Rio Rancho/ Jason Lucero: Custodial Foreman for Rio Rancho Middle School Wins District Acclaim
By Elaine D. Briseño
ABQ Journal Staff Writer
September 15, 2012
Jason Lucero was barely a man when he started working as a custodian for Rio Rancho Public Schools in the mid-' 90s but he already had some very adult responsibilities.
The 19-year-old had a wife and baby at home and his sporadic work installing floors wasn't going to provide financial security for his family. His mother-in-law at the time worked for the district and told him there was a need for custodians.
Lucero said he knew it would be a steady paycheck, so he applied for the position. He was hired to work at Rio Rancho Elementary and then transferred to Ernest Stapleton Elementary. Shortly after his arrival, the school's custodial foreman resigned and he was asked to take the position.
"I was the youngest foreman at that time," he said. "I was only 20."
Lucero, 36, is now the custodial foreman for Rio Rancho Middle School, the district's largest middle school campus with 235,000 square feet. The campus houses the school, a night school and the district's Curriculum and Instruction Department.
- "He is the epitome of a hard worker," said principal Lynda Kitts. "He goes above and beyond. Not only is he a wonderful person, but he has a good heart."
Although some might not consider janitorial work a professional career, from the start Lucero said he approached his job in a professional manner. More than a decade later, he's being recognized for that work ethic. On Monday, the Rio Rancho Public Schools Board gave him a commendation for outstanding service to the district.
Lucero was nominated by Debra Almaraz, the district's manager of publications and special events, as part of RRPS' Unsung Heroes initiative, which was put in place this year to recognize outstanding staff. Lucero was the first one to be nominated and recognized under the new program.
- "I love working with people, and I love the kids," he said Friday. "I take great pride in the details of my work, and I make sure I did the best job I could every day when I go home."
He supervises eight janitors, one of whom is there during the day with him. The other seven come in the evening. His crew is responsible for basic janitorial duties like picking up trash and cleaning, but the workers also do light painting and small repairs.
Lucero has painted several murals around the school, in addition to his custodial duties.
He said one of the biggest challenges of his job is dealing with so many different types of personalities. No matter the situation, he said he tries to treat everyone in a professional manner.
- "It's something my dad instilled in me from a young age," he said. "I've learned to have a big heart and a thick hide."
Lucero left the district a few years ago to become a pastor in Arizona. However, after the death of his father, he moved back to New Mexico to be near his mother. The foreman job at the middle school was available and he was able to step right back into his position with the district.
"When I go to that school, it's always sparkling clean," Almaraz told the board on Monday. "He's accessible, helpful and friendly and has an incredible reputation."
~~~~~~~~~~
Carlsbad/ School Board Members to Vote on $3.4 Million Technology Bond
By Ben Gibson
Carlsbad Current-Argus
September 15, 2012
A $3.4 million bond before Carlsbad Municipal School Board members would helpd the district keep up with changes in technology, according to district officials.
Board members are being asked to vote on the bond during a special meeting on Tuesday.
- "We are replacing an older bond; there is so much technology we need to bring up to date and catch up on," Carlsbad Municipal Schools Superintendent Gary Perkowski said. "It isn't something we can do in the normal budget due to the cuts coming down from Santa Fe."
According to Perkowski the bond isn't expected to cost Carlsbad taxpayers any more than they're already paying, because the district is working with banks to keep the interest rate low.
The school board said that they were waiting on bids to be submitted and finalized today before they could release a financial assessment, but Perkowski expect the bids to be low.
If approved, the bond is expected to pay for a number of technological upgrades for each school, including computer hardware and software updates and upgrades to the district's phone systems.
- "It is important to the district and the children to keep them up to date, and give them best quality education," Perkowski said.
The superintendent cited the age of the school buildings as a challenge in keeping Carlsbad school up to date.
He said wiring and updating the infrastructure within school buildings can as difficult as keeping up to date with the latest software and technology.
"We have to try to keep up and give the kids the best education possible and keep them in the loop," Perkowski said.
The school board is scheduled to vote on the $3.4 million technology bond at a 4 p.m. meeting on Tuesday before its regular meeting at 6 p.m.
~~~~~~~~~~
Santa Fe/ Poverty, School Grades Still Linked
By Hailey Heinz
ABQ Journal Staff Writer
September 17, 2012
Under the state's new accountability system, New Mexico schools with higher levels of poverty still generally received lower grades than their more affluent counterparts.
That's true despite the state Public Education Department's efforts to control for the effects of poverty.
State public education chief Hannah Skandera acknowledged a relationship between poverty and school grades, but she pointed to exceptions and stood by the system as a fair way to grade schools.
- According to a Journal analysis, all 69 schools that received "F" grades under the new system are high-poverty, defined by the federal government as those where at least half the students qualify for lunch subsidies.
- Among schools that received a "D," about 95 percent are high-poverty.
- Conversely, only 41 percent of the 39 schools that received "A" grades are high-poverty.
Overall, about 80 percent of New Mexico schools have high levels of poverty, according to the Journal analysis, which found the relationship between poverty and school grades by several different measures and methods.
- The PED controlled for poverty in calculating A-F grades by looking at changes over time in individual student test scores, rather than raw scores at one point in time.
"One of our goals was to begin to level that playing field and begin to measure growth and improvement," Skandera said. "Obviously, I believe we achieved that goal of finding a much better and more accurate picture, regardless of background and demographics."
Skandera pointed to studies that show an effective teacher can make a big difference for students from all backgrounds, and that teachers vary widely in how much their students' test scores improve from year to year.
"I think that's a key piece to highlight that we often miss and go straight to poverty," she said.
Peter Winograd, director of the University of New Mexico's Center for Education Policy Research, said he is not surprised that school grades are related to income. It would be hard, he said, for even the most sophisticated school rating system to fully account for poverty.
- "I don't believe we're ever going to come up with an accountability system that is really able to fully pull apart kids' performance, totally untainted by socioeconomics," said Winograd, who has researched the connections between poverty and education.
Skandera compared the A-F grading system to previous school ratings under No Child Left Behind, which did not have any demographic controls and did not give schools credit for progress over time.
She said that although poverty may track with school grades, there are striking exceptions. She pointed to examples like Anthony Elementary School in southern New Mexico, which had one of the highest school grades in the state and where nearly every student qualifies for lunch subsidies.
She also said there are other ways to look at the relationship. Specifically, Skandera said if you found the average grade among New Mexico's 20 least-advantaged schools, and compared it to the average grade of the 20 most-advantaged schools, the difference would be just 13 grade points, out of the 105 points possible under the system. By contrast, the difference between an "A" and an "F" is 50 points.
"If grades and poverty were synonymous, the spread would be the same," she said.
Poverty vs. achievement
Winograd has mapped the landscape of Albuquerque, and of New Mexico in general and found that academic failure, truancy, drug use and teen pregnancies are all closely related to income.
- "It is very clear there is a powerful linkage between socioeconomic status and educational attainment and achievement," Winograd said. "The big debate in this country is over why, and what you do about it."
He said it's important to acknowledge the relationship between poverty and achievement, and the best education reform strategies will address both in-school and out-of-school factors that impede student learning.
- "It seems to me that it is important for us as a community, morally and economically, to think about how we address some of the issues that put these barriers in front of kids," he said.
APS Superintendent Winston Brooks said he tries to address poverty by providing help to students.
- This year, for the first time, APS is covering the full cost of lunch for students who qualify for a reduced-cost lunch. Brooks said
- increasing the number of preschool programs around the district also helps ease the effects of poverty.
Brooks pointed to turnaround efforts at Emerson Elementary, where about 96 percent of students are low-income. The southeast Albuquerque school received an "F" under the state system but was dramatically redesigned this year with a new principal and some capital improvements. All the staff had to reapply, and all teachers must now be certified to teach English as a second language.
Brooks said he is confident this will lead to dramatic results at Emerson, but acknowledged that reform one school at a time is slow.
"I think we can turn around these schools. I think we can give them new hope and new energy," Brooks said. "The problem is capacity and being able to do that in a broader way. You can make these systemic changes little by little, but how do you do it district-wide?"
~~~~~~~~~~
Clovis/ Superintendent: New Teacher-Principal Evaluation System Untested
By Benna Sayyed, Staff Writer
Clovis News Journal
September 15, 2012
Local education leaders are looking forward to learning about the state's new teacher-principal evaluation system, but some think it is being pushed too fast.
"I feel the intent of what we're trying to do is probably pretty good, but I feel like we're moving way too fast," said Clovis Municipal Schools Superintendent Terry Myers.
- "We're trying to base this new evaluation system on student performance. And that student performance is going to be measured by a system that we haven't tested."
Teachers in the state are now evaluated with a system that labels them "meets competency" or "does not meet competency."
On April 11, Gov. Susana Martinez directed the New Mexico Public Education Department to create a new teacher and principal evaluation system.
The U.S. Department of Education required the state develop a framework for a new evaluation system before the start of the fall 2012 semester. It's a requirement for granting the state a waiver from the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
Myers said educators in his district are unaware of what this system is going to produce because it has not been tested, tweaked and adjusted over time to yield reliable results.
Myers said it is difficult for educators to explain how the new evaluation system will affect schools because it is based on the unknown. He said he would prefer to have a system with parameters that are clearly defined so educators know exactly what they are trying to accomplish.
He believes the evaluation system could create anxiety in teachers and administrators.
"If we move too quickly, we're not going to get anything accurate," Myers said.
"We're going to create a bunch of anxiety and spend the next three to five years tweaking and fixing and changing and not accomplish what we're trying to with an evaluation system."
Myers believes starting teachers will adjust to the system easier than teachers who have taught in the district before.
Myers said experienced teachers could have a harder time adjusting to the new system due to rules being changed.
Elida Superintendent Jim Daugherty had a mixed opinion on the evaluation system.
Daugherty said the new system could possibly point out any weaknesses in the existing system. He also said he needs to learn about the new system's pros and cons before discussing teacher and principal achievement measures in his district.
"We should make sure its right before you put it in and not rush into things," Daugherty said.
"We need to make sure it's going to be a fair evaluation system."
~~~~~~~~~~
Santa Fe/ SFPS Administrators Get Small Salary Increase
By Robert Nott
The New Mexican
September 15, 2012
One of former superintendent Bobbie Gutierrez's last acts - and one approved by the school board - was to recommend pay raises for five top administrative team members to the total tune of about $30,000.
Though that amount is minuscule in an operating budget of about $84.6 million, it is an action that might make other district personnel - including teachers - unhappy, since they have not had a raise in about five years.
- "It's terrible for morale," said Bernice Garcia-Baca, president of NEA-Santa Fe.
- "For five years, we have been cooperating with the administration, knowing that money is tight, and we continue to see so many other things being funded that may not be necessary. It's come to the point where it's obvious that the staff and faculty are not a priority at all."
Santa Fe High School teacher Lori Andrews said district teachers are committed to their students' cause, but "they also need a vote of confidence for what they are doing: No pay raise in half a decade is not encouraging." Like Garcia-Baca, she thinks administrator raises at this time do not help morale.
The school board approved the money for the raises last spring as part of a $250,000 allocation in this year's operating budget, according to Carl Gruenler, chief financial officer for the district. But he emphasized that when that amount was approved, no one knew how the $250,000 would specifically be utilized beyond using it to build a stronger administrative team for the incoming superintendent.
The administrative raises "reflect changing responsibilities, were targeted at keeping high-value employees in place, and better positioned the organization for the arrival of the new superintendent," Gruenler said via email. In some cases, adding to individual's job responsibilities eliminates the need to hire new administrative staffers, he said.
- Gruenler, for instance, received a $5,569 raise, boosting his salary to $105,099 from $99,530. He is now responsible for technology and operations in addition to finance.
- In the case of former Chief Operating Officer Kristy Janda-Wagner, the job change to executive director of operations - which includes the increased responsibility of overseeing safety, security, and emergency-plan management - earned her a raise of $8,873, bringing her salary to $92,718 from $83,845.
- The largest pay raise - $17,335 - went to Elias Bernardino, executive director of technology and information systems. His salary increased to $92,718 from $75,383.
- The other two administrative staff members to receive raises are Human Resources Director Tracie Oliver - to $92,718 from $81,694 - and
- Richard Halford, executive director of finance and administration - to $92,718 from $79,651.
Joel Boyd, superintendent of Santa Fe Public Schools, said by phone last week that Gutierrez set those salary increases in place before her departure. "I decided to respect the decisions Bobbie made. They are reasonable decisions, even though it is suspicious that she made those kind of decisions right before she left," he said. "While not a decision I would have made personally, it is a reasonable decision."
Boyd said he can see how these raises could displease teachers and other staff members who have long awaited a raise. "It doesn't read well," he acknowledged.
In August, Boyd announced the formation of a competitive-wage committee, to explore ways to prioritize employee raises in the 2013-14 school year.
The issue of raises for district personnel was raised repeatedly during school board meetings on the 2012-13 budget last spring. For instance, when the school board initially discussed paying its new superintendent about $190,000, close to 30 speakers, most of them district personnel, lobbied the board to rethink that amount in an effort to not stir up resentment among staffers. Gutierrez earned about $115,000.
In early May, the board voted to approve a superintendent salary in the $160,000 to $180,000 range. It hired Boyd, a former associate superintendent for the School District of Philadelphia, for $171,000 in July.
In a shuffle of top-level administrators, Boyd hired two more people for the executive team: Latifah Phillips, chief of staff, for $98,500, and Almudena Abeyta, chief academic officer, at a salary of $121,000.
Phillips, who served as executive director of non-instructional professional development and performance management in the Philadelphia school system, will oversee community, legislative and media relationships. She also is forming the district's Parent Academy, designed to engage parents in their students' academic success and slated to open with a pilot semester in the spring.
Abeyta will oversee curriculum, instruction, special education, athletics, arts education and other departments and supervise the district's principals.
Baca said she may comment on the pay raises at Tuesday's board meeting, scheduled for 5:30 p.m. at the district's Educational Services Center on Alta Vista Street. She noted that the district and the union are still engaged in collective bargaining and that she is still hopeful that district workers can receive raises this year.
Earlier this year, the board voted to reinstate an $85-per-meeting per-diem for all board members starting in March 2013.
Neither board President Frank Montaño nor Vice President Linda Trujillo returned calls seeking comment.
~~~~~~~~~~
Rio Rancho/ School Board Reviews High School Truancy Rates
By Elaine D. Briseño
ABQ Journal Staff Writer
September 15, 2012
Recently released figures show Rio Rancho High has a truancy rate almost six times as much as the district's other full-size high school, V. Sue Cleveland High, but that may not be the whole story.
The situation was brought to light Monday during the Rio Rancho Public Schools Board meeting when the district's executive director of safety and security, Mike Tartar, gave a report to the board that included truancy numbers at each of the schools.
His department tracks how many students throughout the year have 10 or more unexcused absences.
- Rio Rancho High had 137 for the 2011-12 school year,
- while V. Sue Cleveland had 23.
District spokeswoman Kim Vesely said in the past, truancy figures at the two schools have been similar.
Board member Divyesh N. Patel questioned the numbers and asked why there was "such a large discrepancy" between the two schools.
Tarter said he was not sure, but that it was possible the schools were reporting their truancy information in different ways.
Vesely said the report piqued the interest of district and school administrators as well.
She said it would be difficult to go back and re-evaluate the data, but she said school and district staff would pay closer attention in the future.
"We want to know is this an anomaly, a one-time oddity?" she said. "Or is this a trend?"
Cleveland principal Scott Affentranger could not be reached for comment.
Rio Rancho High principal Richard VonAncken said he was sure his numbers were accurate.
He said the location of RRHS compared to Cleveland, which is farther west and surrounded by mostly vacant land, could be part of the reason for the large gap.
"This is pure speculation on my part, but if a student leaves Cleveland, where the heck are they going to go?" he said. "It's more obvious at that school if they leave. If they are taking a bus or getting dropped off, it's harder for them to just wander off."
VonAncken said RRHS has a process in place to address truancy problems.
The school sends home a letter after the third, fifth, seventh and 10th unexcused absences. In addition, once a student reaches absence No. 5, the parents must come in and meet with an assistant principal.
The student must sign a contract promising to attend school and go to every class.
When a parent is unresponsive or does not come to the appointment, the school's truancy officer goes to the home to speak with parents and to let them know they are violating the law when their student is not in school.
"That usually gets their attention," he said. "Sometimes that solves the problem."
Superintendent Sue Cleveland said truancy has been a concern for all principals at some point.
"Sometimes it's negligence on the part of the parent," she said. "Sometimes these families are facing extenuating circumstances."
~~~~~~~~~~
ABQ/ Alvarado Elementary School Kindergartners Harvest Garden
By Glen Rosales
ABQ Journal Staff Writer
September 15, 2012
The assembled group of kindergartners and first-graders from Alvarado Elementary School twitched and fidgeted a bit as they listened to parent Devon Finnegan explain the history behind the North Valley school's Offering Garden.
Tucked into small plot behind the school's north wing, the garden is filled with a smattering of vegetables.
The kindergartners Thursday harvested the bounty from seeds the first-graders had planted when they were kindergartners in the spring.
"If you remember, you planted this garden for the new kids coming in to kinder, the little ones," Finnegan explained.
"And we wanted you to be here so they could say, 'thank you,' and so you can feel what it feels like to give something to other people."
Each child plucked a scarlet runner bean and a red or green chile pepper to take home.
But the educational experience goes beyond the simple sharing of food, said kindergarten teacher Debbie Gutierrez, who along with Finnegan, helped create the garden.
"The educational opportunities are numberless," Gutierrez said. "Science, math social studies. It's just countless things."
For instance, when it's this year's kindergartners' turn to plant in the springtime, "we learn about putting seeds in the ground and what they need to grow and the nurturing and all the energy that goes into growing a plant," she said.
And, in turn, next year's incoming class of kindergartners will reap the harvest.
The garden is watered via an old-fashioned hand pump that's fed from two 750-gallon cisterns buried far below the ground. The cisterns are filled by the runoff from the recently completed kindergarten wing that was designed to be a green building.
But when the wing was completed, the space where the garden now lies was not much to view.
"Two years ago, Miss Debbie came to me - and do you know what was here then?" Finnegan asked the students. "A big old pile of dirt. No fence. No plants. No sunflowers. No awnings. No flowers. And she said, 'I want to plant a garden.'"
The space was filled with freshly turned dirt and already had the pump installed.
"It was just waiting," Finnegan said. "It just needed the energy behind it."
The area has now been transformed into an outdoor learning center the whole school appreciates.
"I heard from one of the special education teachers that they use the garden as a place when kids are feeling distraught," she said. "It's a peaceful place."
It's also something the entire community can take pride in and help preserve.
"The whole concept of the garden is twofold," Finnegan said. "It's the learning piece and also we really want to incorporate generosity here; create the most generous climate that we can, so in that spirit it's a community effort.
Yes, the kids are doing all the stuff and learning and so on."
But the community has been encouraged to get involved, as well.
"Debbie was a huge piece of getting it put together," Finnegan said. "We decided let's incorporate parents in because they're part of the community, too. We basically signed up folks to take a day of watering every day and some brought their kids out and some of them did it to keep everything alive and going surviving the hot summers. Just because it's all part of the whole community effort. It just gets bigger."
~~~~~~~~~~
Santa Fe/ OPINION: Teacher Evaluations Should Be Multifaceted, Comprehensive
The New Mexican
September 15, 2012
This piece ran initially in the ABQ Journal: September 9, 2012 and may be read in the 8-10 September 2012 PSFA Digest as "Santa Fe/ OPINION: Evaluations Would Lift, Not Punish, Teachers"
~~~~~~~~~~
Washington DC/ White House Outlines Impact of Looming Sequestration Cuts
By Alyson Klein on September 14, 2012 4:15 PM
All summer, folks in Washington have been wondering just how that series of planned, across-the-board budget cuts, known by the wonky, catchy name of "sequestration," would impact education programs. And, finally, the Office of Management of Budget, the White House's green-eyeshade arm, has released a list detailing just what the cuts would be and which programs they would effect.
(Here's the report: http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/assets/legislative_reports/stareport.pdf. The U.S. Department of Education budget information is on pages 60 through 64. Congress passed legislation earlier this year asking for this information.)
The bad news: The White House is estimating that almost every program in the U.S. Department of Education would be cut by 8.2 percent. That's actually a bit higher than some folks had thought. U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who heads up the panel that oversees education spending, put out a report earlier this year detailing projected program-by-program, state-by-state cuts. [http://www.harkin.senate.gov/documents/pdf/500ff3554f9ba.pdf]
But his estimates were based on a 7.8 across-the-board cut to a broad swath of federal programs, the number the Congressional Budget Office came up with. That was the best data available at the time, but it sounds like the actual cuts, if they happen, will be a little steeper, the White House estimates.
Based on the White House estimates, that means
- programs aimed at equity, including those for disadvantaged kids, funded at $15.75 billion would be cut by almost $1.3 billion. And
- special education programs, funded at $12.64 billion, would be cut by about $1.03 billion.
Those estimates are based on expected funding levels for the federal fiscal year that begins on Oct. 1.
Some background: What exactly is sequestration and where did all these cuts come from anyway?
- The short answer is that, last year Congress was having a tough time reaching an agreement to raise the nation's debt ceiling.
- Lawmakers decided they needed to cut $1.2 trillion out of the federal budget over the next decade. They were hoping to work together on some sort of big, bipartisan agreement to put the nation's fiscal house in order.
- To make sure they stuck to their guns, lawmakers put in place a series of across-the-board cuts that are set to hit just about every federal program, including defense (which Republicans care a lot about) and domestic programs (typically favored by Democrats).
- Almost no one really wants the cuts to happen, but lawmakers can't seem to get their act together and come up with a compromise on how to head them off.
- If an agreement can't be reached, the cuts would take effect on Jan. 2.
In its report, the administration urged Brokedown Congress to act sooner rather than later to head off the cuts, in part because of the potential harm to K-12.
Here's a snippet:
"Sequestration would undermine investments vital to economic growth, threaten the safety and security of the American people, and cause severe harm to programs that benefit the middle-class, seniors, and children. Education grants to states and local school districts supporting smaller classes, after-school programs, and children with disabilities would suffer."
The silver lining, if there is one: Even though the cuts are slated to hit on Jan. 2, most of the large programs important to school districts, including special education and Title I grants to districts, wouldn't feel a squeeze right away. The cuts wouldn't hit school districts until the 2013-14 school year, which doesn't start until next fall. That gives schools more time to plan. Still, no cut is ever a great thing, especially since some states and districts are still recovering from the recession.
The program that could get hit right away? Impact aid, which helps districts with a lot of federal land nearby (i.e. military bases, Native American reservations) make up for lost tax revenue. More background on sequestration generally: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/08/08/37sequester_ep.h31.html.
Unanswered questions: Although the OMB report gives school districts a good idea of just which programs would be cut and by how much, there are still a lot of unanswered questions.
- For instance, how would the planned cuts affect maintenance of effort provisions, which require a states and districts to keep their own spending at a certain level in order to tap federal funds?
What comes next: Almost everyone in Washington seems to agree that sequestration is a big, scary thing, but no one is talking with any seriousness yet about how to head it off.
That will come after the November election, when Congress returns for a "lame-duck" session. Until then, expect a lot of political grandstanding, from just about everyone.
~~~~~~~~~~
Washington DC/ DREAM Act-Lite: 7 in 100 Eligible Illegal Immigrants Apply
Some 82,000 young illegal immigrants, or almost 7 percent of those thought to be eligible, sought a deportation reprieve in the month since the government began accepting applications under the new Obama policy.
By David Grant, Staff Writer
CSmonitor.com
September 14, 2012
When the Department of Homeland Security opened applications in mid-August for undocumented immigrants who are students and soldiers to get a reprieve from deportation, the big question was how many would step out of the shadows and into the applicant pool.
Now, the numbers are in for the program's first month. As of Sept. 13, at least 82,000 illegal immigrants have filed applications to take the government up on its offer, a program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), the DHS announced Friday. That's almost 7 percent of the 1.2 million illegal immigrants whom advocacy groups estimate are currently eligible for the program.
- "All in all, we're very satisfied," not only with the number of applicants but "also with the way the program is being implemented," says Marielena Hincapie, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center.
While some advocates may have expected "hundreds of thousands" of applications out of the gate, Ms. Hincapie says that was never a realistic proposition because of the complexity of the application, concerns from illegal immigrants about making themselves known to the government, and questions about how a potential President Mitt Romney would handle the program.
Another 500,000 or so individuals will meet eligibility requirements in the future, according to an analysis by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), for a total of about 1.7 million potential applicants.
Of the 82,000 people to apply, 63,000 have appointments scheduled for the recording of biometric data. Twenty-nine cases have already been resolved, with 1,660 more cases ready for final review, according to DHS.
The rapidity with which DHS has handled some applications left long-time critic Rep. Lamar Smith (R) of Texas wondering whether the applicants were thoroughly vetted. Moreover, Representative Smith said in a statement Wednesday, the speed with which DACA applicants moved through the system raised his eyebrows about whether their cases received preference over other immigrants.
"While it took the administration less than three weeks to process several amnesty applications, it can take several months for some legal immigration benefit applications to be approved. It's appalling the administration has diverted resources from approving applications for those who have played by the rules to illegal immigrants," said Smith.
Immigrant advocates and analysts question the extent to which fraud will be a problem.
Successful applicants win a deferral from deportation for two years, but after that they must periodically reapply to reauthorize their deferrals, Doris Meissner, MPI senior fellow and former commissioner of the US Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS), told the Monitor last month. While rooting out fraud is always important, Ms. Meissner said, lying to the government during the application process is cause for deportation, and fraud uncovered even after someone is sheltered under DACA means illegal immigrants applying fraudulently "will have put themselves into serious jeopardy."
To qualify for the DACA program, applicants must be under age 31, have lived in the US for five or more years consecutively, served in the military or be pursuing an education or have graduated from high school, have come to America before age 16, and have no significant criminal record. Applicants must pay a $465 fee and submit to a biometric scan and background investigation.
If successful, applicants gain a two-year deferral from deportation proceedings and the opportunity to apply for a work permit, but no path to US citizenship. If unsuccessful, there is no appeals process.
The program is a sort of miniature version of the DREAM Act, legislation that would put young people in a similar situation to those eligible for DACA on a path to US citizenship. With the DREAM Act (and broader immigration reform) stalled in Congress, President Obama announced the DACA policy on June 15 as a sort of stop-gap measure to help stop deportation of young illegal immigrants brought to the US while minors.
~~~~~~~~~~
Tucson AZ/ Schools Overhaul a Program to Help Struggling Hispanic Students
By Fernanda Santos [Sarah Garrecht Gassen contributed reporting]
New York Times
September 15, 2012
The forecast for the year ahead is dire, so officials in the public school district here, the oldest in the state, summoned parents to an urgent meeting one evening to lay out the options: close schools and increase class sizes or impose across-the-board pay cuts, making it harder for the district to recruit quality teachers.
In the auditorium at Cholla High Magnet School, Bryant Nodine, the planning program manager for the Tucson Unified School District, peered into the audience and pleaded for suggestions. "We need your help," he said. The district needs to find at least $17 million in savings, about 7 percent of the money in its general fund, he said, to balance its budget for 2013-14 school year.
Meanwhile, at the district's central offices, Maria Figueroa was busy sifting through résumés and rearranging her calendar to squeeze in one more interview. As the director of a new program intended to help the district's perennially struggling Hispanic students, by far the majority of the enrollment, Ms. Figueroa enjoys a rare distinction: she has jobs to fill and money to hire.
She also has a big task - mending the fences broken by the dismantling of the Mexican-American studies department last school year after an acrimonious debate over the politics of its curriculum and the type of activism it had promoted.
A 2010 law banning lessons that fostered racial resentment and solidarity among members of a single ethnic group, drafted as legislators worked to frame the state's controversial immigration bill, eventually killed the program. Facing persistent financial problems, the school district buckled under the threat of millions of dollars in fines.
- Instead of classes about historical realities and the everyday experiences of Mexican-Americans, once a hallmark of the department, Ms. Figueroa's program will offer tutoring to Hispanic students who are teetering on the edge of failure.
- In place of discussions about race and identity, it will recruit mentors from among Hispanic business leaders and college graduates to talk to students.
The overarching goal is as basic as it is fundamental. "We're going to teach the kids that they need to stay in school, that school is important," Ms. Figueroa said.
For about 30 years, the district has been under a federal desegregation order aimed at doing just that, as well as improving achievement among its minority students. But it has seen limited success at great cost - $1 billion, based on its estimates. Part of the financing has come from commercial property taxes in the district.
- Officials have used the money to pay for teachers, playground monitors and other everyday expenses in schools under the desegregation order, shifting costs to try to offset layoffs throughout the district.
- It has not always worked, and schools have faced budget woes as the district has struggled against shrinking enrollment, declining state financing and mounting competition from charter schools, which have opened at greater numbers in Arizona than in any other state.
At $62 million, the desegregation pot for the 2013-2014 school year makes up 11 percent of the district's budget. It is also where Ms. Figueroa's program gets its financing. She is hiring someone to help teachers handle behavior problems among students, as well as 14 people to guide the mentoring and tutoring services offered by her program, known as Mexican-American Student Services.
It is a return to the past.
- Tucson's Hispanic studies department was born 14 years ago, offering a curriculum that Ms. Figueroa defined as "culturally relevant" and the same type of services her program is offering.
- (The services were dropped somewhere along the way, she said, even as similar programs remained available to African-American, Native-American and Asian students through each of their respective departments, which evolved from the settlement over the desegregation order in 1978, as well as community pressure.)
Ms. Figueroa, a longtime teacher and elementary school principal, had a hand in designing the curriculum back then. In its last iteration, when the department came to be known as Mexican-American studies, it used literature as a basis for personal essays, discussions and projects of the type José González, who taught a course named American Government Social Justice Project, encouraged his students to do, like fixing a problem they found at their school. One of the most memorable, Mr. González said, was a plan to get students more involved in decisions about what and how they should learn.
- "It was an exercise in empowerment for kids who never knew they had a voice," he said.
The district has now given someone else the role of creating a multicultural curriculum to offer a "balanced presentation of diverse viewpoints on controversial issues" related to Mexican-American history and culture, according to a memorandum. Ms. Figueroa said she did not know what it would look like. "It's not my department," she said.
"The content of the material is important, but you have to get past the lack of skills our children have in reading and reading comprehension if you want to make a meaningful impact," Ms. Figueroa added.
About 800 students were enrolled in the Mexican-American studies department at last count, district officials said. They outperformed their peers on Arizona's state standardized tests:
- in reading (by 45 percentage points),
- writing (by 59 percentage points) and
- math (by 33 percentage points).
If it is improving achievement the district was looking for, its proponents have argued, the department should have been expanded.
Seven books were removed from classrooms when the classes were scrapped - shuttled to a warehouse and later disbursed among school libraries, where they remain. They were titles like "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" by Paulo Freire, which argues that students are co-creators of knowledge, and "Occupied America: A History of Chicanos" by Rodolfo Acuña, which discusses the role of race and class divisions in relations between Anglos and Mexicans in the American Southwest.
District officials said that covering the fines - 10 percent of the district's share of state aid to schools, or about $15 million - or paying to appeal the case would have meant diverting money from the classrooms, so they chose to comply with the law.
Besides, Ms. Figueroa said, in a district that enrolls 50,800 students, roughly 32,000 of them Hispanic, the classes had too small an impact.
The district has serious challenges. Some 19,000 seats, in buildings and portable classrooms, are empty. Half of the schools are operating in the red. And the projected deficit could rise to $50 million if voters reject a permanent extension of a statewide 1-cent increase in the sales tax in November.
At the public meeting late last month, Mr. Nodine, the planning manager, told parents, "We want to cut to create something new" to "increase and improve performance." He asked them to write down suggestions; a final decision should be announced in December. The question, he said, is how to do that when programs meant to help achievement, like full-day kindergarten, are now under threat.
~~~~~~~~~~
Washington DC/ NAEP Shows Most Students Lack Writing Proficiency
By Nora Fleming
Education Week, Vol. 32, Issue 4 [Edweek.org]
September 14, 2012
After decades of paper-and-pencil tests, the new results from the "nation's report card" in writing come from a computer-based assessment for the first time, but only about one-quarter of the 8th and 12th graders performed at the proficient level or higher. And the proficiency rates were far lower for black and Hispanic students.
With the new National Assessment of Educational Progress in writing, students not only responded to questions and composed their essays on laptop computers, but also were evaluated on:
- how frequently they used word-processing review tools like "spell check" and
- editing tools such as copying and cutting text.
- Some prompts also featured multimedia components.
According to the NAEP report, released today, the switch from paper and pencil to a computer-based test is tied to recognition of the role technology plays in a 21st-century student's life.
- In 2009, a hands-on and computerized science NAEP was administered, and
- all new NAEP exams are slated to be computerized, including, for example, a 2014 technology and engineering assessment administered entirely on computers.
"This is a very exciting time for us," said Mary Crovo, the executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board, which sets policy for NAEP, on a conference call with reporters.
- "[Technology] is becoming more the norm than the exception in our nation's schools and certainly the way students communicate in college and the workplace."
New Framework
With the new format, which is evaluated on a revised NAEP writing framework, the latest results are not comparable to past exams, but future tests will use these results as a benchmark. The most recent paper-and-pencil tests were administered in 1998, 2002, and 2007.
On the new writing NAEP, given last year, the nationally representative sample of students-24,100 8th graders and 28,100 12th graders-were asked to respond to two 30-minute writing prompts that asked them to persuade, explain, or convey experiences.
- Results show the percentages of students in each grade reaching the "basic," "proficient," or "advanced" levels, which reflect how well they could communicate purposeful messages to specific audiences, such as a college-admissions committee.
At the 8th grade level, for example, one exercise called "Lost Island" asked students to imagine they had arrived on a remote island and listen to an audio file that included nature sounds and lines of a journal read aloud. Students then were required to write personal stories that chronicled an experience they would have had on the island, had they been there.
To reach "advanced" on the exam, students told well-organized stories with strong details, precise word choices, and varied sentences, according to the NAEP report. Students at the "basic" level would use some detail in their stories, but organization was "loose," sentence structure unvaried, and word choice limited.
Teachers of students who took the new exam were surveyed on how frequently they assign schoolwork to be completed on computers. The report finds that those students who were required by teachers to use computers more often to write and edit assignments for school performed better on the test.
- Overall, only 27 percent of students in both grades tested scored at or above the proficient level in 2011.
- The data also reveal some persistent achievement gaps. For instance, at the 12th grade level, 9 percent of black students and 12 percent of Latinos scored proficient or above, compared with 34 percent of white students.
- Also, females outperformed males at both grade levels. In 8th grade, 37 percent of girls scored proficient or above, compared with 18 percent of boys.
Such performance differences for various populations were similar to those seen with the paper-and-pencil tests, according to NAEP data.
David P. Driscoll, the chairman of the NAEP governing board, saw reason for concern in the new data.
"We need to focus on supporting students beyond the 'basic' levels so that they have a solid grasp of effective writing skills," he said in a press release.
Access to Technology
Beverly Ann Chin, a professor of English at the University of Montana, in Missoula, said the report provides insights on how students use technology to write. She also highlighted the stronger outcomes for students who used computers regularly in class.
- "These findings support the importance of integrating computers into writing instruction," she said in a statement.
- "When teachers encourage students to use word-processing features on a regular basis, students learn how computers can facilitate their writing processes and improve their final product."
Ms. Chin raised concerns about access to technology, noting survey data from the NAEP report suggesting that students from low-income families were less likely to be asked by their teachers to use computers to draft and review their writing.
- "Students who are skilled in using technology tools in writing will be more successful in school, the workplace, and society," she said.
A pilot test of the writing NAEP also was given to 4th grade students. Students at that grade level will be included in the regular administration of the exam moving forward.
~~~~~~~~~~
New York NY/ Could Raising Salaries Be Best Way to Attract and Keep Better Teachers?
By Jackie Mader
Hechingert Report [Hechingerreport.org]
September 14, 2012
Educators kicked off the New York Times Schools For Tomorrow Conference [www.nytschoolsfortomorrow.com] on Thursday morning by addressing a recurring question among teachers: how can the status and perception of the teaching profession be elevated?
The talk soon turned to teacher salaries, and through the day, that topic came up, over and over again.
Research has shown that teachers are the single most important in-school factor for affecting student performance, so attracting and keeping good teachers has become a priority across the country. But educators at the conference stressed that the strongest teachers may be leaving the field because of concerns over salary or the belief that teaching is not a respectable profession. And, they say, the field may not be attracting the strongest potential teachers for those same reasons.
"I want teachers to be treated like brain surgeons, and assume that every single day that they go into work is a challenging day," said Ninive Calegari, panelist and president of the nonprofit advocacy group The Teacher Salary Project [http://www.theteachersalaryproject.org/]. "What offends me is that they then go home to financial stress, and that's unfair and as Americans, we should be offended by that."
- As it stands now, the National Education Association reports that beginning public school teachers can be paid anywhere from around $24,000, which is the average in Montana (and the lowest in the country), to nearly $45,000, the average beginning salary in New Jersey.
Salaries also vary within states, depending on district pay-scales, experience and the teacher's education level. In districts that have introduced merit pay, teacher bonuses are typically based on how students perform on standardized tests.
Linda Darling-Hammond, a panelist and professor at Stanford University who is outspoken on education issues, highlighted the disparity between U.S. teacher salaries and those in high-performing countries like Finland and Singapore. In those countries, teachers and doctors have comparable salaries, and teacher education programs are extremely selective.
In Finland, where only one in 10 applicants is accepted by teacher education programs, the teaching profession is highly respected and attracts the nation's top college graduates.
"People respond to you depending upon how much money you make as far as the authority you have, the prestige," said Brian Crosby, a panelist and co-chair of the English Department at Hoover High School in Glendale, Calif. "Teachers do not have the amount of salary they need to have the level of respect they deserve."
The comparison to Finland and the issue of teacher salary kept coming up through the day.
"We are not Singapore, we are not Finland, we have a different set of circumstances," said Kaya Henderson, chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools. "At the same time, we have to continue to hold these children to high standards."
Some districts have seen salary levels directly affect their ability to attract and retain teachers.
- In Tennessee, Metro Nashville Public Schools this summer raised beginning teacher salaries by more than $5,000 a year, to $40,000. As a result, school officials said they had a flood of applications-over 1,000 for about 540 positions.
- Meanwhile, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District, in North Carolina, which has experimented in the past with bonuses based on test scores, was recently identified in a study as a district that has failed to keep enough good teachers. This year, Charlotte-Mecklenburg teachers, who start at $34,000, received their first pay raise in four years. New Superintendent Heath Morrison is also investigating how to raise morale and provide more support to teachers as a retention strategy.
But the teacher strike in Chicago, where the average teacher salary is $71,236, demonstrates that for many teachers, salary is only one critical issue. Chicago teachers are some of the most highly paid in the nation, but even the offer of a 16 percent pay raise over the next four years has not deterred them from striking over other issues, like teacher evaluations and job security.
While raising salaries may not be a main focus of education reform, several members of the panel suggested that it might be the best starting point when it comes to making teaching a more respected position and attracting quality teachers.
"In order for our country to be successful in the future, we need to have college students want to teach the same way they want to get into medical school," said Calegari. "I think that that standard would really protect the future of our country."
~~~~~~~~~~
New York NY/ EDITORIAL: In Search of Excellent Teaching
New York Times
September 16, 2012
The Chicago teachers' strike was prompted in part by a fierce disagreement over how much student test scores will weigh in a new teacher evaluation system mandated by state law. That teachers' unions in much of the country now agree that student achievement should count in evaluations at all reflects a major change from the past, when it was often argued that teaching was an "art" that could not be rigorously evaluated or, even more outrageously, that teachers should not be held accountable for student progress.
Traditional teacher evaluations often consist of cursory classroom visits by principals who declare nearly every teacher good, or at least competent, even in failing schools where few if any children meet basic educational standards.
As a result of this system, bad things can happen. High-performing teachers who have an enormous impact on student achievement go unidentified, and they often leave the district. Promising, but struggling, young teachers never get the help they need to master the job. And disastrous teachers who have no feel for the profession continue as long as they wish, hurting young lives along the way.
The more rigorous evaluation systems that have taken root in several states and districts around the country are intended to change that picture. These systems, which take student achievement into account in various ways, are still in their formative years, but they have already opened the door to a different way of doing business. At their best, these evaluation systems are based on the idea that teaching is difficult to master and that high-performers tend to get that way through intensive feedback and help from colleagues.
The school system in Montgomery County, Md., established its evaluation and mentoring system more than a decade ago. The system does not specify exactly how much weight student test scores and other data should receive. But depending on the circumstances, the evaluation may include scores from state tests, student projects, student and parent surveys and other data.
It is an intensive program that aims to help both novice teachers and experienced teachers who receive a "below standard" evaluation. The system, which has required a considerable investment of time and money, assigns consulting teachers who work full time assisting a number of colleagues. These master teachers help their charges plan lessons, review student work and also arrange for them to observe other teachers on the job. After a year of support, a panel of teachers and principals can recommend dismissal or another year of support.
The widely praised evaluation system in New Haven also relies on a complex mix of factors. It takes into account year-by-year improvement in student learning, as measured by progress on state and local tests and attainment of academic goals. The system also examines the teachers' instructional abilities, judged by frequent observations by principals and other managers. Teachers receive regular face-to-face feedback so that they are fully aware of what they need to do to improve.
Some systems give a specific weight to so-called value-added test scores, which try to account for socioeconomic differences by tracking students' improvement year to year, rather than looking just at their absolute scores. That approach, though, has come under attack by critics who argue that these scores are too often statistically flawed.
Reasonable school officials understand that test scores, while important, do not reflect the sum total of what good teachers provide for their students. In Washington, D.C., where the evaluation system is now in its fourth year, school officials have decided to change the weighting of tests. Originally, value-added scores accounted for 50 percent of teacher evaluations; that has been reduced to 35 percent, with an additional 15 percent consisting of other goals (like the students' mastery of certain skills) collaboratively arrived at by teacher and principal.
Officials there say they reduced the importance of value-added scores after some of the most successful teachers expressed anxiety about the measure and argued that it might not give some teachers full credit for their work because they teach subjects not covered by the state tests.
Many of these new programs are better than the slipshod evaluation systems they replaced. But they are far from perfect. States and cities, like Chicago, will need to keep working at them to ensure fairness, accuracy and transparency.
~~~~~~~~~~
New York NY/ OPINION: Training Teachers to Embrace Reform
Chicago-style war with unions is the past. Here's how Finland and Ontario found a new way forward
By Amanda Ripley [Emerson Fellow at the New America Foundation]
Wall Street Journal
September 14, 2012
Making sense of the Chicago teachers' strike (where the two sides were reportedly moving toward resolution on Friday) is like trying to understand the failure of a friend's marriage. You can't help speculating about who's to blame, but you'll never really know. In truth, it doesn't matter. Many countries have revolutionized their education systems in recent years, but not one of them has done it through strikes, walkouts or righteous indignation.
Just about every country in the developed world has a teachers' union, so the mere presence of a union doesn't determine the quality of a country's schools. There is, however, a significant relationship between the professionalism of the union and the health of an education system. The all-important issue is not how easy it is to fire the worst teachers; it's how to elevate the entire craft without going to war with teachers.
That's where other countries can show us a better way. Working with unions doesn't mean turning into Mexico, where the education system has been gifted to the union in exchange for political favors-and teenagers perform at the bottom of the world in math and reading. In a few countries, politicians and union leaders have managed not only to raise expectations but to get teachers to drink from the same punch bowl as reformers.
In Finland in the 1970s, teachers had to use special diaries to record what they taught each hour. Government inspectors made sure that a rigorous national curriculum was being followed. Teachers and principals weren't trusted to act on their own.
At the same time, however, the government began to inject professionalism into the system. The Finns shut down the middling teacher-training schools that dotted the rural landscape and moved teacher preparation into the elite universities, where only the top echelon of high-school graduates could study (something the U.S. has never attempted). Opponents said the changes were elitist, but the reformers insisted that the country had to invest in education to survive economically. Once teachers-to-be got into the universities, they were required to master their subject matter and to spend long stretches practicing in high-performing public schools.
In the 1980s and '90s, with higher standards and more rigorous teacher training in place, the reformers injected trust. They lifted mandates and asked the teachers themselves to design a new, smarter national curriculum. Today, Finland's teenagers score at the top of the world on international tests.
If Finland feels too remote to serve as a model for the U.S., consider Ontario, Canada. After years of labor strife in the 1990s, a new provincial premier was elected in 2003. Dalton McGuinty chose Gerard Kennedy, a critic of the old regime, as his education minister. He spent months in school cafeterias, principals' offices and parent meetings before the negotiations began. "You couldn't wait until you were at the bargaining table," explains Benjamin Levin, the former deputy minister. When it came time to negotiate a new teachers' contract in 2005, Mr. Kennedy harangued the bargainers and kept them at the table all night on more than one occasion-deflecting the distractions that normally dominate such talks-until he finally got an agreement.
The plan that emerged put pressure on Ontario's schools to improve results and also offered more help to educators. This worked in part because Canada already had fairly rigorous and selective education colleges, so teachers had the skills to adapt to these changes. And by giving in to teachers' requests for smaller elementary-class sizes, politicians bought themselves enormous good will.
The system in Ontario became "a virtuous circle," says Marc Tucker, author of "Surpassing Shanghai," a book about top-performing education systems. "When the young people came out of their training programs, they were damn good teachers. Because of that, they were able to raise public and political confidence-and when that happened, it made it possible for them to get higher salaries and even higher quality recruits into teaching."
For the past decade, there has been a détente in labor relations in Ontario. Despite a diverse population of students, a quarter of whom were immigrants, the province's high-school graduation rate rose from 68% to 82%. Teacher turnover also declined dramatically. In 2009, Ontario was one of the few places in the world (aside from Finland) where 15-year-olds scored very high on international tests regardless of their socioeconomic background.
Interestingly, Ontario had its own labor flare-up this week-over a proposed wage freeze and a law that could limit strikes. But coming after years of relative harmony, the response has been reasonable so far. The union urged members to temporarily stop coaching sports and limit other voluntary activities. The situation could deteriorate, but for now, the tone in Ontario is revealing.
What happened in Chicago is about more than just Chicago. It's about the deeper problem of transforming America's schools. For too long our education reformers have tried to create a professional teaching corps from the top down, and union leaders have fought to maintain an untenable system. Both sides need to enter the 21st century.
~~~~~~~~~~
Chicago IL/ OPINION: Are We Asking Too Much From Our Teachers?
By Alex Kotolowitz [Journalist, author and producer of the documentary "The Interrupters."
New York Times
September 14, 2012
The Chicago teachers' strike, which appears to be winding down, may be seminal, but for reasons that are not necessarily apparent. It came as a surprise. In July, the city had agreed to hire more teachers to accommodate a longer school day. Last Sunday, the city agreed to a substantial pay raise. The following day, teachers walked off their jobs for the first time since 1987. The union's president, Karen Lewis, complained at a news conference about the lack of air-conditioning in schools and the new teacher evaluation system, which seemed rather flimsy reasons for some 26,000 teachers to abandon their posts.
Not only was the public confused, but so were the union's members. One teacher told me last week that if you asked 30 of his colleagues why they were striking, you'd get 30 different answers. Their explanations varied: the teachers wanted respect, they opposed school reform, they feared the privatization of education (in the form of charter schools), they wanted to teach Mayor Rahm Emanuel a lesson. But I believe something else has been going on here, something much more profound.
"Reform of teacher tenure," Paul Tough writes in a new book, "How Children Succeed," has become "the central policy tool in our national effort to improve the lives of poor children." Are we expecting too much of our teachers? Schools are clearly a critical piece - no, the critical piece - in any anti-poverty strategy, but they can't go it alone. Nor can we do school reform on the cheap. In the absence of any bold effort to alleviate the pressures of poverty, in the absence of any bold investment in educating our children, is it fair to ask that the schools - and by default, the teachers - bear sole responsibility for closing the economic divide? This is a question asked not only in Chicago, but in virtually every urban school district around the country.
For the past few weeks, I've been spending time at Harper High, a neighborhood school in Englewood that started classes in mid-August. Over the past year, the school lost eight current and former students to violence; 19 others were wounded by gunfire. The school itself, though, is a safe haven. It's as dedicated a group of administrators and faculty members as I've seen anywhere. They've transformed the school into a place where kids want to be. And yet each day I spend there I witness one heartbreaking scene after another. A girl who yells at one of the school's social workers, "This is no way to live," and then breaks down in tears. Because of problems at home, she's had to move in with a friend's family and there's not enough food to go around. A young man, having witnessed a murder in his neighborhood over the summer, has retreated into a shell. Just within the last month, another girl has gotten into two altercations; the school is naturally asking, what's going on at home?
The stories are all too familiar, and yet somehow we've come to believe that with really good teachers and longer school days and rigorous testing we can transform children's lives.
We've imagined teachers as lazy, excuse-making quasi-professionals - or, alternately, as lifesavers. But the truth, of course, is more complicated. Quality schools and quality teaching clearly can make a difference in children's lives, sometimes a huge difference, but we too often attempt to impute to teachers impossible powers. After more than 15 years of reform in Chicago, the dropout rate has been markedly reduced but is still an astonishing 40 percent.
Consider that in Chicago,
- many elementary schools have a social worker just one or two days a week (they're shared among schools) in communities where children face myriad pressures and stresses.
- Class sizes in kindergarten through third grade hover around 25, even though the Tennessee STAR study, conducted in the 1980s and renowned in education circles, found that small classes of about 15 during those early years can make a big difference for students' long-term outcomes.
- In Chicago, slots in after-school programs for 6- to 12-year-olds have been reduced by 23 percent since 2005, according to Illinois Action for Children, an advocacy organization.
- Earlier this year, the city shuttered half its mental health clinics.
- A promising mentoring program, Becoming a Man, which was found by a University of Chicago study to have reduced violence and increased graduation rates among its participants, is oversubscribed. Forty-five schools want its services, but it has only enough money to work in 15.
Last year, at an Aspen Institute conference, the education historian Diane Ravitch was asked her wish list to improve schools. At the top of her list: universal prenatal care - which, of course, has nothing to do with the classroom. Or so it would seem.
Of course, Ms. Ravitch wanted to make a point. As we slash services in deeply impoverished communities and reduce school budgets, how can we expect that good teachers alone can improve the lives of poor children? Poverty, of course, can't be an excuse for lousy teaching. But neither can excellent teaching alone be a solution to poverty.
It's been too easy to see this dispute as one between two hotheaded personalities - Mr. Emanuel and Ms. Lewis, or as a play for respect. Rather, as I spoke with teachers on the picket lines last week, it became clear that it was about something much more fundamental, and something worth our attention: top-notch teaching can't by itself become our nation's answer to a poverty rate that, as we learned the other day, remains stubbornly high: one of every five children in America live below the poverty level.
In Chicago, 87 percent of public school students come from low-income families - and as if to underscore the precarious nature of their lives, on the first day of the strike, the city announced locations where students could continue to receive free breakfast and lunch.
We need to demand the highest performances from our teachers while we also grapple with the forces that bear down on the lives of their students, from families that have collapsed under the stress of unemployment to neighborhoods that have deteriorated because of violence and disinvestment. And we can do that both inside and outside the schools - but teachers can't do it alone.
