PSFA Daily News Digest

22-24 December 2012

www.nmpsfa.org 

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

Chaparral/ Gadsden District Early College High School is 2nd in NM

By Lindsey Anderson

Las Cruces Sun-News

December 22, 2012

 A second early college high school in New Mexico has launched, both of which are in Doña Ana County.

• Chaparral Early College High School in the Gadsden Independent School District wrapped up its first semester last week.
• Arrowhead Park Early College High School in Las Cruces was the first such school to open in New Mexico in fall 2010.

"The Gadsden district is bringing the same really unique model to their students," said Tracey Bryan, president and CEO of education nonprofit The Bridge of Southern New Mexico.

The 20 ninth-grade students currently enrolled will earn their high school diploma and an associates degree over four years.

Many of the students are first-generation to attend college, said Gema Saucedo, administrative intern for Chaparral Early College High School.

"For them, going to college is going to be a very big experience," Saucedo said, and the early college high school will offer them a peer and faculty "family so they can have that support."

The students will earn degrees in physical science and math, humanities and fine arts, life sciences, social and behavioral arts and criminal justice.

• They will complete 66 college credits for free through dual-credit courses with the new Doña Ana County College campus next to the school.
• Nine of the students earned A's and B's during the first half of the semester, and eight had perfect attendance, Saucedo said.

The program aims to enroll 60 freshmen next semester, she said.

• "We're not going to be Arrowhead (Park) Early College with 300 enrolled, but we want to open our doors even wider," she said.

It's been difficult to get parents behind the school because they don't know much about it, but that should change next year, GISD Board President Craig Ford said.

"We think we've got a really good thing going here and can offer it to students who might not have it otherwise," he said.

• The Bridge originally identified early college high schools as a dropout-prevention strategy to increase the county's graduation rates and meet workforce demands.
• Early college students graduate sooner, save on college costs and don't need remedial education, which costs taxpayers as much as $2,500 per student, according to The Bridge.
• The model also exposes students to college who might not have been otherwise, Bryan said.

"It's a win-win," she said.

Chaparral will prepare students for in-demand careers or a four-year college, Bryan said.

"These kids are going to be launching from early college high school into the rest of their lives," she said.

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Deming/ District Teachers Help Develop National Dual Language Standards

Deming Headlight Report

December 20, 2012

(Deming Headlight editor's note: The following is the final installment of a three-part series highlighting aspects of the dual language programs within Deming Public Schools. This article describes influences Deming has had nationwide.)

As part of the nation's movement to more rigorous standards for American students, new Spanish language standards and assessment are being developed through a partnership between the Illinois State Board of Education, World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment (WIDA), and the Center for Applied Linguistics.

On behalf of the WIDA Consortium, the Illinois State Board of Education applied for and was awarded an enhanced assessment grant to develop and implement academic Spanish language development standards for students in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade and a valid Spanish language proficiency assessment based on those standards.

In addition, WIDA will develop a screener test for obtaining baseline measurements of students' Spanish language proficiency for grades K-2. Deming Public Schools' teachers have been instrumental in the development of the Spanish language standards and assessment.

WIDA and CAL have been collaborating for the last two years in the research and development of the standards and assessment tools that will meet the expectations of this grant. In Nov. 2010, during the Dual Language La Cosecha Conference in Santa Fe, Spanish Language Arts teachers from Deming Intermediate, Red Mountain, and Deming High School assisted in the development of the Spanish Academic Language Standards and Assessment (SALSA).

• Annette Holguin, Martha Orosco, and former DHS teacher Christian Loredo provided WIDA officials ideas on topics and language aspects that are different between Spanish and English.
• Most recently, Torres and Columbus Elementary kinder teachers Sylvia Orquiz and Glenda Sanchez traveled to the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington D.C. to assist with the development of assessment products, Prueba Optima del Desarrollo del Español Realizado (PODER).

As part of the quality control process, test materials go through two main reviews: bias and sensitivity, and content. Orquiz and Sanchez were presented with test graphics and items, test specifications and test procedures for the PODER Kindergarten test. Each section contained test items and graphics in the four language domains: Listening, Speaking, Writing and Reading.

According to Orquiz, "Our purpose was to review testing materials for Spanish language development for students in Kindergarten."

• Through the use of the standards and assessments, educators will gain knowledge about academic Spanish language development and will give them a measure to monitor their students' progress.
• This, in turn, will allow teachers to shape instruction and develop curriculum to enable students to achieve high academic standards in Spanish.

"The standards and assessment will be applicable to any student receiving content area instruction in Spanish regardless of the native language (Spanish or English) a child brings to the classroom," Orquiz added.

Sanchez participated in the item writing and content standard workshop. According to Sanchez, "The brainstorming session was intense."

She collaborated with three other kindergarten teachers resulting in a language assessment that will be utilized for kindergarten students throughout the United States. The panel worked collaboratively to ensure test content and questions were unbiased to provide all students equal opportunity in accurately being tested in oral language. Orquiz and Sanchez were the only teachers from New Mexico to participate in this project and all expenses were covered by WIDA.

The PODER for kindergarten will be released in the spring of 2013.

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Rio Rancho/ Homework Happy Hour: Pizza, Soda and School, After Class

By Elaine D. Briseño

ABQ Journal Staff Writer

December 22, 2012 

Colinas del Norte Elementary School hosted its first happy hour on a recent weeknight, but there was no beer nor was there a cover band.

Instead there was pizza, cookies and milk, a couple stringing their acoustic guitars and a room full of kids doing their homework. It was the school's inaugural Homework Happy Hour, which the staff hopes to repeat next semester and once a month next school year.

The school offered free pizza, courtesy of Papa John's, so parents would not have to worry about dinner. The family members of a co-worker provided the music. The school even offered a story hour in the library for younger siblings, so parents would not have to arrange childcare.

The idea originated with Colinas math interventionist Clara Trimboli, who read about a similar activity at a school in Albuquerque. Colinas is a Title I school and as a result, is required to have parent involvement. Schools with a high percentage of low-income students are given a Title 1 designation. As an interventionist, Trimboli offers tutoring to a wide range of students struggling in math.

• "I thought this would be a good idea," she said. "Our intent was to help parents and show them how they can help their children with homework."

One of the parents who showed up was Susan Mendoza, who has a first-grade son at the school.

She said her son was excited about the pizza, but for her, it was another way to be involved with her son's school, something she didn't always think was important.

She said when he was a kindergartner, she was involved with him at home, making sure he did his schoolwork, but she didn't go to the school very often.

• "When I don't make events at the school, I notice his self-esteem go down," she said. "I know as a kid when my parents didn't go to stuff, I felt bad. By coming to things like this, I know it will make him like school more."

Principal Laura Moore said she was pleased with the turnout. More than 15 families took advantage of the opportunity.

The event took place in the school's cafeteria, and nearly every table was occupied with students doing homework while parents looked on, sometimes answering questions. Teachers walked around to offer extra help.

• "Sometimes moms and dads don't have the resources to help their children with homework," Moore said. "Some parents are also very busy. We wanted to offer them some support."

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Santa Fe/ COLUMN: Investing in Early Education Pays Off

By Robert Nott  [Learning Curve column]

The New Mexican

December 23, 2012

Proponents continue to point to studies showing that investment in early-childhood education programs yields positive academic results down the road by fostering a child's social and emotional relationships and giving him or her a head start on developing and using cognitive skills. So, it was good to hear that New Mexico recently scored $25 million in Race to the Top funds - money that will be paid out over a five-year period and be funneled into literacy efforts for in pre-kindergarten through the third grade.

And last month, members of the bipartisan Legislative Education Study Committee received an update on the state's 2011 Early Childhood Care and Education Act by legislative staffer LaNysha Adams and early-childhood development specialist Lillian Montoya-Rael, who also serves as executive director of New Mexico Independent Community Colleges.

• The report's recommendations included an investment of some $50 million in early-childhood programming with an emphasis on home visits - not just to students about to enter pre-K, but to all expectant mothers (regardless of their income status) to help prepare them to educate their child.
• Right now, the report notes, pre-K educators are visiting the homes of some 1,900 babies statewide, but within five years they would like to reach as many as 10,000 children.
• The idea, Montoya-Rael pointed out, is to engage children in the learning process as early as possible. State legislators were receptive. Sen. Sander Rue, R-Albuquerque, said, "Long-term, this is the best way to improve outcomes" - but all of them had questions about the cost.

For Katherine Freeman, CEO and president of United Way of Santa Fe County, which operates The Santa Fe Children's Project pre-K school on the campus of Aspen Community Magnet School, the cost is worth it.

• The school serves almost 100 pre-K students and only recently was able to track a cohort of about 35 students from its pre-K school to Aspen's kindergarten and compare their literacy skills with those of students who did not take part in pre-K programs.
• More than a fourth of these students exceeded expectations in literacy comprehension at the beginning of the kindergarten year, according to the data, with more than 87 percent of them exceeding expectations by the end of the year.

"The outcomes leads us to believe that these kids are prepared for school ... and that their third-grade reading scores are probably going to be good," Freeman said. United Way's pre-K budget is about $500,000 per year, she said, adding, "We are not cutting it yet because there are not enough pre-K programs to serve all the kids in the district."

She would like to see more partnerships evolve between the school district and community organizations to develop and support more pre-K programs, particularly at or close to low-performing elementary schools.

Incidentally, you may recall that the United Way of Santa Fe County convened the summer 2011 Mobilizing for Education summit at Santa Fe Community College, with the goal of engaging citizens in improving the public-school system here.

About 180 people attended that two-day event, which spawned three action committees. One of them - the Parent Involvement Committee - seems to have been succeeded by the district's planned Parent Academy, which is due to start up with a pilot program this coming semester.

Freeman noted that the district, under new Superintendent Joel Boyd's direction, has basically taken on many of the same initiatives that the summit suggested over a year ago. She said she is enthused about his leadership even as she realizes that the summit's action teams didn't get as far as planned because "there just wasn't the will to look honestly at what needed to be done in Santa Fe Public Schools."

Visit www.uwsfc.org for more information about United Way of Santa Fe County's early-childhood programs.

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Santa Fe/ LETTER: Take a Closer Look at Absences

By Terri Blackman [Wood Gormley Elementary]

The New Mexican

December 23, 2012

I am totally sick of seeing headlines that inflame the teachers vs. the teacher absences issue. Between the news and the district, there is a whole reality that is being ignored.

Reality 1: We get sick - maybe more than you do, since we have up to 32-plus kids who don't always wash their hands or use a Kleenex.

Reality 2: Professional development benefits all kids! Sometimes for years! It is the biggest bang for the buck, if it is used judiciously. Ask the district if its professional development meets that criteria (ha).

Reality 3: We have personal days in our contract and we can take them. Get over it. You would use them, too - they're there because we don't have the usual options everyone else has to make arrangements for personal issues. It is part of our very meager pay (we haven't had a raise for five years) for the amount of hours we put into your children.

I challenge Joel Boyd and his number crunchers to total the hours after school and weekend time which teachers put in to ensure their students have quality education. Then let's compare days off - I think we would be so far into the plus side that it would be embarrassing to the district.

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Washington DC/ Educators Tout International Baccalaureate's Links to Common Core Standards

By Sarah D. Sparks

Education Week, Vol. 32, Issue 15 [Edweek.org]

December 21, 2012

As districts nationwide scramble to translate the Common Core State Standards into concrete curricula and lesson plans, Principal Sue DeVicariis of Kate Sessions Elementary School in San Diego considers herself ahead of the game.

Her school is one of 342 nationwide to follow the Primary Years Program of the Swiss-based International Baccalaureate organization.

Earlier this school year, Ms. DeVicariis and teachers met with colleagues across grades throughout the district to use IB inquiry-style units to create mathematics and English/language arts common-core curriculum units for San Diego.

"It's the exact same intent, and in some cases the same wording as well," said David Weber, an IB math teacher at the Preuss School-University of California San Diego, in La Jolla. "I would say IB has been well ahead of the common core in [math] in particular ... One of the funniest and most interesting [differences] is that the IB objectives call for our students to actually enjoy math, which is starkly absent in the common core."

• While the common core-so far adopted by 46 states and the District of Columbia-is intended to bring a universal rigor to high school diplomas nationwide,
• the IB has been an established international benchmark of college readiness for more than a half century and is in more than 3,500 schools worldwide.

IB educators and researchers view America's foray into voluntary national standards as an unprecedented opportunity to share lessons from the prestigious-but at up to $10,000 per student, expensive-diploma and preparatory programs.

IB's standards, structured into interdisciplinary and multigrade lines of inquiry, were one of the models on which the common core was based, and the drive to meet the common core is drawing interest in IB even in the current tight school budget environment.

"The common core is moving away from the mile-wide-inch-deep curriculum ... [with] scattered topics that don't build upon a foundation to coherence, thinking across grades, and linking to major topics," said Christine Tell, the director of state services for Achieve's American Diploma Project, a major nonprofit driver of the common-core initiative. Speaking at a summit in Bethesda, Md., this month on aligning IB and the common core, Ms. Tell said, "The standards have been adopted, and I would maintain that was the easy part. IB is an incredibly important, critical part of the way forward."

In connection with the summit it sponsored, the International Baccalaureate, in Geneva, released a policy statement on the common core, announcing that the group will conduct linking studies between the two sets of standards and provide professional development for teachers.

"The IB will continue to draw upon school reform initiatives-such as the [common core]-to ensure that the IB continues to lead the way in providing pedagogically current international education based upon research in education and best practices available," the group said.

For example, under the school's existing IB-based lesson plans, 4th graders at Kate Sessions Elementary "inquire" into how changes in people's physical and economic environments affect how and where they live and how they are governed. In the process, they study natural selection, civic responsibility, and how economic and political systems work together, among other topics. These could all link to similar standards in the common core.

Many educators in the program see their work as "not aligning IB and the common core, but the common core catching up to IB," said Drew Deutsch, IB's regional director for the Americas.

Price of Preparedness

IB's diploma, originally developed to provide an internationally standardized education for diplomats' children, has in the last 15 years:

• added pre-diploma programs for elementary and middle schools,
• as well as a career certificate for high school students interested in technical fields such as engineering.

All of the IB programs have ballooned in popularity in the United States and worldwide, expanding to include nearly 3,500 schools now.

IB's rising popularity has not been without controversy. Earlier this year, New Hampshire lawmakers attempted to ban IB for "indoctrinating students to be world citizens" and interfering in state control of education. And districts in Idaho and elsewhere have cut IB programs as being too expensive to sustain.

Principal DeVicariis of Kate Sessions Elementary agreed that cost is always an issue for administrators: Her district's program costs $10,000 per student for the diploma program and $3,600 for the elementary and middle school programs. "We've got 200 schools, and there's no way financially we could support it for everyone," Ms. DeVicariis said. "I wouldn't be able to afford it without a strong parent group."

In fact, she and other IB advocates hope IB will be able to influence curriculum through the common core even in districts that could not afford the program itself.

Assessment Perspectives

Ms. DeVicariis said San Diego expects to roll out its new lesson materials in September 2013 and collect feedback from teachers. "We're trying really hard to get going on this, because we are already really concerned about the assessment piece coming down the pike," she said.

In comparison to the IB's use of portfolio assessments-including skits and creative writing-she believes new tests developed for the common core will be "just another standardized test. It does give you a dipstick of what students know and are able to do at that point in time, but the real learning is in the body of work, and always has been."

Sharon Chaney, the coordinator of advanced academics, including IB, for metropolitan Nashville public schools, agreed. "We're quite concerned about the effects the common-core assessments could have on IB assessments," she said. "We want to retain the beautiful ways IB allows students to show what they can do."

Unlike the common core, IB integrates social and emotional learning into its academic standards, gauging students' progress through projects, presentations, and other means. Several educators and policymakers have voiced concern that the common core might box in the more holistic approach that IB typically uses.

"The common core seems to be uniquely American, very results-oriented," said Brian W. Crane, a mathematics-content specialist with Montgomery County public schools, "and the IB seems to be very concerned with the person as a whole and the results of knowledge."

That is likely to be a culture shock for teachers who are more used to teaching content separated by grade level and subject, according to Christie L. Fox, the honors program coordinator at Utah State University in Logan. "Our teachers really need to become instructional designers, which they have not done in the past. We've never really asked teachers to do that, unless we are talking about" IB's middle and primary years programs, she said.

• "Once we start to do that, I think we'll start to see a really interesting elevation in instruction. Our teachers will themselves have to be global thinkers."

Mr. Weber of the Preuss School and Ms. DeVicariis both mentioned the need for more collaboration during professional development for teachers across both grade levels and disciplines.

"It's very clear what level you expect kids to read at, but it's still open-ended so that every school and every teacher can put their own spins on it so it is right for their kids," Ms. DeVicariis said. "One of the beauties of IB is that it is open-ended; if it was lock step, teachers wouldn't want to buy into it."

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Washington DC/ Federal Study: Head Start Advantages Mostly Gone by 3rd Grade

By Lesli A. Maxwell

Education Week  [Edweek.org]

December 21, 2012

While Head Start participation benefited children's learning and development during their time in the federally funded preschool program, those advantages had mostly vanished by the end of 3rd grade, a new federal study finds.

• In the final phase of a large-scale randomized, controlled study of nearly 5,000 children, researchers found that the positive impacts on literacy and language development demonstrated by children who entered Head Start at age 4 had dissipated by the end of 3rd grade, and
• that they were, on average, academically indistinguishable from their peers who had not participated in Head Start.

The new findings, released today by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, are consistent with an earlier phase of the study which showed that many of the positive impacts of Head Start participation had faded by the end of 1st grade.

The $8 billion Head Start program serves nearly 1 million low-income children.

Researchers examined a nationally representative sample of Head Start programs.

• Study participants were children who were eligible for the preschool services based on family income.
• The children were assigned by lottery to a group that had access to Head Start services or a control group that did not have access to Head Start, but could enroll in other early-childhood programs.

The national study-which was mandated by Congress in 1998 when Head Start was reauthorized-consisted of two age cohorts: 3- and 4-year-old children who entered Head Start for the first time in 2002. Congress ordered the study to examine the impacts through the end of 1st grade; the Health and Human Services department opted to extend it through 3rd grade.

The study's release, which had been delayed a few times, comes at a tense time for Head Start.

• For the first time in the federal program's history, 132 long-time grantees who provide Head Start services are being forced to compete with other bidders to hold onto their funding, part of an Obama administration effort to improve quality.
• The results of that re-competition won't be announced until spring.

It's also possible the study's results could sway lawmakers' thinking on whether to push to cut or spare Head Start in ongoing budget negotiations to avert the fiscal cliff.

• In the first phase of the evaluation, a group of children who entered Head Start at age 4 saw benefits from spending one year in the program, including learning vocabulary, letter-word recognition, spelling, color identification, and letter-naming, compared with children of the same age in a control group who didn't attend Head Start. For children who entered Head Start at age 3, the gains were even greater, demonstrated by their language and literacy skills, as well their skills in learning math, prewriting, and perceptual motor skills.
• The second phase of the study showed that those gains had faded considerably by the end of 1st grade, with Head Start children showing an edge only in learning vocabulary over their peers in the control group who had not participated in Head Start.
• And now, in this final phase of the study, "there was little evidence of systematic differences in children's elementary school experiences through 3rd grade, between children provided access to Head Start and their counterparts in the control group," the researchers wrote in an executive summary.

"We've seen this movie before with the 1st grade results and now at the end of 3rd grade," said Grover J. "Russ" Whitehurst, the director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Washington-based Brookings Institution. "There are not any impacts. There are clear signals here that we need some innovative policies around the delivery of services."

Specifically, by the end of 3rd grade,

• 4-year-old Head Start participants showed only a single advantage in the areas of literacy, numeracy, and school performance over their peers in the control group.
• Only their performance on one reading assessment showed that they still retained some benefit over their control group counterparts.
• But, according to the study, their participation in Head Start showed no significant positive impacts on math skills, prewriting, promotion, or teachers' reports of children's school accomplishments.
• About 40 percent of the children in the control group did not receive formal preschool services; the rest did, just not through Head Start.
• In the 3-year-old cohort, researchers found a learning disadvantage for those who had been in Head Start. Parents of the Head Start children reported lower rates of grade promotion than parents of the students who were not in the Head Start group.

Lisa Guernsey, the director of the Early Education Initiative at the New America Foundation, said the 3rd grade findings were no surprise, but still leave some major questions unanswered. One, she said, is the amount of time children spent in the Head Start classrooms because that varies widely across programs. The other, she noted, is a description of the quality of the learning experiences both in the Head Start classrooms and the early-childhood programs attended by children in the control group.

• "We can't tell whether time and quality made a difference," she said. "We know that the interaction between the child and the teacher matters so much and if you are only in a classroom for three hours a day, four days a week and out all summer long, the experience is much different than for children who go a full day, a full year, and with a teacher that is strong."

When researchers examined the impacts on children's social-emotional development, their findings were significantly different for the two age groups.

• For 4-year-olds, parents of Head Start participants reported less aggressive behavior at the end of 3rd grade than did the parents of the control group children.
• In contrast, teachers reported higher incidences of emotional problems in Head Start students, and less positive relationships with them.
• For the 3-year-old group, parents of Head Start participants reported better social skills in their children, compared to the control group parents.

In examining impacts on health, the researchers similarly found no remaining advantages of Head Start participation at the end of 3rd grade.

Parenting practices however, still showed some positive benefits of Head Start participation in both age groups.

• For 4-year-olds in the Head Start group, parents reported spending more time with their children than did the control group parents, and
• in the 3-year-old group, researchers found that parents in the Head Start group were more likely to use a parenting style characterized by high warmth and high control.

Yasmina Vinci, the executive director of the National Head Start Association, called the vanishing impacts of Head Start in the early grades "troubling," but noted that Head Start does its core job well by preparing disadvantaged children for kindergarten. "Our work with students ends when children graduate from Head Start, but it is clear that for many, their circumstances continue to hinder their success; circumstances including, but not limited to, the quality of their primary and secondary education," she said in a prepared statement.

Ms. Guernsey said to sustain the positive impacts of any early-learning experience into the first years of elementary school requires more emphasis on improvements in kindergarten, first, and second grades.

"The idea that one or two years of preschool is a silver bullet really needs to be stripped from our minds," she said. "The impact study from two years ago and this one now reminds us that the quality of the learning experience in kindergarten, first grade, and second grade really matters too."

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New York NY/ 2 Head Start Reports Find Problems and Some Hope

By Sarah Garland

The Hechinger Report [Hechingerreport.org]

December 21, 2012

The benefits children reap from Head Start, the preschool program for low-income families, disappear almost completely by third grade.

• While social support for children in the program is high, academic supports are low.
• Nearly all of children in the program live near the poverty line, more than half do not live with their fathers, and a third have a parent who is unemployed.

These are the findings from two separate reports released Friday by the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), the federal agency that oversees the Head Start program.

On their face, the pair of reports seem to paint a depressing portrait of a program meant to help the most vulnerable children in the country. But amid the bad news, the researchers who compiled the reports - independent contractors commissioned by ACF - also found a few glimmers of hope.

One of the studies, by the nonprofit Mathematica Policy Research, found that:

• parents of children enrolled in Head Start became more engaged in teaching their children at home:
• They increased (slightly) the frequency that they told their children stories, played games, did arts and crafts and went to the library.
• The report also found that children in Head Start made significant academic progress during the year on skills like identifying numbers and shapes.

The second of the studies, known as the Head Start Impact Study, is the latest in a series of reports that has looked at the academic, social-emotional and health outcomes for Head Start students over time.

• Previously, the study had found that gains made in preschool for children enrolled in Head Start tapered off in first grade.
•  The latest report shows that nearly all the health benefits and academic and social emotional gains were gone by third grade.
• There were also some negative outcomes, including a greater likelihood of being held back.

But parenting skills continued to be better for Head Start families, and in some cases social skills and reading ability were somewhat higher for Head Start children in third grade.

"One of the strengths of the Head Start program is the parent involvement and parent engagement," said Linda Smith, ACF deputy assistant secretary for early childhood development, in a phone interview. "And it is borne out in the study."

Yasmina Vinci, the director of the National Head Start Association, a nonprofit advocacy group, said in a statement that the Impact study showed that "Head Start does its job - it gets at-risk children ready for kindergarten in every aspect that the study measured." S

he sought to place some of the blame for Head Start's diminishing returns on K-12 schools, rather than the preschool program. "Their circumstances continue to hinder their success; circumstances including, but not limited to, the quality of their primary and secondary education," she said.

The Mathematic study reported that the vast majority Head Start teachers in the sample received low ratings on instructional support based on a new classroom evaluation system that is launching in Head Start centers nationally this year, known as CLASS,, even as they scored well on measures of emotional support and classroom organization.

Smith said Head Start's low scores on instruction were not an anomaly - most preschools don't do well in the academic domain, she said. But, she added, "We are looking at these scores very closely."

• "It's an area we are looking at very seriously here in terms of how we are training our teachers and the curriculum they select and use," Smith said.

The CLASS evaluations are part of a major effort by the Obama administration to improve the quality of Head Start. Among other changes, the administration is requiring programs that don't meet certain standards to "re-compete" for their federal grants. The hope is that the competition will force improvements.

• "The reforms of the last four years will ensure Head Start is doing more, so the benefits will be greater and last longer," said Head Start Director Yvette Sanchez-Fuentes in a press release announcing the reports' findings.

This year, 132 programs had to compete for their funding, including some of the biggest agencies in the country. The Head Start office previously said it would announce the winners this month, but officials said Friday that the results of the competition will not be released until the spring for legal reasons.

CLASS and another measure of academic quality were not used to evaluate programs during the first round. But for the next round, Head Start agencies must meet new academic standards to avoid losing their federal support. Smith, of ACF, said the agency would release a list of the next round of agencies that must compete in January.

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New York NY/ Wondering How to Create a Great Tablet App for Kids? Ask Bert and Ernie

By Ina Fried

Wall Street Journal

December 24, 2012

Making a truly kid-friendly app is harder than it looks.

It means paying attention to everything from knowing how kids hold a tablet to accounting for their less finely honed motor skills and their short attention spans.

After spending the last several years creating dozens of apps for youngsters, the folks behind "Sesame Street" have collected a bunch of their best ideas into a guide for developers.

• Educators at Sesame Workshop noticed that kids tend to hold their tablet in landscape mode, for example, and rest their palms on the bottom.
• That means that if app makers put icons at the bottom of the screen, kids are far more likely to click on something accidentally.
• Also, while kids love the interactivity that mobile device apps can bring, it is easy for the story to be lost if everything can be clicked on all the time.

"In the storybook, we know that kids can often get distracted by all the bells and whistles," said Mindy Brooks, director of education and research for Sesame Workshop. A good way to manage that is to require that the youngster listen to the full text on a page before the added features are enabled.

The Sesame gang also has tips on:

• the proper fonts to use,
• how to deal with sound and
• ways of offering gentle encouragement when a youngster chooses the wrong answer when asked a question.

The findings are part of a paper that the nonprofit is making freely available in the hope that it will help other developers create better apps for kids.

"We want to make all preschool apps better for kids," Brooks said in a telephone interview. In offering its suggestions, Sesame is drawing on its own experience creating apps as well as its more than 50 studies of how youngsters use mobile devices.

Sesame has been actively involved in tablet and other mobile apps, creating interactive versions of classic children's books such as "There Is a Monster at the End of This Book." In all, the Sesame folks have created about 45 different touchscreen apps and e-books for a variety of mobile devices.

One of the keys, Brooks said, is offering interactive books that work in different ways. The best option, Brooks said, is where there is a parent or other adult reading with the child. For those instances, Sesame recommends a "parent mode" with easy instructions to allow busy adults to quickly get up and running.

But, since kids are often left to their own devices (literally), Brooks said that Sesame's apps are also designed with the main Muppet character acting as a virtual parent taking the young child through the activities.

Brooks said Sesame now has a better handle on what gestures are most natural for kids. Tapping is the most natural, for example. Tracing a line is also fairly easy, but kids often need to stop and start rather than doing it in one fell swoop. And, in a sign of just how separate today's kids are from their PC-using parents, the double tap is one of the least intuitive gestures.