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Santa Fe/ Teacher Pay Plan Failed to Hike Scores
By Hailey Heinz
ABQ Journal Staff Writer
November 16, 2012
New Mexico's three-tier teacher licensure system, which has cost the state more than $330 million, has little connection to whether teachers boost their students' test scores, according to a new Legislative Finance Committee report.
The report backed the idea of basing teacher pay, in part, on student test scores, but urged caution because different calculation methods can yield very different results for the same teacher.
Sen. John Arthur Smith, D-Deming, who chairs the LFC, said Thursday he was "frustrated" by the findings on the three-tier system.
- "We've rewarded, in many cases, mediocrity, and really haven't accomplished what we set out to do," Smith said.
Another key finding from the report is that New Mexico's education funding formula doesn't reward student achievement.
The formula gives more money to districts where teachers have advanced degrees and long careers, but it does not reward student achievement gains, or even reflect the three-tier pay scale.
- The three-tier system pays tier-one teachers a minimum annual salary of $30,000, increasing to $40,000 for tier-two teachers and $50,000 for tier-three teachers.
- Teachers advance through the tiers primarily through experience, advanced degrees and a portfolio of lessons and student work samples they submit.
Three-tier has been partially funded through a 2003 constitutional amendment, which increased the amount of education money drawn from the state permanent fund. That funding has now begun to gradually decrease, through a sunset provision in the amendment.
Teacher evaluation in New Mexico is already in flux.
- After several failed attempts to revise the system through law, state education chief Hanna Skandera established a rule that requires school districts to evaluate teachers on a mix of test score growth, classroom observations and other measures of student learning.
- That system is being piloted in 68 schools statewide and will be adopted by all schools next school year.
- However, the system is not currently linked to teacher pay. State law still requires teachers be paid based on the three-tier system.
Rep. Luciano "Lucky" Varela, D-Santa Fe, lamented what he called low starting salaries for teachers, but said student learning should drive their pay.
- "This is inadequate in terms of what we're paying our teachers," he said. "But it's got to be tied to performance."
Researchers found students taught by top-tier teachers had slightly better test score growth than students with lower-tier teachers.
- But the gains were not significant, and in many cases the difference disappeared after researchers controlled for poverty.
- Top-tier teachers are more likely to teach more affluent students, who tend to have higher test scores.
LFC researchers also examined "value-added" measures of teacher quality.
- The idea of value-added is to control for variables that affect student achievement and isolate the amount of "value" added by the teacher.
- Researchers looked at two methods for the LFC report.
- The first is relatively simple and includes only how much a student's test scores improved over time.
This method is thought to control for challenges like special needs and poverty, at least in part, because a student's past performance on tests reflects their challenges.
For example, a student who needed special education services one year is likely to need them during subsequent years, so every teacher who works with that student will face similar challenges. Some teachers, however, will help the student grow more than others.
- The second method specifically controls for factors like poverty, special education needs, ethnicity and whether students are learning English.
The LFC researchers found these two methods had dramatically different results.
One teacher, called "Mr. Wilson" in the report, teaches a gifted class in a large, urban school district.
Under the system that included only the student's prior test score performance over two years, "Mr. Wilson" was rated "highly effective" in math and "meets expectations" in reading. However, when the second model was used, "Mr. Wilson" was rated "needs improvement" in both areas. The differences were even more stark when only one year of data was used.
The report concludes that the state should use three years of data whenever possible, and should use a combination of both value-added methods.
It also cautions that only about one-fifth of teachers in New Mexico teach subjects tested on the standardized test, leaving the majority of teachers ineligible for value-added calculations.
Skandera, who spoke at Thursday's LFC meeting, said she agrees with the overall findings of the report, and believes it supports her efforts to overhaul teacher evaluations and to use student growth data in assigning school grades.
- "I think the take-away that we've said all along, and was confirmed today, is value-added models aren't a panacea," Skandera said. "They're not perfect, but boy, they are a step in the right direction, if done right and well."
Skandera said Thursday no decision has been made on which value-added method will be used in next year's evaluations. The pilot currently being done in schools is focused mainly on the classroom observations portion of the rule.
The simple method was used to calculate the "value-added" portion of A-F school grades, which have been criticized as volatile and hard to understand. With some exceptions, the A-F system on the whole assigned higher grades to more affluent schools.
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Santa Fe/ Lawmakers, Education Officials Question School Grading Policy
By Stuart Dyson
KOB Eyewitness News 4
November 16, 201i2
State lawmakers want to make changes in the state Education Department's new A-through-F grading system for New Mexico's public schools.
Some Democratic leaders on the Legislative Education Study Committee said during a Thursday meeting the system needs tweaks, some said it needs to be thrown out, while Republicans said officials need to give the policy a chance.
Education Secretary-Designate Hanna Skandera testified before the committee on the mechanics of the school grading system.
Some of the state's smaller school districts seem to be having trouble with the technology for reporting data to the education department.
And some schools received a "B' in January, but later received a 'D' in May leaving many to wonder what went right and what went wrong and why there is so much fluctuation in the grades.
"The students don't understand - what does that mean?" Education Committee Chairman Rep. Rick Miera (D-Albuquerque) said as he described what's on students' minds. "I have a bad school. I have an 'F' rated school - what does that mean to me? Do I really want to come back to this school. I love my school, am I going to have to leave?"
"We all want to be accountable," Rep. Mimi Stewart (D-Albuquerque), a veteran educator, said. "These schools and these teachers want their students to perform well and we all want a good accountability system, but frankly we need to scrap this one and start over."
Some school superintendents testified against the grading system, but others were on hand to say the policy is working.
"By our numbers going up so high when it came to the A-to-F grading system we rated very well," Pecos Public Schools Superintendent Fred Trujillo said. "We are no longer part of that bottom five percent. Our community started to believe in the school system again and started to bring that pride back to the school system."
Supporters of the policy said it's a clear guide to identify which schools are performing well and which ones need more help.
With Democrats retaining majority control state legislature, lawmakers expect to see coming legislation aimed at the grading system when they convene in January.
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Silver City/ Students From Several Decades Help Celebrate 6th Street Elementary Schools' 130th Birthday
By Benjamin Fisher
Silver City Sun-News
November 15, 2012
Cheers and laughter rang down the halls at 6th Street Elementary School's 130th birthday celebration on Thursday.
The school, first built in 1882 for $7,000 in private funds, hosted a convocation in the gymnasium/cafeteria at 1:30 p.m. for students, parents, dignitaries and alumni.
Rosemary Peru was responsible for planning much of the event. Peru has been a second-grade teacher at 6th Street Elementary for 39 years and loved having the opportunity to track down former students and reconnect with them.
Tables covered with memorabilia from decades past lined the walls of the gym - antique radios and cameras, yearbooks and photographs were displayed for everyone to look at.
The students, for the most part, sat or fidgeted on the floor, listening to speakers or watching presentations by their fellow students.
First-year 6th Street Principal Lisa Ortega opened the celebration before handing it over to master of ceremonies, Sen. Howie Morales.
Morales was a student at 6th Street and it has retained a special place in his heart. The senator said he was honored and excited to be part of the celebration.
"The historical significance is important," Morales said, "but there are more things yet to come."
Morales told a little of the history of the school, of its founding when New Mexico was only a territory and that it was the state's first elementary school. He then introduced music teacher Brandon Perrault, his kindergarten classmate at 6th Street, who led the students through a song about the state symbols and the school's birthday celebration.
The second stage of the celebration was a video showing photos of 6th Street Elementary throughout the years. There were photos of students and teachers from the turn of the 20th century to the present and Silver City scenes like the big flood in the 1800s and the school after the fire in 1987.
During the video, a few voices cheered when a familiar photo of a teacher or friend flashed across the screen. More cheers, whoops and claps followed throughout the rest of the film.
When the room was lit again and the children calm, Principal Ortega presented special education teacher Michiko Moore flowers and a certificate of recognition for being one of five national finalists for a $10,000 grant from Green Mountain Naturals Apple for a Teacher contest.
Moore, who teaches primarily autistic students, was nominated for the big prize by Patti West, a parent of one of Moore's students. West wrote an essay about Moore titled "Love Personified," that became one of five finalists in the contest. Moore didn't win the top prize but as a finalist received a $1,000 Apple store gift card, which she plans on using to buying iPads to use with her autistic students, a Keruig machine and a case of hot apple cider for the teachers lounge at the school.
Ortega also recognized Wendy Shaul, an art teacher at the school, for being named Region 2 EMT of the year for saving the life of a student last year at Stout Elementary School.
- "If the heart of a community is its schools, and this was our first school, then I think the heart of New Mexico is here at 6th Street Elementary," Morales said.
Peru said she was pleased with how the reception went Thursday, and more so to be part of this historic year.
"We've been through fires and wind," Peru said, "and are still here. All we need is a flood, I guess."
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Austin TX/ In Financing of Schools, Defining 'Adequate'
By Morgan Smith
New York Times [The Texas Tribune]
November 15, 2012
During opening statements in the current trial over how Texas finances its public schools, a lawyer for the state expressed what many were already thinking.
"This is like déjà vu all over again," said Assistant Attorney General Shelley Dahlberg.
The state district court trial, which began in October and involves about two-thirds of Texas districts, is the sixth time since 1984 that districts have sued the state over the way public schools are financed under the Texas Constitution.
- The Texas Supreme Court last ruled on the issue in 2005 when it said current financing levels were adequate but left the door open for future challenges - with the same judge and many of the same lawyers involved.
- The courts, facing many of the same arguments, will again decide whether the Legislature has met its constitutional obligation to public education.
But over the years, a chorus of conservative voices has posed another fix for the school finance problem. Why not just change the state's duties under the Texas Constitution?
- "The Legislature has never really defined in statute what they are trying to accomplish and what they are willing to fund," said Bill Peacock, the vice president of research for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative research organization in Austin.
- John Culberson, a United States Representative, proposed a state constitutional amendment in 1992 as a state legislator, to keep the courts out of school finance and allow lawmakers to define adequate levels of financing under the State Constitution. It is a concept supported by fiscal conservatives, many of whom object to what they view as the use of taxpayer dollars to sue the state for more taxpayer dollars.
Such a measure would require a two-thirds vote of the Legislature to make it onto the ballot, and it has struggled to gain traction.
State Representative Gary Elkins, Republican of Houston, was the latest lawmaker to offer the amendment last session. His resolution failed to make it out of committee.
Opponents view the courts as a needed backstop against legislative decisions made for political rather than sound policy reasons, and they say the amendment would shift the burden of paying for public schools from the state to local taxpayers.
"It's hard to convince two-thirds of the representatives that their local school districts would be better off, that their local taxpayers would be better off in general because of such an action," said State Representative Scott Hochberg, the outgoing vice chairman of the House Public Education Committee. "It has always taken the courts to force the Legislature to do the right thing on this issue."
But as the 2013 legislative session approaches, echoes of the philosophy behind the amendment have cropped up in the state's defense during the current school finance trial.
Ms. Dahlberg said during her opening statement that if there was not enough money to go around, it was because of decisions made on the local, not state, level. She pointed to districts spending money on extras that were not explicitly required by the state.
"Ask yourself or the witnesses whether a district can provide for the general diffusion of knowledge without iPads or teacher aides or brand-new facilities," she told the judge. "The wish lists of superintendents are not sufficient evidence that the Legislature has acted arbitrarily."
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Washington DC/ Scale Tips Toward Nonfiction Under Common Core
College and workplace demands are propelling the shift in text
By Catherine Gewertz
Education Week, Vol. 32, Issue 12 [Edweek.org]
November 14, 2012
The common standards expect students to become adept at reading informational text, a shift in focus that many English/language arts teachers fear might diminish the time-honored place of literature in their classrooms.
In schools nationwide, where all but four states have adopted the Common Core State Standards, teachers are finding ways to incorporate historical documents, speeches, essays, scientific articles, and other nonfiction into classes.
The new standards envision elementary students, whose reading typically tilts toward fiction, reading equally from literature and informational text.
- By high school, literature should represent only 30 percent of their readings; 70 percent should be informational.
- The tilt reflects employers' and college professors' complaints that too many young people can't analyze or synthesize information, or document arguments.
Some passionate advocates for literature, however, see reason for alarm.
In a recent paper issued by the Pioneer Institute, a Boston-based group that opposes the standards, two language arts experts argue that those distributions make it inevitable that less literature will be taught in schools. Even if social studies, science, and other teachers pick up much of the informational-text reading, co-authors Sandra Stotsky and Mark Bauerlein argue, language arts teachers will have to absorb a good chunk as well, and they will be the ones held accountable.
"It's hard to imagine that low reading scores in a school district will force grade 11 government/history and science teachers to devote more time to reading instruction," the paper says.
De-emphasizing literature in the rush to build informational-text skills is shortsighted, the study argues, because the skills required to master good, complex literature serve students well in college and challenging jobs. The problem is worsened when teachers make "weak" choices of informational texts, such as blog posts, Mr. Bauerlein said in an interview.
"If we could ensure that the kinds of stuff they're choosing are essays by [Ralph Waldo] Emerson or Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery, then that would be wonderful," said Mr. Bauerlein, a professor of English at Emory University in Atlanta. "Those are complex texts, with the literary features that make students better readers in college."
The only required readings in the standards are four foundational American writings, such as the Declaration of Independence, and one play each by Shakespeare and by an American dramatist. Students also must "demonstrate knowledge" of American literature from the 18th through early-20th centuries.
An appendix to the standards lists texts that illustrate the range of works students should read across the curriculum to acquire the skills outlined in the standards. Those titles are not required reading, but are being widely consulted as representations of what the standards seek.
Stories, poetry, and plays share space with nonfiction books and articles.
- Kindergarten teachers are offered Tana Hoban's I Read Signs, along with P.D. Eastman's Are You My Mother?
- For 4th and 5th grades, the standards suggest Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince as well as Joy Hakim's A History of US.
- Middle school suggestions include Winston Churchill's 1940 "Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat" speech and an article on elementary particles from the New Book of Popular Science along with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
- For 11th and 12th graders, T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is suggested, as are Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point and Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America.
A New Blend
Taking a cue from the standards, many teachers are blending fiction and informational reading as they phase in the common core.
At Calvin Rodwell Elementary School in Baltimore last month, Erika Parker and her class of 4- and 5-year-olds were planning a trip to a nearby farm as part of a unit called "fall fun with friends." She read the children two versions of The Three Little Pigs; they joined her to shout out the famous refrain: "Not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin!" They were addressing a common-core expectation that they learn to compare points of view in multiple texts, Ms. Parker said.
She also read the children books and stories about fall weather, friendship, the life cycle of pumpkins, and how to grow apples. They ventured into the schoolyard to learn about tree trunks and limbs and how trees could be grafted to produce new varieties and colors of apples.
- "We are certainly still reading works of fiction," she said later. "They love their stories. But they also really get excited about something in real life that they can make a connection to."
Quinton M. Lawrence, too, is trying out a new blend with his 5th and 6th graders at the K-8 Woodhome Elementary/Middle School in Baltimore. The language arts teacher is drawing on newspaper articles, novels, and poems to explore the theme of individuality.
Children are choosing from a range of novels with a "realistic feel," Mr. Lawrence said, including House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman, and The Skin I'm In by Sharon Flake. They read newspaper articles about a school uniform rule and the creation of avatars-virtual alter egos-in video games.
Through discussion, the students zeroed in on 10 major components of individuality, such as intelligence, beliefs, and physical appearance, and they explored them through the real and imaginary characters they read about, Mr. Lawrence said. They will write two-page essays exploring the theme further, based on additional research from other articles online, he said.
- "The idea that students are exposed to informational text is somehow taken for granted," said Mr. Lawrence, whose district serves a predominantly low-income, minority population. "Most of my kids have not been exposed to newspaper articles. Their parents don't subscribe to magazines. So it's good for them to see these kinds of things, learn about their structure, as well as the structure of novels."
Sonja B. Santelises, the chief academic officer of the Baltimore system, which has been working with teachers districtwide to design common-core modules and sets of texts in social studies, science, and language arts, said the emphasis on informational reading is crucial as a matter of equity for her 83,000 students.
- "We're naïve if we don't acknowledge that it's through nonfiction that a lot of students who've never been to a museum are going to read about mummies for the first time or read about the process of photosynthesis," she said. She considers it important to use informational readings simultaneously as tools to build content knowledge and to familiarize students with a variety of types of text.
When Ms. Santelises visits classrooms, she still sees plenty of literature being enjoyed, so she isn't worried about fiction losing its place in school, she said. "Fiction and narrative have been so overrepresented, particularly in the elementary grades, that I feel this is more of a balancing than a squeezing-out."
In a study that painted a portrait of that imbalance, Michigan literacy researcher Nell K. Duke found in 2000 that informational text occupied only 3.6 minutes of a 1st grader's day and 10 percent of the shelf space in their classroom libraries.
The Role of Literature
In the rush to rebalance, however, educators risk cheating literature, some experts say. "The emphasis on nonfiction is leading to the development of a whole new universe of activities that will leave less time for the ones about literature," said Arthur N. Applebee, a professor of education at the State University of New York in Albany.
Thomas Newkirk, a professor of English at the University of New Hampshire, said he thinks the common core's "bias against narrative" doesn't serve students well. If teachers seek to make students ready for real life, he said, they must equip them not only to argue, interpret, and inform, but to convey emotion and tell stories.
- "The world is much more narrative than the standards suggest," said Mr. Newkirk, who teaches writing to freshmen and trains preservice teachers.
- "Think about when candidates are running for office, and they have to tell the stories of their lives, the story of where we are going as a nation," he said. "When we honor someone who has passed away, someone who is retiring, we need to tell their story. The other skills are important, too. But in the real world, there are moments when we have to distill emotion, experience. To claim otherwise misrepresents how we operate."
The question of which faculty are responsible for the new informational-text expectations is permeating conversation.
Colette Bennett, the chairman of the English department at Wamogo High School in Litchfield, Conn., said she believes the standards allow her to keep her focus squarely on literature, with essays and other nonfiction used to enrich that study.
Recently, she had students use "The Hero's Journey," a narrative framework designed by American mythology scholar Joseph Campbell, to help them interpret King Lear, she said.
"The standards say that 30 percent of a student's reading in [high] school should be literary, which is as it should be," she said.
"That's my responsibility. My purview is fiction, poetry, literary nonfiction, and no other teacher is going to teach that."
But teachers of other subjects have not been asking their students to read enough, Ms. Bennett said. "I hear them saying, 'Oh, what am I going to drop out of my course to do more reading?' And I say, 'What? You haven't been doing a lot of reading all along?' "
More Time on Reading
To avoid sacrificing literature and still give students deep experience with informational text, one thing will be required, according to Carol Jago, a former president of the National Council of Teachers of English: more time.
- "Teachers don't have to give up a single poem, play, or novel," said Ms. Jago, who now directs the California Reading and Literature Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, which helps teachers design lesson plans. "But students are going to have to read four times as much as they are now."
Where will the time come from? From substituting good-quality reading for "busywork," movies shown in class, and the hours students spend daily on electronic entertainment such as texting and playing video games, Ms. Jago said.
In sorting out how to put the standards into practice, some experts caution against an either-or interpretation. It's important for students to be steeped in all kinds of reading and writing, they say, and it's all possible with good planning and collaboration.
- "I don't know why this dichotomy has been constructed in a way that is so divisive. It's very unhelpful," said Stephanie R. Jones, a professor who focuses on literacy and social class at the University of Georgia in Athens.
- "We shouldn't teach kindergartners as if they're going to join the workforce next year. But it won't hurt us to make sure we are emphasizing nonfiction a little more in K-5. And I don't think fiction has to be edged out at all," she said.
- "In some college and career paths, it's important to state a claim and justify with evidence, and in others, it's important to be really creative and innovative and not start with an argument, but have open inquiry and move toward some kind of discovery."
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Washington DC/ Report Emphasizes Creating Culture of Better Data Use in Schools
By Katie Ash
Education Week [Edweek.org]
November 15, 2012
While states have made significant progress in building robust longitudinal data systems and supporting data use in K-12 education, they now face the more challenging task of building a culture that encourages intelligent use of data within schools to improve teaching and learning, says the latest edition of an annual report released today by the Washington-based Data Quality Campaign.
- "When you look at the actions that are lagging, it's because those are the ones that require the focus on people," said Aimee Guidera, the executive director of the nonprofit data advocacy organization.
- The infrastructure of data systems has now largely been built, she said, but now "it's not just about collecting the data, but putting a focus on how we make sure that valuable, actionable, contextual information gets into the hands of stakeholders."
In the report, states are evaluated based on ten actions they are encouraged to take to support effective data use.
Those ten actions fall into three categories:
- linking data and making sure that the infrastructure and policies are in place to maintain those linkages;
- making sure that data can be accessed, analyzed, and used; and
- ensuring that stakeholders have access to the data and know how to use it.
While no states have implemented all ten actions, ten states now have eight to nine of the actions in place, up from four states in 2011.
"We're very, very hopeful that next year and the year after that we'll see several states reaching all ten actions," said Guidera. "States are bringing people together, and the fruits of those labors will start showing up in the next several years."
Making that cultural shift to put a higher value on data takes at least three components, the report said. Those components include:
- leadership from pre-K, all the way through K-12 and postsecondary education, and up to leaders overseeing the state's workforce data;
- policies that support the use of data; and
- resources such as time, money, and technology.
And it's not just a cultural shift at the school level, said Guidera, but at the state policy and district levels as well.
The report points to Kentucky as an example of a state that has fostered a culture that embraces better use of data.
- The state created a high school feedback report to inform districts about students' outcomes in postsecondary education,
- it dedicated time and effort to building a robust P-20 longitudinal data system,
- the legislature passed policies requiring the state to collect and report on certain types of education data, and
- education leaders reformed the data reports to make them more usable and actionable by teachers.
Since those measures were put in place, the state's postsecondary enrollment has increased from 50.9 percent in 2004 to 61.4 percent in 2010. Although that rise cannot be solely credited to the emphasis on better data use, experts say having those measures in place certainly helped boost those numbers.
Overall, the report recommends three target areas of improvement.
- The first is the linking of preK-20 data with workforce data, which only 14 states currently have in place.
- Secondly, states need to ensure that all stakeholders, especially parents, have access to the available data.
- And lastly, states need to continue to build the capacity of stakeholders to use and understand the data.
"People realize we have to do this, but the hard work starts now," said Guidera. "We've now built the data systems, but the hard work is empowering people to know how to access and use them."
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Denver CO/ DPS, ELL Plaintiffs Now Speak Same Language on Modified Consent Decree
By Kevin Simpson
The Denver Post
November 16, 2012
The controversial, court-ordered plan for serving English-language learners in Denver Public Schools has undergone its first overhaul since 1999 - with what all parties call unprecedented cooperation.
If approved by a federal judge, the modified consent decree will mandate several new standards for teaching more than 36,000 students as they work toward English proficiency while also mastering academic content.
- "It hasn't been easy over the years, and it has been adversarial in the past," said Martha M. Urioste, board member of the Congress of Hispanic Educators, plaintiff in the original lawsuit. "When you think how long we've been doing this, it's a huge, optimistic victory."
The proposed modifications, to be phased in over three years, include:
- improvements to teacher training,
- student placement and exit procedures,
- parent communication and oversight - including a study of the program's effectiveness to be completed by 2015.
U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch, who has overseen the consent decree since its inception in 1984, will preside over a hearing on Friday. DPS, CHE and the U.S. Department of Justice have jointly asked for the court's approval of the new plan.
Matsch is expected to question lawyers from both sides. There could be further proceedings before a ruling.
The legal battle over how DPS would address its non-English-speaking students began as part of the desegregation lawsuit in 1974, and 10 years later the court entered its first consent decree.
The Department of Justice intervened in 1999, and all three parties agreed on a new version of the consent decree.
Acrimonious debate over how to teach English gave way to compromise, as the sides settled on transitional native language instruction that teaches students grade-level academic content while they learn English.
- "If we want to make sure all language-minority kids are ready for college, they can't have language skills that don't prepare them for rigorous math or science," said Susana Cordova, DPS chief academic officer. "Learning English generically is not sufficient if we want kids to go on to higher level coursework."
Part of the impetus for the recent cooperation among DPS and plaintiffs CHE and the Department of Justice has been a growing number of non-English-speaking students that has become impossible to marginalize, said Heather Riley, a past president of the Colorado Association of Bilingual Educators .
Today, more than one-third of the 76,243 DPS students are English-language learners.
"The population is so much larger now, people can't isolate the group, can't say soundly that this is the responsibility of a department, or certain teachers in certain schools," said Riley. "So that reached a tipping point where everybody has to pay attention."
The 54-page consent decree applies to all English language learners in the district, although 87 percent of those students are native Spanish speakers.
DPS could apply to the court to have the consent decree dismissed starting in 2015. But some have mixed feelings about the possibility of ending court oversight.
"It's a support for people who want to do good things for kids," said Kathy Escamilla, a professor of education at the University of Colorado Boulder and a member of CHE. "It guarantees kids' rights come before the whims of any new leadership we might have.
"A lot can happen between now and 2015."
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New York NY/ New Online Venture Promises Small Classes and College Credit
By Jon Marcus
Hechinger Report [Hechingerreport.org]
November 15, 2012
The race to capture a potentially vast market for college courses provided online has taken another big step with the announcement today by 10 top universities that they'll offer such classes for college credit-something earlier collaborations have struggled to do.
Students in a real-time virtual classroom run by the company 2U, which is part of the new Semester Online initiative.
Semester Online envisions not huge, 100,000-student online courses such as those already being offered by MIT and Stanford, but a return to traditional-sized college classes of 12 to 15 students with live student-professor interactions-just delivered online instead of in person.
And rather than making the courses available for free to anyone, it will likely have admission standards and charge tuition, according to the university provosts who have helped set it up.
The concept creates a sudden and significant divide about how best to educate online, just as America's top universities try to get in on an anticipated boom in online learning.
- "The biggest selling point is that it isn't really new," says Rogan Kersh, provost of Wake Forest University, one of Semester Online's member schools.
- "It still feels like an extension of what we do now-the traditional university course that we already know works well, as opposed to a Wild West [where] all bets are off [and it's] every student for him- or herself."
Courses will be taught by university faculty following the same curricula used in conventional courses and with conventional techniques such as class discussions, using technology that allows students and professors to see and talk with one another in real time. Students will be graded on their work by faculty and earn college credit if they get passing grades.
Other collaborations have promised to figure out a way to offer credit or other kinds of credentials for large-scale online courses, called massive open online courses, or MOOCs-something that would threaten what has until now been a tightly held monopoly among traditional universities.
EdX, launched by MIT and Harvard earlier this year, plans to use private companies that will charge a fee to test students at examination centers around the world. Coursera, which includes Princeton, Columbia and Stanford, has proposed letting students take assessments online-and monitoring them as they do so via webcam.
On Tuesday, the American Council on Education said it would review a small number of Coursera classes, and may recommend that universities provide credit for them. Even if it does, however, such a recommendation would not be binding.
Semester Online, on the other hand, planned "from the very beginning" to offer credit, says Ed Macias, provost of Washington University in St. Louis, another member school. "That's built into our model."
The initiative also includes Brandeis, Duke, Emory, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Rochester, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and Vanderbilt. More universities may be added by the time the first courses are offered next fall, organizers say.
Although they were reluctant to say their model is a repudiation of MOOCs, several provosts of these institutions described it as a logical evolution of online higher education.
The earliest online courses were provided "for credit by schools you [had] never heard of," such as the now-ubiquitous University of Phoenix, says Jim Dean, dean of the Kenan-Flagler Business School at UNC-Chapel Hill. "Then the MOOCs were about courses from schools you've heard of, but not for credit. Now you're seeing courses for credit by schools you've heard of."
Kersh said the scale of the wholesale model is larger than many faculty are comfortable with, while Semester Online classes will be a manageable size.
MOOCs "are sexy and exciting because they're new and different, but as a teacher, I've taught classes, and, to me, large means 200, not two million," Kersh said. "We want to deliver the kind of highest-quality educational experience that the United States has been the world leader in-and to abandon that for the sake of a massive global experience feels like something special has been lost."
Still, a few universities are hedging their bets. Duke, Emory and Vanderbilt are members of both Semester Online and Coursera.
One thing the new collaboration has in common with earlier ones is that the details have yet to be fleshed out.
- The 10 universities will work with a for-profit company called 2U, which helps provide the infrastructure and support universities need to offer online courses.
- But the cost to students and the way that revenues will be split among participating schools, among other things, are still being negotiated, according to Macias.
"We thought it would be good to announce what we're doing so people could hear about it," he says.
A 2U spokesman, Chance Patterson, says tuition will likely be equal to what the universities charge for brick-and-mortar classes.
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New York NY/ University Consortium to Offer Small Online Courses for Credit
By Hannah Seligson
New York Times
November 15, 2012
Starting next fall, 10 prominent universities, including Duke, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Northwestern, will form a consortium called Semester Online, offering about 30 online courses to both their students - for whom the classes will be covered by their regular tuition - and to students elsewhere who would have to apply and be accepted and pay tuition of more than $4,000 a course.
Semester Online will be operated through the educational platform 2U, formerly known as 2tor, and will simulate many aspects of a classroom: Students will be able to raise their hands virtually, break into smaller discussion groups and arrange and hold online study sessions.
The virtual classroom is a cross between a Google+ hangout and the opening sequence of "The Brady Bunch," where each student has his or her own square, the equivalent of a classroom chair. However, with Semester Online courses, there is no sneaking in late and unnoticed, and there is no back row.
Unlike the increasingly popular massive open online courses, or MOOCs, free classes offered by universities like Harvard, M.I.T. and Stanford, Semester Online classes will be small - and will offer credit.
"Now we can provide students with a course that mirrors our classroom experience," says Edward S. Macias, provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs at Washington University in St. Louis, one of the participants.
"It's going to be the most rigorous, live, for-credit online experience ever," said Chip Paucek, a founder of 2U.
For many of the participating schools, which include Brandeis, Emory, Notre Dame, the University of Rochester, Vanderbilt and Wake Forest, Semester Online offerings will be their first undergraduate for-credit online courses, and the first to offer credit to students from outside the universities.
One draw for the colleges is the expansion in their course catalogs.
"No university can deliver the full range of courses that both might be interesting and useful and enlightening to our students," said Peter Lange, the provost of Duke. "Imagine if you don't have a person who works on the Sahel region in Africa, but another school does."
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