Santa Fe/ NM Permanent Funds Grow $4 Billion in Past Year
The Associated Press
Alamogordo Daily News
November 9, 2012
The State Investment Council reports that New Mexico's largest permanent funds grew by $4 billion during the past year as financial markets performed strongly.
- The Land Grant Permanent Fund had returns of 18 percent during the past year ending Sept. 30. It had assets valued at $16 billion, up $2.3 billion.
The SIC attributed fund gains partly to changes in investment strategy and money managers starting more than two years ago.
- The Severance Tax Permanent Fund was valued at $11.2 billion, an increase of about $1.7 billion. The fund had returns of about 16 percent, but it includes economic development investments that typically lower the endowment's overall performance.
Permanent fund earnings provide a share of the yearly revenue that finances public education and other government programs.
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Santa Fe/ SFPS Superintendent Boyd takes Teachers' Questions at Staff Forum
By Robert Nott
The New Mexican
November 8, 2012
Santa Fe Public Schools Superintendent Joel Boyd struck a conciliatory tone Thursday evening, telling a group of about 50 teachers that he needs their help, as well as the community's aid, to turn the academically flagging district around.
He addressed the assembly at Santa Fe High School in the first of several planned staff forums.
Boyd had initially planned to talk in detail about his proposed reforms, but dropped that idea and opened up the event to questions from teachers.
He said they could ask him about anything, including the controversial teacher-absenteeism issue. (A recent district-commissioned report found that instructional staffers miss an average of 17 days a year, nearly twice the national average, although that report did not break down the numbers to look at possible explanations.)
None of the assembled teachers bit on that one, but they fired away queries on everything from setting up more alternative school sites for both challenged and gifted students, the pros and cons of K-8 schools, and data-system problems that do not allow schools to track book purchases.
- Interestingly, small groups of teachers from Santa Fe High School urged Boyd to turn their school into either a magnet school for the arts or a career-tech academy with either a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) focus or a sustainability-energy focus.
- All of them seemed to support his ideas for secondary-school reform, which are still in the planning stage, but seem to be focused on creating more alternative academic pathways for students in an effort to keep them in school.
Jonathan Haack, a math teacher at the high school, seemed to be speaking for several other teachers when he suggested that the district has seen superintendents come and go without making any real impact. "What makes your changes different and what's going to make them last?" he asked Boyd.
"If you want the process to sustain itself, it has to be built by everyone in the community," Boyd replied. "What makes it different? My changes are your changes. I'm one employee. The system is not me. The system is this community."
Boyd continually stressed the need to draw in parents, work with students to meet their individual needs and encourage input from teachers when it comes to building curriculum. He said the district is studying various problems and challenges - large classroom sizes, the dropout rate - and is prioritizing teacher needs, including pay raises.
After the presentation, Tammy Harkins, who teaches journalism at Santa Fe High, said she thought the process for teachers will be more successful if they get one-on-one time with Boyd. Molly Lithgow, who teaches culinary arts at the high school, said, "I like that he's trying to engage the community and ask for feedback. He seems on top of what he is doing, but it is a lot of change really quick, so we're hoping it does actually happen."
Boyd plans another staff forum for district personnel at 4:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 9, at Capital High School.
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ABQ/ New APS Community Stadium Coming
By Aurelio Sanchez
ABQ Journal Staff Writer
November 8, 2012
The new, under-construction Albuquerque Public Schools Community Stadium on the city's West Side is about half done and on schedule to open for the 2013 football season.
Some 120 people filled three buses on Saturday to tour the $27 million, first phase of the stadium and the adjacent track-and-field project near 98th Street and Interstate 40.
Most of the tour participants came from nearby neighborhoods, many of which had registered opposition due to worries about increased traffic, light and noise.
While some residents on the tour said they still had concerns, many expressed approval.
A few people even speculated that in a town where the University of New Mexico's Pit made college basketball king, the building of a West Side "pit"-like stadium might do the same for that side of the city.
- "There was a lot of fear initially from neighborhood residents, but the way it is panning out, I think residents will slowly but surely realize that it will help our community," Margaret Olivarez said, looking at a deep bowl-shaped pit from which will rise the new West Side sports complex.
- "It reminds me of the (Lobos') pit," said parent Bruce Jones. "Let's see if some of the same things happen here, as far as providing a strong, new identity for the community."
Bowing to neighborhood concerns, APS decided to build the stadium inside a deep pit to minimize crowd noise, and lights will be aimed inward onto the field, officials said. Jones' daughter, Adrienne Jones, said she's a basketball athlete at Atrisco Heritage High School, and she's liked the idea of a West Side stadium from the beginning. "It's just awesome that they're totally building a stadium because it's so needed," she said.
APS spokesman John Miller said few cities have 14 separate area high schools sharing only two stadiums. In Albuquerque, currently, they are only Milne and Wilson stadiums, both on the east side of the river.
The new stadium will not only cut travel for area teams, but also help fortify a feeling of community, said City Councilor Ken Sanchez, who is on the APS Facilities Design and Construction Committee and represents part of the West Side on the council.
Sanchez praised APS' willingness to accommodate neighborhood concerns by designing a pit-like structure for the stadium.
- "They have done what they said they would do," Sanchez said. "The project took a lot of criticism, and there are still some concerns with some of the traffic issues, but I think we can work them out.
- "The biggest benefit is that people on the West Side have always wanted a stadium that they could call their own, and now it's happening."
Tommy Borst, president of the Tres Volcanes Neighborhood Association, conceded there's no stopping the project now, though he added the neighborhood would remain vigilant, especially over any possible traffic problems.
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Moriarty/ Moriarty-Edgewood School District Earns $58,000 PED Award for Growth
By Lee Ross
Mountain View Telegraph
November 8, 2012
The Moriarty-Edgewood School District has a lot to brag about.
The state Public Education Department awarded the district about $58,000 for the performance of three of its eight schools: Edgewood Elementary, Edgewood Middle and Mountainview Elementary.
District Superintendent Karen Couch said that it's not just the additional cash for those schools that she's excited about.
"There are lots of great things happening in our district," she said.
The awards are for school growth compared to other New Mexico schools with similar student bodies. Although the details are quite technical, in a nutshell it means that these schools were among the top in the state for improving student test scores and other academic indicators. The growth model takes into account the population of English language learners, students with disabilities, students' ethnic backgrounds and more.
Couch pointed out that one school, Edgewood Elementary, is not just doing a good job of educating students when compared to similar elementaries, though. According to an email Couch sent out, that school was ranked ninth in the PED's list of the state's top 10 schools.
And, she added, the elementary school is doing well despite having a high population of economically disadvantaged students.
And that success helps the administration create a model for success at other schools as well, she said.
- "We've looked at the kinds of programs we have at Edgewood Elementary," she said. "We're taking that design and that way of looking at student learning and taking it across the board for all of our schools."
One of the key policies at the elementary school has to do with teachers soliciting feedback from students, she said.
- "They really drill down and interact with students to assess and see whether students are learning those concepts," she said. "They're constantly assessing where the kids are at and going back and reteaching on a daily basis. It's about the teacher working hand-in-hand with students."
The students also chart their own progress and achievements throughout the year, she said, and are given a clear set steps they should take to be successful.
"The kids buy in to their own success," she said.
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Española/ School Officials Edge Closer to Furloughs
By Louis McGill
Rio Grande Sun Staff Writer
November 8, 2012
The Española School District began discussions with the local chapter of the National Education Association union Oct. 30 in an effort to find ways to control the District's dangerously tight budget.
In the meeting, Superintendent Art Blea met with union president Lucille Holguin, vice president for classified staff Keera Abeyta, vice president for certified staff Kim Avila, and state union liaison Charles Goodmacher to talk about the possibility of furloughs and other options for the District to save money.
Blea said the union was not in agreement with furloughs or reductions in force as a means to balance the budget.
- "Furloughs and balancing the district's budget on the backs of its employees are the very last items for consideration as far as Espanola-NEA is concerned," Holguin said.
Among other ideas presented at the meeting were switching to a four-day week and canceling school completely on half-days, Goodmacher said. Other smaller cost-cutting suggestions included eliminating one-touch dialing on the phone system, decreasing the School Board stipend, and suspending the current after-school facilities use policy.
Goodmacher said the District will be sending out a survey to solicit cost-cutting ideas from the whole staff.
- The District cannot unilaterally implement furloughs or reductions in force, however. The District must submit information to both the state and the union to show there is a legitimate financial crisis that calls for drastic action like this, Blea said.
Holguin said there are several questions they still need answered, such as if there has been an absolute hiring freeze implemented for this year, if all out-of-district travel, including Board travel, has been suspended, and if the District has applied for one-time emergency supplemental funding from the Public Education Department.
Restrictions
Even if furloughs are used, Blea said there are legal restrictions on who can be furloughed. Level one, level two and level three teachers and teacher assistants have guaranteed base salaries, which the District cannot cut below.
So, new teachers making the minimum salary or teachers who just gained a level could not be furloughed because their salary would drop below that line, he said. However, teachers who have salaries in excess of these minimums could legally be furloughed down to their level's base salary.
- "There's an impression out there that these are just for teachers," Blea said. "A furlough day would start with me and go all the way down."
However, as the submission date of the District's audit draws closer, Blea said they are getting a clearer picture of their finances, which is good news for the District.
- The final cash balance from last year is coming in as roughly $1.3 million rather than the $1.1 million Finance Director Jeannette Trujillo reported to the School Board Oct. 24.
- This addresses $200,000 of the deficit.
- The final cash balance the District originally budgeted for last summer was $1.5 million.
"Hopefully between that and maybe some attrition through resignations and early retirements, and other savings we can figure out, I would hope to avoid furloughs and (reductions in force) all together," Blea said.
Even with this good news, Blea said the problem isn't quite solved. He said the District can't simply break even, since the money left over at the end of this school year makes up the funds they need to start school next year.
Goodmacher said the union leadership will be meeting with Blea again after Thanksgiving.
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Chimayó/ Elementary School Parents Organize for Change
Fledgling group of parents aim to improve elementary on their own
By Louis McGill
Rio Grande Sun Staff Writer
November 8, 2012
A group of parents took the first steps toward transforming Chimayó Elementary in a Nov. 1 parent meeting.
The small group, made up of Melissa Sandoval, Lorainne Vigil, Danielle Garcia and Violet Serna met to discuss ways to bring more students back to Chimayó Elementary and get more parent and community involvement in the school.
"It was a good forum for us to try to get organized," Garcia said.
Among the suggestions on how to improve the school and bring up enrollment were boosting arts, music and agricultural education, blending those with other subjects, creating what's called a "site-based" school where more educational decisions are made at the school level, and adding middle school grades to provide parents an alternative to Española Middle School.
Serna said all of these ideas are in limbo until the next meeting, planned for Nov. 13.
Everyone at the meeting agreed that, despite butting heads with the District administration recently, they need to work together with Superintendent Art Blea and the school Board to create the changes they want to see in their school.
- "The last meeting was an attention-grabber, but we want to move forward in a positive light," Serna said, referring to the Oct. 1 community meeting where Blea was chastised by parents of both Chimayó and Mountain View Elementary students for a plan to cut teachers and combine grades at their schools. At the Board meeting the next day, Blea described himself as having been "taken to the woodshed" by the roughly 100 parents who attended.
Chimayó and Mountain View principal Ray Griffin, who was also present, told the parents there are two choices for their nascent movement: working with the school District and Board or starting a charter school. Many of the changes these parents discussed cannot be made unilaterally under current New Mexico law.
Serna said trying to turn into a charter school would defeat the purpose of what they are trying to do.
"The reason I said it's self defeating is because we want to work with them to enhance them," she said the following day. "If we break off as a charter school, that's taking money away from the District further, and that's going to hurt kids that are in this district further."
Some kind of change is necessary so the community can take a proactive stance in dealing with the social problems afflicting it, Serna said.
- "I think the amount of crime and drugs that we have goes to show that we're failing at our jobs of basically getting these kids to fall in love with learning and fall in love with life," she said. If students were stimulated in different ways, such as at school, she said the community would see fewer of these problems.
No matter which direction they decide to move, Garcia said the key is parental involvement. They see the other parents every day at the school, they just need to get them to come together for a parent meeting.
"We haven't had that kind of organization here in Chimayó and I think very many places in the District, and so it's time," she said.
Serna called the turnout of the Nov. 1 meeting "a little heartbreaking." She said she hoped for at least 10 people to show, which failed to materialize. However, both remain upbeat about the potential of the next meeting.
"We're starting a chain reaction," Garcia said.
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ABQ/ EDITORIAL: APS, Give the Public the Information It Deserves
ABQ/ Journal
November 9, 2012
It's a difficult course to navigate.
Mindful of lawsuits and personnel protections, Albuquerque Public Schools limits what it will say about a teacher or coach it sidelines.
But does anyone benefit when the district sends out a letter telling students, parents and taxpayers only that an employee is being investigated for "allegations of inappropriate conduct and comments"?
That generic comment was all APS could/would say about Eldorado girls soccer coach Tom Hirschman's paid administrative leave, which ended this week with him stepping down from coaching. He will remain on campus as a special education teacher.
While the official communiqué could involve almost anything, Hirschman says two incidents in which he violated APS athletic policy regarding religion and prayer by "blending church and state" prompted him to resign before being fired.
And before his team competed as the No. 2 seed in the Class 5A state tournament.
In the first, he says he initiated a prayer after a player for the other team was seriously injured during a match. In the second, he says he showed two religion-themed movies as a motivational tool without getting prior administrative approval.
Is there more to the story? Who knows?
APS did say that multiple Eldorado girls soccer players brought allegations of misconduct on Oct. 25 that "were not criminal, or sexual, in nature," and the coach was put on leave Oct. 26.
It's as unhelpfully close-mouthed as the February case of a Tony Hillerman Middle School teacher who was placed on leave, then put back in the classroom after the district investigated a potential "violation of the APS Acceptable Technology Use Policy and inappropriate conduct."
Once allegations have been investigated and validated or disproved, providing students, parents and taxpayers the specifics allows them to make fact-based decisions on whether the public school district acted appropriately, as well as if a retained teacher's classroom is a place they want to be, want their children to be, want to keep paying for.
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ABQ/ UNM CEPR Report: Our Future, Our Challenge, Our Call to Action
UNM Center for Education Policy Research
November 7, 2012
http://cepr.unm.edu/uploads/docs/cepr/Presentation%20for%20La%20Cosecha%2011-7-12%20Final.pdf
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Washington DC/ Educare Preschools Aim to Close Academic Gaps
Public-private model generates interest
By Julie Rasicot
Education Week, Vol. 32, Issue 11 [Edweek.org]
November 8, 2012
As teachers rock babies in their arms, a sense of calm settles over a classroom in a bright, modern building on a side street in the northeastern quadrant of this city, in one of its poorest neighborhoods.
Here at Educare, a $16 million early-childhood school that opened in July with the goal of closing the achievement gap for local children living in poverty, building that sense of security and familiarity is a major component of the program.
- These infants will spend three years with the same teachers.
- At age 3, they'll move to a new teacher who will stay with them for two more years.
Funded by Head Start and public and private partnerships, this school is the newest addition to the growing Educare Learning Network's 17 schools in communities across the country, a program that its proponents hope will become a national model for comprehensive early-childhood education.
Since 2000, the Chicago-based nonprofit has been combining public and private money to provide early intervention for children deemed educationally and socially at risk and to help build strong bonds between the children, their parents, and teachers. The goal is to ensure that the children start school ready to learn, on par with peers from more-advantaged families.
Research has long shown that children from disadvantaged backgrounds enter kindergarten far behind their more-advantaged peers, and often face continued hardship in achieving success in school and life.
Continuity of Care
That's why Educare promotes a comprehensive approach to high-quality child care and early learning through the critical years from birth to age 5, according to top officials.
In the District of Columbia, in fact, the program anchors the city's Promise Neighborhoods initiative, an effort to provide a web of social services to disadvantaged children and their families, much as the Harlem Children's Zone does in New York.
- The Educare program stresses the importance of continuity of care-keeping children together with the same teachers from birth to age 3-and strong parent engagement.
- "Our major strategy is to promote the centrality of relationships as the cornerstone of learning for all human beings," said Portia Kennel, the founder and executive director of the Educare Learning Network. "All learning happens in the context of relationships with caring adults."
Low teacher-to-student ratios-three teachers serve a maximum of eight infants or toddlers- and a requirement that all teachers have a least a bachelor's degree contribute to a high-quality experience, officials said.
It's a model that's achieving results, according to recent research. A study released in August by the FPG Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that Educare was succeeding at preparing at-risk children for later achievement.
The institute has been conducting an implementation study of the Educare model since 2005. Now including 12 Educare schools serving about 1,800 children, study data show that "more years of Educare attendance are associated with better school readiness and vocabulary skills."
Children who enter Educare before age 2 score close to the national average on school readiness assessments when entering kindergarten and exceed the typical scores for at-risk children, the study found.
Researchers also found that children who attended Educare entered kindergarten exhibiting average or above-average social-emotional skills.
Educare "has been a model for the country. It certainly shows what high-quality education can produce," said Hannah Matthews, the director of child care and early education for the Center for Law and Social Policy here.
Site-by-Site Evaluations
Educare also is conducting its own longitudinal study of children who attended its Chicago schools. Its first cohort is now in 7th grade. Based on the findings so far, the nonprofit has made changes, including creating a math initiative in its schools, officials said. In addition, every site contracts with a local evaluator; here in Washington, it's a researcher from George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.
Educare partners with Head Start and other funders in the public and private sectors to operate its schools, which serve between 150 and 200 children each. In addition to the District of Columbia school, there are Educare schools in 11 states, and several more are in development, including sites in New York City and in San Jose and Los Angeles in California, according to the Educare website.
Major philanthropic funders include: the Ounce of Prevention Fund of Chicago, the Irving Harris Foundation, and the Pritzker Children's Initiative, all in Chicago; the Buffett Early-Childhood Fund, in Omaha, Neb.; the W.K. Kellogg Foundation of Battle Creek, Mich.; the George Kaiser Family Foundation of Tulsa, Okla., and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in Seattle. (The Gates Foundation also helps support Education Week's coverage of the education industry and K-12 innovation.)
In the District of Columbia, partners include the city government and school system and a mix of foundations, including Pritzker, W.K. Kellogg, Kaiser, and Buffett, and the United Planning Organization, a local nonprofit.
Educare is an expensive model, said Matthews, adding that research has shown the benefits of investing early in child development. "High quality costs, but it has significant returns," she said.
Still, she noted that Educare's success depends on a mix of private and public support, and that "public funds will remain extremely important to the organization."
"Educare is one more reason Congress can't go forward with sequestration," she said, referring to the massive federal budget cuts that will occur in January if Congress doesn't act.
Educare schools serve a wide range of children, from the mostly black students in Washington to the mostly white attendees of a school in rural Waterville, Maine. About 35 percent of the children served by Educare schools are English-language learners; about 25 percent are Spanish-speakers, according to Diana M. Rauner, the president of the Ounce of Prevention Fund.
"People don't think there's poverty in the suburbs. But, as we know, there is," said Ms. Rauner, who conducted a tour last month of the Washington school for officials from local education and children's-advocacy organizations.
Sooner Than Later
The importance of early intervention for children who are considered at risk is not lost on communities that have welcomed Educare schools. That was the message delivered by District of Columbia Mayor Vincent C. Gray at the March 2011 groundbreaking for the Washington school.
"Frankly, if I were in a position to have a fetus in a program, I would do that," he said, as captured in a YouTube video of the event. "If we wait until kindergarten, the 1st grade, the 2nd grade, for many of our children, the battle is already lost."
At the school, which is located in the Parkside-Kenilworth neighborhood, staff members slowly are increasing enrollment, which now stands at 73 children. School officials expect to reach their goal of 157 children in coming months.
The open floor plan fits the Educare model: Half the space is devoted to infants and toddlers, and there are several indoor and outdoor play areas with minimal transitions between spaces. Halls of classrooms, with observation rooms attached, form a square around a large, plant-filled center courtyard.
Ms. Rauner stressed that Educare is committed to teaching parents how to parent and to become advocates for their children. While Educare staff members conduct home visits with families, most engagement occurs at school, where parents are encouraged to stay during the day and work with their children in classrooms.
Parents sign an enrollment agreement that requires them, among other things, to send their children to school daily; to regularly volunteer and participate in school activities; to develop goals for their child and family and follow through on meeting them; to participate in home visits and parent-staff conferences each year; and to spend time at home on parent-and-child activities that promote development.
"We really do see this as a two-generation model, and the effects we are having on parents are very significant," Ms. Rauner said. "Most of our parents had less than a satisfactory experience with schools. So we're really asking parents to do something for their children that they couldn't do for themselves."
Nastassia Jackson, 26, of Chicago, said that participating in her children's Educare school has taught her how to be a better parent. Though her involvement was limited when her daughter, now 8, was enrolled, Ms. Jackson said she has stepped up her commitment during the years that her twin boys, now 4, have attended.
"I wanted my parenting this time to be better than it was with my daughter," she said. "I learned how to be actively involved, to sit down and to read to them and have that one-on-one time, to actually interact with them and know that every day can be a learning experience."
That's the key to the Educare mission, Ms. Kennel said.
"We are about the business of building competent parents so they can continue to be learning assets to their children," she said. "They are the critical missing link in school achievement."
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Washington DC/ Research Traces Impacts of Childhood Adversity
By Sarah D. Sparks
Education Week, Vol. 32, Issue 11 [Edweek.org]
November 7, 2012
The stress of a spelling bee or a challenging science project can enhance a student's focus and promote learning. But the stress of a dysfunctional or unstable home life can poison a child's cognitive ability for a lifetime, according to new research.
While educators and psychologists have said for decades that the effects of poverty interfere with students' academic achievement, new evidence from cognitive and neuroscience is showing exactly how adversity in childhood damages students' long-term learning and health.
Those studies show that stress forms the link between childhood adversity and poor academic achievement, but that not all adversity-or all stress-is bad for students.
- "Children from their earliest life need to learn how to manage adversity," such as dealing with the first day of school, said Dr. Jack P. Shonkoff, the co-director of Harvard University's Center on the Developing Child, in Cambridge, Mass.
Research from Dr. Shonkoff's center and from other experts finds that positive stress-the kind that comes from telling a toddler he can't have a cookie or a teenager that she's about to take a pop quiz-causes a brief rise in heart rate and stress hormones. A jolt can focus a student's attention and is generally considered healthy.
Similarly, a child can tolerate stress that is severe but may be relatively short-term-from the death of a loved one, for example-as long as he or she has support.
"Adults help children develop strategies to help cope with these stressors," Dr. Shonkoff said. "Whether it's reading or managing stress, adults provide the scaffolding for children to build those skills themselves."
'Toxic' Recipe
By contrast, so-called "toxic stress" is severe, sustained, and not buffered by supportive relationships.
The same brain flexibility, called plasticity, that makes children open to learning in their early years also makes them particularly vulnerable to damage from the toxic stressors that often accompany poverty:
- high mobility and homelessness;
- hunger and food instability;
- parents who are in jail or absent; domestic violence;
drug abuse; and other problems, according to Pat Levitt, a developmental neuroscientist at the University of Southern California and the director of the Keck School of Medicine Center on the Developing Child in Los Angeles.
The exponential brain growth of infancy and early childhood also makes children more vulnerable to chronic stress during those years than at other developmental periods, according to the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, an interdisciplinary group of neuroscientists, psychologists, economists, and education researchers. In a series of easy-to-understand, peer-reviewed videos, the group explains how early cognitive connections form-and break down.
- Good experiences, like nurturing parents and rich early-child-care environments, help build and reinforce neural connections in areas such as language development and self-control, while adversity weakens those connections.
- Over time, the connections, good or bad, stabilize, "and you can't go back and rewire; you have to adapt," Dr. Shonkoff said. "If you've built on strong foundations, that's good, and if you have weak foundations, the brain has to work harder, and it costs more to the brain and society."
For example, a study in the October issue of the peer-reviewed journal Child Development found that out of more than 26,000 students in the Minneapolis public schools, those who moved more than three times a year had significantly lower mathematics achievement and academic growth than students with more stable homes.
In a separate study, Richard P. Barth, the dean and a professor of social work at the University of Maryland College Park, found children with six or more adverse experiences before age 3 were overwhelmingly likely to be identified as needing special education for developmental delay.
Self-Control or Trust?
Moreover, a child's ability to delay gratification and control him- or herself-often seen as a personality trait critical for academic success-can be hugely dependent on the child's sense of stability in the environment and trust in surrounding adults.
In a twist on the classic Stanford University "marshmallow experiment," in which young children's ability to resist eating a marshmallow was tested to show their self-control, researchers led by Celeste Kidd, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester in New York recently found children who trusted the word of the adult tester and felt their environment was more stable waited four times as long for a treat as those who felt more insecure.
The effects of early stress can linger for decades and go well beyond learning difficulties.
"What happens in childhood, like a child's footprint in wet cement, leaves its mark forever," said Dr. Vincent J. Felitti, the director of the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study at the health-care provider Kaiser Permanente's department of preventive medicine in San Diego.
Known as the ACE study and done in collaboration with Dr. Robert F. Anda at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, the project analyzed longitudinal data on more than 17,400 middle-class adults in the Kaiser Permanente system.
Participants reported whether, as children, they had experienced repeated physical, sexual, or severe emotional abuse, and whether they had grown up with any of five types of "household dysfunction": a family member in prison; domestic violence; an alcoholic or drug abuser in the home; someone in the home who was depressed, mentally ill, or suicidal; or loss of at least one biological parent during childhood for any reason.
Adversity, Decades Later
As it turned out, more than half the adults had had at least one type of severe abuse or home dysfunction in childhood, and one in 16 had experienced four or more. The number of traumatic childhood experiences, Dr. Felitti found, was directly proportional to a person's risk of a wide variety of major medical and social problems, from teenage pregnancy and drug abuse to adult heart disease and hepatitis.
- "These results are almost unique in their magnitude," Dr. Felitti said. A boy with six indicators of abuse and home dysfunction was 4,600 percent more likely than a boy with no risk factors to become an intravenous-drug user, according to the study.
Such findings mean that teachers and doctors are left trying to fix late symptoms, like poor reading skills or boredom in school, rather than underlying issues that occur much earlier in life.
"The science [on the effects of poverty and stress] has exploded in the last 25 years, but the policy on the delivery of child care has stalled, without anything close to similar progress," Dr. Shonkoff said.
While federal and state education programs typically focus on academic remediation and nutrition for disadvantaged students, "for some kids, no matter how well you do that, it's not enough, because the amount of adversity in their lives overwhelms," he said.
"It's asking too much," Dr. Shonkoff said, "to require parent education and an enriched preschool program to counteract the effects of the level of adversity in some kids' lives that is whipping up their stress-response systems."
Researchers, including Mr. Levitt of USC and Dr. Felitti, are starting to explore new interventions, both medical and cognitive, that might protect children's developing brains from damage caused by stress and improve their ability to cope.
So far, there are no classroom-ready techniques beyond developing supportive relationships between teachers and parents and their children, Mr. Levitt said. "Helping people after the fact is really nibbling at the edges of the problems," Dr. Felitti said during a presentation on the research at the Society for Neuroscience conference in New Orleans last month. "We need a polio vaccine, as opposed to buying bigger and better iron lungs."
"Stress is not something you get a lot of sympathy for," Dr. Shonkoff said in a separate interview at the Society for Research in Educational Effectiveness meeting in Washington. "This is a culture that says suck it up and get over it."
But in reality, Dr. Felitti concluded, "the [ACE] study makes it clear that time does not heal some of the adverse experiences we found so common. ... One does not 'just get over' some things, not even 50 years later."
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San Antonio TX/ Mayor Julian Castro: Pre-K 4 SA Passage Shows Belief in Education, Opportunity for Future Prosperity
Huffington Post Report
November 8, 2012
Voters in San Antonio, Texas narrowly passed a pre-kindergarten initiative that would create a full-day program for 22,400 4-year-olds over eight years.
- The measure increases the sales tax by one-eighth of a cent, generating about $31 million a year for the Pre-K 4 SA initiative.
- The program seeks to prepare students for school, pointing to evidence of higher performance among elementary schoolers who did attend pre-K programs versus those who didn't, as well as a lower instance of special education placement and grade retention.
"We're a city that believes that if you create opportunity for folks now that were going to see prosperity in the future," Mayor Julian Castro said Thursday on Morning Joe.
Critics of the program have pointed to some ambiguities in the plan, including issues related to transportation, students with special needs and the role school districts would play. Others have also criticized it for potentially competing with existing programs, like the federally funded Head Start preschools.
- Officials have noted, however, that 21,000 children are eligible for Head Start programs in San Antonio, but funding is only available to provide for about 7,000.
- Pre-K 4 SA would answer to that discrepancy and be open to all children.
- A child who is homeless, an English learner, eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, child of a member of the U.S. armed forces or a foster child would be able to attend for free.
The measure was symbolic of Castro's promise to work toward economic prosperity for the low-wage city. It was his big push to develop a stronger, educated workforce that attracts high-wage employers, and its passage was the community's push to fund education in a state where its $8,908 per-pupil spending is well below the national average of $11,463.
Studies have shown huge differences in future success between those who receive early education and those who don't.
"For the purpose of education in a state that ranks about 45th or 47th in terms of per-pupil spending, San Antonioans could see that in order to have economic prosperity in the future, in this 21st century global economy where brain power is the new currency of success, it made a lot of sense to invest this small amount for a big reward in the future," Castro said Thursday.
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Washington DC/ Teach For America Launches Recruitment Initiative for Veterans
Huffington Post Report
November 8, 2012
After pledging to expand outreach efforts, Teach For America has announced its first veterans' recruitment initiative.
- "You Served For America, Now Teach For America" aims to bring top military professionals into the country's highest-need classrooms by partnering with branches of the military and veterans' organizations.
- The initiative will be led by Shaun Murphy, a former U.S. Army staff sergeant and 2009 Teach For America alumnus.
"Joining Teach For America is an opportunity for veterans to put their leadership and skills to work in America's highest-need communities while meeting their desire to continue to serve our nation," Murphy said in a statement Thursday. "Teach For America is committed to making this path a reality through continued investment in the initiative and prioritization of partnerships across the U.S. Armed Forces community."
According to Paul Rieckhoff, founder and CEO of nonprofit Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, the program will enable veterans to continue serving their country after coming home from war and provide them with "the well deserved opportunity to transition into meaningful careers in the civilian workforce."
Currently, Teach For America boasts 10,000 first- and second-year teachers in 46 communities across the U.S. serving 750,000 students. Among them this year are 79 veterans.
The veteran initiative is part of the expansion that TFA's critics say has led the program to stray from its founding ideals of saving poor, struggling schools. TFA's explosion of recruits has pushed a third of its corps members into charters, a move that TFA alumnus Gary Rubinstein told Reuters is a betrayal of its mission.
"When I entered TFA, we wanted to be on the front lines. We wouldn't have accepted a job teaching in a school that was doing well," Rubinstein said. He now teaches math in a high performing New York school.
But TFA founder Wendy Kopp said charter placements allow young teachers to see what can be done in top-performing schools to drive "transformational change" in education.
LaDerrick Collins, a 14-year veteran of the U.S. Army who now teaches fourth grade in Kansas City, said in a statement that his military experience has played an essential role in encouraging students to invest in their own education.
"Soldiers are required to do whatever it takes to get a job done. I've found teaching to be no different," Collins said.
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Vershire VT/ A School Distanced from Technology Faces Its Intrusion
By Vivian Yee
New York Times
November 7, 2012
Past the chicken coop and up a hill, in a spot on campus where the wooden buildings of the Mountain School can seem farther away than the mountains of western New Hampshire, there sometimes can be found a single bar, sometimes two, of cellphone reception.
The spot, between the potato patch and a llama named Nigel, is something of an open secret at the school in this remote corner of Vermont where simplicity is valued over technology. "We're at the periphery of civilization here," said Doug Austin, a teacher.
But that is about to change.
The school offers high school juniors, many from elite private institutions in the Northeast, a semester to immerse themselves in nature. The students make solo camping trips to a nearby mountain for a day or two of reflection, and practice orienteering skills without a GPS device. Between English and environmental science classes, they care for farm animals, chop wood and read the works of Robert Frost. And in the process, many say, they stop scouring the campus for its sparse bars of reception and lose the habit of checking their Facebook pages at every opportunity.
As the rest of the country has gotten high-speed Internet, Vershire (population 730) has lagged, relying on land lines shared among neighbors, with dial-up and (for homes that face the right way) satellite Internet service that cuts out when the weather is rough. But cellphone signals have been seeping in, and soon there will be more.
This fall, technicians will start laying fiber-optic cable to bring high-speed Internet to the town. Cellphone coverage is expected soon after. "Right now we're the third-world country of Vermont," said Gene Craft, the town clerk. "We'd like to be in touch."
That presents a challenge for the Mountain School: how to regulate the use of smartphones and other devices that serve as a constant distraction for 21st-century teenagers, who are here to engage with the rural setting and with one another.
True to its mission of encouraging "collaborative learning and shared work," the school asked its students and alumni to develop a technology policy that will determine whether to ban phones, allow them in a limited way or leave the decision whether to disconnect to students.
Many students, alumni and teachers have asked Alden Smith, the school's director, to declare a ban. But the school has always held that its students can be trusted to make good choices, he said. "We have to figure out the balance between how to preserve the values we have," Mr. Smith said. "But I tend to think that adolescents, particularly the ones we get here, when mentored, will rise to the occasion when trusted with real responsibility."
To make phone calls from the 300-acre campus, students must take turns, using prepaid calling cards, at small phone closets in each dormitory. At the recommendation of alumni, there is no Internet service in the dorms, only in the academic building, and incoming students are strongly discouraged from bringing DVDs or loading videos on their laptops. (Even where there is Internet service, any online activity that requires significant bandwidth - watching a video on YouTube, for example - means a loss of signal to others because the town's fair access policy limits bandwidth to the school.)
At first, Andy Sharp, 17, from nearby Thetford Academy, missed participating in his friends' fantasy football league online. But after most of a semester at the school, he said, he uses his laptop only for doing homework and checking Facebook occasionally. "I didn't think that was going to happen to me, but it did," he said. "Your focus shifts to things that are in front of you."
That is not to say that students cut themselves off from the outside world altogether. Many were keeping up with new music, including Julia Christensen, a 16-year-old from the Lakeside School in Seattle. She planned to wake up before 7 a.m. recently to download Taylor Swift's new album before the morning Internet rush hour. But that was an exception.
"Here, if you spent a lot of time on your computer, people would think that's lame," said Calais Larson, 17, of Phillips Exeter Academy, who believes that cellphones should not be used on campus.
Students say they are ambivalent about returning to a world where they can be reached at any moment.
After a short break last month, several students said it was a relief when they returned and were not expected to respond immediately to text messages or did not have to worry about which party to attend. As they split firewood and dug potatoes, the discussion was instead about heading to Garden Hill to watch the stars, or reading Frost and hiking in the New England countryside.
The school says students have agreed on a draft policy: students will hand over their phones to the faculty when they arrive and will get them back on off-campus trips; they can also choose to get them back a month into the semester.
Mr. Smith and other longtime teachers say their goal is not to encourage their students to live without technology, but to make them think more carefully about their use of it.
"The idea is not to be going back to a time where things were better," Mr. Smith said, "but where the richness of each day is defined by the food you eat, the company you keep, the work you do."
