ABQ/ APS Amends Bid Process
By Hailey Heinz
ABQ Journal Staff Writer
January 4, 2013
Albuquerque Public Schools is revamping its bidding rules, following an outcry last year when it decided a Sandia High School building project should go to the highest bidder - which topped the low bid by $1 million.
That was in part because, in deciding which company should get the job, the district awarded just 40 points for price and 60 points for other factors in a process called qualification-based bidding.
Under the new rules, price will be worth 50 points, among other changes recommended by the district's Community Capital Advisory Commission.
School board member David Robbins, who originally raised concerns about the Sandia bid and the subjectivity of the process, said Thursday he believes the changes are a good first step.
He said they "will send a clear message of a more open and transparent system, from what I gathered talking to many contractors over the last several weeks."
However, Robbins said he would like to see the school board examine the makeup of the team that evaluates construction proposals, to ensure the same people aren't awarding the bids on every project.
- "If we have two or three people who are always the same on the evaluation group, especially on larger projects, I think there's a sense in the community among contractors that there's unfairness there," Robbins said.
In the Sandia case, HB Construction was awarded the job even though its bid was about $500,000 higher than the second-lowest bid. The unsuccessful bidders were Gerald Martin, McCarthy, Bradbury Stamm, Flintco and Jaynes Corp.
Under qualification-based bidding, contracts are awarded partly on the basis of price and partly on the basis of more subjective factors, like a contractor's past performance and a safety plan for the site.
Points for those other factors are awarded by a group of evaluators, which includes APS executive director of capital Karen Alarid, an APS architect, the project architect, a contractor that isn't bidding on the work and another knowledgeable person.
Another change will be a 30-page limit for bids, and a 20-point penalty for contractors who exceed the limit. Previously, there were limits for each bid section but no penalty if those were exceeded.
This had caused some heartburn among contractors who carefully adhered to the page limits, only to see contracts awarded to others who exceeded the limits and included glossy pictures and graphics.
On the Sandia job, HB's site management plan significantly exceeded the five-page limit for that section of the proposal, but the company was not penalized for that.
"Everyone agreed that, if you're going to have a page limit, there ought to be a penalty for exceeding it," Alarid said.
Those two changes will go into effect immediately and have been sent out as amendments to three requests for proposals that are already out, for work at Monte Vista and Adobe Acres elementary schools and Eldorado High.
For subsequent projects, the district will add some other changes that were approved Thursday by the commission.
These changes are largely centered on making the "qualification-based" categories more objective.
- For example, bid evaluators were previously given discretion in how they awarded points to contractors for using New Mexico-based subcontractors and suppliers.
- Evaluators were instructed to rate all contractors consistently, but were not given a rating scale.
- Now, contractors can expect to receive all three possible points if they use 90 percent local workers or more, two points for 80 percent to 90 percent, and so forth.
This is intended to remove some of the guesswork for contractors, as to why they received the scores they did and how they can improve future proposals.
- "The primary goal is the transparency and objectivity, so that folks feel, if they do want to pursue the business, they know what they need to do to get it, and if they don't get it, they understand why," said Mike Puelle, director of public policy for Associated General Contractors. Puelle sits on the capital commission and was involved with revising the qualification-based bidding process.
It is unclear how much difference the changes will make in terms of which contractors get jobs. Bob Goodman, who is on the capital commission, raised questions about whether the revised process will create more diversity in which contractors are awarded work. He said he has spoken to contractors who feel the APS work is always awarded to the same firms, so it's hardly worth bidding on.
- "Would you expect the result of all this to be, if you look back over five years, to be a more diverse group of contractors that have done jobs?" Goodman asked. "I just wonder, what is all this going to change? What outcome will this drive that's different from what it is today?"
APS administrators said it is hard to predict how bid awards will change, but that the changes will ensure that contractors know the district's expectations when they are writing their proposals.
Alarid also said some diversity issues take care of themselves, because each contractor has limited bonding capacity and can only take on one big job at a time.
Several members of the commission emphasized that the qualification-based bidding process is in a constant state of change and improvement, and there will probably be more changes in the future.
"I see this not as, 'We've got a problem, and we've got to fix it.' I see it as a natural part of the process," said Jim Folkman, who represents the Home Builders Association of Central New Mexico on the APS commission.
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Taos/ School Administrators' Lawsuit Dismissed with Prejudice
By Matthew van Buren
Taos News
January 4, 2013
A two-year-old case involving accusations of discrimination, micromanagement and retaliation by Taos Municipal School District officials has been dismissed with prejudice, meaning the claims cannot be brought again.
A stipulated order of dismissal was filed in federal District Court Dec. 18 by Judge Judith Herrera.
The order came one day after a joint motion to dismiss the case with prejudice was filed.
- "As grounds for this motion, the parties state that all claims have been resolved to the mutual satisfaction of the parties, and the Plaintiffs have agreed to dismiss any and all remaining claims in this matter with prejudice," the motion states.
The complaint, filed in the spring of 2010, followed complaints brought before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission by a group of Taos school district administrators, including former superintendent Loretta DeLong. The charges focused on administrators' claims that defendants conspired to begin a "campaign of retaliation" against the administrators that resulted in pay decreases and other adverse employment actions.
Steven Sanders, attorney for the plaintiffs, did not return a phone message or email requesting comment prior to publication.
The defendants included school board member Stella Gallegos and former members Arsenio Córdova and Lorraine Coca-Ruiz, as well as former superintendent and State Rep. Roberto "Bobby" Gonzáles, D-Taos, and the IDEAS Company, of Santa Fe.
Orders filed in late September initially signaled the dismissal, granting qualified immunity to the defendants and granting the defendants' motions for summary judgment - meaning the court found it unnecessary to bring the case to trial. The orders found the plaintiffs did not present sufficient evidence to establish their claims.
Regarding DeLong's allegations of discrimination, a judge's order found she relied too heavily on the timing of employment actions, including being put on administrative leave in 2009, to prove discrimination. The order states that DeLong "pointedly fails to show" circumstantial evidence of retaliatory motives by the defendants and did not identify specific statements that tarnished her reputation.
When the defendants were asked to comment following the September orders, Gonzáles and Coca-Ruiz responded with nearly identical emailed statements.
"The court repeatedly found that there was 'no evidence in the record' to support (the) plaintiffs' claims against me," Gonzáles' email states. "In other words, the lawsuit was groundless from the outset, both factually and legally. Particularly important is that the court rejected the allegation that my actions as superintendent were a pretext for discrimination or retaliation under the New Mexico Human Rights Act and Title VII."
"For instance," Coca-Ruiz' statement reads, "the court rejected the claim that reducing administrators' salaries was anything other than a lawful attempt to use the district's dwindling resources to educate our children. It is unfortunate that the plaintiffs forced the district to expend countless hours and tens of thousands of dollars defending this senseless lawsuit, rather than devoting its limited fiscal and human resources to teaching our children. I am satisfied with the outcome and hope that the district moves forward in a positive and productive manner."
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Washington DC/ School Design, Classroom Layout Can Heavily Affect Student Grades, Learning
Huffington Post Report
January 3, 2012
Great teachers, stable families and a school's location have long been said to be key to student success. But a new study out of the United Kingdom suggests that a school's physical design can improve or worsen children's academic performance by as much as 25 percent in early years.
The year-long study by the University of Salford's School of the Built Environment and British architecture firm Nightingale Associates examined 751 students in 34 classrooms across seven primary schools for the 2011-2012 academic year. Students were assessed at the beginning and end of the year for academic performance in math, reading and writing, and classrooms were rated on environmental qualities like classroom orientation, natural light, acoustics, temperature, air quality and color.
The researchers found that classroom architecture and design significantly affected academic performance: Environmental factors studied affected 73 percent of the changes in student scores.
"It has long been known that various aspects of the built environment impact on people in buildings, but this is the first time a holistic assessment has been made that successfully links the overall impact directly to learning rates in schools," Peter Barrett, a professor at the University of Salford, said in a statement. "The impact identified is in fact greater than we imagined and the Salford team is looking forward to building on these clear results."
The study will continue for another 18 months across an additional 20 schools in the U.K. Researchers seek to apply their findings to help schools "maximize their investment in the learning environment."
Architecture and design magazine Dezeen reports architects in the U.K. are now using the study to fight the government's recent restrictions on school building designs, including a ban on curved and glass walls. Education department officials, on the other hand, are dismissing the study's preliminary findings.
"There is no convincing evidence that spending enormous sums of money on school buildings leads to increased attainment. An excellent curriculum, great leadership and inspirational teaching are the keys to driving up standards," a government spokesperson told Dezeen.
The Salford-Nightingale findings come as an estimated 14 million children in the United States attend crumbling public schools with leaking roofs, moldy walls and dangling ceiling tiles, among other deteriorations.
- The National Education Association, the country's largest teachers union, says the situation has gotten so bad that at least one-third of the United States' 80,000 public schools need "extensive" repair.
- A 2007 Department of Education survey found that 43 percent of schools in the U.S. see the condition of their buildings as "interfering with the ability of the school to deliver instruction."
- The effects of such conditions were reported to range from lower student achievement to reduced teacher productivity.
Just refurbishing those schools into "good overall condition," however, would require $127-322 billion in spending, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
Still, local governments around the world are reshaping students' learning experience through forward-thinking school designs. Below, see some of the most beautiful and imaginative public schools on earth:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/03/school-design-student-grades_n_2404289.html?utm_hp_ref=education.
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Washington DC/ Federal Effort Aims to Transform Learning Technologies
By Sean Cavanagh
Education Week, Vol. 32, Issue 15 [Edweek.org]
January 3, 2013
Can online graphic novels help teenagers cope with difficult social situations? Are 3-D technologies a tool for helping English-learners acquire language skills outside traditional educational settings? And what about the potential for mobile apps that let students manipulate on-screen images with their fingers to help them learn fractions?
A federal program, still in its infancy, is supporting research that seeks to answer those and other questions by wedding partners that often operate in isolation-educational technology and scientific research on learning-with the goal of transforming teaching and learning in schools.
The federal government has been funding projects focused on technology and education for decades, and it has backed research on cognition in many forms.
But the relatively new program, called Cyberlearning: Transforming Education, is the National Science Foundation's attempt to create a space within the agency devoted to supporting research on advanced learning technologies. Such technologies are generally defined as tools that:
- help people connect directly with what they're learning and
- provide them with new opportunities to acquire knowledge in ways that would otherwise be out of reach.
"What we want to do is have one program that will be looking at the future of learning technologies-the next generation," said Janet Kolodner, an NSF program director who is guiding the cyberlearning effort. "Some of [the projects] advance the technology itself. Some of them advance ways of using technology and the integration of technology within other technologies, and in new kinds of learning environments."
The agency, with headquarters in Arlington, Va., hopes the research will help spawn new technology products that can benefit schools, Ms. Kolodner said, but it is also seeking to back projects that will increase scientists' and educators' understanding of technology's capacity to enhance student learning.
Since the cyberlearning program was launched about two years ago, it has awarded grants worth about $30 million for projects focused on an eclectic array of ideas and technologies. All of the projects funded by the cyberlearning program-about 50 so far-are expected to be grounded in scientific theories of learning, and learning with technology, specifically.
Technology changes constantly, and the digital tools that get used in classrooms are no exception. For that reason, the program's greatest potential will come in its ability to produce research and designs that can spawn myriad new technologies and ideas, rather than any single product, said John Black, a professor of telecommunications and education at Teachers College, Columbia University.
- Mr. Black is receiving funding through the cyberlearning program to examine the potential of using mobile applications to teach fractions, and specifically whether "embodied cognition"-the idea that learning is enhanced when people can feel or perform an activity, rather than just watch simulations of it-can help improve student learning.
- His project plans to use narratives, characters, and math content from "Cyberchase," a math-focused TV show.
The importance of research that aspires to produce breakthroughs in technology and education and how it can be used is not always evident to the public, because the results of those projects can take so long to germinate, Mr. Black noted.
"It's much easier to recognize the value of things that are a little bit beyond what we've already done," he said, "as opposed to radical things."
Projects Evolving
The task of setting the cyberlearning program in motion has belonged primarily to Ms. Kolodner, who came to the NSF on loan from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Ms. Kolodner, a professor of computing and cognitive science at the university in Atlanta, is well known in the world of educational technology and cognition, having conducted extensive research in that area and having served as the founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Learning Sciences. She originally signed on for a two-year term at the NSF, but then reached an agreement with the agency to extend her oversight for an additional year.
- One project financed through the program, being led by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, seeks to produce classroom breakthroughs through the creation of a "learning dashboard," a system that uses a statistical and cognitive model to record and compute how well students have learned particular skills, and provide them and their teachers with instant feedback on what they've learned and what to do next.
- The system was developed by Marsha Lovett, the director of the university's Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence, and Christopher Genovese, a professor of statistics at the university.
The dashboard allows students to connect to it through any instructional device, meaning they could use personal computers, smartphones, tablets, and other technologies to complete assignments and practice exercises and take quizzes. The system is designed to work across all academic subjects, with teachers and others adding information on how academic content relates to the skills they want covered.
The system goes beyond the capabilities of many existing interactive-technology devices, which churn out information for teachers about students' performance in class, Ms. Lovett explained, in that the learning dashboard uses scientific principles to provide in-depth information on the extent to which students have actually grasped content and where their understanding is weak. The funding from the NSF-about $500,000 over three years-will help the researchers expand the system.
- Another project will examine whether technology and other approaches can be integrated within "maker spaces"-informal environments created in museums, community centers, or even garages that allow people of all ages to design, build, or tinker with projects-to improve student learning. Those projects could focus on almost anything, from car repair to electronics to welding.
- The researchers hope to develop something akin to a "cyber-enabled critique tool" that would allow students using maker spaces to work with a broader community and refine their work based on feedback from experts, and allow researchers to understand how that learning can be transferred to other math and science skills, said Erica Halverson, an assistant professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is co-directing the effort with Kimberly Sheridan, an assistant professor of educational psychology and art education at George Mason University, in Fairfax, Va.
The researchers are working with a number of maker spaces around the country, though the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh is the site for their design experiments.
"The ethos of 'making' has been around for a long time," Ms. Halverson said. Her project, she said, focuses on "elevating making to a level where we see the value of these spaces, in terms of the skills and abilities we want our students to have."
Measuring Success
Government has played a leading role in underwriting research aimed at producing breakthroughs in science in other areas, and that's a good approach, said Jon Baron, the president of the Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy, a Washington-based nonprofit group that seeks to improve the effectiveness of publicly funded programs by applying rigorous standards of evidence for what works to them.
Government research often has "spillover benefits" for the development of new ideas and innovations in the public and private sectors, Mr. Baron said, including the development of commercial products.
Over the past decade, there has been an increased emphasis on applying scientifically rigorous tests to education products and programs, through randomized control trials and other methods of study that have been more commonplace in medicine and other fields. Applying rigorous standards to what amounts to early-stage or cutting-edge research, such as what emerges from the NSF cyberlearning program, is difficult, because it takes time to know whether new technologies have improved student learning or advanced scientific understanding, Mr. Baron said.
But he argued that small-scale studies could be done of initial concepts and products that emerge, to gauge whether there's preliminary evidence of positive results.
Ideally, a project "is set up to produce evidence about whether products work or not," Mr. Baron said. For early-stage research, "they would identify which are the most promising of the technologies developed."
Ms. Kolodner said she agrees that small-scale studies are a more realistic option for evaluating the projects funded through the cyberlearning program than larger-scale randomized trials, which she says are unlikely to yield insights about when and how, exactly, new education technologies could be used effectively.
As the research on the various learning technologies accumulates, how will innovations emerge from the project to reach educators?
Ms. Kolodner said the NSF is working to establish a "cyberlearning resource center," to distill and disseminate the research from the program for educators, curriculum specialists, researchers, and others.
"Taking these things into the world" and into schools brings many challenges, she said. "There are adoption issues, there are learning issues, with respect to those who have to make it work.
But the science agency's vision is "to fund things that have the potential to make a real difference in populations that are reached in terms of learning," Ms. Kolodner said, "and in the depths of understanding of people in the general population."
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Newark NJ/ Merit Prep: Teachers' Union Fights Blended Learning
By Jill Barshay
Hechinger Report [Hechingerreport.org]
This story also appeared at WNYC
January 3, 2013
When 11-year-old Rachelle Rosado opens up her laptop and puts on her headphones in her sixth-grade classroom, she hears an electronic voice: The prefix "sub" goes with "mit" and that makes the word "submit."
Rachelle attends an unusual charter school in an office building across the street from Newark City Hall. The school, Merit Prep, opened up at the beginning of the 2012-13 academic year with the noble mission of raising the academic performance of low-income minority students.
- But it is also embroiled in a controversy over how much children should be taught by computers.
- New Jersey's biggest teachers' union is suing to shut the school down and is hoping a state appellate court will do so in early 2013.
Students at Merit Prep are part of an educational experiment known as blended learning that combines computer software, individual instruction and small-group learning.
They spend a lot of the day in a cafeteria-sized room where there's enough space for the entire school of 80 sixth-grade students- mostly black, poor and below grade level-to sit at shared lime green tables with their assigned laptops. The plan is to add one grade a year.
Rachelle says the animated characters in some of the software programs are funny. And she especially likes going at her own pace.
- "In my previous school, when we start on one thing, we spent two weeks on it but in this school, if we get it complete, we just move on to the next thing," says Rachelle.
When Rachelle struggled with an online worksheet, she liked doing it over and over again until she got it right.
Hundreds of schools around the country are experimenting with big doses of online instruction inside the classroom and changing the role of the teacher.
Ben Conant, a math teacher at Merit Prep, is half disc jockey who selects the mix of computer curriculum and half personal tutor who addresses each student's weaknesses.
- "I don't want kids just sitting in front of a computer and becoming like pale computer zombies," said Conant. "I was worried about that. That was my biggest fear."
The online curriculum feeds each student's answers into a data center operated by Touchstone Education, the non-profit school management group that runs Merit Prep.
- The data center then spits out reports that Conant can use to monitor his students' progress, figure out what one-on-one coaching each student needs and adjust what he will teach when he pulls a few kids aside into glass-enclosed seminar rooms for small-group instruction.
- Students don't just work on their computers. Conant also has them do calculations on paper, which gives them handwriting practice.
"Four is messy," Conant told one student. "I want to see it like one, two and three. But your math is good."
Conant says his biggest problem in the classroom is that students are playing math games that they find on their own over the Internet. He disciplines the game players with demerits. "They want to learn; that's great," Conant says. "It's much better than students drawing little ink flowers that they scribble over and over again, which is what people do when they have notebooks and they're bored."
Ben Rayer, founder of Merit Prep, believes he can get better results for low income inner-city children by combining technology with the best practices in classroom teaching. If he succeeds with this first Newark school, he plans to build 50 charter schools just like it around the country.
Rayer says the big benefit to using technology is that he can tailor the instruction for each student.
- "No longer do we teach just one lesson in front of a class of 30 or 40 students; we teach many lessons during a day to students based on their individual needs," says Rayer.
This year as Rayer develops his non-profit model at Merit Prep, his school is overstaffed with a 13-to-1 student-teacher ratio.
But he says technology should allow him to increase that. He won't put a number on it but his description of becoming 25 to 30 percent more efficient than a typical school could mean as many as 40 students per teacher.
"That is not the point of what we're doing," said Rayer. "But if this worked and a teacher could serve more students at a highly effective level, we would do that."
The New Jersey Education Association, which doesn't even represent the teachers of Newark, is worried about the specter of computers replacing teachers. The union has gone to court to shut down Merit Prep and another charter school that is also using a blended learning approach. The union's lawsuit argues that charter schools can't emphasize online instruction until the New Jersey state legislature evaluates and approves it.
"Should we be experimenting with students during their academic experience?" asks Steve Wollmer, the union's communications director. "They only get one trip through the public schools."
Computer use in education will inevitably grow, but the question is: How much?
Even some technology advocates like Doug Levin of the State Educational Technology Directors Association doubt that this model will ever appeal to middle- and upper-income families whose children are not struggling below grade level.
Levin says that's because those children don't need as much extra drilling and can use more of the school day for analysis and inquiry.
"I think this approach works much better for elementary school aged children who are really struggling to build their vocabulary, to understand basic math facts and operations," says Levin. "I think as kids get into middle and high school, what the computer can offer in that regard is less."
Levin predicts the computer drilling will succeed in raising the test scores of the low-income sixth graders of Merit Prep.
But until those results are in, this school is still an experiment.
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Washington DC/ OPINION: Why Are College Textbooks So Absurdly Expensive?
By Jordan Weissmann [Associate editor at The Atlantic. He has written for a number of publications, including The Washington Post and The National Law Journal]
Theatlantic.com
January 3, 2013
You thought the rising cost of college tuition was bad? Then check out the rising cost of college textbooks.
The American Enterprise Institute's Mark Perry has put together this chart showing the egregious, 812 percent rise in the cost of course materials since 1978, as captured in the Bureau of Labor Statistics's consumer price index data.
The price of all those Intro to Sociology and Calculus books have shot up faster than health-care, home prices, and, of course, inflation.
Academic Publishers will tell you that creating modern textbooks is an expensive, labor-intensive process that demands charging high prices. But as Kevin Carey noted in a recent Slate piece, the industry also shares some of the dysfunctions that help drive up the cost of healthcare spending.
Just as doctors prescribe prescription drugs they'll never have to pay for, college professors often assign titles with little consideration of cost.
Students, like patients worried about their health, don't have much choice to pay up, lest they risk their grades. Meanwhile, Carey illustrates how publishers have done just about everything within their power to prop up their profits, from bundling textbooks with software that forces students to buy new editions instead of cheaper used copies, to suing a low-cost textbook start-ups over flimsy copyright claims.
And that has consequences for students.
According to the National Association of College Stores, the average college student reports paying about $655 for textbooks and supplies annually, down a bit from $702 four years ago.
The NACS credits that fall to its efforts to promote used books along with programs that let students rent rather than buy their texts. But to put that $655 in perspective, consider this: after aid, the average college student spends about $2,900 on their annual tuition, according to the College Board. We're not talking about just another drop in the bucket here.
AEI's Perry writes that he's confident open educational resources, made available via the web, will eventually topple traditional textbooks, just as Wikipedia killed off the encyclopedia.
The difference is that nobody I know ever had a college professor who said, "If you don't read Britannica, you'll likely fail this class." If we ever want to bring the cost of these books under control, the faculty need to tune into the problem.
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