to invite more programs to step forward and go through the evaluation process.
The reward for those that do? Increased visibility among the corporate community and other potential funders who might expand their reach.
- "There are all kinds of programs that make all kinds of claims," said Claus von Zastrow, the research director at Change the Equation. "You have programs that say they doubled the college-going and -completion rates among low-income students. And when you scratch the surface, you discover, not really."
He added: "We thought the best thing to do was to put programs through a pretty rigorous process."
Among the 20 programs to be recognized so far in the database are:
- Engineering Is Elementary;
- Advanced Placement Training and Incentive Program;
- GirlStart Summer Camp;
- Project Lead the Way; and
- IMSA Fusion. IMSA is the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy.
To make the cut, STEM education programs must be "deemed effective," as the Change the Equation website puts it, when measured against a set of design principles. Those principles, developed by the coalition of business leaders, have been translated by WestEd into an evaluation process.
"What WestEd did was create a pretty strong process to get programs to submit and do self assessments," Von Zastrow said, "provide evidence to support [their claims], and then WestEd reviewers in the STEM area go through the evidence, see if it in fact supports the self assessment."
You can check out all 10 of the design principles here. They include:
- Identify and target a compelling and well-defined need;
- Use rigorous evaluation to continuously measure and inform progress in addressing the identified need;
- Demonstrate replicability and scalability; and
- Offer STEM content that is challenging and relevant for the target audience.
There's also a more detailed rubric aligned with the principles.
The database is searchable by various factors, such as content area, target audience, grade level, and location. By year's end, the goal is to have at least 100 programs included.
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Seattle WA/ Indian Tribal Leaders Give ED Input on Needs of Urban Indian Students
By Joe Barison [Director of Communications and Outreach for ED's San Francisco Regional Office]
US Department of Education [ED.gov]
August 28, 2012
Named in honor of Chief Seattle of the Duwamish tribe, Seattle was a fitting site for a recent U.S. Department of Education (ED) learning session on improving urban Indian education.
- William Mendoza, Executive Director of the White House Initiative on American Indians and Alaska Natives, and
- Joyce Silverthorne, Director of ED's Office of Indian Education,
listened as tribal leaders, Indian-education stakeholders and the general public spoke from their experience and their hearts about the priorities for urban Indian youth in Seattle's schools.
- "These urban, Native consultations are historic," said Arlie Neskahi, Native American Education Program Manager for the Seattle Public Schools and a member of the Diné Nation. "The majority [consultations] in the past have been done just with tribes."
Moderator Ross Braine, the University of Washington's acting tribal liaison and member of Apsaalooke Nation led the day's session. Braine ensured that every speaker was heard and maintained the right pace with insight and humor.
Key participants at the session spoke about the importance of having ED in the room. "As educators, we've gone to tribal settings, and we sat in the back of the room, listening," said Neskahi. "So now we're getting to stand before these federal representatives and share as Native educators. It's beautiful to me."
Mary Wilber, Title VII Coordinator for Washington State's Lake Washington, Bellevue and North Shore School Districts, also saw great importance in the session. "I know the needs for our children...I also know the successes. And those successes need to be shared with people from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Indian Education, and Mr. Mendoza," she said.
- Mendoza agreed with Wilber. "Our learning session in Seattle is critical to the White House initiative, because each of these areas that the initiative relates to...brings to the initiative a certain uniqueness that we couldn't otherwise garner through the reservation lens," he said.
- Joyce Silverthorne explained that for ED's Office of Indian Education, "it's been critical... to look at what [Seattle's urban-Native community] have learned and what they are seeing as the most important issues, and to help them to share that with other people across the country."
This Urban-Native Education Learning Session was a continuation of federal roundtable discussions that began this year to offer tribal leaders and others a chance to provide substantive feedback on the goals and strategies of an Executive Order by President Obama entitled: "Improving American Indian Education and Alaska Native Educational Opportunities and Strengthening Tribal Colleges and Universities."
As the session wound down, Mendoza reflected on the day. "We're very optimistic that today was further validation that we can better help educators at the state and the tribal level make more meaningful connections to their students," he said.
For more information on ED's tribal consultation and learning sessions, please go to www.edtribalconsultations.org.
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Washington DC/ OPINION: The Rebirth of Recess
How do you introduce recess to kids who have never left the classroom?
By Nicholas Day [Day is a freelance writer who lives in Chicago. His book on the science and history of infancy will be published in 2013.]
SLATE online [Washington Post]
August 29, 2012,
Every schoolchild who's ever squirmed in his seat, anxious for recess to arrive, can sympathize with students in Chicago. This year, many public schools in that city are scheduled to have recess for the first time in three decades. Chicago's long recess drought isn't unusual. Even before No Child Left Behind, recess was an endangered species. Since NCLB, every minute of the school day has been scrutinized for its instructional value-and recess, a break from instruction, often didn't survive the scrutiny. It was, by definition, a waste of time.
But while administrators were trying to get rid of recess, academics were studying it-that is, they were studying the time when children weren't studying. The new science of recess says that recess isn't a waste of time at all. "Having recess is much, much, much better than not having recess," says Anthony Pellegrini, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Minnesota who's written extensively on the subject. "That's unequivocal, I feel. That's a no-brainer." That's good news for children in Chicago squirming in their seats. But what does recess look like when no schoolchild has ever had it before?
It's an ironic turn of events: For years, schools have been getting rid of recess to spend more time on math and reading. It is notoriously hard to get reliable numbers on recess-recess policies vary from year to year, school to school, even classroom to classroom-but numerous surveys have found recess time declining. That's especially true in poorer school districts, where test scores are frequently low and principals panicked.
The numbers show a clear trend: The more minority students a school has, and the lower the income level of their parents, the less time allotted for recess-nearly half of poor children go all day without it. They don't even have anywhere to have it: In Chicago, nearly 100 elementary and middle schools have no playgrounds at all. (The American Association of Pediatrics recently issued an impassioned statement on the "play deprivation" experienced by children in poverty.)
The arguments against recess are simple and no-nonsense, especially for these schools: What-you want the kids to play kickball when they're failing math? When the Atlanta public schools got rid of recess, its superintendent famously said, "We are intent on improving academic performance. You don't do that by having kids hanging on the monkey bars."
These arguments work, Pellegrini says, "because attacking recess has got this sort of intuitive feel: If you give kids more time doing something, they'll do better in school. When in fact the opposite is probably the case."
Repeated studies have shown that when recess is delayed, children pay less and less attention. They are more focused on days when they have recess. A major study in Pediatrics found that children with more than 15 minutes of recess a day were far better behaved in class than children who had shorter recess breaks or none at all.
They'll get more out of class, too: Children seem to learn more efficiently when information is spaced out-when it is distributed over time. It's been widely documented that the brain needs a break. High-performing East Asian schools have famously long school days-but much of the extra time is taken up by recess, not instruction. Which might be why recess is now back, even in places like Atlanta (although it is squeezed for time).
Despite the cognitive and social benefits of recess, principals still hate it: In the scholarship on recess, they inevitably describe their recess periods as total chaos. In Chicago, recess has been out of the schools so long that principals are nervous about having it back.
That's the twist in this rebirth-of-recess narrative: In part because of these fears, recess in many schools is now a very different beast. It's more structured and sports-focused, less dreamy and aimless. Whether it leads to the same cognitive and social benefits is an open question. The nonprofit organization Playworks puts full-time "recess coaches" in low-income schools-currently they're in 387 schools in 23 cities-who teach children how to play: They organize games; they model how to resolve disputes (rock-paper-scissors); they try to get kids more active and engaged. (A recent study found that schools with Playworks reported less bullying and better behavior.)
"Recess has changed because the times we live in have changed," says Playworks CEO Jill Vialet. Children no longer know how to play, she says; they don't run around after school with all the kids on their block. "What we're doing is creating just enough structure. That same structure that was created by the older kids in the neighborhood in times past-we're creating that now on the schoolyard."
Playworks doesn't make kids play, Vialet says, and the recess coach doesn't run recess. "There's multiple things happening on the schoolyard at any given point. The coach floats around the schoolyard." But the Playworks vision of recess-more structured, more orderly, more active-is very different from the traditional anything-goes break from class.
Recess may look problematic to the grown-ups, but for Pellegrini, the value of recess is that the children, not the adults, are in charge. It may not look pretty, but that's the point. "A very important part of what kids do on the playground is social competence-that is, they learn how to get along with others," he says. "You have to cooperate, you have to use language, you have to compromise. And that's not trivial. That is huge, in terms of both academic success and success in life."
And despite the fears of many administrators, who talk about recess as if it were a Lord of the Flies sequel, studies have shown that there is surprisingly little violence on playgrounds, says Pellegrini: "It accounts for less than 2 percent of all behavior."
For someone like Pellegrini, the structured recess of PlayWorks is anathema-the value of recess is in messy free play. For the principals in Playworks schools, structured recess is a godsend-precisely because it isn't messy.
My childhood memory of recess-as a break that came twice a day, like a natural phenomenon, and that was wonderfully aimless-may be nothing like the recess my children will someday have. The argument over whether to have recess may be ending. But the argument over what recess means is only now beginning.
Can we give kids today the freedom to play? Or do we need a pedagogy of recess-a pedagogy of free time? The answer may depend on what we value most, or what we can afford to value most: order or chaos, activity or daydreaming, learning to play or learning to be.
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Washington DC/ OPINION: Can Bilingualism Counteract Effects of Poverty?
By Lesli A. Maxwell
Education Week [Edweek.org]
August 28, 2012
The bilingual brain is sharper than the monolingual one, more and more research is showing. People with fluency in at least two languages have better attention spans, enhanced memory, among other cognitive advantages.
But do those same cognitive strengths show up in bilingual children who are low-income?
In other words, can bilingualism help children in low-income communities overcome the enormous cognitive challenges that poverty presents?
A soon-to-be published study from Pascale Engel de Abreu of the University of Luxembourg and colleagues takes a look at that very question.
Their answer in a nutshell: yes.
Researchers tested 80 2nd graders from low-income families living in Portugal and Luxembourg. Half of them were first- or second-generation Portuguese immigrants to Luxembourg, who spoke both Luxembourgish and Portuguese. The other half lived in Northern Portugal and spoke only Portuguese.
The study first tested vocabulary by asking the children to name items presented to them in pictures, with both groups answering in Portuguese and the immigrant children also answering in Luxembourgish.
Then the researchers tested how the students represented knowledge in memory by asking them to find a missing piece that would complete a specific geometric shape. They also measured their memory through various tasks and examined how they could direct and focus their attention when distractions were present. In one visual task, the children were shown a row of yellow fish on a computer screen and were asked to press a button to indicate which direction the fish in the center of the screen faced.
The bilingual kids knew fewer vocabulary words than their monolingual peers, the researchers found, but demonstrated more ability to keep their attention focused on the tasks at hand, in spite of distractions.
"This is the first study to show that, although they may face linguistic challenges, minority bilingual children from low-income families demonstrate important strengths in other cognitive domains," said Engel de Abreu in a news release.
The upshot, the researchers said, is that even more scholars ought to delve into studying the promise of using second language teaching as an academic intervention for poor kids who are struggling.
