Santa Fe/ Proposed Educator Pension Contribution Hike Backed
By Dan Boyd
ABQ Journal Staff Writer
September 20, 2012
A union-backed proposal to shore up the New Mexico Educational Retirement Board moved forward by a narrow margin Wednesday, as detractors questioned whether it would stabilize the cash-strapped pension fund.
Board members for the retirement system that covers more than 96,000 educators and retirees voted 4-3 to endorse the plan, which calls for current employees to funnel more of their paychecks into their retirement funds.
- The plan endorsed Wednesday calls for retirement contributions by employees making $40,000 annually to increase, for example, from $3,760 a year to $4,280 a year, according to ERB staff.
- It would also impose a new minimum retirement age of 55 and defer the start date of certain retirement benefits, but those changes would apply only to future workers.
- And it calls for the taxpayer-funded contributions to be increased by 3 percent, which would equal the amount approved by the Legislature in 2005 but not yet fully funded.
"I think this is a good start," said state Treasurer James Lewis, one of the four board members who supported the plan during the meeting Wednesday at Santa Ana. "We have to do something, and I think our fiduciary responsibility is to do what's good for the fund."
Earlier this year, an ERB solvency proposal that would have trimmed the annual cost-of-living adjustments that retirees receive and enacted other changes stalled in the Legislature after being opposed by some unions.
Backers of the current plan say they have learned from that experience. About 15 labor unions and retiree groups met several times this summer and helped craft the solvency proposal endorsed Wednesday.
- "We believe it's a plan that works and would get us to where we need to be in terms of solvency," said Sharon Morgan, president of the National Education Association in New Mexico.
However, board member Brad Day, who was appointed to the ERB by Republican Gov. Susana Martinez, suggested the plan was drafted largely without board input and said it would be unfair to future teachers.
- Public Education Deputy Secretary Paul Aguilar, who like Day voted against endorsing the plan, suggested future investment earnings likely won't be high enough for the plan to achieve its target of making the fund 95 percent solvent by 2043. "This proposal doesn't work," Aguilar said.
The Educational Retirement Board, one of two public retirement systems in New Mexico, has an unfunded liability of $5.9 billion, the difference between the benefits due to be paid out and the assets on hand, according to its most recent assessment. The pension fund had a balance of about $9.5 billion in assets as of July.
- The ERB also has a funded ratio of just 63 percent, meaning it has 63 cents in invested assets for every $1 in retirement benefits it owes to its members.
- Its fiscal condition has worsened in recent years due to a combination of factors, including market-driven investment losses and the Legislature's decision to delay an approved increase in taxpayer-funded contributions to the fund.
Some states have taken drastic action to address pension solvency issues. In Rhode Island, lawmakers slashed retirement benefits for workers, including teachers, by eliminating the annual cost-of-living increases until the pension system's funding status improves.
In New Mexico, pension solvency is expected to be a high-profile issue during the 60-day legislative session that begins in January. In addition to the ERB, the state's other retirement system, the Public Employees Retirement Association, has also endorsed a proposed solvency fix.
The meeting Wednesday at the Prairie Star restaurant came during a two-day ERB retreat at Santa Ana Pueblo.
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Santa Fe/ New Evaluations for SFPS Workers Proposed
By T.S. Last
ABQ Journal Staff Writer
September 20, 2012
At the halfway point of Santa Fe Public Schools' new superintendent Joel Boyd's 100-day "Entry and Learning Plan," he's introduced a new plan for evaluating school personnel.
At Tuesday night's school board meeting, Boyd, with the help of Assessment and Accountability Director Lynn Vanderlinden, outlined a "performance compact model" he plans to use for employee evaluations, starting with school principals.
- "This is a new approach to shared accountability that will begin to permeate through the entire system," Boyd said before the meeting.
- "Anyone who leads a core function will have a performance compact developed."
Boyd said he expects to have the compact for principals finalized by Oct. 1.
The model was developed through research into what is being done in other states, and the adopted standardized scale used for various metrics was borrowed from the School District of Philadelphia, where Boyd previously worked.
Phase 1 of Boyd's Entry and Learning Plan is listening, and from what he's heard so far, there is a need to bring accountability into the equation used for performance evaluations.
- "There was no clear system of performance management in Santa Fe Public Schools," said Boyd, who began his new job Aug. 1. "There was a perception here that people were evaluated based on personality and not performance."
- Boyd also said there was no clear system for goal setting and improvement. Those are addressed at the beginning of the process when expectations are defined at the beginning of the school year.
Boyd said expectations could be defined differently for different staff members. For example, expectations for a first-year principal would likely be different than those of a returning principal. In addition, each school is unique, so expectations at one school could be quite distinct from another, he said.
Once expectations are set, it would be up to the central office to provide the required support. Only then can school personnel be held accountable, Boyd said.
- "This is about performance management; accountability is just one aspect," he said. "If you don't have the first two, it's unfair to apply the third."
Principals first
Boyd said having a strong principal is critical to a school's success. He identifies four components -
- student achievement,
- school operations,
- community satisfaction and
- instructional leadership
- as indicators of a high-quality school, and all are integrated into the performance compact used to evaluate principals.
- Hard data would be used for the student achievement and school operations components.
- Standards-Based Assessment (SBA) scores and the A-F school accountability grades would be used to measure student achievement.
- Teacher and student attendance,
- Special Education and English Language Learners compliance and
- a safety audit are some of the proposed indicators used for school operations.
- Community satisfaction and instructional leadership would be measured by use of survey data from parents, students and staff.
Boyd, who has the authority to hire and fire principals, said this method is more comprehensive and less subjective than if the critique was just left up to him.
- "This represents a 360-degree review," he said. "The community and teachers get a chance to weigh in on this through survey data, so it's not the superintendent making decisions in isolation."
Boyd said the plan is subject to Public Education Department approval, but he didn't anticipate that to be a problem.
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ABQ/ $1.3 Million NIH Grants Enrich Science Programs in Rural NM Middle Schools
Deming Headlight Report
September 19, 2012
UNM's Prevention Research Center and Department of Pediatrics Professors Drs. Sally M. Davis and Shiraz I. Mishra, and researchers and educators from the UNM College of Education have been awarded nearly $1.3 million over five years from the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA) to implement a science enrichment program in five tribal and non-tribal (predominantly Hispanic) middle schools in rural New Mexico.
American Indians and Hispanics historically have been under-represented in the scientific fields, and there is a steady decline in the number of American Indian and Hispanic students graduating with science and engineering degrees. Further, chronic diseases like obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cancer are a major health concern for American Indians and Hispanics.
- "The lower representation of American Indians and Hispanics in the sciences coupled with higher burden of chronic diseases among these populations poses a serious national challenge," Mishra says.
- "Through the use of innovative technologies and educational strategies, we hope to foster and nurture interest among middle school students about careers in the sciences."
SEPA was created to encourage active biomedical and/or behavioral scientists to work as partners with educators, media experts, community leaders, and other interested organizational leaders on projects that improve student understanding of the health sciences in K-12 education, and increase the public's understanding of science.
The NM FRESH: New Mexico's Future Researchers Exploring Science and Health research project is the first time in the 21-year history of the NIH SEPA program that New Mexico, an Institutional Development Award (IDeA) state, has received a SEPA award.
- "This project builds on the UNM PRC's extensive expertise in school and community based prevention research," adds Davis.
- "The project will shift educational paradigms by including research-tested nutrition and physical activity content in a progressively detailed science enrichment curriculum, which will be supported by Health and Science Fairs, web-based activities to enhance critical thinking, student mentoring, and professional development for teachers."
For more information on the Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA), visit: http://www.ncrrsepa.org/. For more information on the UNM Prevention Research Center, visit: http://hsc.unm.edu/som/prc/.
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Santa Fe/ NM PED Suspends Entire Questa School Board
By Danielle Flores
KOB.com, Channel 4
September 19, 2012
The head of New Mexico's Public Education Department has suspended an entire northern New Mexico school board.
A notice from Hannah Skandera cites several reasons to suspend the entire Questa school board, including meetings that were chaotic, police presence was required.
Members of the Questa school board have even engaged in fist fights. The report also said board members pressured former superintendents to fire people.
There were also violations of the Open Meetings Act, according to the report.
Board members can fight the suspension during a public hearing in November. Until then, the state will oversee the district.
The entire report is posted below:
Notice of Disapproval and Immediate Suspension from Authority (http://www.kob.com/kobtvimages/repository/cs/files/Questa%20Notice.pdf)
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Clovis/ COLUMN: Today's Teachers Provided with More Tools
By Cindy Kleyn-Kennedy [Kleyn-Kennedy is the instructional technology coordinator for the Clovis Municipal Schools]
Clovis News Journal
September 19, 2012
These days we hear and read about too many negative aspects of education without considering the dramatic shifts that have taken place in the classrooms of today.
Technology has impacted education, but teaching has also actually changed considerably. Today's challenges require greater demands on all educators to effectively reach our 21st century learners.
In past years, students entered the classroom, the door closed, and if students were sitting quietly in rows of desks facing the front of the classroom, we assumed that learning was taking place. Today's classrooms look quite different.
While collaborative learning and data-driven instruction might sound confusing to those outside the field of education, today's educators are in the midst of a huge shift in understanding how learning takes place, and, more specialized expertise is required of educators than ever before.
With technology making it possible to provide in-depth insight into what and how a student is learning, the teacher must become adept at interpreting the data and creatively addressing needs revealed by the data. Those classroom doors have swung open, and what is transpiring inside the classroom has become more transparent and collaborative than ever before.
Across the district we're providing more and more in-depth training for teachers.
Cara Malone, instructional coach at Clovis High School, recently described some of the trainings teachers attended even before school began to be better prepared to serve students. These, as well as ongoing trainings throughout the school year, cover:
- data trainings,
- team teaching,
- specific strategies for individualizing instruction and
- developing more accountability for learning.
At CHS, teachers are using more reflective strategies, along with tools and resources for guiding students in reading.
"We reflect on everything we do and how that affects students. We're changing the way we teach students to look at and decipher texts," Malone said.
There is more measurable goal-setting, more creative ways to promote student engagement and with the data generated by student academic performance, teachers are able to more quickly identify and respond to student needs.
At CHS Freshman Academy, much of the same is taking place. Principal Diana Russell described some of the instructional changes that have helped students.
- Instructional teaming has become a powerful way to make sure no student falls between the cracks.
- Teachers meeting regularly and working collaboratively enables them to design complementary, cross-curricular lessons that reinforce all subject content areas.
- More importantly, this enables teachers to stay fully informed about each individual student's progress across the board, which makes parent conferences more productive.
- The governing council, which meets at least once a month with team leaders and department heads provides a working forum for open discussion, input for decisions that affect students and staff, and a positive opportunity for change, all "based upon what is best for kids," according to Russell.
Comparing today's classrooms to yesterdays is like comparing apples and pears.
In upcoming articles, we hope to take you inside these exciting new classrooms to have a glimpse and develop a better understanding of 21st century classrooms.
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Washington DC/ COLUMN: Teachers Make Easy Scapegoat
By Eugene Robinson [Syndicated Columnist]
ABQ Journal
September 20, 2012
Teachers are heroes, not villains, and it's time to stop demonizing them.
It has become fashionable to blame all of society's manifold sins and wickedness on "teachers unions," as if it were possible to separate these supposedly evil organizations from the dedicated public servants who belong to them.
News flash: Collective bargaining is not the problem, and taking that right away from teachers will not fix the schools.
It is true that teachers in Chicago have dug in their heels against Mayor Rahm Emanuel's demands for "reform," some of which are not unreasonable. I'd dig in, too, if I were constantly being lectured by self-righteous crusaders whose knowledge of the inner-city schools crisis comes from a Hollywood movie.
The problems that afflict public education go far beyond what George W. Bush memorably called "the soft bigotry of low expectations." They go beyond whatever measure of institutional sclerosis may be attributed to tenure, beyond the inevitable cases of burnout, beyond the fact that teachers in some jurisdictions actually earn halfway decent salaries.
The fact is that teachers are being saddled with absurdly high expectations. Some studies have shown a correlation between student performance and teacher "effectiveness," depending how this elusive quality is measured. But there is a whole body of academic literature proving the stronger correlation between student performance and a much more important variable: family income.
Yes, I'm talking about poverty. Sorry to be so gauche, but when teachers point out the relationship between income and achievement, they're not shirking responsibility. They're just stating an inconvenient truth.
According to figures compiled by the College Board, students from families making more than $200,000 score more than 300 points higher on the SAT, on average, than students from families making less than $20,000 a year. There is, in fact, a clear relationship all the way along the scale: Each increment in higher family income translates into points on the test.
Professor Sean Reardon of Stanford University's Center for Education Policy Analysis concluded in a recent study that the achievement gap between high-income and low-income students is actually widening. It is unclear why this might be happening; maybe it is due to increased income inequality, maybe the relationship between income and achievement has somehow become stronger, maybe there is some other reason.
Whatever the cause, our society's answer seems to be: Beat up the teachers.
The brie-and-chablis "reform" movement would have us believe that most of the teachers in low-income, low-performing schools are incompetent - and, by extension, that most of the teachers in upper-crust schools, where students perform well, are paragons of pedagogical virtue.
But some of the most dedicated and talented teachers I've ever met were working in "failing" inner-city schools. And yes, in award-winning schools where, as in Lake Wobegon, "all the children are above average," I've met some unimaginative hacks who should never be allowed near a classroom.
It is reasonable to hold teachers accountable for their performance. But it is not reasonable - or, in the end, productive - to hold them accountable for factors that lie far beyond their control. It is fair to insist that teachers approach their jobs with the assumption that every single child, rich or poor, can succeed. It is not fair to expect teachers to correct all the imbalances and remedy all the pathologies that result from growing inequality in our society.
You didn't see any of this reality in "Waiting for 'Superman,' " the 2010 documentary that argued we should "solve" the education crisis by establishing more charter schools and, of course, stomping the teachers unions. You won't see it later this month in "Won't Back Down," starring Viola Davis and Maggie Gyllenhaal, which argues for "parent trigger" laws designed to produce yet more charter schools and yet more teacher-bashing.
I've always considered myself an apostate from liberal orthodoxy on the subject of education. I have no fundamental objection to charter schools, as long as they produce results. I believe in the centrality and primacy of public education, but I believe it's immoral to tell parents, in effect, "Too bad for your kids, but we'll fix the schools someday."
But portraying teachers as villains doesn't help a single child. Ignoring the reasons for the education gap in this country is no way to close it. And there's a better way to learn about the crisis than going to the movies. Visit a school instead.
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New York NY/ OPINION: A Digital Tool to Unlock Learning
By David Bornstein
New York Times
September 19, 2012
When we think about education reform, we usually focus on teacher quality. The big battleground in education revolves around holding teachers accountable for their performance. With all the focus on teachers, however, one group that is often forgotten as a key learning resource are the students themselves.
One way to help students gain agency over their own education is through technology. Despite the Internet revolution, the field of K-12 education has been relatively slow to respond to digital media. That's why I paid a visit last week to the site of a promising experiment in digital learning in New York: the Bea Fuller Rodgers Middle School in Washington Heights.
- Last year, CFY, a nonprofit organization, provided home computers (and arranged for discounted broadband access) to every one of the sixth grade students in the school. (Almost all the school's families are Hispanics who qualify for the federal government's free or reduced lunch program. Currently, half of all Hispanics in the United States lack broadband.). [cfy,org]
- In addition, CFY provided a four-hour training for the students and their parents in a free Web-based platform CFY developed called PowerMyLearning that contains 1,000 (soon to be 2,800) digital learning activities and games from across the Web that have been carefully selected and categorized by teachers and education specialists. [http://powermylearning.com/]
- Finally, CFY provided onsite training to the school's sixth grade teachers in how to integrate PowerMyLearning into their classrooms (practicing what educators call "blended learning.")
Despite a November start, the program appears to have made a big difference especially for struggling students.
- The school reports that the percentage of last year's sixth graders with learning disabilities who met or exceeded standards in math (testing at level 3 or 4) increased by 36 percent,
- while the percentage of students who had been below standard (testing at level 1) decreased from 23 percent to zero.
These results are striking, but they have to be put into context. Bea Fuller Rodgers is a small school with about 20 teachers. It has a dynamic principal, Kristy De la Cruz, and some very caring and committed teachers. So it's too early to draw conclusions from the results. But what caught my attention was simply how excited and effusive everyone was, including the students, about PowerMyLearning.
All of the teachers I spoke with admitted that they had had reservations when the platform was introduced to them. Tristan Wright, a veteran teacher who teaches struggling students, had been wary of technology until she tried out the platform one weekend with her 9-year-old daughter. Daniel Matta, a six-year veteran who teaches math, said his first reaction was: "Oh, no, not another thing. It won't work."
- Now they both say that the digital learning not only increases student attention and engagement in school - a finding that conforms with research (http://www.wfu.edu/education/gradtea/forum09/forumproceedings09.pdf, p. 37-42) - but has also encouraged students to take ownership of their own learning and made it easier for teachers to differentiate instruction without embarrassing students.
- "After 12 years, it's completely changed my experience as a teacher," said Wright.
PowerMyLearning has hundreds of activities for each grade level that are linked to the Common Core State Standards (which have been adopted by 45 states).
- Teachers assign "playlists" of activities to students based on student needs;
- they can track what the students do at school and home.
- They also share data from performance tests with students so they can guide their own learning as needed.
- (In the fall, parents will also be able to create playlists.)
"We've found that the students want to know the reality," explained the principal, Kristy De la Cruz. "They know when they're struggling and they want to know how to work on it. This blanket assumption that 'I'm dumb in math' has changed to 'I need to practice fractions.'"
That's exactly what Maria de Leon, a seventh grade student, did in partnership with her teacher. "I created my own playlist," she said. "Five activities for math and five for reading. Based on things that I needed help with."
One of the biggest challenges teachers face is creating environments in which children feel safe to try out ideas. When children are asked questions in class, it's inherently stressful - like being on stage. When you learn from a person you're always conscious that that person is thinking about you. In his classic book, "How Children Fail," John Holt noted that, unlike toddlers who are undaunted experimenters, many children in grade school become more concerned with avoiding embarrassment than learning new things.
After years of embarrassments or failures, some children grow so guarded they won't even make eye contact with teachers. That was a problem that Tristan Wright faced with one of her eighth grade students, who resisted her efforts to connect. Then, one day earlier this year, she handed him a laptop opened to a math game that dealt with the concept of slope. "The next thing, he was doing it," she told me. "And then he started asking questions. He showed up to my next session and we agreed that he could continue working with the computer. He still struggles with effort, but it opened up a door. It changed our whole relationship."
Another challenge for teachers like Wright is differentiating instruction for students at different levels without stigmatizing them. Today, schools are being required to serve children with wide ranges of abilities and special needs. The old way of differentiating instruction was to separate kids in groups or classes and assign different exercises. No matter how the labels were disguised - you could call one group the Eagles and the other the Falcons - the kids knew the difference.
Technology offers another path. For example, Wright had an eighth grader who had trouble with basic addition. "I could never go to her and say, 'Today we're going to work on adding.' It would just be devastating to her," she said.
- "With PowerMyLearning, I found I could assign her activities and she didn't even know what skills she was working on. She was just playing. And for the first time, she started to like math."
"People aren't going to believe me when I say this," she added. "But when the kids are using technology, they don't care what other kids are doing. They're just focused on the activity."
The students are less self-conscious, so they try more experiments. If an answer is wrong, the computer gives feedback, and they can adjust - quite a different experience from saying the wrong answer out loud. Technology offers students different ways to visualize information. And students can continue working at home. "Sometimes the teacher doesn't explain it to you as well as a computer," added Lisa Lora, a seventh grade student. "And there are no interruptions. No one is shouting answers. You can concentrate and go at your own pace."
Often, the students work in groups, rotating from station to station. As students figure things out they'll show their partners. "They don't even realize they're teaching each other," said Wright. "It just comes out organically."
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CFY was founded by Elisabeth Stock in 1999, when Google was a year old, Internet access was dial-up, and the "digital divide" was emerging as a serious educational problem. The organization began by concentrating on helping low-income students do better in school by improving their learning environment at home. Since then, the organization has provided home computers and training to kids and parents in 50,000 families in five cities. An independent study (http://cfy.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/CFY-ETS_Research_Study_FINAL) in 2007 reported that its approach led to significant increases in students' math scores. In recent years, the organization has moved to deepen its work in the classroom.
Stock, a social entrepreneur and an engineer with degrees from M.I.T., decided to target sixth grade because research indicated that it is a pivotal year in a child's development. "It's the age where children are starting to push away from their parents but also they're still young enough that when you say, 'You did a great job on your test, they blush,'" she explained. "It's the age where school becomes more rigorous and if kids fall behind, it's a predictor of them dropping out."
De la Cruz said that because a parent or guardian in each family receives training in PowerMyLearning at the beginning of the school year, it leads to more conversations about education at home. Kids and parents play games together. A survey three months after the start of the program found that average television watching had declined an hour a day. "The parents are very aware that their children love technology and use it every day," said De la Cruz. "And they want to know how their children are using it and how to support it."
Over the past decade, this need has grown more pressing as a new gap has opened up: the "time wasting" gap. As technology and broadband continue to spread, and educational software products proliferate, not enough effort has gone into packaging and delivering free high quality online learning activities that teachers, parents and students from low-income or low-education backgrounds find accessible and engaging.
That means activities that children can use for different learning issues without direct adult support, that work for different learning styles (e.g., games, visualizations and simulations, not just videos), material that is accurate and teaches concepts, that is adaptive, that supports group learning and children with special language needs, and doesn't assume that families have up to date computers. Those were some of the requirements for PowerMyLearning when it was launched in 2010.
- "We wanted to build something that was flexible, that teachers at different levels of comfort and expertise could take advantage of, that treated them as professionals, and at the same time was really engaging for the students," said Stock.
This year, the Gates, Broad and Kellogg foundations invested $7 million to build up and spread the platform so that it can be used by schools across the country. CFY will be expanding its intensive school partnership program to eight or nine schools this year and will be reducing its costs per school so that the program can be scaled further. In the meantime, any student, parent or teacher can use PowerMyLearning for free.
"I used to think I would fail math," said Juan Guzmán, a seventh grade student, who loves playing a baseball math game. "Sometimes teachers would go too fast for me. But I like PowerMyLearning because I can take a break if I get tired."
"The main thing is that it feels like I'm not in school," he added. "I'm just playing a game. But then when I finish I realize that I learned something. It's weird."
"Yeah," added Maria de Leon: "I never thought that fun could go with learning."