ABQ/ $600,000 Grant from Lumina Foundation to Aid UNM, CNM, APS Hispanics
By Astrid Galvan
ABQ Journal Staff Writer
October 5, 2012
A somewhat small but significant grant from a national private foundation will help New Mexico educators and community members coalesce to improve Latino student success, a UNM leader said Thursday.
The $600,000 grant from the Lumina Foundation will be used by the University of New Mexico, Central New Mexico Community College, Albuquerque Public Schools and several community groups to increase high school and college graduation rates.
The New Mexico group was one of 14 selected for the grant.
- "It's really not about the dollars but about the people who are engaged in doing the work and have the commitment to see things change around Latino student success," said Josephine "Jozi" De Leon, UNM's vice president of the division for equity and inclusion.
The group, though still working on logistics, has some hefty goals:
- To increase APS' high school graduation rate for Latinos from 59.5 percent in 2011 to 90 percent by 2025 and to get 15,000 Latino dropouts to complete high school or obtain their GED by the same year.
- To increase the percentage of Latino students who go to college to 90 percent by 2025.
- To increase CNM's graduation rate for Latinos to 40 percent and UNM's to 75 percent by 2025. The Hispanic six-year graduation rate at UNM in 2011 was 42.4 percent.
The Unidos Project, as it's been dubbed, will start by hiring an "achievement coach" who will work with Latinos at CNM on their transition to UNM.
Others will be hired at UNM to help students navigate the university, such as applying for financial aid.
The project also will work with the Latino students at high schools with the lowest graduation and college attendance rates. De Leon said UNM is hoping to work with West Mesa and Rio Grande high schools, but APS has yet to approve that.
The Lumina Foundation, which works to improve education access, is awarding a total of $11.5 million for the Latino student success initiative.
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Questa/ School Board Yet to Discuss Response to PED
By Matthew van Buren
Taos News
October 4, 2012
Two weeks away from the deadline imposed by the state Public Education Department (PED), members of the suspended Questa Independent School Board have yet to discuss how they intend to respond.
Education Secretary-Designate Hanna Skandera suspended the board's authority Sept. 18, accusing board members of exceeding their authority, violating the Open Meetings Act and committing other violations.
The suspended board members have until Oct. 18 to "submit a written statement with supporting documentation stating why the Secretary should not impose a suspension." A public hearing regarding the suspension will be held Nov. 5 in Taos.
Suspended board members Bernie Torres and Daryl Ortega both told The Taos News this week that the board members had not yet met to craft a response to the PED. Torres said he is not particularly concerned, however: He said he let out a "sigh of relief" that the district is going into the fall with a sense of calm that didn't exist when the board members were in place.
"It wasn't getting any better," he said. "We've had too much chaos already."
Torres said he hopes interim superintendent Lester Beason will stay on at least through the end of the year.
"I'm just happy that there's some peace within the district right now," he said.
'Mental problems'
PED records show complaints about the Questa board go back at least to the beginning of 2011, when Bernie Torres' wife and school district employee Gladys Torres wrote a letter in which she said she was afraid something "tragic" would happen at a board meeting.
"I was very concerned about my husband's safety," she told The Taos News in a phone interview. "I had sleepless nights when he was at a meeting ... I was concerned about the safety of the staff, too."
In the letter, addressed to Gov. Susana Martínez, she wrote that board members Matt Ortega and Tammy Jaramillo were "obstructing the business of the district."
"They are more interested in abusing the rest of the board, the interim superintendent and administration office staff, who are required to attend meetings, than they are of taking care of the school business at hand," Torres wrote. "It seems that their only goal as board members is gaining power and firing and investigating people who they have personal vendettas against, thus delaying the continuance of school business."
She wrote that Bernie Torres has tried to keep order at meetings, but she listed instances that she believes demonstrate that Matt Ortega, in her words, is "not mentally well," including having a fistfight with resigned board member Herman Medina before a meeting, maintaining and inappropriate MySpace page, having verbal altercations at a staff picnic and tearing out an electrical line that cost the district $4,000.
"I honestly feel that these two board members have mental problems, especially Mr. Matt Ortega, who in my opinion is capable of doing something drastic during one of the meetings or at adjournment, since he has gone as far as taking his arguments outside after meetings," Gladys Torres wrote.
She said she is pleased with the suspension of the board in general but is sorry that Bernie Torres, Jack Gallegos and Kenny Gallegos also had to be suspended. She said she believes Daryl Ortega and Matt Ortega and Tammy Jaramillo are mainly responsible for the problems the board has experienced.
"They were power-hungry, as far as I'm concerned," she said.
In Sept. 19 emails to The Taos News, Matt Ortega and Tammy Jaramillo wrote that they believe they were targeted for political reasons.
In a phone interview Wednesday (Oct. 3), Jaramillo said there had been finger-pointing and acrimony on the board but that she is not convinced the PED takeover is improving things for the district. She said she hopes the board members can come together soon to decide how to respond to the PED.
"Hopefully we can come to a consensus," she said.
Jaramillo said, if the board is reinstated, board members will need to engage in a "healing process" and learn how to react to each other more constructively, or things would fail to improve.
As of press time, Matt Ortega had not responded to phone and email messages requesting further comment.
Code of ethics
A group of nearly three dozen staff members from the Questa school district also signed a letter of concern regarding the school board and submitted it to the PED with an "educator ethics complaint form."
In its letter, which was also submitted to former superintendent Roy Herrera, the group takes issue with board members for violating the board's code of ethics, including using positions on the board for personal gain.
In the notice of suspension, Skandera also cited a conflict of interest involving board member Daryl Ortega, whom she said voted in favor of a resolution awarding his company a contract with the district.
Ortega said Aug. 7 meeting minutes showing he voted on the contract are "incorrect." He also told The Taos News Wednesday (Oct. 3) that he intends to file a complaint with the Attorney General's office regarding a recent decision by interim superintendent Lester Beason and Paul Aguilar, who was appointed to take the place of the Questa school board during its suspension, not to contract with Ortega and his brother's company for plumbing and electrical services. He said the district will go out to bid for the services at Beason's suggestion - and that in his opinion, Aguilar isn't spending enough time scrutinizing Beason's decisions.
"He just approved everything," Ortega said. "I don't know if the PED is doing a very good job."
In his Aug. 20 letter of resignation, Herrera also cites the board's code of ethics in broad terms and implies that district protocols, communications and procedures are not being followed. He emphasized district leaders' influential roles within the district.
"It has become clear to me that our focus is moving in different directions, and our team is not unified," he wrote.
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Santa Fe/ PED Cites Farmington School District
By Ryan Boetel
Farmington Daily Times
October 5, 2012
The Farmington Municipal School District was cited by the Public Education Department for failing to review special education students and annually checking to see if the students received the services they qualified for.
The New Mexico Public Education Department issued the school district a corrective action plan that will bring the district back into compliance. The plan gives the district a series of deadlines to review all special education students.
John Keenan, a former Piedra Vista High School teacher, filed a complaint against the school district near the end of the 2011-2012 school year that said special education students were not being reviewed in a timely matter.
The state investigated the complaint and issued the district two citations Aug. 10.
- One of the citations was for failing to provide three-year evaluations and individual education plans to special education students.
- The other citation was for failing to implement the individual education plans for students.
The evaluations for special education students are done every three years, or as requested by parents and teachers.
- The evaluations determine if students qualify for special education services, said Phil Valdez, the director of exceptional services for the school district.
- The individual education plan [IEP] describes the additional services the students qualify for.
Larry Behrens, a PED spokesman, said the department wasn't going to release how many students were lacking evaluations.
During its investigation, the education department sampled eight special education students and said three of them were overdue for three-year assessments. A sample of eight gifted students revealed three of the students needed an annual review, according to the department's letter to the district.
"We try to do everything we can so the district can meet the needs of its students," Superintendent Janel Ryan said. "This was not a widespread issue."
There are 1,900 special education students in the school district, which is about 18 percent of the student body, she said. Both Valdez and Ryan said a high turnover rate among special education teachers and staff was a reason students were not evaluated correctly.
Ryan said high turnover among those teachers was not because of the recent citation.
"It's a high-demanding job," she said.
The district must check the status of all special education students' evaluations by Friday and evaluate all special education students that are lacking a recent evaluation by Oct. 19, according to the corrective action plan.
Keenan said he hopes his complaint prompts parents of special education students to request their children's three-year assessment and the past two individual action plans to check to see if their children are receiving the correct services.
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ABQ/ EDITORIAL: Laguna-Acoma Makes Data Hands-On Lesson
ABQ Journal
October 5, 2012
"We needed to get the data out of the hands of the administrators and into the hands of the teachers, and down to the students."
- Principal Tom Trujillo, Laguna-Acoma Junior-Senior High
In the past year that data-driven, hands-on philosophy - grounded in training at the University of Virginia - has translated into literal hands-on learning. As in math students graphing their own test scores to get a clear picture of their progress.
And progress they have made. In one short year Laguna-Acoma high school students who took the SBA have charted an impressive 16 percentage point increase in math proficiency - from 28.2 percent in 2011 to 44.2 percent in 2012. Reading gains have been more modest - from 36.6 percent to 39.5 percent.
The UVA approach combines strategies from the business and education schools and focuses not on running a school like a business but on giving principals the leadership skills of chief executives. In practice at Laguna-Acoma, it seems to have resulted in a unified team tackling the common goal of improved student performance. And so far there's buy-in at all levels.
Trujillo and assistant principal Gerald Horacek post charts of where they want student achievement to go. Math teacher Berna Marquez puts students' grades in their notebooks every week and has them graph their progress. And students like senior Brent Riley say the testing at the end of each curriculum unit helps them chart their progress toward college.
Gov. Susana Martinez is directing $3.5 million be used to bring this leadership training to principals of the 319 schools the state gave "D" and "F" grades to. It is important to track their progress, just like the Laguna-Acoma students are tracking theirs.
Because CEOs and principals can agree that the bottom line in education must be adequately preparing students for the next step in their lives.
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Washington DC/ Study Finds Benefits to Infusing Math into Science Lessons
By Erik Robelen
Education Week [Edwek.org]
October 4, 2012
With the prevalence of the acronym STEM in education parlance today, interest has grown in not just promoting the subjects of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics as separate entities, but in figuring out the ways they can intersect to enhance learning.
A recent project funded by the National Science Foundation took this issue to heart, by supporting the development of a math-infused science curriculum and then studying its effects on math learning.
New findings from that project show a statistically significant boost in math achievement for the 8th graders exposed to the lessons, when compared with a control group of students who were not.
- "What we found from year one was that the kids ended up doing a lot better in math," said co-author James Lauckhardt, a senior research associate at the Center for Advanced Study in Education, part of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
Lauckhardt said there were limits on the data available on science achievement, but that he and his fellow researchers did not find any evidence that the math focus diminished science learning.
The study was recently submitted to the Journal for Research in Mathematics Education for publication.
The research project was supported through an NSF grant of $2.1 million over three years.
- The principal investigator for the grant was David Burghardt, the co-director of the Center for STEM Research at Hofstra University.
- The other co-authors of the study were Maria Russo and Deborah Hecht from CUNY's Center for Advanced Study in Education.
The project involved the development of lessons that asked students to use what they already know about math concepts and apply it to science, Lauckhardt said.
- "So they were introduced to the math more frequently than the control group but in different (and we think more meaningful) ways," he wrote in an email.
The project involved the development by curriculum experts of 29 "math-infused" science lesson plans for 8th grade teachers. They were asked to select six lessons and implement them over the course of the academic year. Each lesson was expected to take about five days.
The lessons were structured so that students would encounter increasingly complex math that supports the study of linear relationships. Three levels of math were introduced:
- graphical representation of data;
- examination of slope and visual understanding of linear and nonlinear lines; and
- contrasting linear and nonlinear lines and developing linear equations.
The first-year research focused on eight schools and 20 teachers, with half using the math-infused lesson plans and the 10 teachers in the control group doing "business as usual," Lauckhardt said.
The study explains in greater detail what was learned.
- "Most notably, student-reasoning skills increased for students in the infusion group above and beyond what would be expected during a typical school year," the authors write.
- "In essence, students who received math infusion were able to apply their knowledge to unfamiliar situations or contexts."
They also had more practice with math and were better prepared to tackle a variety of math concepts. As a result, they showed stronger scores on a state math test, according to the study.
"This finding is encouraging, as it implies that students who learn math in a variety of contexts are better able to retain mathematical concepts and perform better than students who only learn math as a stand-alone content area," the study says.
Lauckhardt said that beyond the change in test scores, another difference the researchers discerned was that students who participated in the math-infusion lessons over the course of an academic year showed a stronger positive attitude toward math. "What appeared to happen was that the positive attitude toward math waned for students in the control group over the year, while it stayed about the same for participants."
Although this might not on its face sound terribly encouraging, Lauckhardt reminded me that these students were right at the tender age when a fondness for academics often falters.
"Middle school is a time when the [positive] attitude toward school goes down," he said.
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Washington DC/ Giving Teachers Tools to Stop Bullying: Free Training Toolkit Now Available
By Deborah Temkin [Research and Policy Coordinator for Bullying Prevention Initiatives at the Department of Education]
US Department of Education Release [Ed.gov]
October 4, 2012
Over the past three years, at our annual Federal Partners in Bullying Prevention Summits, we have heard the same call by educators - teachers want to help stop bullying, but they don't know how. Most try to help, but few receive training on how to do so. There are bullying prevention trainings available for teachers, but many are very expensive or not based on the best available research.
That is why the Department of Education and its Safe and Supportive Technical Assistance Center, set out to create a free, state-of-the-art training for classroom teachers on bullying. http://safesupportiveschools.ed.gov/index.php?id=1480
- The two-part training aims to help teachers know the best practices to stop bullying on the spot and how to stop it before it starts.
- The training toolkit consists of PowerPoints, trainer guides, handouts, and feedback forms that school districts, schools, and teachers can use free of charge.
Both the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers gave feedback on the modules and made suggestions on what teachers would find most useful.
The research-based training gives teachers practical steps to take to respond to bullying.
- These skills include how to de-escalate a situation, find out what happened, and support all of the students involved.
- The training also shows the importance of building strong relationships in the classroom, as well as creating an environment respectful of diversity, in order to prevent bullying.
The classroom teacher toolkit is based in part on a toolkit specific to bus drivers, released in June 2011.
- Many states and school districts have used that toolkit; it has been used to train over 100,000 of the nation's estimated 550,000 school bus drivers in the past year.
- Trainees have reported feeling better equipped to address bullying on their school buses following the training.
We hope that the districts, schools, and teachers will use this toolkit as a resource. When more people know how to stop bullying, the more likely we will be to ensure that all students are able to learn in a safe and supportive school.
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Moscow RUSSIA/ Teachers Reveling in Growing Technology
By Lena Smirnova
The Moscow Times
October 5, 2012
In 2011, 6,700 schools across the country were slated to receive new equipment after then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin issued an order to modernize secondary schools.
Thousands of kilometers from the capital, a lone interactive whiteboard sits in a customs warehouse on Russia's southern border.
The device's Turkish manufacturer, Vestel, is rushing to get the unit to its Moscow showroom and start selling the product to schools. But more than two months is expected to pass before that happens and Vestel can join other companies cashing in on supplying classrooms with the newest education technology.
Russian schools have become the prime destination for educational technologies such as interactive boards, learner response remotes and audio systems, thanks to a state initiative to increase the amount of such devices in schools and a growing interest from teachers.
The best news for companies is that the market is still wide open.
- Only 16.4 percent of Russian classrooms are equipped with interactive boards, while in Britain this number has reached 75 percent, said Eugene Viscovic, president of the international markets department at Promethean, which has supplied 8,700 interactive systems to Moscow schools alone.
- "For the UK to be today at 75 percent classroom penetration with this technology, it took 10 years, which means for Russia it's going to take a long time to have every classroom equipped," Viscovic said. "But you need to start somewhere."
Companies that supply technology for educational institutions in Russia got a stimulus in 2011 when then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin issued an order to modernize secondary schools by equipping them with more computers and other technologies. In 2011, 6,700 schools across the country were slated to receive new equipment.
"Now there is no going back," said Svetlana Titova, vice dean at Moscow State University's Department of Foreign Languages and Area Studies. "There are new standards, so whether the teachers want to or not, they have to study and move forward."
Yelena Novikova saw an interactive board for the first time at an exhibit in 1993. Five years later, as the general director of Polymedia, she brought the first such board to a Russian classroom. Her company recently partnered with Promethean and has high hopes for the local market.
"This is no limit," Novikova said. "There is room to grow. Russia has about 50,000 schools and 700,000 audience members. In Moscow today, every other [school] has an interactive board, and in Russia, it's one in five."
Other companies are also rushing to sell new technologies to Russian schools.
- Panasonic has equipped 11,000 classrooms in Russia with interactive boards since it started addressing this market segment four years ago, said Irina Smirnova, coordinator of education programs at Panasonic. The company also recently started selling sound systems that facilitate the use of more audio materials during lessons.
- New entrant Vestel is No. 1 in its home market of Turkey, where it sold 85,000 digital boards to schools this year, and it is now hoping to replicate this success in Russia. The company expects the first interactive board to arrive at its showroom in November, said Kivanc Isik, general director of the company's Russia office.
The price of the technology used to be a significant barrier, Smirnova said, but things have picked up since the federal program made equipping schools a priority. Companies can look for opportunities on Russia's official site for state orders, where municipal education departments post tenders for supplying their schools with computers or digital whiteboards.
Tsaritsyno Moscow High School No. 548 is one of the city's most progressive schools in terms of its technology arsenal.
- The school's administration started thinking about technology supplies in the 1990s and got the first interactive board in 2000.
- Now, the school has more than 800 computers and 50 interactive boards for its 2,300 students.
The trick is not to depend only on government support but find business-led competitions where teachers can win this technology, said Elena Shimutina, deputy director for information technology at the school. Shimutina added that part of her job is to find such competitions and notify teachers.
"There are different paths to getting this technology," Shimutina said. "Sometimes you have to pay, and sometimes you just win competitions from companies."
Even the more modest schools in Moscow are fairly well-supplied with technology, experts said. Schools in the regions are also doing well.
Panasonic has supplied its technologies to almost every region in Russia, Smirnova said. Large orders for interactive boards have come from Vladivostok, the Volga and Northwestern federal districts, the Krasnodar region and Chechnya.
The main problem now is that classroom technology is frequently underused.
"They have the technology, but they don't know how to use it," Titova said.
Titova teaches the online professional development courses for high school teachers and institute professors that are offered through Moscow State University. About 200 schoolteachers take these courses each year, she said.
Some companies also offer teachers training in using their technologies.
- Polymedia issues brochures and DVD courses to teachers.
- Panasonic has independently trained 4,000 teachers, but it now directs teachers to professional development centers because the undertaking was too large, Smirnova said.
Shimutina has seen interactive boards used simply as projectors, with much of their functionality ignored, and she said that cases like these are shifting the discussions about the technology.
"Now we are talking more about the quality of teaching that is offered through technology," she said." We have started to look deeper into how we use this technology instead of just saying 'give us more, give us more, give us more'."
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New York NY/ EDITORIAL: The Documented Life
New York Times
October 4, 2012
President Obama's decision to suspend the deportations of young immigrants who were brought here illegally as children has stirred a lot of hope and exhilaration. It has also created a daunting paperwork challenge, both for the people seeking the reprieve and for the agency charged with granting it.
Applicants need to prove that they arrived in the United States before turning 16 and have lived here continuously for the last five years, among other requirements. But it's not always easy to document the undocumented life - especially for people not long out of childhood, who often work off the books and who lack driver's licenses, credit cards and other fundamental papers.
Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency handling the applications, deserves credit for posting detailed guidance on the Web about the documents and procedures needed to win a deferral. It would have been easy - and much in keeping with the agency's old reputation - to throw up rigid hurdles to give administrators the easiest route to saying no. But the director of Citizenship and Immigration Services, Alejandro Mayorkas, seems to be taking seriously the job of making this program work - and quickly, in the 60 days between the announcement in June and when the first applications were received.
The agency won't say how many people have applied, but rough estimates put it at about 150,000 so far, with a fraction having won deferrals. The number is sure to grow as the pipeline swells; an estimated 1.4 million are eligible.
Many might be afraid to apply because they don't want to admit having done unlawful things, like using a fake ID, to survive. Those are understandable concerns. But making this important program succeed will take confidence and courage on both sides. Those who oppose it may well seize on administrative fumbles to stymie future efforts at immigration reform.
There are 11 million Americans-in-waiting: If sweeping legalization ever happens, bringing them out of the shadows will be a difficult task. The country needs to show the competence and understanding to get it right. These young students are a dry run for much-needed reform.
