Santa Fe/ Law Takes on Reading Instruction
By Hailey Heinz
ABQ Journal Staff Writer
October 9, 2012
A law that is slated to go into effect in January will require that prospective elementary school teachers pass "a rigorous assessment of the candidate's knowledge of the science of teaching reading."
The bill was sponsored in 2011 by Rep. Jimmie Hall, R-Albuquerque and Rep. Mimi Stewart, D-Albuquerque, a retired educator.
It requires that college students seeking certification as elementary school teachers pass the new assessment.
Public Education Department spokesman Larry Behrens said the reading assessment is now available for all teaching candidates.
"This is extremely important because it raises the bar and helps us be more competitive," he said in a written statement. "Most importantly, it's the right thing to do to raise student achievement. Making sure every teacher, in every classroom, is equipped for success is the goal."
The assessment will test teachers on the five essentials of reading instruction, which are phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.
Janet Lear, who teaches reading instruction classes at the University of New Mexico, said UNM already prepares future teachers to use a variety of reading instruction methods. She also cited the five "essentials."
"There are so many different pieces to reading, and our students need to have a very sophisticated understanding," Lear said. "We take that very, very seriously."
She also said she emphasizes to her students that decoding skills - the ability to sound out words - should be mastered early.
"What we promote a lot in our classes, is getting kids learning how to decode as early as possible," she said. "Kids need to be able to read fluently in order to be able to move past that and really be able to look at texts and comprehend and think critically about what they're reading."
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Las Cruces/ Literacy for All: Reading Mini-Conference Coming to Camino Real Middle School
Las Cruces Sun-News Report
October 8, 2012
Literacy for All, a New Mexico International Reading Association Mini-Conference, will be held from 8 a.m. to noon Saturday (Oct. 13) at Camino Real Middle School, 2960 Roadrunner Parkway.
The keynote speech, Teaching Literacy Through Content, will be delivered by Dr. Toni Hull, with the United States Department of Education.
Following Dr. Hull's presentation, each person in attendance will have the opportunity to attend two breakout sessions. Among the breakout sessions being offered are:
- An Essential Read-Aloud Vocabulary for ELLs,
- Dolly Parton's Imagination Library,
- Teacher's Tool Box,
- Multi-Sensory Reading and Writing, and
- Remembrance Books.
The conference provides excellent opportunities for Professional Development.
Pre-registration is not necessary. Interested persons may register at the school on Saturday between 8 and 8:30 a.m.
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Cubero/ Grants/Cibola County School District Superintendent Search Continues
By Bob Tenequer
Cibola Beacon Staff Writer
October 9, 2012
The Grants/Cibola County School District Board decided continue to move forward in choosing a research firm to assist them in selecting a school district superintendent at their Oct. 2 session.
During the community comment portion, several individuals asked board members how district staff and community members will be involved in the process.
Gary Atencio, assistant principal at Grants High School asked, "When would the staff and community become involved and how deeply will they be involved?"
School Board President, Joel Stewart responded by saying, at this time the board isn't able to answer that question, because the board hasn't had that discussion.
Parent and community member, Bobbie Littlebear suggested that the board select teachers from the schools and incorporate them into the process. She also recommended involvement of parents and getting representation from Acoma and Laguna Pueblos.
Jerry Smith, board vice president, informed the administrator and citizens that their recommendations and suggestions would be incorporated in the selection process.
William Estevan, board member, said that he was glad that the parents shared their views, "because we want to do it right."
He added, "I think we have to establish some kind of selection protocol that will provide proper guidance of where we want to go."
"More importantly," Estevan said, "I want to make sure that we all understand one another."
In selecting a candidate, Estevan cautioned, "I don't want someone from New York or Canada, who doesn't understand how we exist out here. I want someone who knows that we have a multi-cultural population and have different ways of doing things."
Smith told his fellow board members, "It is important we run a fair and independent process with everyone putting their name forward and giving them fair consideration."
A firm out of Omaha, Neb., submitted one of the three proposals. The Nebraska proposal drew criticism.
Board member Dion Sandoval was the most vocal when it came to the costs associated with the proposal, "The basic fee is $7,000 up to $20,000." He said that he considered the fees associated with the proposal "ridiculous."
Sandoval then suggested that the board conduct the search process internally with the assistance of the board's attorney. He mentioned that districts like Las Cruces, Gadsen and Silver [City] did their superintendent search internally. "I just think that we can use this amount to pay for something else," he concluded.
If the board decided to conduct the search process internally, said Smith, they would have to rescind their previous resolution.
It was then decided that to abide by the resolution and to begin the process of moving forward with the hiring of a search firm.
The board also decided to develop a matrix with all critical elements identified and including a score to rate each search firm.
President Stewart said that a matrix will be distributed to all board members, and then they will rate all three firms and make a selection at the next board meeting.
Other topics discussed included:
- The University of Virginia follow-up visit and a summer school update.
- A Memorandum of Understanding between the New Mexico Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement, Inc., (NM-MESA) and the Grants Cibola County Schools.
A video of the G/CCS Oct 2 meeting is available for viewing online at www.cibolabeacon.com/multimedia/video.
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Taos/ School Administrators' Federal Court Case Dismissed
By Matthew van Buren
Taos News
October 9, 2012
Eleven administrators' claims against the Taos Municipal School District and school board appear to be one federal court filing away from being dismissed.
- In a complaint filed in U.S. District Court nearly 2 1/2 years ago, the plaintiffs - all current or former employees of the Taos school district - alleged improper behavior, such as harassment, micromanaging and retaliation. In orders filed Sept. 20-28, the court granted qualified immunity to the defendants and granted the defendants' motions for summary judgment, meaning it was found to be unnecessary to bring the case to trial.
- The suit was filed on the heels of formal complaints made to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), a halted recall effort, investigations by the state Public Education Department (PED) and threats by the Secretary of Education to suspend the board's authority if the situation did not improve.
The Questa Independent School Board was suspended at the end of September after allegations of micromanagement, fights and harassment surfaced.
The administrators' lawsuit named as defendants former school board members Arsenio Córdova and Lorraine Coca-Ruiz, former superintendent and current State Rep. Roberto "Bobby" Gonzales, D-Taos, as well as current board member Stella Gallegos.
The IDEAS Company and its owners, who filed for bankruptcy in 2010, were also named as defendants, with the plaintiffs claiming they were involved in a conspiracy of retaliation and defamation.
- The company performed a "due diligence audit" of the district after being hired with a majority vote by Córdova, Coca-Ruiz and Gallegos.
- A defamation claim against the IDEAS parties is still pending.
Though final judgments have yet to be filed in the case involving Gonzales and the board members, the suit is apparently all but concluded. The recent orders largely found that the evidence the plaintiffs presented was not sufficient to establish their claims.
For example, in the case of former superintendent Loretta DeLong, the complaint claimed she was terminated in violation of her contract as part of a "campaign of retaliation" by the defendants. In the opinion and order filed Sept. 28, the court found that DeLong failed to show that she had attempted to invoke the "renewability" provision in her contract and that insufficient evidence exists in the records "from which a reasonable jury could conclude that DeLong's contract was breached."
"DeLong puts the cart before the horse by conflating a mere option to renew a contract for an additional year with a binding contract for an additional year," the filing states.
Other plaintiffs cited 2.1-percent salary reductions as evidence of retaliation for filing EEOC complaints. Nutrition coordinator Mary Ann McCann claimed the salary reductions were not made for budgetary reasons, but rather to punish the complainants.
"McCann's assertions, if supported by specific facts, would provide sufficient evidence of pretext to withstand summary judgment," the Sept. 20 court filing in her case states. "However, McCann fails to identify by correct citation any evidence in the record that supports what are otherwise conclusory accusations."
As an example, the court notes a failure to cite a date or docket number when referring to a piece of evidence to support her position. The court arrives at nearly identical conclusions in the cases of other administrators.
Regarding DeLong's claims of retaliation, the court found she "failed to exercise her right to bring a lawsuit on the claims set forth in her initial EEOC complaint in May 2009." The group of administrators initially filed complaints with the EEOC in 2009 and received "right-to-sue" letters from the EEOC Jan. 2010; a second round of EEOC complaints filed in the spring of 2010 made similar claims, and the employees also said they had been retaliated against as a result of their initial complaints.
The court also found DeLong did not do enough to prove she had been discriminated against and relied too heavily on the timing of adverse employment actions, including her March 2009 suspension, to prove discrimination. According to the filing, DeLong "pointedly fails to show" circumstantial evidence of a retaliatory motive, such as inconsistencies in the reasoning of her employers.
"DeLong cannot survive judgment by leaving it to the court to comb through the record to uncover, proffer and analyze any circumstantial evidence of retaliatory motive that may have existed on the part of the school defendants," the filing states.
DeLong had also claimed her reputation had been tarnished, including by the IDEAS defendants, though the court again found insufficient evidence.
"DeLong does not identify the specific statement(s) that impugned her good name, attempt to show that the statement(s) were false, or even offer evidence that the statements were published," the filing states.
Kevin Brown, attorney for the defendants, said he was confident the court would find in his favor, even though he knew it would take some time.
"I always thought this was a weak case for the plaintiffs," he said. "They just didn't have enough (evidence)."
The plaintiffs' attorney, Steven Sanders, did not respond to messages seeking comment prior to publication.
Board member Stella Gallegos - the only individually named defendant who is still affiliated with the Taos school district - said she is happy to see the case come to a close.
"It's been a tough road for me," she said.
Gallegos said she disagrees with how she has been portrayed in The Taos News but that her experience on the board has helped her learn to endure criticism.
"That's part of being a public servant," she said.
She said she feels good about her accomplishments while on the board and intends to work to support parents and staff until her term ends in March.
"I am not going to seek re-election," she said.
Messages seeking comment from Córdova, Coca-Ruiz and Gonzales were not returned as of press time.
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Santa Fe/ Judge Rules for Taos School Board Members
By T.S. Last
ABQ Journal Staff Writer
October 9, 2012
A federal district court judge has ruled against a group of current and former Taos school district administrators who accused school board members and a former superintendent of retaliation, breaches of contract and due process, as well as violations of the Human Rights Act.
By granting the defendants' motion for summary judgment and qualified immunity, Judge Judith C. Herrera late last month ended a long-running and bitter dispute between school officials and staff administrators.
Among the plaintiffs was former superintendent Loretta DeLong, a Native American who accused two former school board members of racism, charges they sternly denied.
DeLong took over as the Taos schools' boss in July 2008, but her relationship with then-school board members Arsenio Cordova and Lorraine Coca-Ruiz soon deteriorated. In her seventh month on the job, DeLong sent a letter to the school board complaining the two had been verbally abusing and harassing her.
The school board voted to place DeLong on paid administrative leave and provided her with a list of 22 examples of work performance issues and six instances of alleged insubordination. The board said DeLong failed to keep open lines of communication, evaluate all administrators, follow the salary schedule, be responsive to budget problems and submit timely and accurate information to the Public Education Department.
DeLong filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission accusing Cordova and Coca-Ruiz of discrimination on the basis of sex, race, age, national origin and religion, which the EEOC dismissed.
In April 2010, DeLong and 10 other current or former school officials filed a lawsuit alleging they had been "subject to hostility and retaliatory behavior" that included pay cuts.
Named as defendants were Cordova and Coca-Ruiz; current board member Stella Gallegos; state Rep. Roberto "Bobby" Gonzales, who served as interim superintendent after DeLong was placed on leave; and Peter Baston and his company, Ideas Business Technology Integrated LLC.
During the last week of September, Judge Herrera issued separate opinions and orders for each of the 11 plaintiffs. In each case she rejected their motions for summary judgment, finding in favor of the defendants.
The judge wrote that many of the "facts" asserted by the parties were merely conclusory allegations or summaries of contentions that did not support or were not relevant to their claims.
Addressing the pay cuts, the judge noted that the possibility of an across-the-board 2.1 percent salary decrease for school administrators had been repeatedly discussed at school board meetings during the spring of 2009 as an alternative to eliminating positions.
At that time, school districts statewide were facing budget crunches as a result of the state's own effort to balance its budget.
In DeLong's case, the judge ruled that there was insufficient evidence to support the former superintendent's contention that she had the option to renew her contract after one year, even though she was on suspension. Nor did she attempt to renew the contract, the judge said.
"DeLong puts the cart before the horse by conflating a mere option to renew a contract for an additional year with a binding contract for an additional year," the judge wrote.
The judge further ruled that DeLong "has not even articulated a coherent theory of how (the contract) was breached" and that she failed to specifically address any of the reasons the board gave for placing her on leave.
"DeLong cannot survive judgment by leaving it to the Court to comb through the record to uncover, proffer, and analyze any circumstantial evidence of retaliatory motive that may have existed on the part of the School Defendants," the judge wrote.
DeLong, who went on to serve as superintendent of the Zuni school district but is no longer employed there, could not be reached for comment. Her attorney, Steven Sanders of Albuquerque, did not return a phone message.
Coca-Ruiz said in a written statement that she was pleased the judge recognized that the administrators' salary reductions were only an attempt to address budget problems.
"It's unfortunate that the plaintiffs forced the (school) district to expend countless hours and tens of thousands of dollars defending this senseless lawsuit, rather than devoting its limited fiscal and human resources to teaching our children," Coca-Ruiz wrote. "I am satisfied with the outcome and hope that the district moves forward in a positive and productive manner."
One issue is left open, however. Judge Herrera found that a triable issue exists as to whether Ideas Business Technology Integration defamed 10 of the 11 plaintiffs by publishing statements that administrators' contracts may have been backdated.
The Santa Fe company, which had been contracted to analyze processes and procedures within specific departments, made the statement in a report to the school board in August 2009.
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Raton/ Having a Blast(Off) in 100 NM Schools!
Local students part of statewide rocket project
By Todd Wildermuth, Editor
Raton Range
October 9, 2012
Local sixth-graders will be part of a launch of model rockets that will occur simultaneously throughout New Mexico Thursday morning, with the rockets blasting off in Raton and other communities at the countdown signal of an astronaut from the International Space Station.
The Raton Middle School students who assembled the large model rocket provided by the state as part of its centennial celebration - marking New Mexico's 1912 statehood anniversary - will launch the rocket from Tiger Stadium Thursday at 10:30 a.m.
At the same time, following the same countdown, students from 99 other schools will also launch similar model rockets.
- The prerecorded countdown - preceded by a welcome message to students and teachers - will be given by NASA Commander Sunita Williams, who is a crew member on the International Space Station.
- The countdown will be broadcast on several radio stations throughout the state, including Raton's KRTN.
- Video of the countdown message also will be shown after the launch at www.nmcentennial.org and www.newmexicoculture.org, as well as on YouTube and Facebook.
Also among the 100 participating schools are schools in Maxwell, Springer, Des Moines and Wagon Mound.
- "This Centennial project is an important celebration of New Mexico's significant role in the development of our nation's space program," said state Department of Cultural Affairs Secretary Veronica Gonzales. "The example set by astronauts like Commander Williams serves as an inspiration to the hundreds of students that will participate in this event."
New Mexico has a long association with rocketry and space exploration.
- The Centennial Rocket Education Project was designed to focus on the state's history related to space-exploration developments, while "embracing the future of science and rocketry," according to a state news release.
- The educational project coincides with the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
RMS science teachers Jo Ahlm and Liz Wick have headed up the project in Raton.
- Ahlm submitted the local school for participation in the project and Raton was selected to be one of the 100 launch sites.
- The model rocket that is to head into the sky this week can reach up to 2,000 feet in altitude and will return to the ground by floating down on a two-foot-wide parachute.
- Ahlm said RMS also has some smaller, low-level model rockets that will be launched Thursday.
Participating schools received the model rocket, with instructions for assembly and launch, an accompanying lesson plan/curriculum focusing on New Mexico's history in rocketry and science, a commemorative classroom poster, commemorative bracelets for students directly involved in the building of the rocket, and a copy of the film October Sky. The 1999 movie is the true story of Homer Hickam, a West Virginia coal miner's son who, inspired by the 1957 launch of Soviet satellite Sputnik, took up rocketry against his father's wishes and went on to become a NASA engineer.
Leading up to the launch, Ahlm said she and Wick have been teaching their sixth-graders about technology and science and "how they blend together."
- The project was created by Ona Johnson, director of New Mexico Centennial, and Tomas Jaehn, librarian/archivist of the Fray Angélico Chávez History Library at the New Mexico History Museum.
- The Department of Cultural Affairs contributed funding to purchase the rockets, which were made by ESTES, a company that has been involved in model rocketry for more than 50 years.
- Other entities that helped make the project possible were PNM Resources, NASA, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the Museum of Space History in Alamogordo.
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Detroit MI/ Educational Achievement Authority: New Statewide School District Projected to Grow to 60 Schools
Huffington Post Report
October 8, 2012
The Educational Achievement Authority of Michigan, a special school district composed of low-performing schools, is projected to grow from 15 schools to up to 60 total across the state in the next 5 years, according to a federal grant application.
In late September, the U.S. Department of Education awarded a total of $35 million over the next 5 years to the new district as part of its Teacher Incentive Fund Grant program.
The grant application estimates the new district "will impact approximately 46,545 students and more than 2,219 teachers" in 10 districts.
- The EAA, which launched this school year, was established to "radically transform teaching and learning" in the lowest performing five percent of schools in Michigan. It offers students a computer-focused learning environment with individualized lesson plans.
- All 15 current EAA schools are now in Detroit and previously belonged to Detroit Public Schools. The grant lists school districts in Kalamazoo, Flint, Lansing, Saginaw, Battle Creek, Grand Rapids, Pontiac, Port Huron, and Southfield as potential locations of schools that could be taken over by the statewide school system.
Schools belonging to Michigan's bottom-performing five percent are designated priority schools and have have three years to create and enact an improvement plan approved by the state.
- If they don't, the state can decide to add them to the EAA during their fourth year on the list.
- There are currently 146 priority schools in 49 Michigan school districts.
- An emergency manager can also transfer a district into the system, which is what happened in Detroit under Emergency Manager Roy Roberts.
Schools that transfer into the EAA take state school funding with them into the system. Teachers who join into the new state district enter as non-unionized employees.
Sara Wurfel, a spokeswoman with Gov. Snyder's office, told the Detroit Free Press that the numbers in the grant application are simply projections, but added that it was "completely feasible" the district would grow given the number of schools on the state's priority list.
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New York NY/ Before a Test, a Poverty of Words
By Ginia Bellafante
New York Times
October 5, 2012
Not too long ago, I witnessed a child, about two months shy of 3, welcome the return of some furniture to his family's apartment with the enthusiastic declaration "Ottoman is back!" The child understood that the stout cylindrical object from which he liked to jump had a name and that its absence had been caused by a visit to someone called "an upholsterer." The upholsterer, he realized, was responsible for converting the ottoman from one color or texture to another. Here was a child whose mother had prepared him, at the very least, for a future of reading World of Interiors.
Though conceivably much more as well. Despite the Manhattan parody to which a scene like this so easily gives rise, it is difficult to overstate the advantages arrogated to a child whose parent proceeds in a near constant mode of annotation. Reflexively, the affluent, ambitious parent is always talking, pointing out, explaining: Mommy is looking for her laptop; let's put on your rain boots; that's a pigeon, a sand dune, skyscraper, a pomegranate. The child, in essence, exists in continuous receipt of dictation.
Things are very different elsewhere on the class spectrum. Earlier in the year when I met Steven F. Wilson, founder of a network of charter schools that serve poor and largely black communities in Brooklyn, I asked him what he considered the greatest challenge on the first day of kindergarten each year. He answered, without a second's hesitation: "Word deficit."
As it happens, in the '80s, the psychologists Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley spent years cataloging the number of words spoken to young children in dozens of families from different socioeconomic groups, and what they found was not only a disparity in the complexity of words used, but also astonishing differences in sheer number. Children of professionals were, on average, exposed to approximately 1,500 more words hourly than children growing up in poverty. This resulted in a gap of more than 32 million words by the time the children reached the age of 4.
This issue, though seemingly crucial, has been obscured in the recently intensified debate over the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test, the multiple-choice exam used as the sole metric for entrance into some of New York City's elite public high schools, including Stuyvesant and Bronx Science.
Thousands of students in the city are in the throes of preparing for the test to be administered the last weekend of this month.
- Two weeks ago, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, along with other organizations, filed a federal civil rights complaint challenging the single-score admissions process as perilously narrow and arguing that it negatively affected black and Hispanic children, who are grossly underrepresented in these schools, so long considered forceful agents of mobility.
- As the complaint makes note, of the 967 eighth-grade students offered admission to Stuyvesant for the current school year, only 19 were black and 32 Hispanic.
- During the previous school year, only 3.5 percent of students at Bronx Science were black and 7.2 percent Hispanic.
- At Staten Island Tech, the figures were even lower.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg quickly defended the process, contending that it was so free of subjectivity that it must inherently be regarded as fair.
Others called the system Darwinian. The Education Department, required by state law to rely exclusively on the test, volunteered defensively that it offered free exam preparation to low-income students. The fact that so many children of means take costly tutorials to ready themselves for testing has always been a matter of concern to anyone hoping to see the racial imbalances redressed.
And yet, all of this focus on the test - which examines reading comprehension, math skills, the ability to reason logically - suggests a myopia of its own.
- Expanding the ranks of poor black and Hispanic children in the top high schools would seem to require infinitely more backtracking. Consider that Christa McAuliffe Middle School in Brooklyn, one of the major pipelines to top public high schools, last year had a student population that was 0.52 percent black.
- As the education theorist E. D. Hirsch recently wrote in a review of Paul Tough's new book, "How Children Succeed," there is strong evidence that increasing the general knowledge and vocabulary of a child before age 6 is the single highest correlate with later success. Schools have an enormously hard time pushing through the deficiencies with which many children arrive.
According to state education data, a far higher percentage of children in New York City charter and district schools in grades three through eight score at the highest level (a four) in math than they do in what is known as English Language Arts.
- In the 2011-12 school year, only 3.2 percent of children in district schools scored at the four level on the end-of-year statewide English exam.
- For charter schools, the figure was 1.9 percent.
All of this would seem to argue for a system in which we spent ever more of our energies and money on early, preschool education rather than less.
The city has taken the right direction with the announcement of a new preschool in Brownsville, Brooklyn, scheduled to open next year, that will start with children as young as 6 weeks old.
But that's one program in a city where 7,500 children reached kindergarten this year without preschool preparation. Obviously we want equal opportunity; we also want children to know what words like "equal" and "opportunity" mean.
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Moorhead MS/ A Solution to Lost Early Childhood Opportunities in Mississippi?
By Liz Willen
Hechinger Report [Hechingerreport.org]
October 4, 2012
JeMira Nichols entered kindergarten in this sleepy Delta town way ahead of her classmates. She knew colors, letters and numbers. She spoke in full sentences. She could discuss books comfortably.
Until she started school in August, JeMira spent nine hours each weekday at Little Angels Day Care, a well-equipped one-story center that participates in a largely privately funded school-readiness program called Mississippi Building Blocks.
"She would not be where she is right now if it weren't for Little Angels," said JeMira's 43-year-old grandmother, Mary Davis, who assembles tools at a nearby factory and helps raise JeMira and her younger sister while their mother attends college out of state. "They have an instructor just like regular school. They do math and reading and they color and draw. And they write all the time."
In this poorest region of the poorest state in the country, where there's little industry, few job prospects and many obstacles for children, Building Blocks has helped transform a wildly uneven and scattered network of some 1,685 early childhood centers-including Little Angels.
Mississippi needs the help:
- It has the highest rate of child poverty in the nation and some of the lowest standardized test scores.
- Licensing and oversight of small, family child care homes in Mississippi rank dead last in the country.
- And it's the only state in the South that doesn't fund pre-kindergarten.
Nationally, children from low-income families are also lagging;
- almost half are unready for school by the time they enter kindergarten, according to Child Care Aware of America, a nonprofit organization that promotes quality care.
In Mississippi, the private sector is taking action.
- Recognizing the state's dire situation, businesspeople, philanthropists and corporate sponsors started raising $6 million for Building Block's pilot program five years ago, hoping it might provide a partial solution.
- Over 500 early childhood programs in 31 counties have since benefitted from free equipment, a research-based curriculum, training for teachers and parents, and business advice.
- "Thanks to this program-which is scalable-these kids are going to have a better shot when they walk into kindergarten," said Jim Barksdale, the former president and CEO of Netscape Communications, who helped fund Building Blocks.
- Early results are promising, and the program's backers now plan to ask the state legislature for $5 million to expand.
The proposed expansion, though, comes at a time of yet another early childhood crisis in Mississippi.
- Only 35 percent of low-income, working families who qualify for state and federally subsidized child care, including Head Start, are being served.
- There's a waiting list of 8,050 children who would love to attend a center like Little Angels, but their families cannot afford the rates and they can't get a voucher from the state, said Carol Burnett, founder and director of Mississippi's Low-Income Child Care Initiative.
The price Mary Davis pays for her granddaughter JeMira's full-time care-$78.50 a week, including three hot meals-is out of reach for many in the Delta. It is only slightly less, annualized, than the $4,620 average fee for an infant in a full-time childcare center in Mississippi. Median family income hovers around $25,000 a year.
Celia Ward, owner of Little Angels, gets choked up when she looks at her well-equipped-but partially empty-rooms. She remembers the day she opened a letter from Building Blocks three years ago that promised unheard-of resources for the needy population she serves.
"It said we would get a mentor and materials, and I said, 'Oh my goodness, thank you, Lord,' " Ward recalled on a recent steamy afternoon. While she talked, trained mentors helped her staff guide toddlers through seven carefully labeled learning areas in a classroom, each one emphasizing different numbers and letters.
The children recited the five words of the week-"interview," "enormous," "gigantic," "teamwork" and "thankful"-and sounded out new ones. They also sang songs, finger-painted and listened to The Lion and the Mouse, the book of the day.
Literacy is at the heart of the Building Blocks curriculum and gets woven into all activities. "Play is how they learn-it's really their language," said Building Blocks director Laurie Smith, who can often be found playing with children and reading to them on the floor.
Countless reports have shown that the first five years in a child's life are the most critical for learning and developing language skills, Smith said.
Conditions in centers that have not benefited from Building Blocks support can be abysmal. During a reporter's recent unannounced visit to one such center in the Delta, toddlers sat in a darkened room watching television news surrounded by a dirty mop, a bucket of water, and used diapers sitting in an open pail. A stench of rotten food permeated the room.
"I find this the most sad part of my job," said Smith, who sees many families choose substandard centers because they cost less and because they don't receive state vouchers that subsidize childcare. While families earning below 85 percent of the state median income all qualify for vouchers, the program doesn't have enough money to serve anyone earning more than 50 percent of the state median income.
Smith is optimistic that deficient centers can be turned around. She shared notes from Keri Wright, a former Building Blocks mentor charged with training teachers in the southeastern part of the state, documenting frightful conditions that improved over time with help.
"I can't believe the unsanitary practices I witnessed," wrote Wright, who spent three years working for Building Blocks. Children seemed bored, few of their toys operated properly, they had no access to books or blocks, and they were never taken outside, Wright reported.
"The teacher did not converse with the children, or even sing," Wright wrote. "She did not interact with the children other than to help them in the bathroom and say a blessing before eating."
Child care centers in the state have no consistent education standards and require nothing more than a license from the Mississippi Department of Health-and only then if they care for seven or more children.
- Licenses are not hard to come by, and inspections typically take place once a year or even less frequently.
- There are no regulations requiring that early childhood teachers be licensed or possess any degree beyond a high school diploma or GED in Mississippi.
Indeed, those who skin catfish in a Delta processing plant can earn more money than the state's early child care providers, whose mean wage is $8.69 per hour. To get hired, they need only to be 18, have three years of experience caring for children under the age of 13, or obtain 15 hours of training. Few receive health or retirement benefits, or paid vacation.
Poor or non-existent early childhood education experiences contribute to an unbroken cycle of poverty in Mississippi, where thousands of white families decamped long ago for private institutions, leaving highly segregated schools. One in four Mississippi public high-school students will drop out before graduation-and rates are even higher in the Delta.
- In recent years, one of every 14 kindergarteners and one of every 15 first-graders in Mississippi were deemed unready for the next grade-level, according to the Southern Education Foundation.
- Between 1998 and 2008, the state spent over $2 billion because thousands of unprepared school children had to repeat a grade.
- Mississippi would save almost $37 million a year in community-college remediation and lost earnings if all high-school students who graduated were ready for college, according to the Alliance for Excellent Education, a Washington D.C.-based research and advocacy group.
If the state funds Building Blocks, the program could add more materials, mentors, teacher training and scholarships, parenting classes and a literacy curriculum for as many as 2,500 additional children, Smith said.
Preliminary results from the first three years of Building Blocks as measured against a control group are promising, both in gains on school-readiness measures and in social and emotional development.
A push to expand Building Blocks comes as momentum is building to improve early childhood education in the state. The Mississippi Education Department recently proposed an unprecedented $2.5 million program to establish model early childhood classrooms with priority given to high-poverty areas in public-school districts.
- Early childhood advocates are gathering this week in Jackson, Miss., to talk about ways to improve early learning at a summit sponsored by Excel By 5, another privately funded effort to help communities boost educational opportunities for the state's littlest learners.
- Also this week, the Mississippi Early Childhood Association is holding a conference to discuss an array of solutions and ways to improve early learning.
There remains some skepticism, though. Proposals for state-funded pre-k in Mississippi have failed repeatedly. Politicians have argued it would be too expensive. Others insist that parents and churches should better prepare children for school.
Even some who praise Building Blocks wonder if the program can go far enough to make a dent in school readiness throughout the state.
"To me, this is not a policy solution. It's not a direct service to children like a pre-k program,'' said Cathy Grace, a national early childhood expert who helped craft Building Blocks and now oversees early childhood programs for the Gilmore Early Learning Initiative. "State dollars need to improve and impact systems."
The state is also going to have to find a way to reduce the waiting list for working families in need of childcare, Burnett said. "If Building Blocks helps the [child care] centers, but no parents can afford to send their kids there, what have we accomplished?"
Jill Dent, director of the office for children and youth at the Mississippi Department of Human Services, said the waiting list of 8,000-plus children is due to both federal cuts and the loss of stimulus funding. "We are trying to serve as many children as we possibly can," she said. "We want to get them back in care." The state currently finances early childhood care for 18,000 children a month.
Smith said advocates of Building Blocks, including business advisors and military leaders, will fight to keep centers open by speaking out in favor of reducing waiting lists to serve more families, and set an example by constantly improving quality.
At Little Angels, that fight can't come quickly enough. Ward cannot keep her doors open if more parents don't sign up.
"I would love to take in more children. We have the room for them and a great program, but they [the families] don't have the money," Ward said. "And if children can't get in a program, they are lost."
What is Building Blocks?
- Mississippi Building Blocks is a largely privately funded, $6 million investment in its fourth year of boosting the quality of early care and education to young children in Mississippi to improve their readiness for school. The program provides mentors and scholarships to help train teachers, aids child care centers with business practices and equips them with a research-based literacy curriculum along with up to $3,000 in classroom supplies.
What do initial results show?
- The Center for Family Policy & Research at the University of Missouri found in an independent analysis that the program had a positive impact on children's skills and social emotional development - particularly those with the greatest need. The analysis compared results of children who were in the Building Block program against those in a control group, using school readiness assessment measures and tools to gauge their social and emotional growth.
What would it take to implement Building Blocks on a large scale statewide?
- It would take a concerted, collaborative effort between government, business, advocates and parents, and cost about $2,000 per child - a lot less than a publicly funded pre-k program.
Who funds Building Blocks?
- A number of Mississippi businessmen and foundations, including the Phil Hardin Foundation, Mississippi Power Company, AT&T, Entergy, Cspire, the Barksdale Foundation for Northwest and many others.
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Canton GA/ Attention Disorder or Not, Pills to Help in School
By Alan Schwarz
New York Times
October 9, 2012
When Dr. Michael Anderson hears about his low-income patients struggling in elementary school, he usually gives them a taste of some powerful medicine: Adderall.
The pills boost focus and impulse control in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Although A.D.H.D is the diagnosis Dr. Anderson makes, he calls the disorder "made up" and "an excuse" to prescribe the pills to treat what he considers the children's true ill - poor academic performance in inadequate schools.
"I don't have a whole lot of choice," said Dr. Anderson, a pediatrician for many poor families in Cherokee County, north of Atlanta. "We've decided as a society that it's too expensive to modify the kid's environment. So we have to modify the kid."
Dr. Anderson is one of the more outspoken proponents of an idea that is gaining interest among some physicians. They are prescribing stimulants to struggling students in schools starved of extra money - not to treat A.D.H.D., necessarily, but to boost their academic performance.
It is not yet clear whether Dr. Anderson is representative of a widening trend. But some experts note that as wealthy students abuse stimulants to raise already-good grades in colleges and high schools, the medications are being used on low-income elementary school children with faltering grades and parents eager to see them succeed.
- "We as a society have been unwilling to invest in very effective nonpharmaceutical interventions for these children and their families," said Dr. Ramesh Raghavan, a child mental-health services researcher at Washington University in St. Louis and an expert in prescription drug use among low-income children. "We are effectively forcing local community psychiatrists to use the only tool at their disposal, which is psychotropic medications."
- Dr. Nancy Rappaport, a child psychiatrist in Cambridge, Mass., who works primarily with lower-income children and their schools, added: "We are seeing this more and more. We are using a chemical straitjacket instead of doing things that are just as important to also do, sometimes more."
Dr. Anderson's instinct, he said, is that of a "social justice thinker" who is "evening the scales a little bit." He said that the children he sees with academic problems are essentially "mismatched with their environment" - square pegs chafing the round holes of public education. Because their families can rarely afford behavior-based therapies like tutoring and family counseling, he said, medication becomes the most reliable and pragmatic way to redirect the student toward success.
"People who are getting A's and B's, I won't give it to them," he said. For some parents the pills provide great relief. Jacqueline Williams said she can't thank Dr. Anderson enough for diagnosing A.D.H.D. in her children - Eric, 15; Chekiara, 14; and Shamya, 11 - and prescribing Concerta, a long-acting stimulant, for them all. She said each was having trouble listening to instructions and concentrating on schoolwork.
"My kids don't want to take it, but I told them, 'These are your grades when you're taking it, this is when you don't,' and they understood," Ms. Williams said, noting that Medicaid covers almost every penny of her doctor and prescription costs.
Some experts see little harm in a responsible physician using A.D.H.D. medications to help a struggling student. Others - even among the many like Dr. Rappaport who praise the use of stimulants as treatment for classic A.D.H.D. - fear that doctors are exposing children to unwarranted physical and psychological risks. Reported side effects of the drugs have included growth suppression, increased blood pressure and, in rare cases, psychotic episodes.
A.D.H.D. which is characterized by severe inattention and impulsivity, is an increasingly common psychiatric diagnosis among American youth:
- about 9.5 percent of Americans ages 4 to 17 were judged to have it in 2007, or
- about 5.4 million children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The reported prevalence of the disorder has risen steadily for more than a decade, with some doctors gratified by its widening recognition but others fearful that the diagnosis, and the drugs to treat it, are handed out too loosely and at the exclusion of nonpharmaceutical therapies.
The Drug Enforcement Administration classifies these medications as Schedule II Controlled Substances because they are particularly addictive.
- Long-term effects of extended use are not well understood, said many medical experts.
- Some of them worry that children can become dependent on the medication well into adulthood, long after any A.D.H.D. symptoms can dissipate.
According to guidelines published last year by the American Academy of Pediatrics, physicians should use one of several behavior rating scales, some of which feature dozens of categories, to make sure that a child not only fits criteria for A.D.H.D., but also has no related condition like dyslexia or oppositional defiant disorder, in which intense anger is directed toward authority figures. However, a 2010 study in the Journal of Attention Disorders suggested that at least 20 percent of doctors said they did not follow this protocol when making their A.D.H.D. diagnoses, with many of them following personal instinct.
On the Rocafort family's kitchen shelf in Ball Ground, Ga., next to the peanut butter and chicken broth, sits a wire basket brimming with bottles of the children's medications, prescribed by Dr. Anderson: Adderall for Alexis, 12; and Ethan, 9; Risperdal (an antipsychotic for mood stabilization) for Quintn and Perry, both 11; and Clonidine (a sleep aid to counteract the other medications) for all four, taken nightly.
Quintn began taking Adderall for A.D.H.D. about five years ago, when his disruptive school behavior led to calls home and in-school suspensions. He immediately settled down and became a more earnest, attentive student - a little bit more like Perry, who also took Adderall for his A.D.H.D.
When puberty's chemical maelstrom began at about 10, though, Quintn got into fights at school because, he said, other children were insulting his mother. The problem was, they were not; Quintn was seeing people and hearing voices that were not there, a rare but recognized side effect of Adderall. After Quintn admitted to being suicidal, Dr. Anderson prescribed a week in a local psychiatric hospital, and a switch to Risperdal.
While telling this story, the Rocaforts called Quintn into the kitchen and asked him to describe why he was had been given Adderall.
"To help me focus on my school work, my homework, listening to Mom and Dad, and not doing what I used to do to my teachers, to make them mad," he said. He described the week in the hospital and the effects of Risperdal: "If I don't take my medicine I'd be having attitudes. I'd be disrespecting my parents. I wouldn't be like this."
Despite Quintn's experience with Adderall, the Rocaforts decided to use it with their 12-year-old daughter, Alexis, and 9-year-old son, Ethan. These children don't have A.D.H.D., their parents said. The Adderall is merely to help their grades, and because Alexis was, in her father's words, "a little blah."
"We've seen both sides of the spectrum: we've seen positive, we've seen negative," the father, Rocky Rocafort, said. Acknowledging that Alexis's use of Adderall is "cosmetic," he added, "If they're feeling positive, happy, socializing more, and it's helping them, why wouldn't you? Why not?"
Dr. William Graf, a pediatrician and child neurologist who serves many poor families in New Haven, said that a family should be able to choose for itself whether Adderall can benefit its non-A.D.H.D. child, and that a physician can ethically prescribe a trial as long as side effects are closely monitored. He expressed concern, however, that the rising use of stimulants in this manner can threaten what he called "the authenticity of development."
"These children are still in the developmental phase, and we still don't know how these drugs biologically affect the developing brain," he said. "There's an obligation for parents, doctors and teachers to respect the authenticity issue, and I'm not sure that's always happening."
Dr. Anderson said that every child he treats with A.D.H.D. medication has met qualifications. But he also railed against those criteria, saying they were codified only to "make something completely subjective look objective." He added that teacher reports almost invariably come back as citing the behaviors that would warrant a diagnosis, a decision he called more economic than medical.
"The school said if they had other ideas they would," Dr. Anderson said. "But the other ideas cost money and resources compared to meds."
Dr. Anderson cited William G. Hasty Elementary School here in Canton as one school he deals with often. Izell McGruder, the school's principal, did not respond to several messages seeking comment.
Several educators contacted for this article considered the subject of A.D.H.D. so controversial - the diagnosis was misused at times, they said, but for many children it is a serious learning disability - that they declined to comment.
- The superintendent of one major school district in California, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, noted that diagnosis rates of A.D.H.D. have risen as sharply as school funding has declined.
- "It's scary to think that this is what we've come to; how not funding public education to meet the needs of all kids has led to this," said the superintendent, referring to the use of stimulants in children without classic A.D.H.D. "I don't know, but it could be happening right here. Maybe not as knowingly, but it could be a consequence of a doctor who sees a kid failing in overcrowded classes with 42 other kids and the frustrated parents asking what they can do. The doctor says, 'Maybe it's A.D.H.D., let's give this a try.' "
When told that the Rocaforts insist that their two children on Adderall do not have A.D.H.D. and never did, Dr. Anderson said he was surprised. He consulted their charts and found the parent questionnaire. Every category, which assessed the severity of behaviors associated with A.D.H.D., received a five out of five except one, which was a four.
"This is my whole angst about the thing," Dr. Anderson said. "We put a label on something that isn't binary - you have it or you don't. We won't just say that there is a student who has problems in school, problems at home, and probably, according to the doctor with agreement of the parents, will try medical treatment."
He added, "We might not know the long-term effects, but we do know the short-term costs of school failure, which are real. I am looking to the individual person and where they are right now. I am the doctor for the patient, not for society."
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Palo Alto CA/ Brain Scientists Seek Developmental Measures for Learning to Read
By Sarah D. Sparks
Education Week [Edweek.com]
October 8, 2012
Could a brain scan one day be added to the normal developmental measures children receive at the pediatrician's office before starting school?
Jason D. Yeatman, a psychologist at the Stanford University Center for Cognitive and Neurobiological Imaging, hopes that researchers will soon be able to identify biological indicators for reading development just as they now do for height and weight.
Yeatman and fellow researchers from Stanford and Bar Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel, think they already have a clue to this.
They found that in order to learn to read, a young child's brain must be developed enough to process the information, but still capable of fast growth, according to a new longitudinal study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
- The researchers tracked the development of reading skills and brain growth in 55 children ages 7-12 during a three-year period.
- Two separate processes are hard at work in a child's developing brain during this time, Yeatman explained.
- Learning and practicing a skill creates and strengthens the neural pathways connecting the associated parts of the brain, represented by white matter; a child has three times as much white matter as an adult because they are making so many more new connections and learning new skills.
- At the same time, however, unneeded connections are not reinforced and deteriorate over time, a process known as pruning.
"Both processes are unfolding over time. In good readers they are balanced and going at the same time and being influenced by the child's experience," Yeatman said.
- "What we think is happening in the poor reader is there was this exuberant growth in early life and then it had already plateaued ... by the time they were engaged in reading instruction.
In the poor readers, the growth process has already stopped and you only see the pruning process.
- "High-performing readers initially had lower levels of white matter in the areas of the brain associated with visually identifying words, but these levels grew rapidly during the three years studied.
- By contrast, below-average readers had higher initial levels of white matter in the areas associated with reading but these levels declined over time, suggesting the children were not creating and strengthening neural pathways.
"The brain matures in a sequential manner in which some circuits develop and stabilize while others remain capable of plastic change," the researchers noted in the study.
- "In this view, reading instruction should be delivered when the systems needed to learn the material are adequately developed but still have a potential for further plasticity so that they can respond to the instruction."
It sounds like a big leap from this sort of brain imaging in a lab to a regular diagnostic tool, but Yeatman argues the magnetic resonance images that took an hour to capture five years ago now take only about five minutes, and measuring the density of neural connections requires only a snapshot of the brain, which is easier to perform on notoriously wriggly children. As technology improves, he said he expects the cost of such scanning-now at about $400 for an hour-to drop.
"People are doubtful of whether 'neuroprognosis' will actually be useful. If you look at the cost to the system of children failing academically, those costs are incredibly high-thousands and thousands of dollars going to intervention programs, and, unfortunately, a lot of those intervention programs are not as effective as we'd hope," he said.
"I think we're getting close to the point of being able to identify a specific abnormality in an individual and make predictions and interventions based on that. If we could find a way to make meaningful predictions earlier in life ... in a decade I'd like to be able to measure a 3-year-old, figure out what abnormalities are in there and what interventions might help prevent reading problems before they start."
