Santa Fe/ NM Educational Pension Fund Assets Reach Nearly $10 Billion
The Associated Press
Alamogordo Daily News
October 23, 2012
New Mexico's educational pension program reports strong investment returns during the past year and the fund's finances reached a historical high.
The Educational Retirement Board said the pension fund had assets valued at more than $9.7 billion at the end of September.
The previous high was $9.6 billion in September 1997, shortly before the state's pension and investment funds nosedived because of a global meltdown in financial markets.
The pension system reports investment returns of 4.6 percent during the last quarter and 16 percent during the past year. It has 10-year investment gains of 8.5 percent.
About 97,000 educators and retirees are covered by the pension program.
The system's governing board is proposing higher payroll contributions by educators to help shore up the pension fund's long-term finances.
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Santa Fe/ SFPS, School for the Deaf Consider Land Deal for New South-Side Elementary
By Tom Sharpe
The New Mexican
October 23, 2012
The Santa Fe school district is negotiating to buy 15 1/2 acres near Capital High School from the New Mexico School for the Deaf for construction of a new elementary school.
An agent for the School for the Deaf was scheduled to appear before the city of Santa Fe's Summary Committee of the Planning Commission on Thursday, Nov. 1, to seek to split a 213-acre parcel on the south end of Paseo del Sol, adjacent to Herrera Drive, to accommodate the sale.
But city Land Use Director Matthew O'Reilly said Tuesday that the lot split is likely to be postponed until the committee's next meeting due to unresolved issues.
- "The property they are splitting off is going to need to be served by a road," he said, "and staff is asking them to adjust the location of the property they want to split so that the roads line up better."
- For more than a year, the Santa Fe Public Schools has been looking for a place to build a new elementary school in the fast-growing southwest section of town that includes Tierra Contenta.
- One estimate says there is permanent classroom space for only 1,626 of the 2,266 students who live in southwest Santa Fe.
"The new school is definitely a necessity," school board President Frank Montaño said last April. "The reason we decided to create a new school is that at César Chávez Elementary, Piñon and Kearny elementary schools we have loads of [portable classroom buildings]."
The district has $19 million from general obligation bonds available for the new school.
On Tuesday, the district's chief operations officer, Kristy Janda Wagner, confirmed that the district is negotiating with the School for the Deaf to purchase property for the new school, but she declined to discuss terms.
Shirley McDougall, asset manager for the district, said tentative plans call for building classrooms for kindergarten through fifth grades in the first phase, then for grades six, seven and eight in the second phase. The timeline for the project "keeps changing," she added.
The New Mexico School for the Deaf was established at 1060 Cerrillos Road in 1887. By 2000, faced with overcrowded and decaying buildings, the school's Board of Regents began looking to relocate its campus - to Albuquerque, to Los Lunas or to the acreage it had previously acquired in southwest Santa Fe near Tierra Contenta.
The regents abandoned that idea and decided to keep the campus on Cerrillos Road in 2002 after state voters endorsed educational bonds, providing money for new dormitories at the school. But in recent years, the school has worked with the New Mexico Coalition to End Homelessness and The Housing Trust on a plan to use some of the southwest-side property to build a Village Safe housing complex that would have units especially designed for people with hearing difficulties.
Richard Gorman, project manager for the School for the Deaf, was not available for comment on Tuesday.
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Raton/ 88 Schools Earn Cash for Good Grades in State Rating System
Raton Middle School, others rewarded for good showing
By Todd Wildermuth, Editor
Raton Range
October 23, 2012
Good grades have paid off in the form of a little extra cash for one Raton school and several others in the area.
88 schools in 41 districts are splitting slightly more than $1.73 million the Legislature approved in 2010 for the state Public Education Department to use as rewards for schools that score an A in New Mexico's letter-grade rating system or improve by at least two grades from one rating period to the next.
The first school year the system was used was 2010-2011. Because it was the first year the system was in place, the school grades were not issued until this past January. Those grades were followed in July by the grades for the 2011-2012 school year.
- Having jumped from a grade of D in the first rating year to a B for the last school year, Raton Middle School will receive $15,440.29.
- Maxwell Elementary is also in line for a funding reward because of an improved grade, from an F to a C, and will receive $3,176.88.
Other area schools will get funding rewards for earning an A grade for the last school year.
- They are Springer's Miranda Junior High ($2,662.53),
- Des Moines High ($1,966.64),
and three schools in the Cimarron district:
- Cimarron Elementary ($3,691.23),
- Eagle Nest Elementary ($5,294.80) and
- Eagle Nest Middle School ($4,235.84).
The money for the statewide rewards program is being divided based on the number of students in each qualifying school. Each school must use the money for instructional materials, such as textbooks and computer software.
The state Public Education Department put in place its own school grading system to replace the rating system otherwise required in the federal No Child Left Behind Act. New Mexico was one of the first 11 states that received a waiver of the federal measurements after developing their own rating systems.
New Mexico's letter-grade system is designed to be more specific than a simple passing or failing mark that is given under the rating system in the No Child Left Behind Act.
The school grades are calculated using at least three years' worth of data whenever possible in areas such as academic growth, attendance, support of both the highest and lowest performing students, and college and career readiness. Students' performances on standardized tests are a part of the factors in determining a school's grade.
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Quay County/ 2 "Top Growth" Middle Schools Awarded PED Grant Money
By Jerrene Bradley, Staff Writer
Quay County Sun
October 23, 2012
Tucumcari and Logan middle schools are getting surprise grant money from the state for improving student test scores.
Tucumcari Middle School will receive $13,463.91 and Logan Middle School is getting $3,328.16.
The award recognizes the middle schools as one of just 48 schools in New Mexico earning a "Top Growth" designation from the state Public Education Department. The grant is given for improvement in 2012 New Mexico Standards Based Assessment tests.
Secretary-Designate of Education Hanna Skandera said Logan and Tucumcari raised their grade average from a D to a B. She said the state wants to champion these schools and give support where it is deserved.
Skandera said she will ask the legislature for more money to help the struggling schools in the state.
The grant money must be used for books and instructional materials, according to the state education department.
Tucumcari Middle School Principal Roberta Segura said the school hasn't decided what books and supplies they will purchase yet. She said that they are very excited to receive the money and "We know how hard we work and it is great to be recognized."
Logan Schools Superintendent Johnnie Cain called it a nice surprise. Cain said he is proud of the accomplishment by students.
Cain said the school will determine how the award money will be spent after sitting down with the teachers to go over what supplies are needed.
New Mexico Public Education Department spokesman Christopher Thwealt said 88 schools received grant money.
Thwealt said students all of "Top Growth" schools worked hard at raising their scores.
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Taos/ School Board Hears about Gains, Opportunities from Taos Pueblo Leaders
By Matthew van Buren
Taos News
October 23, 2012
The Taos Municipal School Board heard at its yearly meeting at Taos Pueblo Tuesday (Oct. 23) that the school district is going in the right direction, but there is much work yet to be done.
The concerns raised Tuesday ranged from information technology to the district calendar.
Taos Pueblo Board of Education Chairman Vernon Luján addressed the board, saying a more effective online presence and more timely reports would be helpful for parents as they try to track their children's progress and attendance. He spoke to the importance of more cultural and linguistic education, as well, and said proposals are currently being refined at the tribal level.
- "We're still in the planning stages (of a Native culture-focused class)," he said. "It won't just be for Native American kids. It will be open."
Luján said such a class would teach students about historical subjects such as the Pueblo Revolt, Native philosophies and other topics. Luján said the Taos district has done an "admirable job" of addressing a number of tribal concerns and that Taos Pueblo wants to see its students receive the best education possible.
- "We want to increase our graduation levels," he said. "We want more college-educated children."
Luján praised Superintendent Rod Weston's accessibility and efforts on behalf of Taos Pueblo students.
The school board also received praise, though several speakers expressed a need for a Taos Pueblo representative on the board. Luján suggested redistricting or another concerted effort to give a Pueblo representative a voice at the head of the district.
- "We have our own issues here," he said. "We have concerns that we can better address at our level ... Once it's addressed at that level, we can take it to yours."
Tribal Secretary Floyd Gomez also addressed the board Tuesday, saying "there is a lot of work that needs to be done" to address the achievement gap. He said a tribal board member or liaison would be helpful.
"I think that's very, very important," he said. "Let's keep that momentum going."
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ABQ/ COLUMN: 3rd Annual School Choice Fair-Opportunity to Compare Public Charter School Programs
By Bruce Hegwer [Executive director of the New Mexico Coalition for Charter Schools]
ABQ Journal
October 23, 2012
As a parent or a family looking for differing educational opportunities for children, trying to find the right school can be a somewhat daunting task.
Back in the old days, choosing a school was simple. You went to your local neighborhood school, because that was your only choice. If your neighborhood school was a great one, you were very fortunate. If your local school was not so good, well, that was just too bad.
Today's parents, families and students have a number of choices when it comes to selecting an educational setting, and many students and families are willing to travel a good distance to receive the education they want and in the setting they desire. Parents and students can now choose among traditional schools, public charter schools, private schools, virtual online schools, home schools and even a blend of the above. Thus, choosing the right school has become a highly involved process with lots of choices and a lot of stress ensuring that parents and students make the right choice in finding a school that meets their needs.
Public charter schools are a viable educational option for parents, and in Albuquerque, there are 54 located throughout the city. These charter schools come in a variety of grade-level configurations, sizes, instructional themes, teaching methodologies and school cultures. Given that there are many options of schools available, finding the "right" charter school takes a lot of time and effort. With so many different types of charter schools, where do families and students go to find the right fit?
Parents and community members now have a wonderful opportunity to see what public charter schools have to offer. On Nov. 14, the third annual School Choice Fair, hosted by PNM, the Amy Biehl Foundation and the New Mexico Coalition for Charter Schools, will take place from 6-8 p.m. at the Hyatt Regency Downtown at 330 Tijeras NW.
The purpose of the fair is to introduce families to the many educational opportunities afforded by local public charter schools. The School Choice Fair brings together many of the charter schools in Albuquerque in one location, which allows families to easily view the many options available. Last year, more than 35 charter schools participated in the fair, and nearly 1,000 parents and students attended.
This year, Albuquerque Public Schools magnet schools have been invited to participate and provide information on what their schools have to offer.
The fair provides an opportunity for families and students to meet with school leaders and staff, discuss what the schools are about, the type of students they serve, how they teach and, just as important, the culture or environment of the schools. Last year, one parent commented, "Having so many schools in one place was just a huge service! It really facilitated my ability to see what's out there and start the process of finding a good fit for my child."
The fair is free, open to any family and any student, and is a great place to conduct research on many of the 54 elementary, secondary and high school charter school options in Albuquerque. For further information on the Public School Choice Fair, contact Mike May at 505-401-5736, or Bruce Hegwer at bruce@nmccs.org.
On another note, the New Mexico Coalition for Charter Schools is hosting its 13th annual New Mexico Charter School Conference at the Marriott Pyramid in Albuquerque on Nov. 2-3.
The theme of this year's conference is, "Charter Schools - Making the Grade."
- The conference will bring approximately 400 charter school leaders and school board members together for training on a variety of topics, ranging from current laws and regulations affecting charter schools to "cloud computing."
- Each year, charter school board members are required to obtain at least five hours of training, and the annual conference provides an opportunity to obtain the required training.
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Washington DC/ E-Learning Opens Real-World Doors
By Ian Quillen
Education Week, Vol. 32, Issue 9 [Edweek.org]
October 24, 2012
For many schools, mixing online courses with face-to-face learning is primarily a method for serving struggling or advanced students while keeping them inside school walls.
But for several hundred high school students in the Grand Rapids, Mich., school district, blended learning is the key that unlocks the door to the real world.
In 2008, the district launched the first of five Centers of Innovation, one at each of the 17,000-student district's high schools.
- They are designed to give students a pathway to in-school internships and fellowships that could eventually lead to careers.
- Two of the centers now use online courses from e2020, a provider located in Scottsdale, Ariz., for students' core academic subjects.
"The overwhelming factor [in building a blended program] was the flexibility of being able to pull [students] out of class" for internships or college coursework, said Misty Stallworth, the assistant principal of the Academy for Design and Construction, one of those two centers. The academy serves roughly 120 students in a small wing of the much larger Union High School.
"We have a lot of students who just crave the flexibility of being able to work on what they want and when they want," Ms. Stallworth added.
- The blended models within the Academy for Design and Construction and the School of Business, Leadership, and Entrepreneurship, housed within the district's Ottawa Hills High School, were not a result of a district emphasis on online learning when the district launched the initiative, however.
- And the district's first Center of Innovation, Grand Rapids University Preparatory Academy at the district's University Prep High School, was created in response to a group of local businesses that originally wanted to open a charter school with the aim of arming students with the skills needed to succeed in four-year colleges.
"A charter gets into many different areas of a system we hadn't explored yet, including teachers' unions," said Mary Jo Kuhlman, the district's executive director for organizational learning, when explaining why the district resisted the charter proposition in favor of school-based innovation centers. "We really wanted to be collaborative."
Online Study Schedules
So instead of stopping at the creation of one center, the Grand Rapids district used the momentum from University Prep to charge each high school with creating a separately focused Center of Innovation by partnering with community players in separate vocational sectors. Career readiness is especially relevant in a community that has seen increasingly difficult economic times in the past two decades.
Because of the exodus of students from more affluent families to private schools and a local industrial economy that was slowing long before the recession that officially began in the final quarter of 2007, the percentage of students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch in the district had climbed steadily to 87 percent by the 2009-10 school year, from about 40 percent in 1991-92.
- "Our goals were to expand school choice, increase student achievement, and also reduce the racial achievement gap," said Ms. Kuhlman. The 2006 measure of adequate yearly progress, or AYP, found fewer than half the district's schools to be meeting the standard under the federal No Child Left Behind law, the most recent version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
- "Our other important factor was to be able to design and influence curriculum that was specific to that particular industry," Ms. Kuhlman said.
With each high school developing its innovation-center idea organically, only the Academy for Design and Construction and the School of Business, Leadership, and Entrepreneurship chose to use online courses to cover core academic subjects when those centers were launched in 2009.
Their blended approaches were more structured than what some other online students would encounter in a self-blended model, in which students select courses to supplement their brick-and-mortar studies to fill gaps in their schedules.
Freshmen and sophomores at the Academy of Design and Construction study both design and construction in a vocational technology classroom, while usually completing their core academic courses online and their electives in courses mixed with other Union High School students.
Their online study occurs in labs of 30 to 40 students of the same grade level.
- The labs are staffed by a lead teacher, a special education teacher, a paraprofessional, and a student advocate.
- That team combines to monitor students' progress, gives optional mini-lessons when needed on particular subjects that a number of students may be tackling at the same time, delivers required one-on-one assessments to allow students to pass units of a given course, and intervenes whenever students run into academic difficulties.
Freshmen and sophomores are generally scheduled for no more than two consecutive hours of online coursework-a policy established as a result of lessons learned earlier in the center's operation."
Our students in the first couple years were screaming that we take too much time on the computer," Ms. Stallworth said. "Even now, it takes until about halfway through the students' freshman year for them to say, 'You know, this is kind of good. This is working to my advantage.'"
Measuring Progress
Melissa Gorman, a special education teacher for the Academy of Design and Construction for the past four years, previously taught special education in a more traditional classroom for five years. She said the transition to the computer-lab model took some adjustment for her as a teacher, but has since become second nature.
"I really didn't know what it was going to look like, and I couldn't quite wrap my head around it, until I was in it and doing it," said Ms. Gorman. She spent several summer days before her first year in professional-development sessions learning how to instruct with e2020's content, as well as observing other schools in the state that incorporated online courses.
"We are given liberty," she added. "Because it's our fourth year working with this program, we've kind of figured out what is working best with us."
By their junior year
- at the Academy of Design and Construction, students choose either a design path that involves a nearly full-day, twice-weekly internship, or a construction path, in which students spend two days a week working on houses being constructed or renovated through the Kent County, Mich., chapter of Habitat for Humanity.
- Students in the School of Business, Leadership, and Entrepreneurship take a similar path toward increasing specialization in their junior and senior years.
The result for Academy of Design and Construction students like junior José Ruelas is an increased amount of time spent working with the e2020 content during days he is not on the Habitat for Humanity job site. Because Mr. Ruelas has worked through some required classes, he spends the second half of his Monday taking a college-level introductory construction course, Ms. Stallworth said.
That still leaves him three hours on Mondays, and five on Wednesdays and Fridays, to work solely online, either on material in his Algebra 2 and English/language arts courses, or in other online electives, such as economics. He also has a one-hour early release those days.
"It does take some practice," Mr. Ruelas said of the need for self-discipline. "You've been going to middle school and you've never been taking a class this way, asking for checks and for help from a teacher. But you get used to it. You pay attention to your lectures, take notes, and you get used to it."
It's tricky to measure the success of the blended programs of the Academy for Design and Construction and the School of Business, Leadership, and Entrepreneurship, in part because both Centers of Innovation will only be graduating their first seniors during the spring of 2013, and also because it's hard to separate their results from those of their host schools.
Neither Union High School nor Ottawa Hills High School made AYP in 2012, according to progress reports released in August and available on the district's website, with the latter school missing out because it did not attain target achievement goals for all subgroups of students in math and reading. Both schools, though, showed double-digit percentage-point gains in the number of students meeting or exceeding their growth targets on the Northwest Evaluation Association's Measures of Academic Progress, or map, assessments in reading.
There is, however, some evidence that the Centers of Innovation and, more broadly, increased school choice options across primary and secondary grade levels, are working in a holistic sense. The number of Grand Rapids schools making AYP has increased for five straight years, according to the district's 2011 strategic plan, and in 2010, rose to 47 of the district's 59 schools total.
"I think what's important here is what the intent was, and the intent was that we knew we had academic-achievement gaps and we knew we needed to make greater gains in academic achievement," Ms. Kuhlman said. "When you looked at the data [in 2006], it told you, you needed to do something different. It was a natural fit."
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Miami FL/ Miami-Dade District Wins Broad Prize for Urban Education
By Jackie Zubrzycki
Education Week [Edweek.org]
October 23, 2012
Five-time finalist Miami-Dade County public schools has won the Broad Prize for Urban Education.
At an event today at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced that the 350,000-student Miami-Dade district is the winner. In his remarks, philanthropist Eli Broad said the prize was aimed at creating environments where "good teachers can do great things."
The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation provides $550,000 in scholarships to a school district determined to be the nation's most-improved urban school system, and $150,000 apiece to three finalists.
The prize has been awarded every year since 2002, and Miami-Dade was also a finalist in 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2011. Miami-Dade is the nation's fourth-largest school district. Seventy-four percent of its students are eligible for free and reduced-price lunch, 90 percent are black or Hispanic, and 21 percent are English-language learners.
The finalists are selected by a panel, and then an 11-member jury (the press release specifically notes that it is bipartisan, though that doesn't necessarily reflect their attitudes toward education policy) analyzes districts' test scores and conducts classroom visits before selecting the winner. There's no set formula to determine which district will win; here's a description of the process.
Some of the accomplishments cited by the jury:
- High and increasing percentages of Miami's Hispanic and black students scored advanced on state exams;
- There was increased participation and performance on the SAT for students overall;
- The graduation rate for black and Hispanic students increased, especially between 2006-09, when it grew by 14 percentage points.
In a conversation with Education Week before the announcement, Miami-Dade Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said that the series of nominations demonstrated that the district's successes are not just a "flash in the pan."
- "I believe we're providing a scalable, practical solution as America becomes more Miami. We've cracked the code of student achievement in Miami that can become America's solution," Carvalho said. Mr. Carvalho has been superintendent since 2008, when he succeeded Rudy Crew.
Carvahlo drew attention to improvements in some of the district's lowest-performing schools, which he attributed partly to the Data/COM (short for Data assessment, technical assistance, coordination of management, according to Carvalho) process.
During Data/COM, school officials analyze a school's challenges and debate solutions, Carvahlo said. The Broad jurists also applauded that program in their announcement of the award.
The district's budget has also improved dramatically under Carvalho's tenure, which was noted by the jury. "This may seem strange, but we actually embraced the economic recession as an opportunity to leverage and accomplish change," he said. The district found additional government and foundation funding and made sure all spending was directed at improving student achievement, Carvalho said.
The event's keynote came from Admiral Michael G. Mullen, a retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which advises the president and others on national security issues, and was in keeping with Broad's framing of education as an issue of national security. Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York City, also spoke, touting his own district's successes. New York won the 2007 Broad Prize.
In terms of national security and America's intellectual capital, Carvalho was optimistic. "I'm an American by choice," he said (Carvalho came to America from Portugal as a teenager). "I too am informed by best practices across the world that we find in countries like Singapore or Hong Kong-but I believe also that we have an opportunity as a nation of innovation to reinvent ourselves as a better version of ourselves rather than attempting to copy someone else."
This year's runners-up were Palm Beach County, also in Florida; Houston, which won the first Broad Prize in 2002; and the Corono-Norco district in California. Corono-Norco and Palm Beach County are both first-time finalists.
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Miami FL/ Why Miami-Dade Schools Won Prestigious Broad Prize for Urban Districts
Miami-Dade County Public Schools has been steadily chipping away at the achievement gap. After being a finalist four other times, the district won the Broad Prize for Urban Education on Tuesday.
By Amanda Paulson, Staff Writer
Christian Science Monitor [CSMonitor.com]
October 23, 2012
In Florida's Miami-Dade County Public Schools, schools are slowly but steadily chipping away at the achievement gap, especially for Hispanic and black students.
The district, which on Tuesday was awarded the Broad Prize for Urban Education,
- has increased black and Hispanic graduation rates at a faster rate than other urban districts in the United States;
- has increased the percentages of Hispanic and black students reaching the highest achievement levels; and
- has increased the percentages and scores of students participating in college-readiness exams more than other districts.
It's the fifth time that Miami-Dade has been a finalist for the prestigious Broad Prize, which honors urban districts for their success in reducing achievement gaps for low-income and minority students, as well as for high overall performance and improvement in student achievement.
That sustained recognition, says Miami-Dade superintendent Alberto Carvalho, shows that the district's success "is not a flash in the pan."
- "What I'm proudest of," Mr. Carvalho adds, "is that we were able to achieve this remarkable feat ... with one of the most diverse communities of America, marred by incredible poverty, and we were able to do it in the midst of the worst recession in America since the 1930s."
In fact, Carvalho says that he believes the district was able to leverage the tough economic conditions to get some things accomplished that might have been tougher in more-prosperous years. Among other things, he managed to reduce administrative spending by 58 percent, and he was able to refocus spending and support on classrooms and programs that had student learning at the center.
"We put the kids front and center of everything we do," Carvalho says.
Among the specific gains that Broad cited in recognizing Miami-Dade:
- The district's Hispanic students outperformed peers in other districts in reading and math at all school levels.
- They also outperformed in elementary and middle-school science.
- The graduation rates for black and Hispanic students both increased by 14 percent between 2006 and 2009.
- In 2011, the number of Miami-Dade Hispanic students performing at the highest achievement levels on state tests ranked in the top 30 percent, compared with Hispanic students in other Florida districts.
Achievement gaps for low-income and minority students have been a persistent and intractable problem in US education - a main reason that the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation has made success in addressing that gap a focus of their annual prize, which is the largest education award in the country given to school districts.
As this year's winner, Miami-Dade will get $550,000 of the $1 million prize, to be used in college scholarships for high school seniors. The other 3 finalist districts will each get $150,000 in scholarship money.
This year, those districts were:
- Corona-Norco Unified School District in California,
- Houston Independent School District, and the
- School District of Palm Beach County in Florida.
All these also made significant progress in raising student achievement and closing the achievement gap.
"We have a lot of challenges out there, but we have a lot of hope," says philanthropist Eli Broad, citing as particular reasons for optimism developments like the new Common Core standards, adopted by almost all states; and "blended learning" opportunities, in which teachers combine face-to-face teaching with computer-mediated methods.
This year, Mr. Broad notes, his foundation inaugurated a new prize for charter-school management organizations, and he was excited that the first winner - YES Prep Public Schools in Houston - has "totally closed the [achievement] gap."
In announcing the winner, Education Secretary Arne Duncan highlighted what he sees as the too-often unequal opportunities for students in America. He reflected on a recent visit to Topeka, Kan. - where Brown v. Board of Education originated - and asked, today, "how many systems have schools that are truly equal and are not separate?"
"If we're serious about closing the achievement gap, we have to close what I call the opportunity gap," Secretary Duncan said. "The Broad Prize shines a spotlight on success. We have to celebrate success, but most importantly we have to replicate it."
Indeed, a major purpose of the prize is to encourage other urban districts to replicate the techniques that winning districts have found to be successful. Carvalho, the Miami-Dade superintendent, says he sees no reason why other districts can't do some of the things Miami-Dade has.
The 350,000-student district is heavily minority and low-income: About 90 percent of its students are either Hispanic or black, 74 percent qualify for free or reduced lunch, and 21 percent are English-language learners.
"Cracking the code in Miami today is launching scalable, replicable solutions for America's children," says Carvalho.
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Washington DC/ Translating the Common Core for Dual-Language Classrooms
[ABQ mention]
By Lesli A. Maxwell
Education Week [Edweek.org]
October 23, 2012
When it comes to putting the new common standards into classroom practice, dual-language teachers must prepare and adapt their instructional strategies to teach the more-rigorous common standards in language arts and mathematics not only in English, but in a second language.
In many dual-language programs, particularly in the early grades, students are learning as much as 90 percent of their content in the target, non-English language.
So what does the common core look like in Spanish language arts, for example?
Who is doing the kind of translation and modification that dual-language teachers need to bridge the language they are teaching in with the content standards?
And where can dual-language teachers find more resources to help them?
- One is called the Common Core en Español Project and is being led by the San Diego County Office of Education, with support from the California Department of Education and the Council of the Chief State School Officers.
This group of district-level educators and language scholars has been working to translate the standards into Spanish, as well as provide "linguistic augmentation" to address differences between the English language and Spanish language such as the use of accent.
Some of the main contributors to this project presented their work both in language arts and in mathematics at a bilingual educators conference a few months ago in California. It doesn't appear that their final translations are available for widespread use yet, but soon they are to be published on the California education agency's common core website.
- Another initiative that also targets Spanish/English dual programs was spearheaded by educators in the District of Columbia public schools and researchers at the Center for Equity and Excellence in Education at The George Washington University (GW-CEEE). That effort-called "Normas Para la Enseñanza de las Artes de Lenguaje en Español"-is described by the writers as being "carefully and closely aligned to the Common Core State Standards while still taking into account the linguistic differences between the Spanish and the English languages, the methodological differences in Spanish- and English-literacy instruction, and traditional Spanish literacy-learning expectations."
- The New York state education department has also been developing what it is calling "Bilingual Common Core Standards" that are meant to align the state's standards for English-as-a-second-language and native-language arts (for students in bilingual or dual language programs) with the common core in English/language arts.
- And in Albuquerque, N.M., where there are numerous Spanish/English dual-language classrooms across the city, educators are putting the finishing touches on modifications of the district's new units of study and scope-and-sequence documents for the common core in English/language arts for kindergarten through 3rd grade so that they will work for Spanish language arts. Lynne Rosen, who is district's director of language and cultural equity, calls it "taking the content standards in English/language arts and mirroring them in Spanish."
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Oakland CA/ In Search of High-Quality Teachers, Charter Network Trains Its Own
By Lillian Mongeau
Hechinger Report [Hechingerreport.org]
October 23, 2012
Amy Youngman's seventh- and eighth-grade humanities students had left for the day. Other than some shouts from the after-school program in the courtyard, all was quiet in her second-floor classroom here.
Youngman's day of teaching at ERES Academy-part of the Aspire charter school network-wasn't over, though.
Nor was Danny Shapiro's day of learning. Shapiro, not 13 but 30, is learning to be a teacher. Youngman, three years younger than Shapiro but with six years of teaching already under her belt, is his mentor.
"Highs and lows?" Youngman asked Shapiro across the wide table that served as her desk.
Shapiro sighed deeply as he considered the ups and downs of his second week in the classroom. He is one of 34 new teachers in Aspire's three-year-old intensive residency program, aimed at training incoming teachers like him for positions in one of the network's nearly three dozen schools.
Founded in California in 1998, Aspire currently serves 12,000 mostly low-income students in grades K-12 and will expand out of state for the first time next year with two new schools in Memphis, Tenn.
Many of these teachers-in-training are career-changers like Shapiro, who was working at a policy foundation in San Francisco focused on climate change this time last year. Now, he's spending four days a week in a classroom in one of the state's toughest neighborhoods.
- Shapiro started preparing for his year of teacher training with three months of summer courses that will count toward a master's degree.
- He continues working on that degree on his one weekday without teaching duties.
- A discount on tuition and a small stipend-about one third of what a first-year teacher earns-help make this program possible for Shapiro, who also took out student loans to cover his costs.
- By the time 12 months are up, Shapiro should have a teaching credential, a master's in education and a job at an Aspire school.
"So, last Thursday was the low, because that was the day the stress and the [classroom] management [were] like a wave that came over me," Shapiro said. "Friday was a high because I was so well planned."
Youngman nodded as she wrote this down. After sharing her own high (two students scored 100 percent on their reading tests) and her own low (meetings went long on Friday, leaving her less prepared than usual for Monday), Youngman printed out the notes she'd taken while Shapiro was leading a history lesson earlier that day. Now, she asked him to highlight parts of the lesson that had gone well and underline those that hadn't. Pulling out a highlighter and pen, he started reading.
The number of career-changers who are entering the teaching force has doubled over the last 20 years.
Shapiro, who majored in politics at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., is not among the much sought-after math and science career-changers, but feels his experience in international climate change policy can help him make real-world connections for his students.
Harnessing that practical work experience is a goal of programs like Aspire's that cater to career-changers who want an alternate route to certification.
- 35 percent of U.S. teachers report having first had careers outside of education, and
- more than two in five entered the classroom through an alternative preparation program,
according to a 2010 survey by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation in Princeton, N.J.
Now charter networks and school districts, including High Tech High in San Diego, Calif., are beginning to pioneer their own training programs.
- In addition to the desire to bring in new teachers from other fields, Aspire leaders report being dissatisfied with the training their first-year teachers have received.
- This problem-first-year teachers lacking sufficient content knowledge and classroom-management skills-has been echoed at the national level by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
Study after study has shown that the single most important in-school factor influencing student achievement is the quality of the teacher. But figuring out new ways to train and evaluate teachers remains one of the most contentious issues in education today.
- In California, nearly 40 percent of teachers are over 50, and the number of new credentials awarded to new teachers each year is shrinking. The state is near the bottom for student performance nationally, and the teaching profession is facing numerous challenges, according to a recent survey by the California Department of Education.
Teacher education in the Golden State is "uneven in duration and quality," the report found, while "mentoring for beginners is decreasing." The authors note that evaluation is "frequently spotty" and teacher salaries are often below market value.
The youngest and least-prepared teachers tend to be clustered in the highest-need areas, they found. But critics charge that alternative certification programs are partly to blame for this disparity. A lack of supervised teaching and minimum academic coursework in many programs lead to underprepared teachers who don't stay in the profession, they say.
Richard Sterling, director of the teacher preparation programs in U.C. Berkeley's Graduate School of Education, says many of the most strident critics come from the ranks of traditional teacher education programs like his. Sterling worries that alternatively certified teachers don't get enough of an intellectual grounding in the profession, but says each program should be judged on its own merits.
"My attitude is, 'Let's just take a look and not dismiss alternative programs out of hand,' " Sterling says.
The residency models, for example, offer more supervised teaching than many traditional programs and more academic content than many alternative programs. This makes for an intense schedule for residents. Aspire residents often work 10-hour days and some weekends to fulfill their teaching duties and complete their coursework. It's hoped that the exacting residency year will provide a solid foundation in classroom management, lesson planning and grading, ultimately yielding first-year teachers who are well prepared.
Aspire hasn't entirely eschewed traditional teacher education. The network partners with the University of the Pacific to provide residents with master's-level courses. The focus of the program, though, is on what happens in the classroom.
- A recent study by the Washington, D.C.-based National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) found the length of time spent in the classroom and the quality of mentoring are key elements in strong teacher preparation programs. However, few of the 134 programs studied had those elements.
- For example, 43 percent of programs had no criteria for choosing mentor teachers other than that they have some teaching experience.
- "Student-teacher programs tend to be luck of the draw," said Sandi Jacobs, vice president of the NCTQ. "They tend to be based on who volunteers, not on any evidence of effectiveness."
Not so at Aspire, where mentors are carefully selected and trained. Take Youngman, one of several mentor-teachers at ERES Academy. She was tapped as a mentor because of strong student performance data and positive peer reviews of her teaching based on classroom observations, along with her principal's recommendation.
Youngman receives additional training, a formal title change and a $3,000 stipend as part of her agreement to mentor a resident teacher. This is her second year as a mentor.
Shapiro said he finds her insights invaluable.
"There's a reason why she's a mentor," Shapiro said. "She's able to see a hundred things at once and not seem like she's doing anything."
Heather Kirkpatrick, Aspire's vice president of education, hopes that using strong teachers to train newcomers will result in everyone staying in the classroom longer.
- "I'm looking for 'lifers,' I really am," Kirkpatrick said. Her goal is to keep the expert teachers interested and engaged at a time when about half of all U.S. teachers leave the profession in their first five years.
- Up to 10 percent of those leave in the first year, according to a 2011 study of beginning teachers by the U.S. Department of Education.
The study, which followed nearly 2,000 new teachers starting in 2007, found that well-chosen mentors can have a real effect on improving teacher retention. Among public-school teachers with an assigned mentor, 92 percent were still teaching the following year. Of those not assigned a mentor, only 84 percent were still teaching in their second year, the study found.
Once they're through those critical first years, positions such as mentor teacher, lead teacher and model teacher offer alternative paths to promotion besides the traditional move into administration.
At ERES Academy, Shapiro combs through Youngman's notes on his lesson. The notes read like a script, with Shapiro's statements in one column and the students' statements and actions in a second column.
Shapiro highlighted something he'd said at the beginning of the lesson: "Thank you, Cristian, for showing me you are ready."
Offering positive reinforcement for good behaviors was something he'd been working on this week. Youngman agreed he'd gotten better at it.
In the second column, Shapiro had underlined a statement by a student that made him think he'd bumbled a teachable moment. He'd called on a girl who didn't know the answer to his question.
He had several questions for Youngman: How long should he wait for a hesitant student to answer? Should he just supply the answer himself? Should he ask another student? Or was it better to push the first student to come up with something?
Youngman advised him to write down answers he needed students to know in advance of a lesson. If he didn't get those answers, he'd know he'd found a hole in his teaching. He could then remedy it in a follow-up lesson.
That kind of detailed feedback is what Youngman said she wishes she'd received in her first year as a Teach For America teacher in San Jose, Calif. Instead, she said she felt mostly on her own, a common complaint of new teachers no matter how they are trained.
It's too soon to have enough data to make a call about Aspire's success, but Kirkpatrick said 18 of the first 20 residents completed their first full year of teaching. One Aspire principal, she said, called a current resident-cum-teacher "more like a third- or fourth-year teacher than a first-year teacher."
Kirkpatrick said the goal is to prove that such anecdotes can be replicable-and to back up that claim with student performance data.
If the Aspire model does succeed at better training a new crop of teachers, it will be a notable win.
- A recent study by the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington and Mathematica, a nonpartisan research group, identified Aspire as one of the nation's high-performing charter networks.
- And the Aspire Public Schools ranked first in California among large districts with two-thirds or more low-income students, based on 2010-11 standardized test results, with 100 percent of graduating seniors accepted to four-year colleges or universities.
For now, the residency program at Aspire is funded by grants from foundations, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. (Disclosure: the Gates Foundation is among the many supporters of The Hechinger Report, which produced this story.)
Most public districts don't have access to such funds, but Kirkpatrick thinks they might not need extra money to create their own residency programs. Aspire operates almost entirely within the constraints of public funding, and the long-term plan is to fund the mentoring program by shifting funds currently earmarked for teacher recruitment and support.
"We are not doing rocket science," Kirkpatrick said. "There's not one thing [other schools] couldn't do."
~~~~~~~~~~
Washington DC/ Millennials: Rising Generation of Booklovers
Death of reading? Not so fast. The millennial generation is more likely to read and use their local library than their parents.
By Husna Haq, CS Monitor Correspondent
Christian Science Monitor [CSMonitor.com]
October 23, 2012
A Pew study found that 60 percent of Americans under 30 used a library in the past year.
Not only is the Facebook generation reading and visiting their local library, they're actually more likely to read and more likely to use their local library.
Yup, that's right - 18 to 29-year-olds are actually reading a whole lot more than tweets, and more than other adults.
- Some 8 in 10 Americans under the age of 30 have read a book in the past year, compared to about 7 in 10 adults in general.
That unexpected good news comes courtesy of the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project which conducted a study examining the role of books, libraries, and technology in the lives of young readers ages 16 to 29.
"A lot of people think that young people aren't reading, they aren't using libraries," Kathryn Zickuhr, a research analyst with Pew told the New York Times. "That they're just turning to Google for everything."
Pew's findings, it turns out, have proved that notion wrong.
83 percent of Americans between the ages of 16 and 29 read a book in the past year, compared with roughly 70 percent of the general population.
- Some 75 percent read a print book,
- 19 percent read an e-book and
- 11 percent listened to an audio book.
60 percent of Americans under 30 used a library in the past year.
- Some 46 percent used it for research,
- 38 percent borrowed books, and
- 23 percent borrowed newspapers, magazines, or journals.
The study also revealed some surprising insights about the use of e-books among younger readers. First, not surprisingly, younger readers are more comfortable with reading digital materials - but they aren't ditching print books for digital.
"We heard from e-book readers in general [that] they don't want e-books to replace print books," Zickuhr told NPR's Morning Edition. "They see them as part of the same general ecosystem; e-books supplement their general reading habits...We haven't seen for younger readers that e-books are massively replacing print books."
There's also troubling news for tablet makers. Those under 30 are more likely to read e-books on a cell phone or computer than on an e-reader.
- Pew found that 41 percent of readers under 30 view books using a cell phone and
- 55 percent read them on a computer.
- In contrast, only 23 percent used an e-reader and
- 16 percent used a tablet.
"That's definitely something we will keep an eye on," Zickuhr said.
Tablet makers aren't the only ones who should pay attention to this study. Libraries, listen up: According to Pew's study, many readers under 30 have expressed a desire to borrow e-books on pre-loaded e-readers from the library. The catch: most libraries today offer this and young readers simply don't know they can borrow e-books from their local library.
- Some 58 percent of readers under 30 said they would be "very" or "somewhat" likely to borrow pre-loaded e-readers if their library offered that service.
- About 52 percent were unaware they could do so at most libraries and
- only 10 percent of e-book readers said they borrowed an e-book fro their library.
The good news: libraries have massive potential with younger readers, they just need to understand how best to reach out to this age group.
"...a lot of libraries are really looking at how they can engage with this younger age group, especially with Americans in their teens and early 20s," Zickuhr told NPR. "And so a lot of libraries are looking at ways to sort of give them their own space in the libraries, have activities just for them. Some libraries even have diner-style booths for the teens where they can just socialize and hang out, and so that they can think of the library as a space of their own."
We're tickled that younger generations appear to be avid readers and eager to see how that plays out as these younger readers grow up and help shape the marketplace of books.
Millennials, it turns out, might just help reinvent libraries - and reading - in the new millennium.
~~~~~~~~~~
New York NY/ "Be More Than a Bystander" Campaign Tries to Help Defuse Bullying
By Elizabeth Olson
New York Times
October 23, 2012
Tauntin and aggressive teasing have long been seen as disagreeable rites of adolescence, until a string of suicides by bullied students raised awareness of the destructive consequences. A new campaign by a coalition of organizations is aiming to eliminate, or at least curb, bullying by urging parents to teach their children to face down such behavior.
The "Be More Than a Bystander" campaign, orchestrated by the nonprofit Advertising Council, underscores the problem with a series of television, print and online ads and a Web site promoting the idea that if witnesses know what to do, they can take various steps, such as moving the victim away from the situation or reporting the treatment to an adult, to defuse the bullying.
"Parents talk to their kids about drugs, sex, drinking and driving," said Peggy Conlon, president and chief executive of the Ad Council, a nonprofit group that addresses social issues like teenage dating violence and high school dropout rates. "But they are not always proactive about bullying."
- 80 percent of high school students see bullying behavior firsthand at least weekly, according to research by DoSomething.org, a national nonprofit group that involves teenagers with civic activities and social change.
- But parents are less aware of the frequency, with only about 50 percent realizing that bullying occurs routinely, according to the organization's findings.
The Ad Council is working with groups like Facebook; AOL; the federal education and health departments; and the Free to Be Foundation, which includes the entertainers Marlo Thomas and Alan Alda, to kick off the public service advertising campaign this month. It will run for more than one year.
To underscore the problem, one of the ads shows a girl being bullied by two schoolmates in the hallway near her locker. A fourth girl looks on but looks bewildered about what to do.
"They want to help, but don't know how," says the commercial's narrator. "Teach your kids how to be more than a bystander."
The campaign's print and online ads have declarations like "You're Worthless" and "Everybody hates you" to underline the starkly negative messages that victims receive.
While some dismiss bullying as a nearly universal but fleeting experience, Ms. Thomas says the Internet has made the problem worse.
- "This is not the old 'Boys will be boys,' " she said. "This has gotten vicious and lethal. I've talked to children who dread coming to school, who want to change schools or be home schooled. It is dire now because it's online. People are anonymous and they say awful things and are not held accountable."
Having been introduced by Timothy Armstrong, AOL's chief executive, Ms. Thomas joined with Ms. Conlon in early 2011. Ms. Conlon said the Ad Council had long wanted to tackle bullying but needed to cover the production and distribution costs, which average $800,000 to $1 million per campaign.
The Ad Council got support from the pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson and pro bono help from the New York ad agency DDB, part of the Omnicom Group.
The council tested some approaches with consumers and settled on the parental focus after reading a report from DoSomething.org.
- The group used Facebook to collect responses from more than 50,000 high school students from April through August 2012.
- It found that half the teenagers said they rarely helped anyone being bullied or had ever seen anyone else doing so. The report is posted at dosomething.org/bullyreport.
In a separate research, Communispace, an online market research firm, concluded that the parents of school-age children found it "compelling, unexpected and encouraging" to empower their child to act against bullying.
As a result, the Council set up the Web site www.stopbullying.gov, hosted by the Department of Education. The site provides adults with tips, like warning signs or ways to assess questionable behavior, to teach children how to handle bullying.
The campaign ads have a "message that is uncomfortable and disconcerting," said Joe Cianciotto, executive creative director for DDB New York. "We wanted to remind parents that what their kids are witnessing is serious, and it can have devastating effects."
"The television and print ads create a sense of urgency," he said, "and the Web site provides the tools to do something."
- The filmmaker Lee Hirsch, who created the 2011 film "Bully," which follows five students who are bullied, made a public service ad that shows a boy being harassed on his school bus.
- CNN contributed a television spot with the anchor Anderson Cooper, and
- the MLB Network developed two commercials with its hosts and analysts Brian Kenny, Sean Casey and Dan Plesac.
- Univision is creating Spanish-language commercials with the anti-bullying message that will be broadcast on its television, radio and online properties.
- The public service announcements will also be distributed to media outlets nationwide and will run in donated media time and space.
- Facebook is hosting a Stop Bullying: Speak Up page. So far, it has more than a million likes and has generated more than 130,000 pledges to stop bullying. Facebook has committed to promoting the campaign throughout the site.
- AOL is donating space for banner ads, a video feature on its home page and a spot on its sign-in page.
- Magazines like Parenting and The Food Network magazine, as well as some newspapers around the country, will also run print ads free. The campaign is also partnering with the National PTA to spread awareness of the anti-bullying campaign.
"Parents are still influential," said Ms. Thomas. "We've changed the culture around letting friends drive when they're drunk. The message we want to get over now is that bullies are not cool; they're jerks. And you can do something about it."
