Anthony/ Excellence at Anthony Elementary School
By Rene Romo
ABQ Journal South Reporter
October 7, 2012
At Anthony Elementary, where nearly all of the 420 students from kindergarten to sixth grade come from low-income families and nearly all entered school speaking Spanish primarily, the focus is on higher education and academic excellence.
That focus helped earn the school an "A" grade in July on the Public Education Department's new A-F grading system. Anthony Elementary was the only school in the Gadsden Independent School District in southern New Mexico to earn an A.
The PED also rated Anthony the No. 5 school in the state.
- The ranking does not reflect student academic achievement alone
- but rather how much test scores improve over a three-year period,
- along with other factors, such as the quality of the learning environment, students' enthusiasm for school and parental involvement.
Much of the school's success is attributed to a culture of high expectations nurtured by Principal Linda Perez and her focus on frequent testing to determine where teachers need to concentrate their efforts to ensure students master the curriculum.
Neither the students nor faculty at the school, which abuts a low-income housing development where the manager has been purging gang members and drug users, appear willing to accept low expectations.
A banner hanging in the foyer displays the school's simple, succinct motto: "No excuses! We're a College-Bound Campus!"
- "It's up to us to give kids that opportunity that they deserve," said Perez, a 42-year-old El Paso native who came over to Anthony Elementary three years ago following a stint as principal at Sunland Park Elementary.
- Perez, an educator for 22 years, said, "I tell (teachers), 'If the kids fail, it's not their fault. It's us.' "
Perez, the daughter of working-class Hispanic parents, can relate to her students, many of whom live in a federally subsidized housing complex nearby. Perez grew up in a one-bedroom single-wide in an El Paso trailer park near the Bridge of the Americas, which spans the Rio Grande into Ciudad Juárez. Her mother is a housewife with a high school education; her father immigrated from Mexico with a sixth- grade education and made a living as an auto mechanic.
Inspiration came from an uncle who earned a master's degree in accounting. He wore a suit and worked in an office and always seemed to be reading and studying.
Perez and her staff have fostered a school culture in which all students expect and plan to go to college, and everyone is held accountable.
Every school hallway is decorated with the felt pennants of colleges and universities - Notre Dame, Louisiana State, Nebraska and dozens of others. Hallways are named after University of New Mexico Lobos, New Mexico State's Aggies, Texas Tech's Red Raiders. Every Friday, students who host a morning school newscast broadcast to every classroom feature a different university's fight song and facts about the school.
Each morning, students recite the pledge of allegiance and one other, the Anthony Elementary Eagle pledge, written by Perez: "I believe in myself and I am here to succeed. I am responsible, respectful, safe and prepared. . . . I will do my best because everything I do today will affect my tomorrow."
Perez has also provided all students with day-planner notebooks, in which they are supposed to write down homework assignments.
Starting last year, teachers posted their photos outside their classroom, along with details about the university from which they graduated and what academic degrees they obtained.
At various spots around the school, Perez has posted signs showing the school's standards-based assessment scores in math and reading for the last six years. The signs note that Anthony scored first in the district in 2012 in both categories.
- 70 percent of Anthony Elementary students demonstrated proficiency in math, compared to the district-wide average of 42.6 percent and the statewide average of 43 percent.
- In reading, 62.4 percent of the school's tested students demonstrated proficiency at grade level, compared to the district-wide average of 42.7 percent and the statewide average of 51 percent.
The signs are also a reminder that the faculty's goal is to improve scoring by 10 percent each year, Perez said.
Araceli Rodriguez, the mother of two boys in the third- and fifth grades, praised the committed staff and the campus' tranquil environment. "My kids always talk about what college they want to go to," Rodriguez said. "That's something they wouldn't talk about before. It didn't cross their minds."
Another mother, Maria Davila, said Perez has made progress "like no other principal has ever done." Davila, the mother of a third-grader, said the teachers "come together to look out for the best interests of the students."
- The school year is divided into four nine-week periods, and teachers test students two weeks after the start of each period to determine how well they are able to meet state standards in math and reading.
- That information enables teachers to focus on the particular needs of each student.
"There's a lot of differential instruction going on in the classroom to meet the needs of the students. She (Perez) is an outstanding administrator," said Gadsden district Superintendent Efren Yturralde.
Several longtime teachers said that, since Perez's arrival, student absenteeism has fallen sharply and student expectations have increased, along with parental involvement. Several said they work more closely together now in analyzing test data, designing tests and developing instructional practices.
Bilingual education teacher Margarita Barraza said teachers feel validated by the team approach.
Barraza said teachers are motivated, not discouraged, by the challenge of working with a student population in which Spanish is commonly spoken in the typically low-income home.
"The bottom line is, every child is capable, and you are targeting every single child."
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Santa Fe/ Superintendent Lets Students Talk Back at Public Forums
By Robert Nott
The New Mexican
October 6, 2012
Noting that kids are more insightful about the school system than adults acknowledge, Santa Fe Public Schools Superintendent Joel Boyd held about 10 student forums at the middle and high school levels over the past few weeks in an effort to see what students think of the system.
- "They know what works and what doesn't work," he said during one recent forum, held at Aspen Community Magnet School. "They may not know the strategies for improving things or the root cause of the problem, but they know what works and what doesn't."
On Friday, Boyd visited seventh- and eighth-graders at De Vargas Middle School for the last of those sessions, where much of the student discussion centered on the district's Code of Conduct dress rules for students, De Vargas' Citizen Schools expanded learning day and the public's perception of De Vargas.
Of the school's some 500 students, roughly 83 percent are economically disadvantaged based on the federal government's percentage of those who receive free and reduced lunch. The school received a D recently in the state's A-F grading system.
- "I don't like how people underestimate De Vargas students," one teen girl told Boyd. "We're all smart even if we don't know as much as someone else. We may be falling behind, but we're not stupid."
One of Boyd's many mandates is to ensure that students do not get left behind. To that end, he is exploring the possibility of expanding the school day at some of the district's underperforming sites, he said Friday. Thus, he was particularly curious about the De Vargas Citizen Schools program, which offers students an additional 90 minutes of remedial training, college-career readiness programs and various apprenticeships per day.
In general, the De Vargas students told Boyd that they appreciate the program's mission. But many suggested that its narrow focus - reviewing math homework, for instance - does not allow them to work on other topics that they feel they need to emphasize.
At all the school stops, Boyd first introduced himself to the students, explained his job ("It's like being principal of all the schools," he told the De Vargas kids), and asked them each to introduce themselves and tell him one thing they enjoy doing outside of school.
He then asked them to tell him what is working within the school, and what is not working.
- "The teachers let us state our opinions; you can express yourself here," one De Vargas girl told Boyd. Another praised the school's array of elective classes, including art, cooking and mariachi.
At every school, Boyd has asked the students to give him the names of three of the best teachers. He has followed up with a brief visit to those three teachers' classrooms immediately after the student forums. At De Vargas, the students praised Natasha Choe, Chris Slakey and Jacob Zgela.
Boyd and his chief of staff, Latifah Phillips, said that during the course of their student forums, they discovered that
- a lot of middle and high school students have issues with the strict dress codes.
- Most of the students have asked for more demanding classes, including Advanced Placement and college-readiness programs.
- In a few cases, Boyd discovered that there are serious academic holes in the system - no Algebra I class in place for eighth-graders at Aspen Community Magnet School, for instance, and
students being forcibly enrolled in French 2 classes at Capital High School without French 1 classes behind them.
Other issues came up, some of which were immediately solvable:
- (students being placed in school hallways for tutorial work at one school were given a more viable option when Boyd worked with the school librarian to move them into the library), and
some of which may require a bit more time to fix
- (students drinking milk from containers long since past the expiration date).
On Thursday, students at Aspen told Boyd there is too much testing taking place and not enough time allotted for them to pass from one class to another in the building. "We only have two minutes to pee," is how one girl put it.
- "I can learn from you," Boyd told the Aspen kids Thursday. "I believe the people who know best are in the schools - including you."
Upon his hiring this summer, Boyd announced that he would put together a 100-day entry plan that would culminate in an action plan to tackle the district's problems. Earlier this month, he announced that he will release some of his preliminary findings at the next school board meeting, slated for Oct. 16.
On Friday, he said the district will explore a number of options to support academic achievement at low-performing schools, including:
- providing targeted interventions for students,
- increasing professional development opportunities for teachers and
- engaging families in the learning process -
- as well as the possibility of expanding learning time, as the Citizen Schools program has done.
The district will release a final report on its student-forum findings Oct. 29.
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ABQ/ APS Proposes New Parent Engagement Policy
By Hailey Heinz
ABQ Journal Staff Writer
October 6, 2012
Albuquerque school district officials have a new parent engagement policy, and now they are looking to flesh it out with details.
The policy, which the board approved in August, "affirms that the involvement of family and community partners is critical to student success" and lays out four pillars:
- Fostering safe and welcoming environments
- Strengthening relationships among families, school staff and community,
- Expanding communication among families, community and schools.
- Cultivating equitable and effective systems in the district.
But just what these pillars mean in practice will be the focus of a community meeting Monday at the main Albuquerque Public Schools offices. The meeting is intended to gather comment from parents about how they would like to be engaged.
In addition to the new policy, increasing family engagement is one of APS' four broad district goals for the next three years. The district has already begun a number of initiatives toward that end, including a review at every APS elementary school for its family friendliness.
Kris Meurer, APS director of family and community supports, said the reviews look for things like how visitors are greeted when they enter a school, whether someone promptly helps them and whether someone is available to translate for parents who speak only Spanish. The assessments also check for things like whether signs are clear and whether it is easy to find the front office.
Meurer said she hopes her staff will have reviewed every elementary school by the end of this school year. After each review, the findings are used to make plans for the school, if needed, to improve its family friendliness.
APS also has made it cheaper and easier for volunteers to get background checks and to get into schools. While prospective volunteers still must have a criminal background check, the process no longer requires fingerprinting and now costs only $12.
Meurer said APS is also working toward involving volunteers with district initiatives beyond the classroom. She said this might be particularly relevant for parents with secondary school students, who no longer want their parents volunteering in the classroom.
"We're looking at how we can use volunteers in helping us with truancy prevention and intervention, how we can use volunteers as we begin to roll out the plan for bullying prevention," Meurer said.
APS is also starting up a "parent university" initiative, which is still in the planning stages and won't be up and running until next year. Parent universities, which have been started in other parts of the country, offer free classes in subjects like parenting, financial literacy or understanding new curriculum like the Common Core standards. Meurer said she hopes registration will be open this spring, with classes starting in the fall.
APS is gathering parent comment about community engagement in the district and how it can be improved.
Meeting will be held at APS main office, 6400 Uptown NE, 6 p.m. Monday.
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Socorro/ 3rd-Grade Retention Questioned
By Karen Bailey-Bowman
El Defensor Chieftain
October 6, 2012
Three-quarters of New Mexico voters think that third graders who aren't reading at grade level should be held back for another year, according to a recent Albuquerque Journal poll.
Gov. Martinez and New Mexico Education Secretary Hanna Skandera both support retention of third graders who can't demonstrate reading competence on standardized tests even if their parents object.
But all of Socorro's elementary school principals think a blanket policy at the state level calling for the retention of every low performing third grader is a bad idea.
Unrealistic, ineffective
- Last year, 22 percent of New Mexico third graders were not proficient in reading, and
- 25 percent were "nearing proficiency," as measured by the state's Standards Based Assessments, said Karin Williams, Cottonwood Valley Charter School principal.
"Almost a quarter to maybe a half of third graders would be retained," she said. "Is that realistic?"
She thinks the money spent on keeping third graders back an extra year could be better spent on more effective interventions in the earlier grades.
"Research shows that retention above first grade is very seldom effective," she said. "Children don't tend to catch up in the next grade. And research shows that the ones who are retained are more likely to drop out later.
"Third grade retention is a simplistic solution to a very complicated problem."
Systemic problems
Midway School head teacher Sally McGovern understands the concern about poor reading performance in third grade.
- "Statistics show that children who leave third grade not reading at grade level have a 95 percent chance of never catching up," she said. "But third grade is awfully late to start thinking about reading. Blanket retention may be a starting point in the discussion, but we need earlier intervention."
McGovern would like to see more support for pre-kindergarten children and their families, especially families who are struggling economically.
"Our push should be earlier," she said. "Put money into early childhood programs and prevention."
Children in New Mexico are at a disadvantage, she said, because of the high poverty rate.
- "Parents are holding on by the skin of their teeth, working two or three jobs," she said. "Money should go to fund high-quality day care for preschoolers."
She said parents who are exhausted from working don't have the energy or time to engage in rich conversations with their children, so day care centers have to make language enrichment a priority.
- "Play is important, but language development is why New Mexico fails in reading," she said.
Parkview's principal Anna Addis agrees with McGovern that waiting until third grade to react to reading problems is too little, too late.
"We need to be more proactive than reactive," she said. "There are many issues involved when a student isn't reading at grade level, and the school is not in control of all of them."
Addis thinks the state needs to look at "systemic issues" that affect students' performance, such as poverty.
"Where do we want to put our money? Where are the priorities?" she said. "I think third-grade retention is a short-term solution to a long-term problem."
Focus on early grades
San Antonio head teacher John Dennis has "mixed feelings" about the retention idea.
"I do think kids and teachers need to be more accountable, but it needs to happen earlier - in kindergarten and first grade," he said.
"I think the earlier you can catch reading problems, the better. It's like a health condition, you want to catch it before it gets to be serious, not after."
Dennis is not against retention, but he thinks letting struggling readers have an extra year or two in kindergarten and first grade where children learn the mechanics of reading makes more sense than waiting until third grade, when the emphasis shifts to other skills, such as speed.
"If they are falling behind, they need to repeat those grades where they learn to read, kindergarten and first grade," he said. "By the time they are in third grade, a lot of instruction is in fluency and comprehension."
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ABQ/ ACE High School's Collaboration with US Fish & Wildlife Service
By Kim Vallez
KRQE-TV, Channel 13
October 5, 2012
Students at an Albuquerque charter school are getting hands on learning as part of a project with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at the Rio Grande Silvery Minnow Sanctuary, a facility to help grow the population of the endangered fish.
The students from ACE High school were asked to build bridges and kiosks for the outdoor outreach education center. At ACE kids are taught core subjects through three principals, architecture, construction and engineering, making them perfect for this project.
- The students not only designed the structures,
- they were also responsible for buying materials at the best price and making sure they adhere to all state building requirements.
- The students then assembled the structures over several days with the supervision of a foreman, from their own class.
While the students are learning math, and engineering through the actual build.
- They also had to research the history and habitat of the silvery minnow, learning biology in the process.
"It makes biology seem so much more important if they know this is to help the U.S. Fish and Wildlife protect a federally protected species." says teacher Robert Shauger
The students at ACE aren't typical students, they're kids who have struggled learning in the typical classroom setting.
Senior Jesse Campbell says he likely would have dropped out had it not been for ACE High School. He says learning like this helps keep him motivated and wanting to advance his education. He's also looking forward to getting a job in the construction field after graduation.
"You can look back and say I built that, you know. You accomplished something" says Campbell
Other students at ACE are former dropouts who have come back to school to get their degree.
The U.S.Fish & Wildlife service plans to continue educational programs like this one. They are currently talking with APS about incorporating it into their schools. So far they have only worked with charter schools.
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Farmington/ Race to Educate: Running Events to Benefit Farmington Schools Foundation
Farmington Daily Times Staff
October 7, 2012
Hoping to kick off its fundraiser with a bang, the Farmington schools foundation will host Race to Educate, an event to challenge area runners and provide a fun walk/run for families while raising money for classroom projects and scholarships.
Collaborating with the area Centennial Celebration committee, the Farmington Municipal Schools Foundation for Educational Excellence will host the run on Oct. 13 with the start of the 5K walk/run, 10K and half marathon runs taking place at Hutchison Stadium.
Foundation President Deb Dumont said the organization has been working on setting up the event for the last year and is pleased by the community's excitement and support.
"We're kind of glad we went after this one," Dumont said. "We are hit all the levels, just about anybody can participate."
A pre-race meeting will be held between 6 and 8 p.m. Oct. 12 in the Farmington Schools Boardroom. Registration will be held and race participants will be able to pick up their timing chip, bib and other race information.
"The community has been really wonderful with this fundraiser," Dumont said.
This is the first year for the event, Co-Chair Dolores Cammon said, with the idea sprouting from the areas' fondness for outdoor activities.
"This is a very outdoorsy type of community and they like biking, golfing and running," Cammon said. "So it was an idea for a fundraiser after we started talking it and organizing it."
Kicking off in the parking lot of the stadium at 8 a.m., the 5K and 10K portions will take place on neighborhood streets near the stadium, while the half marathon will take place across paved city streets and dirt trails.
Cammon said her daughter, a half marathon runner herself, suggested the half marathon.
"We have quite a few half marathon runners in the area, one of them being my daughter," Cammon said. "She said if we were looking for an idea, those of us who like to run those, usually have to travel-and that started the whole thought process."
There are already more than 200 entries, with the largest portion signing up for the 5K walk/fun, Cammon said, adding she has heard of entire families signing up together.
"We hope to have it be a family affair," Cammon said. "It would be nice to have families involved. We think it's great, not only for them but great for fitness."
Online registration is available at www.race2educate.eventbrite.com and for more information, interested runners and walkers can call 505-324-9840.
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White Sands/ Hispanic Heritage Speaker John Muñoz on Diversity, Importance of High School Diploma
By Adriana Salas / Missile Ranger Staff Writer
["What's Up at WSMR" is a weekly feature provided by White Sands Missile Range]
Las Cruces Sun-News
October 7, 2012
John Muñoz, guest speaker at the Sept. 26 Hispanic Heritage Month Luncheon asked guests to forget about the comparison of diversity to a melting pot, where culture and heritage can potentially be lost, and to think of diversity as a large salad with a variety of individuals from different backgrounds that complement each other well.
- "Together we make a great dish, something that's very tasty and something that's very healthy for you," Muñoz said. "That's really the concept of diversity, together they make something stronger."
Muñoz was the guest of honor at this year's Hispanic Heritage Luncheon held at the Frontier Club.
- Muñoz is the site director for SITEL, an outsourcing company, and was
- a recent president for the Las Cruces Hispano Chamber of Commerce.
Just last year, Muñoz visited the White House after receiving a personal invitation. Muñoz was nominated by Las Cruces Mayor, Ken Miyagishima, to become a member of the "Champion of Change."
Muñoz was chosen as a "Champion of Change" member, and was invited along with a group of other members from the Southwest to meet with members of the Obama administration to discuss job improvement for the border region.
During his speech, Muñoz said that as a teenager he never expected to even finish high school and never dreamed of one day being invited to visit the White House. Muñoz said he always struggled with the idea of having to be defined by certain terms like Latino or Hispanic. He decided to create his own definition of who he was.
- "The question always comes up, well what am I," Muñoz asked. "First of all I'm an American, you can call me John. I'm a little tall, a little dark, and a little handsome."
Aside from acceptance of self-identity, Muñoz's continuing theme during his speech was the issue of how the statistics for minorities who do not finish high school are reaching an alarming rate. He said the issue can easily be corrected through the help of people like those in the audience, who can serve as role models and change the current statistics.
Muñoz talked about how he is contributing to make that change by helping to create a school that can now be found in downtown Las Cruces.
- The school is called New America School, a school geared towards immigrants who wish to learn English while earning a high school diploma.
- Muñoz said he thought the school would be a success if 50 students graduated from the program in the first year, 140 graduated the first year.
"We need to turn that tide around and we can together," Muñoz said.
Prior to Muñoz's speech, guests were entertained during their lunch with the musical talents of Alma de Jalisco from Las Cruces, led by Salvador Hernandez. The El Paso Ballroom Dancers performed several Latin dances and the Panamanian Folklorico Dancers and Alamogordo Ballet Folklorico dancers performed several numbers during the lunch as well. Executive director, Robert Carter thanked all of the guests who attended the event and honored the guest performers with a commemorative plaque of WSMR.
"We do strive for that salad bowl that John was alluding to," Carter said. "To our Hispanic members of the workforce who are here today I just want to thank you all for your contributions."
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Santa Fe/ COLUMN: Developing Effective Educators
By Robert Nott [Learning Curve column}
The New Mexican
October 7, 2012
According to educator and author Harry Wong, school is not a place. It's a concept.
Wong and his wife, Rosemary, co-authored the book The First Days of School: How To Be an Effective Teacher.
They will be keynote speakers for the Los Alamos National Laboratory Foundation's 15th Annual Conference on Education this week.
- The two-day event runs Thursday and Friday, Oct. 11 and 12, at the Buffalo Thunder Resort & Casino.
- Though pre-registration has closed for the event, interested parties, including educators, can show up on either or both of those two days and register.
- The roughly 440 teachers who are part of the LANL Foundation's Inquiry Science Education Consortium attend for free; it's $70 for all others, and that includes breakfast, lunch and conference materials.
The Wongs' book emphasizes their personal/professional approach to teaching, which argues that there are three characteristics of effective teachers. Speaking by phone from the West Coast last Friday, Harry Wong laid those three principles out.
"You have to know how to manage and run your classroom, which has nothing to do with discipline," he said. "And deliver instruction so kids can learn, and if they don't learn, help them progress until they do learn. And you have to set very positive expectations that kids can learn."
Told that these seem like obvious, common-sense ideas, Wong laughed and said, "They are. And they should be happening. This kind of teaching is happening, it is being practiced." (Google teachers.net to find the Wongs' website, which includes continuing columns on the issue and firsthand testimonials from teachers.)
- Among other challenges facing teachers in their efforts to develop into effective educators, Wong said, is ineffective teacher-training programs and the idea that money solves everything.
- Federal, state and districtwide mandates regarding teaching can also "screw up everything," he said. "We are here for one reason only: to get kids to learn."
Effectiveness should be measured by how well students do in school, he said. "Every kid craves and wants to learn," he said. And yet he is aware that teacher evaluations are the "big hot fad right now.
- I believe teachers should be evaluated. But what no one takes into account is what kind of training those teachers are getting before they get evaluated. You should never test the kid until you teach the kid first. And we are testing teachers without training them first."
He acknowledged that teacher effectiveness can be tied to principal effectiveness and said the best principals are those who serve as instructional leaders, helping their teachers manage classrooms and connect to students.
The Wongs' book includes tips on everything from how a teacher should dress - bright colors are enjoyed by elementary students - to developing relationships with parents. Explaining, modeling, rehearsing and repeating through reinforcement will all work to make a teacher more effective, the book notes. And there is a big difference between surviving the classroom and driving it, as the book makes clear.
Rick Scott, director of the Inquiry Science Education Consortium for the LANL Foundation, said by phone Friday that the upcoming two-day conference serves as a professional-development tool that allows Northern New Mexico educators the chance to benefit from the experience of nationally recognized educators/speakers. He said he is expecting at least 500 attendees on Thursday and probably 800 on Friday.
The conference runs from 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. both days with the Wongs speaking in the morning and Jeff Goldstein, director of the Maryland-based National Center for Earth and Space Science Education (and a Huffington Post tweeter), speaking in the afternoon.
Visit www.lanlfoundation.org for more information or call 505-753-8890.
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Washington DC/ 'Gateway' Districts Struggle to Serve Immigrant Parents
Schools falter at keeping ELL families in the loop
By Lesli A. Maxwell
Education Week, Vol. 32, Issue 6 [Edweek.org]
October 3, 2012
As thousands of communities-especially in the South-became booming gateways for immigrant families during the 1990s and the early years of the new century, public schools struggled with the unfamiliar task of serving the large numbers of English-learners arriving in their classrooms.
Instructional programs were built from scratch. Districts had to train their own teachers to teach English to non-native speakers or recruit teachers from elsewhere. School staff members had to figure out how to communicate with parents who spoke no English.
But even as immigration has slowed or stopped in many places, and instructional programs for English-learners have matured, serving immigrant families and their children remains a work in progress in many public schools, especially those in communities that are skeptical, or sometimes hostile, to the newcomers.
One of the biggest challenges, educators and advocates said, is communicating effectively with parents who don't speak English-an issue that, in part, has brought recent complaints of discrimination against Latino students and their families to two large districts in North Carolina and one in Louisiana.
- "The parent piece is so, so important for the success of these students, but it's also one of the most difficult things we've had to tackle," said Jim D. Rollins, the superintendent in Springdale, Ark., where the 19,000-student school system has gone from having no English-learners 15 years ago to more than 8,500 now. "You have to make it a priority and work on it, work on it, and work on it."
Divides to Bridge
Aside from the practical challenges, such as finding bilingual staff members, steering districts through such drastic transformations requires school leaders to bridge difficult political and cultural divides. That can be a rocky transition, said Daniel A. Domenech, the executive director of the American Association of School Administrators, based in Alexandria, Va.
- "For districts that had never had these Spanish-speaking kids before, at first they just didn't know what to do," said Mr. Domenech, who was superintendent of the 182,000-student Fairfax County, Va., school system during a time of rapid demographic change. "And for those school leaders in the South, especially in the last few years, they are dealing with a backlash of opinion against immigrants that makes the job even harder."
School districts in the South-especially in states such as North Carolina and Georgia-have seen some of the most explosive growth in immigrant families and their children, most of them from Mexico. Few of them were equipped with staff members who could speak Spanish, or who had much familiarity with Mexican culture.
Civil rights advocates in the Southern states say they have become increasingly concerned with the treatment of Latino students and their Spanish-speaking parents in some school districts, prompting them to file complaints with the U.S. Department of Education's office for civil rights. Since 2010, that office has been aggressive in pursuing numerous complaints and opening investigations into school-related civil rights issues that had previously received little scrutiny.
- Currently, federal civil rights officials are investigating discrimination complaints against Latinos in the 150,000-student Wake County, N.C., school system and
- the public schools in Jefferson Parish, La., a 45,000-student district just west of New Orleans.
- Last year, the federal office for civil rights struck a voluntary agreement with the 33,000-student school system in Durham, N.C., after investigating a similar complaint there.
All three districts were singled out by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a Montgomery, Ala.-based civil rights organization, for their treatment of Latino families.
- "A lot of what we are seeing in districts stems from a serious lack of language access for parents so that they can be full participants in their child's education," said Jerri Katzerman, the deputy legal director for the Southern Poverty Law Center. "The other issue is that often the anti-immigrant sentiment in the broader community shows up, too, in an unwelcoming, or hostile, school environment."
Lost in Translation
In Wake County, for example, the discrimination complaint stemmed from three instances when Spanish-speaking parents at different schools could not understand important documents pertaining to their child's special education services or disciplinary procedures because they were provided only in English, or, if they did receive information in Spanish, it wasn't complete, according to Peggy Nicholson, a lawyer with Advocates for Children's Services, which worked with the Southern Poverty Law Center to file the complaint.
- "For these parents, it was an issue of not being able to be meaningful participants in decisions about their child's education," Ms. Nicholson said. In Jefferson Parish, the complaints are similar, Ms. Katzerman said. In one case, a 7-year-old student was asked to translate for his Spanish-speaking mother at a parent-teacher conference because the school did not have a bilingual staff member.
The boy, said Ms. Katzerman, didn't understand much of what the teacher said, so he told his mother that the teacher said he was doing fine. Spanish-speaking parents also reported hostile, rude treatment at certain school sites in Jefferson Parish, and restrictive or nonexistent access to bilingual staff who could assist them.
In both districts, Ms. Katzerman said, the individual cases pointed to a broader, systemic problem.
Neither Wake County nor Jefferson Parish school officials responded to Education Week's repeated interview requests. Durham school officials also didn't respond to interview requests, but in an interview with Education Week late last year, school leaders there said they had already been working to address shortcomings in providing adequately translated communications materials to Spanish-speaking parents when the civil rights office began investigating. ("OCR Pace on Probes Quickens," Dec. 14, 2011.)
Even school districts with a long history of serving immigrant populations wrestle with this issue. In the 1.1 million-student New York City schools last spring, a group of 19 parents who don't speak English filed a lawsuit against the school system, alleging that it had not provided important documents about their children's special education services in a language they could read and understand.
'Zero Experience'
In northwest Arkansas, where the Springdale district is located, a nearly all-white, English-only school system saw a surge of immigrant families from Mexico and the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific beginning in the mid-1990s, said Mr. Rollins, the superintendent since 1982. Plentiful jobs with the region's two corporate giants-Tyson Foods, the world's largest poultry producer, and Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer-brought the wave of new families.
- "In total humility, we had virtually zero experience with immigrant kids and families," said Mr. Rollins. "But we just knew we had to adopt the mentality that we had to be learners ourselves about the language, the culture, and the experiences with education that our families were bringing here with them."
The district first set about developing an English-as-a-second-language program and training teachers, he said. Initially, it was completely ad hoc, with "learning and borrowing from other schools with a deeper history with this."
Eventually, the school system brought in educators from California to provide professional development for staff members both in instruction for English-learners and cultural-competence training, a process that is ongoing, Mr. Rollins said.
All Springdale teachers, regardless of what they teach, were required to complete a professional-development program that teaches them the theories behind second-language acquisition.
But once the district had established a strong instructional program, hired Spanish-speaking bilingual staff members to work in schools, and trained teachers, Mr. Rollins said, "it was still clear that we wouldn't have as much success with these kids until we engaged their parents."
So, five years ago, the district-with the help of a grant from the Toyota Family Literacy Program-launched a program to bring its immigrant parents into their children's schools every week to spend time in the classroom and receive their own English-language instruction.
Currently, the program is serving more than 250 parents across nine schools.
"It's a powerful transformation for our parents," Mr. Rollins said. "They sit side-by-side with their children and learn the curriculum, they learn English, and, ultimately, they learn to be really good advocates for their children."
Mr. Rollins said the broader Springdale community, including the school board, has been very supportive of the district's efforts to provide such programs for the immigrant community.
"We know we are very fortunate," he said. "We all understood that these students are going to grow up here, stay here, and be a permanent part of this community. Their success is the key to our community's success."
Mr. Domenech, the AASA executive, said strong leadership from the top, especially from superintendents, is the most critical component for districts that are managing such dramatic demographic changes.
Superintendents, he said, "have to become the champion for these kids who have no champion. As superintendent, you are the one who has been tapped on the shoulder and you have to stand up on their behalf to your board, your staff, and your community."
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New York NY/ Loopholes Seen at Schools in Obama Get-Tough Policy
By Motoko Rich
The New York Times
October 6, 2012
With an agenda that Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, has described as a "quiet revolution," the Obama administration has pushed rigorous new standards for a majority of the nation's public schools as well as requirements that states and districts evaluate not just schools but individual teachers, in part by assessing their ability to improve student scores on standardized tests.
But some critics suggest that at the same time the administration has gotten tough on teachers and set higher standards, it could be allowing states to set new, unambitious goals for how quickly students must reach those standards, particularly poor and minority students.
- "We repeatedly look for ways to game the system and fuzz up the fact that our kids aren't being educated to the standards that they need," said Amy Wilkins, vice president for government affairs at the Education Trust, a nonprofit group that works to close achievement gaps.
One particularly controversial example emerged over the summer, when Virginia initially released new targets showing that the state would require 57 percent of black students to become proficient in math by 2017, compared with 78 percent of white students. Virginia's education department has since revised its goals, with a goal of making 73 percent of all students proficient in math within five years.
The administration has pushed its agenda through two programs: its Race to the Top grants, which it has awarded to 19 states, and the waivers to 33 states from central provisions of the Bush administration's signature No Child Left Behind education law. States that have qualified for the waivers are relieved from meeting the law's most controversial target: making all students proficient in reading and mathematics by 2014.
Although both President Obama and Mitt Romney addressed education during their debate on Wednesday, neither talked specifically about the changes to No Child Left Behind. But Mr. Duncan, in a telephone interview, addressed critics of the waiver policies. He said the administration had deliberately flipped the theory behind No Child Left Behind, which has been up for reauthorization since 2007.
That law prescribed consequences for schools that failed to meet annual goals, while allowing individual states to set goals that Mr. Duncan described as "dummied-down standards." He said that with its waivers, which the administration used to sidestep Congress after lawmakers failed repeatedly to reauthorize the No Child law, the policy was "tight on goals, loose on means."
So while the administration is requiring states that want waivers to set rigorous "college and career ready" standards, it is allowing them to design their own proposals for how - and how quickly - to get schools to meet those standards.
- "Going forward, we should be in the business of supporting states and holding them accountable," Mr. Duncan said, "and not treating every state and district the same."
Some advocacy groups worry that the waivers require few consequences if schools fail to meet their new targets, even as No Child Left Behind was criticized for requiring rigid interventions for low-performing schools, like forcing states to lay off a large portion of a school's staff or to close a school altogether.
The waivers allow states to design new interventions, and some critics worry that education officials now have too much leeway. "All of these states continue to significantly weaken the power and impact of goals by not using them to hold schools accountable," Jeremy Ayers, associate director of federal education programs at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, wrote in an e-mail.
With the waivers directing states to focus on the bottom 15 percent of schools, Mr. Ayers said, he was concerned that the remaining schools would do little more than report test results. "Describing the problem is not the same as fixing it," he said.
Teachers' unions and other education advocates have chafed at other conditions in the waivers and Race to the Top, which require new teacher evaluation systems that rely increasingly on students' standardized test performance. Such objections became a significant sticking point in the Chicago teachers' union strike last month.
According to the Education Commission of the States, 30 states have passed laws requiring districts to evaluate teachers using standardized test scores. Michael Griffith, senior policy analyst at the commission, said states had acted despite the fact that the $4.35 billion disbursed through the Race to the Top program is to be spread over five years and amounts to less than 1 percent of total education spending at the federal, state and local level in 2011-2012. Federal education financing is typically about 10 percent of total spending on public K-12 education.
It is not clear what could happen to the waivers if Mr. Romney is elected president. Congressional Democrats and Republicans have repeatedly failed to reauthorize the elementary and secondary education law as they have clashed on the proper role for the federal government in public schools. In the debate, Mr. Romney reiterated his support for a plan to distribute federal money so students can choose where they go to school, and surprised some educators and analysts when he said: "I'm not going to cut education funding. I don't have any plan to cut education funding."
Supporters of the Obama administration's approach say it is allowing states to accommodate differences between students, rather than entrapping schools with unattainable goals.
"A statement by a state that 'we're going to give low-income schools more time to reach proficiency than we're going to give high-income schools' is reasonable in the real world," said Chester E. Finn Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative-leaning education policy group in Washington. The adoption of the new college and career standards, he said, "is still ambitious, and says in the long run, it's the same standard we'd like them all to attain."
Civil rights groups said they would monitor states to make sure they were not watering down expectations for minority groups or poor students.
"Ultimately, fiddling around with the finish line or different heights of the hurdles is not how you get all students to succeed," said Beth Glenn, education director at the N.A.A.C.P. "You have to change what you do in the classroom."
Teachers worry that they are being asked to do too much at a time when money is so limited.
"You can continue to say you're accountable for x, y and z," said Freeda Pirillis, a first-grade teacher at Agassiz Elementary School in Chicago. "But if you don't support teachers and students in that work, then that's just an empty sort of thing." She noted, for example, that "we continue to have textbooks in our school that show that Bill Clinton was our last president."
Education officials say they feel the effect of the Obama administration's education agenda in their day-to-day lives.
"When you think about the impact of the federal government on our work, it's amazing," said David Fleishman, superintendent of the Newton Public Schools in Massachusetts. Every faculty meeting since the beginning of the school year, he said, has focused on the teacher evaluation system the district has introduced to meet federal criteria.
"I'm just hopeful and optimistic that it ends up improving student learning," Mr. Fleishman said, "and not being a bureaucratic checklist."
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Washington DC/ Exit Exams Face Pinch in Common-Core Push
By Andrew Ujifusa
Education Week, Vol. 32, Issue 6 [Edweek.org]
October 3, 2012
With many states crafting assessments based on the common-core standards-and an increasing emphasis on college and career readiness-some are rethinking the kind of tests high school students must pass to graduate, or whether to use such exit exams at all.
- 25 states, enrolling a total of 34.1 million students, make exit exams a graduation requirement, according to a study released last month by the Center on Education Policy, a Washington-based think tank.
- That represents 69 percent of the nation's K-12 enrollment.
- And that's grown over the past decade: In 2003, 19 states representing 52 percent of U.S. enrollment had such exit exams.
But now states including Arizona, Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Rhode Island plan to use new common-core-aligned tests as exit exams in some form once those tests are fully implemented in 2014-15. Other states are less certain about their plans for the assessments being developed as part of the common-standards push.
Exit exams have grown more prevalent over the past decade, due in part to advocacy from the business community for assessments that can better measure whether students will be ready for the labor force and therefore ensure the value of a high school diploma.
- Many of today's exit exams, however, are seen as significantly less rigorous than the common-core tests being produced by two consortia, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium
- "They're really at a crossroads at this point," Shelby McIntosh, the author of the CEP study, said of exit exams, which the group defines as state-mandated tests, including end-of-course tests, that students must pass-not just take-to graduate.
The Common Core State Standards were sponsored by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers.
- PARCC has 23 member states while Smarter Balanced has 25, although some states belong to both consortia, which are crafting the assessments in math and English/language arts aligned with those standards, with the help of $360 million in federal money.
- Because of federal rules connected to that funding, states adopting the tests will be required to use them for school, district, and state-level accountability, as well as for teacher evaluations. But they will not be required to use them as high-stakes tests for individual students. That decision will be up to individual states.
"They have to hit the right balance between making it more rigorous and making it acceptable," said Brian Gong, the executive director of the Dover, N.H.-based National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment, which has provided technical assistance to PARCC and Smarter Balanced.
Common Demands
- Rhode Island has not yet implemented an exit-exam requirement, but plans to adopt the common-core tests for that purpose starting with the class of 2016.
The state set itself on that path in 2008, said David Abbott, Rhode Island's acting education commissioner. That year, the state board of regents decided that, in order to graduate from high school in 2014, students would have to pass the New England Common Assessment Program, or NECAP, adopted in 2005 by New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. (In Rhode Island, the NECAP is administered in reading, writing, math, and science, although only the reading and math scores are part of the state's diploma system.)
Whatever the federal rules and rigor surrounding them, Mr. Abbott said, state officials feel comfortable using common-core tests as graduation requirements.
"Very early on, that was one of the assurances that we and several other states needed, that we need to develop as a consortium a test that can be used for that purpose," said Mr. Abbott. The state is part of the PARCC consortium.
He acknowledged that there would be a transition period, since the new tests will be administered on a different schedule from the NCAP and will have different proficiency levels. Still, he said, the benefits would outweigh those complications.
- Florida this year implemented end-of-course tests in reading and mathematics that students must pass in order to graduate. Those tests will make way for the PARCC-devised assessments in math and English/language arts in 2014-15.
The state education department plans to require students to pass the PARCC tests to graduate, although the decision is subject to oversight by state lawmakers and the state school board. (Other end-of-course tests in civics and biology, for example, will remain.)
Vince Verges, the state's PARCC implementation director, highlighted the fact that the tests could mean different things for students in different states.
For example, if the PARCC tests have five proficiency levels, Florida could decide that students scoring at the two highest levels could be labeled "college ready" in those subjects. Students scoring in the middle level, meanwhile, could be allowed to satisfy the graduation requirement for a particular course, but miss out on the college- and career-ready designation.
"When it comes to high school graduation, that will be a state-by-state decision," Mr. Verges said.
In a radio interview last week, Florida Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, said, "PARCC will make sure we're not teaching to a test," pointing out that the assessments would be "diagnostic" for students, the Miami Herald reported.
But the use of newer, more-rigorous tests as graduation requirements could have an especially negative impact on minority students, said Robert Rothman, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Alliance for Excellent Education, which advocates high school policies that promote college and career success.
"These standards are, in many cases, higher than existing state standards, particularly with exit exams, which were traditionally pegged to lower standards than other state tests," Mr. Rothman said.
Changing Course
Passing rates on students' first attempts on exit exams across various states tend to be well above 50 percent.
- In Minnesota, for example, 80 percent of students passed the exit exam in reading on their first attempt in the 2011-12 school, CEP reports, and 92 percent did so on the writing test. However, the first-attempt passing rate in math was only 58 percent.
- Georgia is phasing out its comprehensive exit exam in favor of end-of-course tests, and students who started high school in the 2011-12 school year won't have to pass the exit exam (the Georgia High School Graduation Test) to graduate. However, they will still be required to pass the state's high school writing test.
But the PARCC exams will be used as end-of-course tests in English/language arts and math when the assessments become available, and each exam will count for 20 percent of a student's course grade.
Similar to Florida's plan, scoring at high proficiency levels will allow students to avoid remediation in Georgia' state university and technical-college systems.
Georgia has always understood that the common-core assessments were to be designed as end-of-course exams, said Melissa Fincher, the state education department's testing director.
"We will have students that do not pass the course as a result," Ms. Fincher said. "The increased rigor is absolutely a concern. But that didn't influence our decision not to use it as an exit exam."
- Alabama is also eliminating exit exams (the class of 2015will be the last to take them). Its upcoming end-of-course tests for 8th graders and high school students will be based on the ACT QualityCore program, not the common-core assessments, and won't count toward students' final grades.
"The [common-core] assessments seemed too far out in the future and with too many elements of the unknown for us," said Sherrill Parris, the deputy superintendent of public instruction, although the state will implement the common-core math standards this year and the English/language-arts standards in the 2013-14 school year. "We've separated our assessment work from the accountability work," she said.
On the Fence
Some states haven't decided whether to use the common-core tests for graduation purposes.
- In California, for example, schools Superintendent Tom Torlakson is set to deliver his recommendations to the state legislature this fall on how those exams should be used.
- Students in the class of 2015 and beyond in Washington state will have to pass five exams-including three end-of-course ones-to graduate, while students in previous classes must pass three, including one end-of-course test, said state department spokesman Nathan Olson. State legislators are to decide next year whether students must also pass the two Smarter Balanced tests to graduate.
The CEP study reports that 14 states allow students to take modified or alternative exit exams, while eight allow for students to earn alternative diplomas, although those are not always equivalent to regular degrees.
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Denver CO/ 2 Teacher Pay-for-Performance Programs Receive $37 Million in Federal Funding
Denver Post
October 5, 2012
Two Colorado school districts will get a combined $37 million from the federal government to help them expand or implement educator evaluations and pay-for-performance programs.
- Denver Public Schools will get $28.5 million over five years from the Teacher Initiative Fund.
DPS will use the money to grow its teacher and school leader evaluation and pay-for-performance systems. The money will expand incentives for teachers in high-poverty schools and to expand rewards for teachers who exhibit leadership in high-need schools.
Denver, which has had an incentive-pay system in place for several years, also plans to improve the information systems that are the basis for teacher evaluations.
- Harrison School District in Colorado Springs will get $9 million over five years.
Harrison was among the first districts in the state to implement a pay-for-performance plan, and will use the grant money to expand it professional development efforts.
