PSFA Daily News Digest

14 December 2012

www.nmpsfa.org 

Barbara Riley, Editor  ·  Email:  newsdigest@nmpsfa.org 

ABQ/ Mixed Messages on Continuing Waiver on School Class-Size Cap

By Hailey Heinz [Staff writer Elaine D. Briseño contributed to this report]

ABQ Journal Staff Writer

December 14, 2012  

Legislators meeting with Albuquerque Public Schools staff and students heard competing messages Wednesday night about whether to continue allowing class sizes to exceed state caps.

On one hand, APS Chief Financial Officer Don Moya told lawmakers it would cost APS $18 million in additional teacher salaries if the district lost its waiver and had to cut class sizes.

But on the other, high school students spoke about the stress of having up to 40 students in their classes.

• "As a student, being in an environment with overloaded classes is really difficult," said Del Norte High School student Corinne Foskey.
• "Especially within my AP courses, trying to teach the material that's already difficult to 40 students in an AP government class, it is nearly impossible to get the kind of depth of information that we're supposed to know."
• Other students added that large classes also make it harder for teachers to control disruptive students.

Moya joked that the students' comments made the case for decreasing class size, even as he made a budgetary case for keeping them larger.

• "So, it's occurred to me that we probably made the argument for you, of why you shouldn't extend the class size waiver as a Legislature," Moya said. He added that if lawmakers decide not to extend class size waivers, APS will need to hire about 320 teachers, and will need more funding.

For the past several years, New Mexico school districts have been eligible for waivers that allow them to exceed state class size caps. APS has had a 7 percent waiver.

• At the elementary level, 7 percent amounts to one or two students per classroom.
• The waivers are more pronounced in secondary schools, where state law caps the total number of students that can be on a teacher's daily classload.
• For high schools, the maximum is 160 students, which is increased to 171 students with a 7 percent waiver.

APS is not the only district considering class size.

• Rio Rancho Public Schools has placed the issue on its list of legislative priorities. During a school board discussion Monday, administrators said they do not like larger classes, but it's the best solution at this time. RRPS spokeswoman Kim Vesely said Thursday if the waiver were not renewed, they would have to hire "a lot more teachers."

"The remedy for large class sizes, of course, is more teachers," she said. "Without significant additional funding, it could be a challenge for school districts in general."

At APS' annual dinner with the Albuquerque legislative delegation, legislators voiced varied opinions on the issue.

• Sen.-elect Jacob Candelaria, D-Albuquerque, said past legislatures have set the class size limits, and the current Legislature has a responsibility to fund them appropriately. He said considering the high cost, the Legislature might want to compromise and require smaller classes in the early grades, while allowing waivers for older students.

"Going door to door in my district, most people talked about education, and the No. 1 thing I probably heard from parents was, 'There are too many kids in our West Side schools in the classrooms,' - that serious concern that their kids were just not getting the attention they deserved," Candelaria said. "I would definitely be open to a conversation about this issue in session."

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ABQ/ Native American Head Start Program Receives $820,000 Federal Funding

The Associated Press

Alamogordo Daily News

December 14, 2012

An Albuquerque organization will receive more than $820,000 from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for its Early Head Start program.

Native American Professional Parent Resources serves more than 70 families, including expectant moms and families with infants and toddlers. The funds will be used to expand its services.

U.S. Sen. Tom Udall announced the funding this week. The New Mexico Democrat says most families living in poverty have difficulty accessing resources to support their children's development.

Early Head Start is a federally funded program for low-income families. Its mission is to promote healthy prenatal outcomes for pregnant women, promote functioning families and bolster the development of young children.

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Raton/ School Board Seeks Training to Resolve Problems; Proposed Staff Policies Draw Teacher Concerns

By Bob Morris, Staff Writer

Raton Range

December 14, 2012

The Raton school board will be seeking training from the Cuddy Law Firm - which gives legal advice to school districts - to help board members be clear on what their duties entail.

The board unanimously approved such training at its Monday meeting. The decision comes a month after a meeting never got underway - aside from the passing of resolutions related to the upcoming board election in February - after no second was made on a motion to approve the November meeting agenda. During that meeting, board member Anne Litchfield was absent.

Board member Art Armijo had originally requested the training during the summer but his request failed on a 3-2 vote. But during Monday's meeting, on which the item again came up for consideration, Litchfield said she felt it was now necessary.

• "Originally, I was against it because I didn't want to spend $1,300 trying to get training," Litchfield said, "but after the last couple of months, I have changed my tune. We need to have board training."

During Monday's meeting, several board members discussed a letter to the editor that board members Armijo and Art Salazar submitted to The Range, which appeared in the Dec. 7 edition.

Board member Michael Anne Holland said she was "tired of the board being in the condition it is in." She said some of the issues Armijo and Salazar raised had been addressed, such as an issue regarding reimbursement board President Sheila Castellini requested when attending board training.

Litchfield specifically addressed that issue, saying she was unable to put expenses for board training on her own credit card and that Castellini "was kind enough to put on hers." She admitted a mistake was made in the reimbursement process, but that school business manager Erlene Bradley addressed it.

Holland addressed Armijo and Salazar, mentioning that Armijo had indicated in the past that he would attend "several district meetings" for to the New Mexico School Boards Association and "you never do," noting that the district still had to pay Armijo's registration fee for the meeting.

She added that Salazar had spoken to her about not getting chances to make motions or seconds "and you never do." "I think you have a power struggle with Sheila," Holland told Salazar.

Armijo asked to clarify Holland's remarks, saying that, with regards to not attending the NMSBA district meetings, that "in my job, emergencies come up and sometimes I can't answer the phone, even when there is a call from my family." He said he "didn't think the $15 was a big issue," but added that he has not claimed mileage when attending NMSBA trainings and "I usually pay my own" as his means of giving back to the district.

Salazar said his concern is that "there is a proper protocol that board members are responsible for" and that he did not believe that "micromanaging" was an improper way to run the district.

"Many of these issues came about because of people wanting to control and micromanage," Salazar said. "Micromanagement is not what we are elected to do."

Litchfield noted that she has only been on the board for nearly two years and "since all of this finger pointing came up, half the time I have to question what you are all talking about."

Litchfield said that "I can get worked up during meetings" but that it was important for everyone to remember that the board members are there to serve the students, staff and everyone else who is part of the schools.

"Maybe we need to all put aside needing to be in control, work together as a board and help Mr. [Superintendent David] Willden run this district," she said.

Litchfield then addressed school staff members in attendance, saying that "as a board, we need to look at you all, put the past in the past and move forward for the kids. If (the board) requires more training, then fine, but I think more of this is about personalities." She said she hoped board members, when dissenting on issues could "agree to disagree."

Castellini told those in attendance she had not read the letter Armijo and Salazar had submitted to The Range and would not comment on it.

Also during the meeting, a number of teachers expressed concerns regarding several policies pertaining to employee benefits that the Raton school board was considering for the first of two readings - two which were pulled from the agenda.

• The two items removed from the agenda were regarding a professional learning community and sick leave. Castellini addressed those in attendance prior to the agenda's approval, saying she would ask those items be removed.
• She told those in attendance that "I asked for these items to be placed on the agenda because the accumulated sick leave adds up to a large sum of money and this sum has to be counted in our financial statements as a district.
•  The professional leave item has to do with trying to keep our staff in the classroom as much as possible with our students."

She added that, with the items being removed from the agenda, that she would suggest Superintendent Willden "convene a work group to make suggestions to the board on sick leave during the budget process that will help the bottom line and help increase the morale of our staff."

Teacher Sue Holland, the president of Raton-National Education Association, addressed the board about those policies as well as another policy regarding bereavement leave, or when staff take time off because of a death in the family.

• The bereavement policy originally stated that staff could have up to three days of such leave, and could have two extra days at the discretion of the superintendent, with those days coming out of sick leave.
• "The employees in the school district have family all over the United States," Holland said. "Does the current policy take into account for travel time and how about per occurrence?"

Willden told those in attendance that the new policy put in place, when the board has passed an updated policy manual, changed the policy to read that any bereavement would come out of sick leave, but suggested it be changed to say that up to five days may be granted and none would come of sick leave. Litchfield suggested Willden implement that into a revised policy.

Other discussion centered around a policy regarding time clocks, which are used by substitute teachers and some classified employees.

• Teachers have started using them when they check into the building each day, but concerns arose about teachers having to use them every time they check in or out, given that teachers receive set salaries.
• Castellini said other districts used time clocks, while others did not, but she was simply looking for consistency among the schools in the district because it varied among the schools as to how teachers were directed to use them.
• Willden said he disagreed with the policy because "the jobs are different at different levels (of schools)." He said how close teachers are to the time clocks "differs from building to building" and that teachers who work with students after school in any capacity might not have easy access to the main office once those activities are completed.

Litchfield said her main concern was "safety," saying that the time clocks allowed for administrators to account for any staff who might not be at the building when an emergency occurs.

Teacher Frances Malano said she felt the policy put too much restriction on staff members. She said she is "really good about letting the secretary know" when she has to leave the building and did not understand why there was a need for time clocks.

"To further impose other restrictions, I find it a violation of privacy and not trusting us," Malano said.

When the agenda was up for approval, Salazar had made a motion to remove the time clocks policy from the agenda, with Armijo seconding, but the motion failed 3-2. When the item was discussed, Salazar said he did not feel time clocks were necessary because "salaried people don't need to check in or out" and that if any issues arose with staff members arriving late or failing to notify somebody when they must leave the building, those matters should be addressed individually.

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ABQ/ EDITORIAL: Why Education Reform Must Continue Forward

By ABQ Journal

December 14, 2012  

Less than half of fourth-graders nationwide know what the words "flourish" and "prestigious" mean, according to the latest results from the country's only national standardized test.

It gets worse if you're trying to flourish as a student in New Mexico and carve out a prestigious academic career. The National Assessment of Educational Progress results put New Mexico's fourth-graders dead last among the 50 states in vocabulary skills; they rank N.M.'s eighth-graders fifth from the bottom.

And because this test is taken by a sample of students in every state, there can be no rationalizing the dismal showing by saying New Mexico's test is harder because its standards are so much higher. Or that the results can be explained away by New Mexico's poverty and high number of minority students.

Alabama and West Virginia, for example, have similar poverty rates, and their fourth-graders were at the national average. Like New Mexico, Texas is a minority-majority state, and less than 60 percent of Florida's population is made up of non-Hispanic whites, yet those eighth-graders were at the national average.

So forget the education establishment's usual litany of excuses. New Mexico earned its last place, and 45th place, fair and square.

And that does not bode well for the economic future of the Land of Enchantment.

But it should fuel arguments against the state's education status quo as well as for real progress on education reform.

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Santa Fe/ LETTER: Professional Development for Teachers Doesn't Have to Require Absences

By Ferdi Serim, Santa Fe

The New Mexican

December 13, 2012

Santa Fe has the opportunity to increase teachers' professional learning while reducing teachers' time out of class. How?

By taking advantage of blended models that use online learning to provide truly job-embedded professional development (JEPD). JEPD takes place in the classroom, in real time, with teachers' current students, and is centered on issues of actual practice.

Extensive research shows that changes in classroom practice tied to improved student results only come with PD that exceeds 49 hours per year. This doesn't have to mean seven additional teacher absences, as most of the "course work" can happen outside of class.

The New Mexico Society for Technology in Education (NMSTE) is collaborating with educators nationwide in developing programs like the Leading Edge Certifications that successfully use these models. Now is the time to apply creative problem solving and bring these benefits into our schools.

We're ready to help!

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Washington DC/ Federal Attention on ELL Needs Seen to Wane

A diminished clearinghouse, a leaderless office, and a department reshuffling have advocates worried

By Lesli A. Maxwell

Education Week, Vol. 32, Issue 14  [Edweek.org]

December 12, 2012

As the number of English learners continues to grow faster than that of any other group in the nation's public schools, concerns are mounting that the distinctive needs of those students and the educators who work with them are receiving diminishing attention from the U.S. Department of Education.

Even as the federal government spends roughly $750 million a year to help educate a population that's grown to be one out of every 10 students, the department's Office of English-Language Acquisition, or OELA, has seen its clout steadily shrink.

• In mid-October, the office lost its director, Rosalinda B. Barrera, who was appointed in August 2010 and became the first permanent political appointee in that post since 2008.
• The department did not publicize her departure, and no one has been named to replace her.

Before Ms. Barrera stepped down, OELA decided not to renew a $2 million annual contract long held by George Washington University to manage the National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition, or NCELA.

• The office did not explain why it did not renew the contract, and early in the summer, it launched a new competition for the clearinghouse.
• In late September, OELA awarded the contract to LEED Management Consulting Inc., a year-old company in Silver Spring, Md.
• But after complaints about the process, including the final selection, the Education Department is "re-evaluating" all the proposals.

It's unclear what work is currently being done on behalf of NCELA, which Congress created to serve as the go-to source of information for state and local administrators on research, instructional strategies, and data on English-learners.

And four years after then-U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings moved authority over nearly all Title III funds-the formula aid allocated to states and districts for English-language-acquisition programs-from OELA to the department's elementary and secondary education office, several state and local officials said in interviews that they get less technical assistance and support to help meet the needs of ELLs and adhere to the relevant federal rules.

• "There is a great need and role for the clearinghouse and the resources it is supposed to provide, especially because there is so much turnover at the state and district level when it comes to administrators working on Title III and English-learner issues," said David J. Holbrook, the director of federal programs for the Wyoming education department and the president of the National Council of State Title III Directors.
• "They are supposed to be a source for what works and what doesn't work for English-language learners," he said of NCELA. "But I think what is going on with NCELA is a symptom of a larger problem."

All this comes as a separate arm of the federal department, the Office for Civil Rights, has ramped up scrutiny of the instructional services that states and districts are providing English-learners.

The department did not respond to specific criticisms, but a spokeswoman said it has "raised the bar on support and standards" for ELLs.

• "Whether through targeted, ongoing technical assistance, or new requirements to provide specialized professional development for [ELL] educators and college- and career-ready resources for [ELLs], our department is committed to continually providing smarter, better support to all [ELL] students," said spokeswoman Elizabeth Utrup in a statement.

Opportunities Ahead?

Raúl Gonzalez, the director of legislative affairs for the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic-advocacy group in Washington, said ELL issues have not been front and center in the Education Department in President Barack Obama's first term because officials have been focused on major initiatives such as the Race to the Top grant program and No Child Left Behind Act waivers.

He noted that it wasn't until President George W. Bush's second term that ELLs received more attention from the department, and he suggested that could be the case with President Obama.

"I think there's an opportunity in the second term to engage the department more intensely on English-learner issues," Mr. Gonzalez said.

Complaints about the department's lack of attention to English-learners are not new, especially since OELA lost most of its Title III authority.

• That restructuring-which left the office mainly responsible for NCELA and about $50 million in grants for professional development and programs for Native American and Alaska Native students-was opposed by several education groups.
• They worried that ELL issues would be lumped in with those of disadvantaged students covered under Title I of the NCLB law, the current version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

The Education Department's rationale was that combining oversight of both federal programs would provide better coordination for states and districts.

• Some educators and advocates thought the merging of the two programs-with the $14.5 billion Title I dwarfing Title III's $750 million in funding-could bring more prominence to ELLs.
• But an ongoing concern among several state and local directors of ELL programs is that splitting responsibility for Title III weakened the office where much of the expertise on English-language acquisition resides and has put a strain on the Title III monitors, who some state officials have said are increasingly tasked with responsibilities outside the section of the law specific to ELLs.

Hispanic and civil rights advocacy groups have urged U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to return the oversight of Title III to OELA since he took office, and, more recently, they asked him to put OELA on the front lines of major policy and oversight activity that affects English-learners, including states' implementation of NCLB waivers.

• In a September 2011 letter to Mr. Duncan about the waivers, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of 210 national groups, wrote that OELA should "play a greater role in monitoring and oversight of any waivers tied to Title III or Title I obligations that apply to ELL students. Underutilizing OELA and limiting the authority of the office is unacceptable."
• And in a meeting with Mr. Duncan earlier this year, members of the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda, an association of national groups, told the secretary that the issues OELA is focused on "appear to not make the forefront of the department's decisions and rollouts," according to a copy of discussion points from the Jan. 24 meeting.
• The group asked Mr. Duncan to return the Title III monitors to OELA and to elevate the OELA director's position to be "part of the secretary's management and policy-development team."

As the influence of OELA waned, some say the clearinghouse became less useful.

"When I first moved from being a district director to a state Title III supervisor, NCELA was really useful for summarizing research relevant to teaching English-learners and for learning about instructional strategies, parent outreach, and other best practices," said Cathy M. Nelson, a Title III/ELL specialist for the Maryland education department since 2009.

Ms. Nelson said she noticed a drop-off in resources from NCELA after her first year, including the demise of an online forum where she and her peers could ask questions and seek advice from one another and from the NCELA team.

Statutory Origins

The national clearinghouse was created more than 40 years ago as the National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education.

• The name changed with the 11-year-old No Child Left Behind Act, which created Title III and sharpened the federal government's focus on holding schools accountable for ensuring that ELLs would become both proficient in English and learn academic content.
• Under federal law, NCELA is supposed to "collect, analyze, synthesize, and disseminate information" about language instruction and research on English-learners through its website, written reports, face-to-face contact, and electronic media.
• For most of its existence, NCELA has been managed by a team of researchers and consultants at the education school of George Washington University, in Washington.

Kathleen Leos, who was the director of OELA under the second President Bush from 2005 to 2007, said she worked closely with the NCELA team to convene regular national meetings for Title III directors and produce and share resources with them.

"NCELA was truly an extension of the workload in our office," Ms. Leos said. "We were dealing with a brand-new law and a shift to formula grants that required all new regulations, so we couldn't have done it without them."

But the relationship between OELA and NCELA has weakened in recent years, according to Judith Wilde, who was the director of NCELA from 2009 until last September.

• Three years ago, at OELA's request, the clearinghouse held 15 webinars for ELL administrators on important topics, she said.
• The next year, there were roughly a dozen.
• The number dwindled to six in 2011, and
•  in 2012, there have been just three, Ms. Wilde said.
• A fourth webinar, on grant programs for Native American and Alaska Native students, was planned for Dec. 19.

The last major initiative NCELA worked closely on with OELA was a series of "national conversations" in 2011 that Ms. Barrera spearheaded in six states with large numbers of English-learners, Ms. Wilde said. At the conclusion of the events, OELA staff members took responsibility for writing a report for the field rather than assigning NCELA to do so, a task that would have been within the scope of its duties, Ms. Wilde said.

Late in 2011, OELA officials released a request for information that signaled to the team at George Washington that its contract would not continue. In June, the office released a formal request for potential contractors to submit proposals to manage the clearinghouse project.

The most notable change was the Education Department's specification that the potential prime contractors be small businesses with staff members who would account for at least half the labor called for in the contract.

Bidders Confused

From the outset, the competition sparked questions from potential bidders over the specifics of the project, including the precise size of a small business that would be considered eligible to compete.

• One bidder, a Washington-based company called edCount, first protested the department's decision to consider proposals from two different categories of small business, a decision that the firm contended violated federal contracting law that says, in most cases, only a single category be considered, according to documents filed with the federal Small Business Administration. The SBA hearing officer agreed.

The Education Department conceded the mistake; clarified that only businesses with a three-year average revenue of less than $7 million would be considered; and extended the deadline for bids.

The SBA rejected an attempt by a larger business, Synergy Enterprises Inc., of Silver Spring, Md., to still be allowed to bid.

After those hiccups, the department announced in September that the contract had been awarded to LEED Management Consulting.

In a protest filed with the U.S. Government Accountability Office, edCount contended that LEED Management, as the primary contractor, had not demonstrated enough expertise on English-learners to run NCELA and would be too reliant on its subcontractors, including the widely respected Center for Applied Linguistics.

The GAO dismissed edCount's protest, but the Education Department wrote to the congressional watchdog agency, saying it would take "corrective action" and re-evaluate all the proposals for NCELA within 80 days, according to documents filed with the GAO.

Daren Briscoe, a spokesman for the Education Department, said he couldn't comment on the NCELA contract.

For Title III directors like Mr. Holbrook of Wyoming and Ms. Nelson of Maryland, meanwhile, finding other sources of technical assistance and advice has become necessary.

• Ms. Nelson said she relies on World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment, a 31-state consortium that Maryland belongs to, for the latest information on best practices and important issues facing the field, such as recently updated English-language proficiency standards that link to the new common-core standards.
• Mr. Holbrook, the president of the state Title III directors' group, said a meeting convened in October in Washington by his group provided vital information to the field, including updates from the U.S. Department of Justice and the Education Department's civil rights office, as well as briefings from congressional staff members.

Title III monitors from the office of elementary and secondary education also participated, he said.

"We, as an organization, are going to be pushing for more support," Mr. Holbrook said. "The success of these students is important."

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Washington DC/ NAEP: School Absences Translate to Lower Test Scores

Minutes spent on homework on the rise

By Sarah D. Sparks

Education Week, Vol. 32, Issue 14  [Edweek.org]

December 12, 2012

Missing even a few days of school seems to make a difference in whether 8th graders perform at the top of their game, according to a new analysis of results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

The report, the first of a planned series of analyses of NAEP's background-survey data, looks at how 4th and 8th graders use existing school time, including their attendance, instructional time, and homework.

It was previewed here at a Nov. 29 meeting of the National Assessment Governing Board, which sets policy for NAEP.

The study found that instructional time in reading, math, music, and the visual arts is on the rise nationwide, and that teachers are expecting more homework from their middle school students. As schools ramp up their academic focus, however, the analysis shows the cost of missing school may be greater.

• 56 percent of 8th graders who performed at the advanced level in NAEP reading in 2011 had perfect attendance in the month before the test,
• compared with only 39 percent of students who performed below the basic level.

In comparison, nearly one in five 8th graders at the basic level and more than one in four below basic in reading had missed three or more days in the past month, according to Alan L. Ginsburg, a research consultant for the governing board and a co-author of the report with Naomi Chudowsky of Caldera Research in Bend, Ore.

• "Three days, if you multiply that out by nine months, is five weeks a year," Mr. Ginsburg said. "You've got more than a quarter of the below-basic kids who are going to miss five weeks of school a year or more," he said, noting that only 8 percent of students at the advanced level had missed that much school. "That, to me, would be something that if you are a chief state school officer or a superintendent, you might worry about."
• The analysis contributes to mounting evidence that absenteeism puts students at greater risk of poor academic achievement and eventually dropping out of high school.
• "For those of us in schools, this reflects what we've been saying all along: In order to advance, in order to learn, you have to be there," said Doris Hicks, a governing board member and the principal and chief executive officer of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School for Science and Technology, in New Orleans.

Low Performers

Academic expectations seem to be increasing for middle school students both in school and at home, the researchers found. But the bulk of the additional instructional time happened before the 2001 passage of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, with its new demands for academic progress, and the students who most needed extra time weren't always the ones to get it.

• Teachers reported that from 1996 to 2000, 18 percent of 8th graders moved from having less than four hours of mathematics instruction each week to four or more hours a week, and from 2005 to 2011,
• another 6 percent of students started receiving five or more hours of math each week.

While 8th graders performing at or below basic in math on the 2011 NAEP were more likely than advanced students to receive seven hours of math instruction a week or more, the researchers found that more than half of 8th graders performing below basic in math received less than an hour of math each day on average.

"To me, this is [about] opportunity to learn," Mr. Ginsburg said. "Are the kids getting the amount of instruction they need to succeed?

"At grade 8, pre-algebra, where we have most kids getting less than an hour a day on average," he said, "does that make sense? ... You have a group of kids who are below basic, who are in need of help, and they are getting less than an hour a day of instruction."

Some educators have voiced concern that extending math and reading instructional time could crowd out other subjects, but the researchers actually found a slight increase in arts instruction in middle school.

• 57 percent of 8th graders had music instruction three or more times a week in 2008, up from 49 percent in 1994.
• During the same time, 47 percent of 8th graders had visual arts at least three times a week, 5 percentage points higher than in 1994.

Moreover, the analysis found that teachers are expecting students to do more work outside of class to bolster their class time.

• From 1996 to 2011, the percentage of 8th graders assigned an hour or more of math homework each night rose more than fourfold, from 4 percent to 17 percent.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan last week called for more expanded school days and years. But the NAEP background questionnaire does not include questions on school length, so researchers were not able to include such data in the report.

The assessment governing board has also released an analysis of charter school attendance and achievement, and it is planning as many as a dozen reports intended to "develop a portrait of American education."

"You're raising questions with this data for the field that I think will be very useful," Mr. Ginsburg said.

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Washington DC/ Policies Proposed, Change Demanded to End 'School-to-Prison Pipeline'

By Nirvi Shah

Education Week [Edweek.org]

December 13, 2012

At a U.S. Senate hearing Wednesday about ending the 'school-to-prison pipeline,' leaders in the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice said they expect to provide guidance to schools about school discipline policies, a measure that would add to the growing list of actions the current administration has taken in this arena.

When pressed, Melodee Hanes, acting administrator of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, told U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., that the direction from the agencies would be available in the next few months.

Durbin, chairman of the judiciary committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights, convened the hearing on ending the school-to-prison pipeline-a collection of actions that lead to students' arrest for school-based actions, which often has the long-term effect of derailing students' academic careers. For some, it leads to criminal behavior in adulthood, and the practices disproportionately affect minorities, students with disabilities, and students who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender.

• "The current system puts kids on a path into the adult justice system for minor infractions," Durbin said. "I hope today's hearing can initiate reforms to better discipline our students without forcing them out of the classroom and into a courtroom."

Hanes and Deborah Delisle, the assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education at the U.S. Department of Education, hinted at what their policy guidance may include. Delisle's written testimony included references to providing teachers and administrators appropriate alternatives to out-of-school suspension and expulsion, an over-reliance upon which can indicate problems in the school environment that are going unaddressed.

• "We must build school capacity to maintain a positive school climate and support students by drawing from evidence-based practices," Delisle's testimony reads. "We must encourage states, schools, and communities to rethink school discipline policies and develop equitable and appropriate codes of conduct."

She specifically mentioned

• a Missouri school's adoption of a behavior-management approach called Positive Behavioral Intervention and Supports and
• Colorado's efforts to reform school discipline policies, which began with the state legislature convening a task force of stakeholders.

Delisle and Hanes referenced a report that studied about 1 million Texas students as they moved from 7th through 12th grades and found that

• about half were suspended or expelled at least once in that time.
• Students disciplined repeatedly, the study found, were far more likely to come in contact with the juvenile justice system than peers who weren't suspended or expelled.
• The volume of suspensions, they said, is not an indicator of school safety, Delisle said. Nor does the punishment address students' underlying behavior.

The increase in suspensions has been accompanied by an increase in police presence at schools that leads to student arrests, in many cases, Judith Browne Dianis, a co-director of the Washington-based Advancement Project, told senators.

• "Police are arresting students for behavior like talking back, which becomes disorderly conduct, or writing on desks-that's called vandalism," she said.

Hanes added that "We don't want to demonize school resource officers," but "we do want to see the best practices used and the best discipline practices."

What could some of those best practices look like? Consider this scenario.

• A student at one Georgia high school was behaving violently, throwing chairs at a teacher, said Steven Teske, the chief judge in the juvenile court of Clayton County, Ga. Teske has worked with law enforcement and the school system on reducing the traffic to his courtroom, including through crisis-management training for school police officers.

"There was no doubt she has to be removed from the classroom," Teske said, but instead of handcuffing her, the officer led the student out of the class and talked with her for about two hours, helping her calm down. The student eventually broke down.

"She confessed her mom's live-in boyfriend has been raping her every week," Teske said. The girl was taken into protective custody and the boyfriend arrested.

The training works in another way, too. Instead of living in fear of police stationed at schools because of constant arrests and handcuffing, officers become another adult with whom students can form relationships.

"Students shared information. Police intelligence increased. School disruption decreased, including weapons on campus. Graduation rates increased 24 percent," he said. "The Clayton experience is not novel. We may have been a pioneer in dismantling this pipeline. We're not alone."

Possible Solutions:

The litany of speakers Wednesday outlined a number of proposals or recounted action they are already undertaking to address the school-to-prison pipeline. Among them:

• The federal Education Department, through the office of vocational and adult education, is developing a comprehensive strategy that addresses the quality of educational services in juvenile facilities and reentry of youth from prisons into the community;
• The federal Education and Justice Departments, through the Supportive School Discipline Initiative, are encouraging effective disciplinary practices, collaborating on research that informs this work, and developing the policy guidance that senators seized upon
• The Justice Department has investigated the conduct of police in arresting children for school-based offenses and whether officers involved in juvenile justice are complying with young people's due process rights
• Ohio instituted a program called RECLAIM-Reasoned and Equitable Community and Local Alternatives to the Incarceration of Minors, Ohio Attorney General Michael DeWine said. This empowers juvenile court judges to use more community-based options and keep students close to home or school and out of prison. Felony commitments and the state Department of Youth Services population have dropped by about 75 percent over the past few decades, and the state has saved money once spent on youth incarceration;
• Districts and states that have addressed the pipeline have done so by limiting the use of out-of-school suspensions and referrals to law enforcement, Dianis said. Schools in Denver and Philadelphia have adopted a range of consequences instead of defaulting to suspension. Suspensions should be limited and in-school suspension should be used instead of out-of-school suspension. Offenses should be defined narrowly;
• A number of speakers referenced the use of positive behavioral interventions and supports, or PBIS, and restorative justice;
• At Orr Academy High in Chicago, the school instituted peer juries to mete out punishment, said Edward Ward, a sophomore at DePaul University who graduated from Orr two years ago. The premise was solid, but administrative turnover hampered the effort. "Students were actually understanding each other. They were working together to restore relationships that were almost destroyed between them. This effort has provided a safer school environment in which students and staff can work together as a unified body," he wrote in prepared remarks to the Senate subcommittee. "A suspension could never do that.";
• Vigorous, consistent enforcement of the code of conduct, detentions for small transgressions and in-school suspensions for more serious ones work at schools, Andrew J. Coulson, director of the Cato Institute Center for Educational Freedom has found. He also encouraged Congress to expand programs favored by the institute such as the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, noting that students using the voucher program graduate at a higher rate than other Washington students. He encouraged lawmakers not to institute new regulations and programs "that would impede states' efforts to bring safe, responsive, independent schools within reach of all children."

Congress Poised to Act?

Many in attendance seemed pleased by the senators' inquiries and the generally consistent message of the speakers-that the problem is pervasive but not unsolvable.

All the local and state efforts outlined by speakers signal that it's time for federal action, said Matthew Cregor, the assistant counsel of the education practice at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund in New York City.

• Several pieces of legislation already have been proposed, he said, including Virginia Rep. Bobby Scott's Youth PROMISE Act. The Democratic congressman and Rep. Danny Davis,D-Ill., also spoke Wednesday.
• The Youth PROMISE Act would provide grants to communities facing the greatest youth gang and crime challenges that would pay for a comprehensive response to youth violence through a coordinated prevention-and-intervention approach.

Jerri Katzerman, deputy legal director for the Southern Poverty Law Center, said she was watching senators' faces closely during the hearing.

"They were looking for answers," she said. "What can they do on the Hill? That's where we're headed."

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New York NY/ COLUMN: In Ignorance We Trust

By Timothy Egan [Egan worked for The Times for 18 years - as Pacific Northwest correspondent and a national enterprise reporter. In 2001, he was part of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team that wrote the series "How Race Is Lived in America." He is the author of several books, including "The Worst Hard Time," a history of the Dust Bowl, for which he won the National Book Award, and most recently, "The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America."]

New York Times

December 13, 2012

A packet of letters arrived the other day from the honors English class at St. Lawrence School in Brasher Falls, N.Y. Snail mail, from high school sophomores? Yes, and honest, witty and insightful snail mail at that. They had been forced to read a book of mine.

"Personally, I don't like reading about history or learning about it," wrote one student, setting the tone for the rest of the class.

"The Dust Bowl? Really?" So began another missive. "When we heard we were reading your book...heads dropped. Let me rephrase that, heads fell to the floor and rolled down the hallway."

You get the drift: history is a brain freeze. And, writers of history, well, there's a special place with the already-chewed gum in nerd camp for them. But as I read through the letters I was cheered. Some of the last survivors of the American Dust Bowl were high school sophomores when they were hit with the nation's worst prolonged environmental disaster. In that 1930s story of gritty resilience, the Brasher Falls kids of 2012 found a fresh way to look at their own lives and this planet.

History is always utilitarian, and often entertaining. It stirs the blood of any lover of the past to see Steven Spielberg's majestic "Lincoln" - at its core, a drama about politicians with ZZ Top beards writing legislation - crush the usual soulless, computer-generated distractions at the box office.

But history, the formal teaching and telling of it, has never been more troubled. Two forces, one driven by bottom-line educators answering to corporate demands to phase out the liberal arts, the other coming from the circular firing squad of academics who loathe popular histories, have done much to marginalize our shared narratives.

David McCullough, the snowy-headed author and occasional national scold, says we are raising a generation of Americans who are historically illiterate. He cites Harry Truman's line that the only new thing in the world is the history you don't know. And today, in part by design, there's a lot of know-nothingness throughout the land. Only 12 percent of high school seniors are "at or above proficient" in American history, which, of course, doesn't mean they're stupid.

For knuckleheaded refinement look to the state of Florida, a breeder of bad ideas from its dangerous gun laws to its deliberate attempts to make it hard for citizens to vote. Gov. Rick Scott's task force on higher education is now suggesting that college students with business-friendly majors pay less tuition than those in traditional liberal arts fields.

"You know, we don't need a lot of anthropologists in this state," the governor said in October. "I want to spend our dollars giving people science, technology, engineering and math degrees. That's what our kids need to focus all their time and attention on."

Notice he said "all." If the governor, who's been trying to run Florida like a corporation, had applied the skills of the liberal arts, his approval rating might be higher than 38 percent. Any anthropologist could tell Scott how he misread human behavior in the Sunshine State.

It's fine to encourage society to crank out more engineers, computer technicians and health care specialists. We need them. But do we really want to discourage people from trying to understand where they came from? The Florida proposals would enshrine the unexamined life.

This is but one byproduct of the rage among educators to use math and science like a stick against history, literature, art or philosophy.

And yet, as McCullough has said, the keepers of academic gates in these fields are their own worst enemies. Too many history books are boring, badly written and jargon-weighted with politically correct nonsense. There are certainly exceptions among the authors - the witty Patricia Limerick at the University of Colorado, for example, or the prolific Douglas Brinkley at Rice. And I defy anyone to read Robert K. Massie's "Catherine the Great" (enlightened German teenager takes over Russia) or Erik Larson's "In the Garden of Beasts" (Nazis, oozing evil in diplomatic circles) and not come away moved.

But in the great void between readable histories and snooze-fest treatises have stepped demagogues with agendas, from Glenn Beck and his paranoid writings on the perils of progressivism, to Oliver Stone and his highly selective retelling of the 20th century.

One of my best friends in college ripped through chemistry, engineering and advanced calculus courses. And then, degree in hand, he felt strangely uncompleted. On his own, and for a full year, he read Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Fitzgerald and Civil War histories. He spent the next 30 years at Boeing. No doubt, he was one of the few mechanical engineers who not only was aware of Faulkner's immortal line - "The past is never dead. It's not even past" - but also understood what it meant.

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Washington DC/ OPINION: Educational Apps Alone Won't Teach Your Kid to Read

By Lisa Guernsey and Michael H. Levine [Guernsey is director of the Early Education Initiative at the New America Foundation. Levine is executive director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop. They are authors of "Pioneering Literacy in the Digital Wild West," a new report from the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading

Slate .com [Washington Post]

December 13, 2012,

 As touchscreen tablets become the hot holiday gift for children-even for tots still learning to walk and talk-parents can be forgiven for feeling a little confused and skeptical about this new trend, especially when it comes to claims about education. The iTunes App Store boasts more than 700,000 apps and, as the Joan Ganz Cooney Center discovered earlier this year, nearly 80 percent of the top-selling paid apps in the education category are aimed at children. Many of these apps make claims about helping children learn to read. It's an alluring promise-but are they all they are cracked up to be?

As partners with the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, a national coalition examining reading problems, we set out to answer those questions. For the past eight months, we scanned the technology and literacy landscape examining new products and programs. What we found was a digital Wild West, especially in the teeming app marketplace. Tens of thousands of apps are labeled educational and marketed to parents who receive little to no information about whether and how they work.

Most of the top-selling reading apps appear to teach only the most basic of literacy skills.

• They lean toward easy-to-teach tasks, such as identifying the ABCs, but don't address higher-level competencies that young children also need to become strong readers, such as developing vocabulary and understanding words in a narrative.
• A snapshot of the iTunes App Store's most popular paid literacy apps showed that 45 percent targeted letters and sounds and half focused on phonics. Only 5 percent covered vocabulary, and none addressed comprehension or the ability to tell stories.
• Many "reading" apps are essentially flashy flashcards: Click on a set of letters and the audio kicks on, uttering the letter's sounds. Move to the next set and repeat.

This imbalance comes as research shows that knowing the ABCs and other basic literacy skills, while important, are not enough to help children become strong readers.

• Children need background knowledge and vocabulary, too, as made clear last week in the release of vocabulary scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
• The scores, which are distressingly low for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, showed an integral link between vocabulary and reading comprehension.
• Until comprehension is addressed, American kids will continue to lag compared to children from nations such as Hong Kong, Singapore and Finland.

But apps aren't the only problem.

We also examined the most popular children's ebooks in the iTunes store and found missed opportunities for literacy development.

• Ebooks have real potential to exploit interactive features for engaging parents and children around stories, while also providing prompts and assistance when words are too difficult to sound out.
• But our data on ebooks, while based on a small sample, showed that the e-titles that parents download are not the ones taking full advantage of technology to help children learn to read and understand the story.
• Popular ebooks based on children's movies, for example, appear to be designed to be "watched" more than "read," putting them in the category of child-occupying tools rather than something to actively engage children with the print on screen and the story being told.
• Few ebooks give children on-ramps to new vocabulary or background knowledge in subjects they may not come in contact with everyday (art, science, history).

By contrast, good ebooks for building strong readers will ask questions that lead to interactions with on-screen images that add meaning to the story or help reinforce the storyline. Ideally, such ebooks, coupled with parenting programs in early childhood programs and libraries, could help parents see their value in helping their children, especially for moms and dads who have never felt all that confident reading aloud print books.

More than two-thirds of fourth graders unable to read at grade-level (and numbers far worse for low-income children, blacks, and Hispanics). 

We have to find new ways to help or we will continue to sap the potential of millions of young children. Already the federal government and states have spent billions of dollars to try to tackle the literacy problem, but current policies and practices have only barely budged reading scores upward.

With the advent of new technologies, we are at an opportune moment for harnessing digital media to support parents, educators, and children in building the next generation's reading skills. But technology's potential to be a game changer will not be reached unless technology is tapped to provide vital new supports for parents and educa­tors. At its best, the technology complements the work of trained teachers and parents. It doesn't replace it.