ABQ/ School Consortium Misses Cut for Race to the Top Money
By Hailey Heinz
ABQ Journal Staff Writer
December 12, 2012
A consortium of rural school districts from New Mexico, Washington and Arkansas missed the cut for federal Race to the Top money, the U.S. Department of Education announced Tuesday.
The consortium, which included 21 small New Mexico districts, was a finalist in the grant competition, but was dropped from the running when the list of 61 finalists was trimmed to 16 winners.
Race to the Top is a grant program in which states compete for education dollars, and it has been used by the U.S. Department of Education as an incentive for states to reform their education systems.
New Mexico has mostly been unsuccessful in winning the money, although the state was recently awarded $25 million for early learning initiatives through Race to the Top.
Before this round, the money had been available only to states. This was the first district-level competition.
The consortium was the only New Mexico finalist. It had proposed to create an online network of lessons and resources for students and teachers in rural areas.
- Reviewers who scored the applications gave the consortium low marks in the category of setting up partnerships with businesses and community groups to supplement the grant and help support students.
- Reviewers also wrote that the application did not specify goals for groups of students, which was required. A goal, for example, might be that all students enter kindergarten ready for school, or all leave third grade reading at grade level.
Districts that did receive funding are: Galt Joint Union, Lindsay Unified and New Haven Unified in California; Harmony Science Academy consortium and IDEA Public Schools in Texas; Guilford County Schools and Iredell-Statesville Schools in North Carolina; Carson City, Nev.; Charleston County, S.C.; Green River Regional Cooperative, Ky.; KIPP DC, Washington, D.C.; Warren Township, Ind.; Middletown City District, N.Y.; Puget Sound consortium, Wash.; Miami-Dade, Fla.; and St. Vrain Valley, Colo.
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Tularosa/ School Board Talks Training, Math Programs
By Alex Quintana, Staff Writer
Alamogordo Daily News
December 11, 2012
The Board of Education met Tuesday night preparing for the next semester's training and selecting a new math program.
Board member Brenda Vigil announced that on Jan. 3-4, staff members of all schools will receive additional training.
- Unit-plan training will be aimed toward staff in the high school and middle schools.
"We are trying to fit in as much training as we can in those two days," Vigil explained.
- Elementary and intermediate staff also will undergo math and data analysis and reading and literature strategies.
After the holidays, Vigil said there will be a formal math textbook adoption committee to review math programs. Earlier this year, Vigil said math teachers from the high school and middle schools favored Agile Minds, an Internet-based program. That system, she said, is currently used in Las Cruces. She has also asked New Mexico State University to evaluate that and other programs.
The board also added a special session to discuss of the superintendent's evaluation and contract for 2013-14. Due to scheduling conflicts with board members, the board voted to amend the motion to the approval of the executive session on Jan. 7 and reschedule the session at 8 a.m. Jan. 11 with a special session open to the public to follow at 1 p.m. the same day.
Board president Brenda Yousif said she wanted the board to feel more comfortable and not rushed with the evaluation this year.
"Last time, we felt sort of under the gun when we did the evaluation the night before. We weren't completely done with the evaluation and it was on the agenda the next day to approve or disapprove and we weren't really comfortable with that, so I thought maybe we should do it with either a longer amount of time in special session or split them up in two nights," Yousif said.
Vigil also announced that there is now a position in the budget for a special-education coordinator
The next regular session meeting is scheduled at 5 p.m. Jan. 8 at the board conference room.
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Bloomfield/ School Audit Shows Irregularities
By Joshua Kellogg
Farmington Daily Times
December 11, 2012
An audit firm representative shared several findings with the Bloomfield Board of Education members Tuesday night pointing to several areas of concern, including issues with payroll, inventory control for sales and nepotism with hiring.
Superintendent Joe Rasor said the Bloomfield School District had been award of several issues brought up by Terri Ogle, partner at the audit firm Keystone Accounting, during her presentation at the board meeting.
- "When we did the audit, the agency's people uncovered some irregularities and we started digging into them," Rasor said.
Seven findings were outlined by Ogle, with two of them described as material weaknesses,
- covering the lack of documentation on payroll produced by the Athletic Department and
- lack of inventory controls in place to track the sales at the athletic store and the concession stand operations at Bloomfield High School and Mesa Alta Junior High.
"A time document was produced from the athletic department, requesting payment for game workers, including people not on game schedule," Director of finance and operations Gary Giron said. "Arbitrary amounts were filed for reimbursement and the schedule indicated one person was reimbursed for different games, happening at the same time."
Other areas of concern brought up by Ogle included :
- untimely payment of game workers who were not paid as part of regular payroll,
- tracking of in-kind donations made,
- lack of timely monitoring of budget line and issues with tax form 1099 not being issued.
Rasor said most of the irregularities came from the athletic department, as was prompted from a Title IX review conducted prior to the audit. This process has been in progress for the last 16 months, according to Director of Curriculum and Assessment Chuck Culpepper.
- "It started out primarily as a Title IX pre-audit internally before we rolled into this year's audit," Culpepper said. "We tried to be real proactive, as we found issues, we tried to correct them before the actually showed up in the audit. The bulk of what was seen, was cleaned up before the auditor started in July or August."
Rasor said the school district has been working with the state on every issue found in the audit, with systems in place to correct most of the issues described.
- "The state had a bunch of issues, we are trying to do everything correctly," Rasor said. "They asked a lot of questions of a lot of people and we didn't hold anything back."
For sales out of the athletic store and concession stands, a point of sale system was established with every item sold containing a bar code for inventory management.
Hiring practices for game workers was moved to the Human Resources department with a process in place to make sure all hiring in identified areas is handled fairly.
"We don't like the findings, but we made sure the corrections are in place," Rasor said.
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Santa Fe/ EDITORIAL: 2 School Board Vacancies Offer Opportunity
The New Mexican
December 11, 2012
The news that two incumbent Santa Fe Board of Education members have decided not to run for re-election should be sending shock waves through town. More than most offices, a seat on the school board is close to the people and can impact our small corner of the world in greater ways than the political positions that attract much more attention.
The decision of Frank Montaņo and Barbara Gudwin to leave the board comes less than a week before filing deadline, which allows little time for potential challengers to step up and decide to run. Montaņo, current board president, has represented District 5 for two terms, while Gudwin, the secretary, won her District 3 seat in 2009. Both have served with integrity and distinction on the board.
What's more, the two board members have set an example of public service with graciousness. Despite being on the losing side in the decision to end former Superintendent Bobbie Gutierrez's contract early - the vote was 3-2 - both Montaņo and Gudwin searched for a new superintendent with good will and have been supporters of Superintendent Joel Boyd. In timing their leaves, both feel the district is on the right track. Replacing two stalwarts with equally capable and hard-working board members is important. The deadline to file a declaration of candidacy is Dec. 18, next Tuesday. Election day is Feb. 5, with the new officers taking over in March.
What is particularly troubling about losing both incumbents at once is the loss of institutional memory from the board - with a new superintendent and mostly new administrative team, having at least one board member who has served longer than one term is useful. Depending on who self-selects as a candidate, we could end up with a school board comprised entirely of people who never spent a day in a Santa Fe classroom, either.
Montaņo's history in Santa Fe, his experience with the City Council and his knowledge of the place and the people have proved valuable over the years. It's essential to have different points of view on a governing body - local, non-native, Anglo, Hispanic, professional, blue collar, parent, community member - and the board could use homegrown wisdom in the mix. At present, Montaņo is the only board member raised in Santa Fe. It also would be refreshing if someone young ran - a young parent, perhaps, or even a young professional who doesn't have children in school.
For would-be candidates, there's not much time to decide, but we would encourage people to jump in anyway. Volunteers especially - there are many able potential school board members on district committees or at the PTA level - should consider entering the race. The school system needs their talent and knowledge. Serving on the school board is a hard job, and one that takes time and dedication. But it is a place to truly make a difference in young people's lives. We would love to see spirited, issue-filled campaigns, fought by knowledgeable candidates who want to help in the work of improving education in Santa Fe.
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Washington DC/ Arne Duncan: How Do US Students Compare with Peers Around the World?
By Arne Duncan [US Secretary of Education]
Huffington Post
December 11, 2012
New international assessments of student performance in reading, math, and science provide both encouraging news about American students' progress and some sobering cautionary notes.
The encouraging news is that U.S. fourth grade students have made significant progress in reading and mathematics in the last five years. In fact, our fourth graders now rank among the world's leaders in reading literacy, and U.S. student achievement in math is now only surpassed, on average, in four countries.
Unfortunately, these signs of real progress are counterbalanced by the fact that learning gains in fourth grade are not being sustained through eighth grade-where mathematics and science achievement failed to measurably improve between 2007 and 2011.
Still, the progress of fourth graders is especially noteworthy because we see it on rigorous, internationally-benchmarked assessments that students take without any special test preparation, the TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) and PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study).
And unlike previous PISA assessments-the other major international assessment, which U.S. 15-year olds take-nine U.S. states voluntarily participated in TIMSS in 2011. For the first time, policymakers and parents now have data to gauge how academic performance in a significant subset of states compares with the U.S. as a whole, and with international competitors.
In 2006, the last time the PIRLS reading assessments were administered, a slew of countries and regions equaled or surpassed U.S. fourth graders in reading. Students in Hungary, Italy, Sweden, and the Canadian province of Alberta had higher levels of literacy than U.S. students.
Yet five years later, U.S. students are out-performing students in all of those nations and provinces. Education systems where students were on a par with U.S. fourth graders in reading literacy in 2006-Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, the Netherlands, and the Quebec region of Canada-have all been surpassed in the last five years by U.S. students.
Just as encouraging, students in highly-diverse states like Florida, Massachusetts, and North Carolina excelled internationally in a number of subject areas, suggesting that demography is not destiny in America's schools.
State and local policy turn out to matter a great deal-and can have a powerful influence in advancing or slowing educational progress. It is state and local leaders and educators who are providing the commitment, courage, collaboration, and capacity at the state and local level to accelerate achievement. It's no surprise that Florida, Massachusetts, and North Carolina all won competitive Race to the Top grants from the federal government.
Finally, the new TIMSS and PIRLS results put to rest, once and for all, the myth that America's schools cannot be among the world's top-performing school systems.
- In fact, eighth graders in Massachusetts performed below only one country in the world in science, Singapore.
- In Florida, the math skills of students are on a par with those of their Finnish peers, who have a record of being among the top-performing students in the world. And the reading skills of Florida's fourth-graders are on a par with those of the top-performing education systems in the world, too, including Finland and Singapore.
For all of the good news, the new TIMSS and PIRLS assessments also underscore the urgency of accelerating achievement in middle school and the pressing need to close large and persistent achievement gaps.
- To take one example, in 2011, white eighth graders scored 83 points higher in science on TIMSS than black students and 60 points higher than Hispanic students.
- To put those numbers in perspective, white eighth graders in the U.S. did about as well in science as Finland's and Japan's students, and were only surpassed by students in Singapore, Chinese Taipei, and Korea.
- By contrast, Hispanic eight graders' science scores were on a par with students from Norway and Kazakhstan.
- And black eighth graders' science scores were roughly equivalent to those of students from Iran, Romania, and the United Arab Emirates.
If education is to fulfill its essential role in America as the great equalizer, big achievement gaps and opportunity gaps must close-and all students must receive a world-class education that genuinely prepares them for colleges and careers in the 21st century. In America, educational opportunity cannot depend on the color of your skin, your zip code, or the size of your bank account.
Given the vital role that science, technology, engineering, and math play in stimulating innovation and economic growth, it is particularly troubling that eighth-grade science achievement has barely budged in the U.S. since 2007. Students in Singapore and Korea are far more likely today to perform at advanced levels in science than U.S. students.
In a knowledge-based economy, education is the new key to individual success and national prosperity. The results of the TIMSS and PIRLS assessments show both that our students are on the path to progress-and that we still have a long journey to go before all of America's children get an excellent education.
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Boston MA/ Giving Teachers More Power Helps in Schools' Turnaround
By Jackie Mader
Hechinger Report
December 11, 2012
Six low-performing Boston schools participating in a pilot program that gives teachers more training, support, and leadership roles are showing higher growth on state tests than other low-performing city schools according to a report released Monday by the non-profit Teach Plus.
- The T3 Initiative program, a collaboration between Boston Public Schools and Teach Plus, began training and placing groups of experienced teachers with track records of raising student test scores in a set of three failing schools in 2010, after a dozen city schools were deemed underperforming by the state in 2010 for chronically low test scores.
- The pilot expanded to three more schools the following year.
The report, an evaluation by Teach Plus of its own program, shows that:
- at the first three schools to use the program, the percentage of students earning advanced or proficient scores on their state tests increased by nearly 13 percentage points in English language arts on average over the course of two years, and
- 16.5 percentage points in math on average.
- The second group of schools saw similar growth at the middle and high school level over the course of one year.
In addition to training and hiring new teachers, the six schools in the T3 Initiative, provided health and wellness services for students, and intensive teacher professional development over the summer. Teach Plus teachers make up 25 percent of the school faculty at T3 schools, and serve in leadership roles to help other teachers improve.
Six other Boston turnaround schools did not participate in the T3 pilot, but did experiment with longer school days and staffing changes.
A report by The Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education found that:
- state-wide, less successful turnaround schools, including those not part of the T3 program, tended to provide more generic professional development, infrequent coaching and teacher support, and struggled to create a safe school environments.
- Test scores at those turnaround schools have remained relatively stagnant.
Among the T3 schools, the biggest gains were in the middle grades at Orchard Gardens K-8, which doubled the number of seventh graders scoring proficient in English and math over the course of one year.
- At the elementary schools participating in the program, growth has been high in math, but more moderate in English language arts.
- There was only a 0.3 percentage point increase on average in English language arts scores during the first year of the pilot.
- The elementary school that joined the program during the 2011-12 school year saw only 4 percentage points of growth, although
- math scores jumped by 18 percentage points.
The Teach Plus program is among several types of reforms that Boston has tried since the 12 city schools began receiving federal funding to undergo a turnaround process.
- Principals were replaced in five of the 12 failing schools, and staff members at six of the schools were asked to reapply for their positions, including three schools that participated in the T3 project.
- One school closed in 2011 as part of a massive school closure and consolidation plan intended to save the district more than $36 million.
- Nine of the remaining 11 schools extended their school day by an hour, and two added two hours.
Research suggests that school turnarounds are extremely difficult. Most schools in the federal School Improvement Program, which the Boston schools were a part of, made gains on test scores in the first year, but more than a third did worse after receiving federal funding to make improvements.
- "If we're going to make lasting change in our schools, we need to look to teachers to lead that change," said Boston Public Schools Superintendent Carol R. Johnson. "We're thrilled with the progress these schools are making."
Research has shown that teachers are the most important in-school factor that influences student achievement, yet inexperienced teachers are more common in urban and low-income schools.
A 2010 study commissioned by the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education found that during the course of two school years, half of Boston's public-school teachers were never evaluated, and a quarter of the city's schools didn't turn in teacher evaluations to the district.
Districts in Massachusetts have three years to turn around failing schools before they could face a state takeover.
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Baton Rouge LA/ 'Diplomas Now' Data-Based Model Turns Around Failing Broadmoor Middle School
Huffington Post Report
December 11, 2012
Broadmoor Middle School in Baton Rouge, La., had a 50 percent suspension rate three years ago, and one in four students there couldn't keep up on core subjects like English and math.
Now, the school is boasting top performers and drastically lower discipline rates.
In a number of districts, including in New York City, the country's largest, the turnaround strategy for a failing school is to overhaul its infrastructure by laying off teachers, replacing staff and sometimes closing it altogether.
But at Broadmoor, a data-based model called "Diplomas Now" kept the school intact while tracking student performance beyond traditional methods like student test scores, PBS reports.
- The system adds to the evaluation formula tardiness, unexcused absences and poor behavior, and
- academic and social care professionals periodically assess the collected data.
Now, Broadmoor's suspension rate has fallen to just 15 percent, and the failure rate has plummeted to 7 percent from its previous 25 percent.
Diplomas Now operates using $30 million in 2009 federal stimulus funds in 44 schools across the country. Program founder Robert Balfanz, of Johns Hopkins University, says the method allows educators to pinpoint how the students and schools are performing while improving attendance and behavior alongside academic achievement.
- "It's almost like insider trading for the social good," Balfanz told PBS.
Balfanz's work and research have been often cited in education reform efforts. His studies have suggested that there is a key period in middle school that determines whether a student will eventually drop out: If a sixth-grader in a high-poverty school attends school less than 80 percent of the time, fails math or English or receives an unsatisfactory behavior grade in a core course, there is a 75 percent chance he or she will drop out of high school.
- A student drops out of high school every 26 seconds in the U.S., and of the 3.8 million students that start high school this year, a quarter won't go on to receive a diploma.
Dropouts are not eligible for 90 percent of the jobs in our economy, contributing to a rising unemployment rate among young adults.
Students who don't finish high school will earn $200,000 less than those who do over their lifetimes, and $1 million less than a college graduate. In addition, dropouts cost taxpayers between $320 billion and $350 billion a year in lost wages, taxable income, health, welfare and incarceration costs, among others.
Balfanz tells PBS that of the 40 million Americans without a high school diploma, the majority come from a small group of about 5,000 schools - a pool that he aims to target just like Broadmoor.
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Berkeley CA/ Undocumented Student Scholarships: UC Berkeley Sets $1 Million Fund to Help Dreamers
By Aaron Sankin
Huffington Post
December 11, 2012
The University of California, Berkeley has announced the formation of a $1 million scholarship benefiting undocumented immigrant students, the largest such fund at any university in the country.
Established with a gift from the Evelyn and Water Haas Jr. Foundation, The Dreamers Fund will go toward helping some 200 students from 20 different countries when it goes into effect early next year.
- "We are committed to advancing rights and creating opportunities so that all people can live, work and raise their families with dignity," Haas Jr. Fund President Ira S. Hirschfield told NBC Bay Area. "These motivated, hardworking and inspiring students are an asset to our state and our country."
While undocumented students are eligible for in-state tuition, they are barred from receiving Pell grants, federal government loans or participating in work-study programs.
"I'm so grateful for this opportunity," Uriel Rivera, an undocumented UC Berkeley student who had drop out when his family was unable to keep up with tuition, told NBC Latino in a statement. "You're just not paying for a student to go to college, you are helping a whole community."
The $8,000 scholarship will be awarded to undocumented UC Berkeley students with at least a 3.0 GPA on the basis of need.
However, some students have been critical of the minimum GPA requirement.
"[Undocumented] students usually work two jobs and take care of family and have to deal with psychological distress, and getting 3.0 for...[undocumented] students is not easy," UC Berkeley senior Ju Hong explained to Berkeley's Daily Californian. "But the financial office mentioned that even if you don't have a 3.0 GPA, you are still encouraged to apply. So everyone has a chance to apply and receive $8,000 based on financial need."
The Dreamers Fund is named after the federal DREAM Act that would have granted conditional permanent residency to undocumented immigrants who came into the United States as young children if they completed two years of military service or higher education.
After congressional Republicans blocked efforts to pass the bill in 2011, President Barack Obama announced a similar program that would offer undocumented immigrants who would have qualified for the DREAM Act a path to residency.
Last year, California passed its own version of the DREAM Act, which made undocumented immigrants eligible to receive scholarships offered by individual state colleges and universities as well as the Cal Grants that subsidize tuition for low- and middle-income students.
It was only following the passage of this bill that the Haas Foundation was able to establish The Dreamers Fund.
This scholarship fund isn't the only recent development at UC Berkeley geared toward helping undocumented immigrants on campus.
- A $300,000 gift from Elise Haas is targeted for the construction of a special resource center for said students.
- Additionally, earlier this year, the university also hired its first undocumented student program coordinator to assist in navigating various aspects of university life.
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Yucaipa CA/ Students Learn Cell Phone App Programming
By Beau Yarbrough, Staff Writer
Denver Post
December 11, 2012
In a packed classroom at Yucaipa High School, more than 30 students have their cell phones out, and no one is getting in trouble for it.
"This is probably the only class on campus where (adults) won't scream if they have their phone out," teacher Mark Watkins said, looking out over one of his two sessions of cell phone app programming.
Yucaipa High may be the only high school in the nation offering a year-long course in programming the ubiquitous programs found in the pockets of billions of people around the world.
- "I've heard there are six-week seminars, after school or one-semester things. But as far as year-long things, I think we're it."
The class programs for the Android platform, as it's cheaper and easier to get started-the class does most of its work in the free App Inventor program built by MIT-but Watkins hopes they can expand to Apple's iOS platform, which runs on iPhones and iPads, in the spring.
The class brings together hardcore computer programmers with newbies who simply love their phones.
"We had almost 80 kids try to get in this class," Watkins said. "Their world revolves around their phones."
App Inventor uses object-oriented computing:
- Pre-built sections of computer code are represented as blocks the students assemble together to create a functioning program.
- Later in the year, Watkins intends to peel back the object-oriented computing model to give the newer programmers a deeper understanding of how programming works.
"I've got a couple kids who are a few miles down the road, a few that don't get it, and about 50 in the middle."
The class has built about 14 apps so far this year. At the moment, the class is working on creating a pachinko game-a Japanese game resembling pinball where steel balls drop from the top of the game and bounce off a set of pins. The pachinko projects range from simple affairs with white backgrounds and fitfully blinking pegs to more elaborate affairs depicting balls bouncing off Christmas tree ornaments or black spots on the surface of Jupiter.
"They've gone from touching a kitty on the screen and the kitty meows to having objects interact," he said. Soon, students will be incorporating GPS data into their apps.
Watkins has been teaching computer science since 1997. This isn't the first time he's expanded the school's computer science curriculum: The district previously supported his idea of starting up a 3D graphics class. The class went on to become a standard part of the computer science curriculum at Yucaipa High.
Adding an app development class was a no-brainer, he said.
"I kept seeing the world being more and more app-driven."
While many of his students are just in it for the fun of it, others are aware of the commercial possibilities of selling their own apps.
"I want a career in the field," said senior Dominic Champion-Stucker. He's already built an app to help his fellow Thunderbirds get to class on time.
"The bell schedule is really iffy here. I basically made this for myself."
An experienced programmer, Champion-Stucker intends to major in computer science in college.
"I've never worked with apps before, so it's been useful," he said.
Senior Tim McDowell has an entrepreneurial streak already-he operates a mobile electronic device repair business and carries business cards in his wallet.
"I figure I might as well learn the basics here and go on from there."
His dream job: working for Apple.
"Heed my warning," Watkins calls out as the bell rings and students file out for their next classes. "Pass your other classes-this is the elective they take you out of."
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