Santa Fe/ Bigger, Better Sweeney Elementary School Reopens After 18 Months of Construction
By Robert Nott
The New Mexican
January 9, 2013
Few people - certainly not teachers, staffers or Superintendent Joel Boyd - were happy to discover that Sweeney Elementary School was not yet fit for occupation Monday, when Santa Fe Public Schools resumed operation after a two-week winter break.
But the south-side elementary school on Airport Road, which serves about 590 students and employs about 75 staff members, will reopen Thursday, following a semester in which half its students were bused to the old Kaune Elementary School building during a construction project.
The district decided to close the school Tuesday to give construction crews the chance to ensure the site was ready for students Thursday.
- "It looks like we're ready for the kids," Boyd said during a tour of Sweeney on Tuesday. "It's amazing what can be done in 24 hours. We've had the full support of the [Sweeney] community."
The roughly 18-month construction job, which included major structural renovations and additional classroom wings, will come to a close over the next few weeks - though the classrooms are ready for teachers and students now.
On Wednesday, while construction crews continued to fine-tune their work, staffers, teachers and Principal Theresa Ulibarri readied their rooms and prepared lesson plans. The job increased the size of the school by about 14,520 square feet.
- "I feel excited for what we have and feel a sense of anticipation for what will be done," said the school's music teacher, Kristina Kort. "I'm ready to exhale."
The exhalation resulted in part from the knowledge that the school's K-2 students who attended Kaune last semester will come back home to learn with their older schoolmates. The school's third- through fifth-graders remained in Sweeney during construction last semester.
Ulibarri said the separation was "like a divorce." On Dec. 21, 2012 - the last day of school before winter break - the school's older kids invited their younger comrades back for that half-day of school, she said.
Kort is not the only teacher who can now revel in her own "defined space," as Ulibarri put it.
- Each of the school's wings, which had housed five classrooms, now houses four larger rooms.
- The school's gym was updated, and a 1,000-square-foot stage was built into it for performances, assemblies and other community events.
- Kort, for example, now has a large music room with an adjoining storage room to maintain the instruments for her band students (40 in the fourth grade and another 40 in the fifth grade).
- The school has two additional Smart Board labs,
- an art room and
- a large community space that includes an amphitheater,
- a "flex" room that can be altered to fit various needs, and
- a kitchen that will be used by the Cooking For Kids program and, hopefully, will provide an opportunity to make meals for parent-driven events.
The Sweeney project cost about $7 million, funded through the $160 million in bond money approved by county voters in 2009.
About $60 million of that amount remains for upcoming projects - including:
- construction of a new Agua Fría Elementary School and
- a new south-side K-8 school, and
- renovations at Atalaya, Kearny and Piñon elementary schools.
On Feb. 5, county voters will decide whether to approve $130 million in general obligation bond money for both ongoing and future construction projects within the district.
Boyd stressed that property taxes will not increase as a result of bond approval.
Boyd, who came on board as superintendent last August, said he is impressed with the district's construction-management work.
- "With every project we've done ... it seems like money well spent," he said. "But having the full support of the community is the only way to provide a quality education for our kids. I think the community feels confident with these projects - they add real value to every neighborhood and to the lives of our young people."
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Deming/ Luna County Commissioners Poised in Support of School District
By Matt Robinson
Deming Headlight Staff
January 9, 2013
Luna County Commissioners are poised to issue a letter in support of Deming Public Schools seeking another general obligation bond to improve local schools. But the top DPS administrator says there are currently no plans on the table to set a date for a bond vote and that the district is merely getting its ducks in a row for a facilities master plan.
The county will meet at 9 a.m. on Thursday at the Luna County Courthouse, 700 S. Silver Avenue. Last for new business on an agenda chock full of annual procedural votes is a vote on a letter of support to Deming Public Schools "pertaining to the new high school bond issue."
- "We've got a long way to go, but we've started," DPS superintendent Harvielee Moore said.
- "We're doing our jobs because our old facilities master plan is completed and now we have to do a new one."
She says the state requires a new plan every five years.
- In short, the plan is a guide that specifically outlines needed improvements within local schools.
- They hope to have the next plan finished by March, at a cost of approximately $80,000 to taxpayers, about $60,000 of which is funded by a state grant.
You might recall the failed 2008 DPS bid to have voters approve a $19.5 million bond to build a new high school to replace Deming High School.
Voters overwhelmingly rejected the measure. The last school bond approved by Luna County voters came in 2006, when an $11 million bond was approved for Ruben S. Torres and Columbus Elementary Schools.
- "We are putting plans together as we speak and that includes looking at every school," Moore said.
- "The two schools that jump out, of course, are the high school and intermediate school, because they have not been renovated."
During its promotion of the 2008 bond vote, the district argued the high school was in dire need of modernization.
- The facility was built in 1957 and saw renovations in 2003.
- Deming InterMediate school was built in 1938 with an addition added later.
The county's letter to DPS is short and to the point:
Luna County elected leaders and administration realize the importance of providing safe, modern facilities for the future success of students. We, therefore, support the school's efforts towards a general obligation bond to renovate Deming High School and replace Deming Intermediate School.
"We had asked if they would be willing to support a bond if we did go to bond, but we are not saying at this time. Only the board can say if we're going to bond," Moore added.
She encouraged locals to contact the district or visit the main office with comments or questions.
- The district can be reached at (575) 546-8841 or visited at 1001 S. Diamond Avenue.
She also stressed that public meetings will be held in coming months to seek other input on the plan.
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ABQ/ OPINION: APS Reform Are Efforts Working
By Winston Brooks [APS Superintendent]
ABQ Journal
January 10, 2013
The Journal editorial board seems inconsistent when it comes to public education reform.
Usually, the newspaper complains long and loudly that Albuquerque Public Schools doesn't do enough to promote education reform. But when that dull, old saw doesn't cut, it finds a new complaint, one apparently centered on this premise: Ground-breaking reforms at Rio Grande High School and Ernie Pyle Middle School don't work fast enough, or worse, don't work at all.
Ordinarily, I'd simply dismiss the Journal's reflexive negativity as the price of doing business in Albuquerque, but its most recent screed does a disservice to the children, teachers and administrators at Rio Grande and Ernie Pyle. Their hard work is showing good results. While it's absolutely true that reform doesn't create sparkly, wonderful numbers overnight, it does change culture. And culture, over time, improves results.
What APS did at Rio Grande and Ernie Pyle - schools that have underperformed for decades - was revolutionary. By changing the structure of operation in those schools - including collaboration, administration, and yes, pay - we went about reform never before attempted in New Mexico.
Does this cost more? You bet. Is it "throwing money" at the problem? Absolutely not. Every reform we're attempting is targeted toward improving student achievement in a far more strategic approach, with collaboration on a variety of fronts as its centerpiece.
That's something the Journal and APS critics have long complained we weren't doing.
In executing this reform, we created an alliance that includes the district, community, unions, teachers, parents, even business. Arrows are moving up, not down. And while we cannot microwave massive improvements in a short span of time, the staffs at Rio Grande and Ernie Pyle have created an energy that in the long run will do wonders for the students at those schools.
The Journal laments Rio Grande's graduation rate of 52 percent, a number that's nowhere near good enough for anyone. I would note, however, that this number was a two and a half percent increase over the previous year, despite state-mandated changes in graduation-rate calculations that should have pushed that figure lower. And I'll wager the numbers at Rio will continue to improve.
There are other positive signs of success. Discipline referrals are down. More than 75 percent of the students who attended at least three tutoring sessions passed the high school exit exam. In the fall of 2012, a growing number of sophomores scored proficient and nearing proficient in both reading and math.
We still have a lot of work to do. No matter the reform, no matter the politics, real and consistent improvement takes time and support. Sometimes, it's three years. Sometimes, it's five. In dealing with hundreds and thousands of human beings, the key point is constant, diligent progression.
There have been problems, and those are my responsibility. At Rio Grande, we had six principals in four years, which complicated the reform effort. We also had a near-catastrophic scheduling mess there two years ago, one that was stemmed by the incredible work of former APS Chief Academic Officer (and interim Rio Grande Principal) Linda Sink and a staff that went above and beyond the call of duty in order to help kids deal with a problem not of their making.
If nothing else, you should know this about the reforms at these schools: We're all in - strategy, money, commitment. It's too bad the Journal and reflexive APS critics can't say the same.
That said, I do not deny that others' ideas can be helpful, and perhaps, speed the improvement at Ernie Pyle and Rio Grande. That's why we collaborate with those school communities, and others. Could we begin reforms at earlier ages? Absolutely. Working on early intervention reading programs, even before children get to school, would make everyone's job easier.
We can't do it alone. We need students and parents to take advantage of services we provide, such as one-on-one tutoring. We're offering the programs; we need them to come.
I've always contended that instituting reforms at middle and high school are only one piece of a very difficult puzzle. But to imply that these reforms are not working, or are a poor use of the public's money, is simply fantasy.
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Washington DC/ States Show Spotty Progress Across Swath of Education Gauges
By Amy M. Hightower
Education Week, Vol. 32, Issue 16 [Edweek.org]
January 10, 2012
The 17th edition of Education Week's Quality Counts continues the report's tradition of tracking key education indicators and grading the states on their policy efforts and outcomes. Each year, Quality Counts provides new results for a portion of the policy-and-performance categories that form the framework for the report's State-of-the-States analysis. The 2013 edition presents updated scores and letter grades, for the states and the nation as a whole, in three of the six major areas tracked in the report.
Highlights From the Quality Counts Report:
Executive Summary: Schools Aim to Craft Environment for Learning
Overview: Discipline Policies Shift With Views on What Works
Voices From the Field: Creating a Healthy School Climate
Full Report
Read the Full Report
- New analyses from the EPE Research Center for the Chance-for-Success Index and school finance categories, respectively, capture critical aspects of the broader educational environment and the level and equitability of school funding.
- In the other updated category, the center examines policies related to transitions and alignment across stages of education.
- Results for the three other areas in the State-of-the-States rubric-the K-12 Achievement Index, the teaching profession, and standards, assessments, and accountability-were updated for the 2012 report.
In addition to the evaluations of performance within those individual categories, readers will find overall, summative letter grades and scores for the nation and the states. Those grades incorporate the most recent information available across each of the six categories that make up the full Quality Counts report card. Each category carries equal weight when calculating the summative scores.
For the fifth year in a row, Maryland posts the nation's highest overall grade. Scoring 87.5 and earning a B-plus, Maryland finishes 3.4 points ahead of second-place Massachusetts, which is followed by New York and Virginia. For the first time, Kentucky (10th) joins the top-10 states, while Florida (sixth) regains its top-10 ranking after falling to 11th place in 2012. At the other end of the rankings, South Dakota was awarded a grade of D-plus. A majority of states fell near the middle of the grading curve, with 38 states earning grades between a C-minus and a C-plus. The United States as a whole gained a half-point from last year, bringing the national grade up to a C-plus, from a C.
Chance for Success
The Chance-for-Success Index provides a unique perspective on the link between education and beneficial outcomes at each stage of a person's life.
- The index combines information from 13 indicators that span childhood through adulthood to capture three broad life stages: the early-childhood years, participation and performance in formal education, and educational attainment and workforce outcomes during adulthood.
- The grading for this section follows a "best in class" approach, which evaluates each state's performance on a given criterion relative to the nation's top-ranked state on that same indicator. The leading state is awarded 100 points for the indicator; other states receive points in proportion to their performance as benchmarked against the national leader.
Massachusetts remains at the top of the national rankings in Chance for Success for the sixth year running, with a grade of A-minus. Connecticut, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Vermont each receive a B-plus. Those states have collectively been the nation's top scorers since the index was introduced in 2007. By contrast, two states-Nevada and New Mexico-each receive grades of D, placing their results roughly on par with past performance.
The nation as a whole earns a C-plus in the Chance-for-Success category, dropping by nearly a point from 2012. Sixteen states experienced a modest increase or decrease in their grades since last year's report. Vermont increased its score the most, by 2.3 points, while Alaska and Wyoming lost the most ground, seeing their scores fall by 2.2 and 2.4 points, respectively.
Across the areas tracked by the Chance-for-Success Index, states perform best on indicators associated with opportunities to acquire a solid foundation for learning during the early years. However, the measures that capture participation and performance in formal schooling remain the driving force behind state rankings.
Transitions and Alignment
The category of transitions and alignment tracks state-policy efforts to better coordinate the connections between K-12 schooling and other segments of the education pipeline, with a particular focus on three critical stages: early-childhood education, college readiness, and career readiness.
- This section of the report monitors activity around a set of 14 individual policies, each of which factors equally into a state's grade.
- The state's final score reflects the number of policies a state has implemented.
This year's average grade for transitions and alignment is a B-minus, marking an increase of nearly 3 points from two years ago, when the analysis was last updated. Since then, states have expanded their policymaking in each of the three areas the section examines, with activity slightly more pronounced in the college-readiness domain than in the early-childhood or economy-and-workforce domains. Twenty-five states have seen increases in their scores since 2011.
For the first time, a state has earned a perfect score in this section. Georgia has enacted all 14 policies to receive the maximum 100 points. In addition to Georgia, seven other states-Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Tennessee, and Texas-also receive an A for their progress in this policymaking arena. Utah-which rose from a C-minus in 2011 to a B-plus in 2013-saw the largest gain over the two-year period and nearly doubled the number of enacted policies tracked across all three stages of the education pipeline.
While seven states posted scores of D-plus or lower in 2011, only three states-Montana, Nebraska, and South Dakota-perform at that level in 2013, which corresponds to implementation of just three or four of the 14 policies tracked by the report.
In linkages to early education, states made the biggest movement in the establishment of school-readiness definitions. In 2013, just over half the states (26) have such definitions, continuing an upward trajectory from 19 states in 2009 and 22 in 2011.
But the most significant movement occurred further along the pipeline, as many states enacted college-readiness policies aimed at preparing high school graduates for the rigors of postsecondary education. Here, states made progress in four of the five indicators tracked.
This year, we again see the influence of major national movements that promote college preparedness, including the Common Core State Standards Initiative and the federal Race to the Top program.
- 38 states have now defined college readiness, 5 more states than in 2011 and 18 more than in 2009.
- In addition, 16 states now require all high school students to take a college-preparatory curriculum to earn a diploma, an increase of 6 states since 2011.
- 21 states have high school assessments aligned with their postsecondary systems, an increase of 6 states.
Overall, state efforts to connect education and workforce preparation remain the most mature of the areas examined in this section of Quality Counts.
- This year, 28 states have implemented all four economy-and-workforce policies examined in the report.
- We see growth in the number of state K-12 education systems defining work readiness, with 38 states doing so in 2013, compared with 33 in 2011 and 28 in 2009.
- We see growth in the number of states offering students a pathway to a standard high school diploma that allows for career specialization, with 44 states doing so in 2013, compared with 38 states in 2011 and 37 in 2009.
School Finance
The final section of the State of the States examines a set of eight school-finance indicators. Half of those measures encompass school spending patterns, while the other half focus on the distribution of resources within a state.
When gauging education expenditures, the EPE Research Center evaluates that spending relative to some applicable criterion or benchmark, such as regional differences in costs, the national average for per-pupil expenditures, or the total size of a state's budget. We do not base our evaluations on raw dollars spent. Like the Chance-for-Success Index, school finance grades are calculated using a best-in-class rubric. The finance indicators in Quality Counts 2013 are based on data from 2010, the most recent year available.
This year, the nation as a whole earns a C for school finance, holding steady across the past several editions of the report in spite of turbulent economic times. The grades in this category tend to be tightly clustered, with 24 states scoring in the C-minus to C-plus range. Wyoming, a longtime leader in this section, receives the only grade of A this year, increasing its score by almost 4 points from the 2012 report. West Virginia, which ranks second in the nation with an A-minus, saw its score climb by more than 11 points over its 2012 results.
That jump can be primarily attributed to a large increase in per-pupil expenditures ($1,074) over the past year. As a result, the percent of students in districts spending at or above the U.S. average soared from 17 percent to more than 88 percent, while its Spending Index score rose by 5 points since last year's report. A large increase in West Virginia's K-12 education spending during this period has been widely reported.
At the other end of the grading spectrum, four states-Mississippi, Nevada, North Carolina, and Utah-each receive grades of D, and Idaho receives a D-minus.
The research center's equity analysis continues to find wide disparities in funding patterns across districts in many states.
- For example, the Restricted Range indicator, which reports the difference in per-pupil spending levels for districts at the 95th and 5th expenditure percentiles, finds a gap of $13,535 in Alaska, the largest in the nation.
- At the other end of the spectrum, about $1,850 separates high- and low-spending school systems in Utah.
The 2013 Wealth Neutrality scores find that just five states-Alaska, Kansas, Nebraska, Nevada, and Wyoming-fund property-poor districts at equal or higher levels than their wealthier systems.
On average, states score considerably better on the equity measures tracked in Quality Counts 2013 than they do on the spending metrics.
However, few states rank at the top or bottom of the nation for both aspects of finance, and several post especially mixed performances. For example, nine of the states that earn an A or an A-minus on the equity measures tracked also earn an F on the set of spending indicators.
To put that disconnect in terms of state ranks,
- Utah is second in the country on equity of school funding, but dead last on spending.
- Conversely, Alaska and Vermont rank near the bottom (49th and 47th, respectively) on equity, but near the top (sixth and second, respectively) on education spending.
Grading Summary:
B+
1. Maryland 87.5
B
2. Massachusetts 84.1
3. New York 83.1
4. Virginia 82.9
B-
5. Arkansas 81.7
6. Florida 81.1
7. Georgia 81.0
8. New Jersey 80.8
9. West Virginia 80.8
10. Kentucky 80.1
11. Vermont 79.9
12. Ohio 79.6
C+
13. Wisconsin 79.4
14. Texas 79.4
15. Louisiana 79.0
16. Connecticut 78.9
17. Rhode Island 78.7
18. Pennsylvania 78.2
19. Delaware 78.0
20. Indiana 77.8
21. North Carolina 77.7
22. Tennessee 77.6
23. Wyoming 77.5
24. Michigan 77.3
25. New Hampshire 77.1
26. South Carolina 76.9
U.S. Average 76.9
27. North Dakota 76.8
28. Illinois 76.7
29. Hawaii 76.7
30. Alabama 76.6
31. Oklahoma 76.5
C
32. Colorado 76.1
33. Maine 75.9
34. Iowa 75.9
35. New Mexico 75.9
36. California 75.5
37. Kansas 75.2
38. Utah 74.6
39. Minnesota 74.2
40. Washington 73.8
41. Missouri 72.8
42. Oregon 72.7
C-
43. Arizona 72.2
44. Montana 72.2
45. District of Columbia 71.5
46. Nebraska 71.2
47. Alaska 71.0
48. Mississippi 71.0
49. Idaho 70.9
50. Nevada 69.7
D+
51. South Dakota 69.3
Note: States are ranked based on unrounded scores.
SOURCE: EPE Research Center, 2013
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Charlotte NC/ School Project Blurs Line Between Public, Private Funding
By Jaclyn Zubrzycki
Education Week, Vol. 32, Issue 17 [Edweek.org]
January 9, 2013
An unusual public-private school improvement partnership in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C., school system is raising hopes about its potential for improving the lives of some of Charlotte's neediest students and generating concerns about its nontraditional funding and governance structure.
Project Leadership and Investment for Transformation, or Project LIFT, is a $55 million investment from corporate and family foundations aimed at improving the academic outcomes for a cluster of public schools in west Charlotte that serve some of the city's most disadvantaged students.
The goal is to provide resources and boost the academic performance of the 7,400 students who attend West Charlotte High School and the eight schools that feed into it.
Project LIFT, which is led by a foundation-sponsored area superintendent who reports to both the private foundations and the chief academic officer of the 141,000-student Charlotte-Mecklenburg public school district, was officially launched in 2011 and entered into a formal agreement with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board in early 2012. Its schools are in their first year of implementation. More than 22 organizations have partnered with Project LIFT, whose 13-member governing board funneled donations into the Foundation for the Carolinas, a community foundation based in Charlotte.
- The project's governance arrangement is unique in the United States, but is part of a trend toward public-private partnership that has arisen partly due to school districts' budget constraints, said Janelle Scott, a professor of education and African-American studies at the University of California at Berkeley.
"Foundations want to help school districts to take risks they otherwise wouldn't be able to," she said.
But some are concerned by the role the funders will play in making educational decisions and worry whether the changes funded with outside money will be sustainable.
- Many of the project's strategies for improving student performance, like an extended school day and year and increased hiring autonomy for principals, are more common in public charter schools, said Ann Clark, the chief academic officer of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system, but Project LIFT schools are still considered to be part of the traditional public school system in Charlotte-Mecklenburg. One of Project LIFT's goals is to show that "this can be done within the public school structure," said Ms. Clark.
Unique Arrangement
The project began as a collaboration between the Leon Levine Foundation and the C.D. Spangler Foundation, both based in Charlotte, and soon expanded to include five other local and national foundations.
- The participating foundations had mainly been involved in education before, but were frustrated by the "persistent achievement gap" and wondered if they could have a greater impact by working together, said Stick Williams, the president of the Duke Energy Foundation and co-chair of the Project LIFT board.
Inspired by Geoffrey Canada's work in New York City's Harlem Community, the group decided to focus on just one group of high-needs schools in west Charlotte. The initiative focused on four "interventions":
- time (extended school days and years),
- talent (targeted teacher recruitment and retention efforts),
- technology (including a one-to-one laptop program), and
- parental and community investment.
The governance board also has a legislative agenda, and has already successfully obtained an exemption from a state law regulating school start and end dates.
When the effort was announced in January 2011, $40.5 million had been promised, but the board decided that the project would not launch unless it hit a target of $55 million. More than $57 million has been raised so far, and the project currently has partners providing in-kind services ranging from tutoring to health services.
Balance of Power
Negotiating the balance of power has been a task:
- The superintendent of the Project LIFT zone, Denise Watts, reports directly to and is paid by the Project LIFT board , but also reports to the district's chief academic officer and supervises the principals in the zone.
This arrangement was only arrived at after some negotiation, as Ms. Watts' position initially reported only to the Project LIFT board. Feeling that she had "influence but no power" over the schools in the project, Ms. Watts advocated for moving her position into the district so that principals in Project LIFT schools reported to her. Project LIFT also pays the salaries of an executive director focused on evaluation and a human resources specialist.
Moving Ms. Watts' position into the school district streamlined operations, said Ms. Clark. But, she said, "It's worth acknowledging that the Project LIFT board still has the key lever" and determines how its funds are spent. Ms. Watts, who has been working in the Charlotte schools since 2000, said that balancing the commitments is a juggling act.
Four Pillars
In this first school year, "talent is the number one priority," Ms. Watts said.
- Project LIFT principals were able to remove teachers they did not believe were mission-aligned, and offered signing, performance, and retention bonuses for others.
- Ms. Watts said that the zone had typically started the school year with close to 100 vacancies, but this year there were only five.
- Only the high school has a new principal, Ms. Watts said, but all of the principals have been receiving new leadership training at the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville, through Project LIFT.
Tonya Kales, a principal at Ashley Park, a pre-K-8 school in the zone, said the training and the hiring autonomy had provided her with support and allowed her to build the school culture she wanted to create: "There's power in being in a room with people who are all mission-aligned."
The initiative's focus on technology was suggested through community meetings, Ms. Watts said, and has begun to gain some traction. Elementary school students will receive laptops and teachers have received training on new software. Some families of Project LIFT students-about 80 so far-will receive subsidized Internet access in their homes.
Project LIFT has also yielded some striking in-kind donations:
- A $1.8 million gift from the Presbyterian Healthcare Foundation in Charlotte provided vaccinations for free to Project LIFT students.
- That effort reduced the number of students who were suspended for not having their immunizations up to date, as was the state's policy, from nearly 60 last year to only three or so at the start of this school year, said Ms. Watts.
The most publicized policy change so far has been the effort to expand the school day and year. A campaign to raise community support for that effort yielded mixed results, with some families saying they do not want the longer school day and even some key funders wondering if it is the best use of the project's money. Some Project LIFT students already received extra summer programming last year through the Building Educated Leaders for Life, or BELL, program. A hearing on the extended-day proposal is scheduled for January 22.
The zone's curriculum is the same as the rest of the district's, said Ms. Watts.
Project LIFT's work is being closely watched by its investors and by school district officials in Charlotte and nationwide. Ms. Clark said, "this will help all of us as a community learn about how we make investments ... you have to have good results for the district or Project LIFT to invest in you."
Sustainability
Because the continued investments are contingent upon results, some have concerns about whether the program will last. "If we feel like there's not much actually happening, we've agreed that we ought to pull the plug and not throw money away," said Mr. Williams.
Ms. Clark said that she believed that if the donors, most of whom had worked with the school system before, see that their investment was successful, they might be likely to continue their support.
- "$55 million is a significant investment, but $10 to $11 million a year in the types of budgets these foundations and the county are dealing with is not that significant ... Our community can afford it," she said. She said the district would also hope to learn from Project LIFT's successes.
But others, including Carol Sawyer, a co-founder of an equity-focused nonprofit called Mecklenburg Acts, said her group was concerned about what would happen at the end of five years. "It's not that you can fix a school once and it stays fixed," Ms. Sawyer said.
Integration Concerns
Richard McElrath, a member of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board who taught in the district for three decades, said that while he voted to approve Project LIFT, he was concerned about the program's sustainability. "I voted for it as an intervention. But you've got to look for the cause-how did it get this way?" he said. "I don't want us to think that we can be successful as a city having poor people over here, middle income over here, rich people over here."
West Charlotte is the alma mater of many of Charlotte's prominent citizens, but its academic reputation has deteriorated as its population has grown poorer and as the city's busing program ended due to a court order in 1999. The school's on-time graduation rate was 56 percent in 2012.
The special attention to west Charlotte has caused some conflict, though.
- "It creates a zone of privilege within a unified school system," said Susan Harden, an assistant professor of education at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte. "I don't think you'll have support for a unified district for long if you single out these as the special kids."
In well-off Ballantyne, a neighborhood in south Charlotte, there was serious discussion of seceding from the city of Charlotte and from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district, with some residents fearing that too much money was going to other schools.
There are also concerns that while Project LIFT may benefit some students, it maintains or even promotes a school system that is increasingly segregated by race and socioeconomic status. "Project LIFT represents a paradigm shift for Charlotte. Charlotte at one point worked toward integration, and West Charlotte High School was one of the models of that integration effort...now the notion is, pour extra money in and educate children in isolation. That troubles me," said Ms. Sawyer.
Ms. Watts said that while such concerns were not "invalid or outlandish...at the same time, it's the cards these kids have been dealt."
"People in decisionmaking positions continue to think about whether this is the best way to deal with this," she added, "but this is what we have today, this is where we are, and we need to serve these kids."
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Washington DC/ McKinley Technology High School Closes The Achievement Gap, Against All Odds
Huffington Post Report
January 9, 2012
American youth appear less interested in pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering and math fields compared to students of other countries as the country faces a potential shortfall in quality STEM workers in coming years.
But fighting the STEM shortage, as well as an achievement gap among minorities and low-income students, is the McKinley Technology High School in Washington, D.C. PBS NewsHour visited the public, Title I STEM magnet school, which is situated in a low-income area where at least 40 percent of students qualify for free or reduced lunch.
Senior James White is studying to be a civil engineer, at a time when the Department of Commerce expects STEM occupations to grow by 17 percent in the next five years, compared with 9.8 percent for non-STEM positions.
- "I like that it's hands on and I like tot help other people," White told NewsHour. "I get to build things we get to use."
While science and math classes are becoming slightly more popular in high schools, but are just pockets of improvement, and the U.S. is already lagging behind countries like South Korea in awarding engineering degrees. More than half of the Ph.Ds awarded by U.S. engineering schools go to non-U.S. citizens, many of whom leave the country within five years.
To add to that, American students perform very poorly on national science tests, results that experts have called "unacceptable." Reports have also shown that American students can plug and chug their science experiments, but can't explain why they got the results that they did.
- President Barack Obama has made a call for improving STEM education over the next decade through a number of partnerships and initiatives, and
- the U.S. Navy announced in June 2011 a plan to invest more than $100 million in science and technology education by 2015. Its aging workforce seeks to bolster a robust generation to replace the 50 percent of its many science and engineering-based workers who will be eligible for retirement by 2020.
A report by the Statistical Research Center at the American Institute of Physics released in July 2011 rankings of how states' primary education systems are preparing students for careers in science and engineering. Massachusetts, Minnesota and New Jersey topped that list.
And at McKinley Technology High, that preparation is robust, particularly for minority and low-income students who lack exposure to STEM education and professions.
- "You know, the familiarity to STEM that these programs allow help kids choose careers in collegiate and secondary level that are not traditionally chosen by children of color and women," Washington Teachers Union president Nathan Saunders told NewsHour. "If you look at the annual salaries of STEM, you consistently see they're making very good dollars on an annual basis."
To learn more about how McKinley Technology High School is educating a new generation of students, watch the full PBS NewsHour report: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2013/01/how-one-stem-school-aims-to-lower-the-achievement-gap.html.
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Washington DC/ OPINION: Language Education We Can Use
By David Young and J.B. Buxton [Young is the CEO of VIF International Education, a Chapel Hill, N.C.-based company that works with states, districts, and schools on international education. Buxton is the founding principal of the Education Innovations Group, in Raleigh, N.C., and a former deputy state superintendent of education and governor's education adviser in North Carolina.]
Education Week, Vol. 32, Issue 15 [Edweek.org]
January 9, 2013
As the global nature of work and life in the 21st century becomes clearer by the day, calls for a greater focus on international education and language learning are growing louder. Leaders from the education, business, and national security communities are agreed: International understanding and second-language proficiency are critical to individual and national interests-and our K-12 system must do more to promote them.
But with respect to international education and language learning, more of what we are doing today wouldn't be better. In fact, it might be worse.
For too many years, we have maintained a language-learning strategy that simply does not work. In programs using outdated pedagogies focused on grammar and translation and coupled with low expectations, students take foreign languages with goals that seemingly include everything except actually learning to speak the language. If graduates of our high schools regularly reflected that, after four years of mathematics, they couldn't solve for an unknown variable, we would be outraged. But we share a laugh when someone says, "I took four years of a language, but I can't really speak it."
As a nation, we seem unconcerned by students' wasting years in language programs with instructional approaches that have no chance of helping them achieve meaningful levels of proficiency. Students are neither learning to speak in large numbers nor at high levels because the traditional platform cannot possibly deliver enough intensity or time in the target language. As a result, everyone understands that putting Spanish or French or Mandarin on your resume simply means that you took it, not that you speak it.
But what is the goal of traditional programs if it is not learning to speak the language? Teachers and administrators will tell you that there is much more to language classes than just oral proficiency. There is cultural awareness and sensitivity, global knowledge, and exposure to the target language.
They are absolutely right. And these objectives would be well worth the investment if traditional world-language programs were actually set up for those outcomes. Unfortunately, they aren't. They continue to operate with the primary goal of increased proficiency and a secondary goal of increased global knowledge. The result? We achieve neither.
But we could. To do so, however, we will need to part ways with our traditional one-size-fits-all approach to language instruction.
Let's start with increased global knowledge. Rather than perpetuate the fiction that world-language classes can result in advanced proficiency, it is time to convert existing courses to a classroom experience that provides a combination of introductory language exposure, cultural studies, and deep, experiential learning about the countries that speak the target language. These middle and high school language courses would have the following three components:
"We seem unconcerned by students' wasting years in language programs with instructional approaches that have no chance of helping them achieve meaningful levels of proficiency."
- Specific, real-life language instruction narrowed to focus on survival travel skills and with the goal of teaching a subset of the current language curriculum to greater depth and understanding-with relevance and utility as guiding principles;
- A cultural-studies framework that teaches students how to understand a country's cultural identity and to compare and contrast countries; and
- Global knowledge through the study, comparison, and contrasting of countries that speak the target language.
To be clear, students will not leave these classes with advanced language proficiency. What they will obtain, however, are the language skills needed to travel in countries that speak the language, an understanding of other countries and cultures, and an awareness of the global issues that impact both those countries and our own.
For the students who seek to achieve proficiency, classrooms with dual-language instruction will provide the route. In these classrooms, the target language is not taught as a separate subject; it is the language in which instruction is delivered. Students master the curriculum objectives in all subject areas, while becoming highly proficient in a second language. A recently released book by the renowned dual-language-education researchers Wayne Thomas and Virginia Collier, Dual Language Education for a Transformed World, provides ample evidence that not only is dual language a best practice for second-language acquisition, but it is also the "most powerful school reform model for high academic achievement, whatever the demographic mix!"
There are different models of dual-language education, including 50/50 two-way (in which half of instruction is presented in English and the other half in the target language), and 90/10 full immersion (in which nearly all instruction is conducted in the foreign language being taught).
Communities with native Spanish-speaking, Mandarin-speaking, or other English-language-learner populations can benefit from the 50/50 model-a program that promotes academic achievement through enrichment, rather than remediation. In 90/10 programs, native English-speaking students benefit from the academic rigor inherent in learning nearly all content through the target language.
For students who enter these programs in the elementary years, school districts and states would develop companion middle and high school coursework that would build their language skills and ensure high-level proficiency by high school graduation.
No doubt, it will be difficult to wean our schools and districts from their traditional language approaches. But these approaches seek to teach language to 100 percent of the students with a success rate of 1 percent. Instead, we should aim for 10 percent participation in dual-language education to achieve 100 percent success, and support the remaining 90 percent of students with courses that will build survival language skills, cultural understanding, and global knowledge.
The good news: We can redeploy the existing world-languages course platform, teaching positions, and support resources to implement a language-learning and international education agenda that will actually achieve results.
In doing so, we will be in tune with the demands of states, businesses, and parents to better prepare students for the global world in which they will live and work.
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Washington DC/ OPINION: Without Teachers, the Classroom Is Just a Room
By Melinda Gates [Co-chair, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation]
Huffington Post
January 9, 2013
Years ago, when our foundation was getting started and Bill and I were starting to learn more about high school education, I had a conversation with a young teacher in Houston, Texas that transformed the way I look at the work we're doing.
He said that when he reflected about what it meant to be a good teacher, he realized that he had to live the values he was trying to instill in the students. (This reminded me of one of my favorite quotations from Gandhi - that you should "be the change you wish to see in the world.") Then he said that once he reflected on what it meant to live good values, he stopped thinking just about being a better teacher and started thinking about being a better human being.
This teacher gave me a new reverence for what the bond between teacher and student is all about. There is a cliché about the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. The whole of education is greater than the sum of algebra, persuasive writing and reading comprehension - even though basic arithmetic tells you that the sum of those parts is very large. That was the idea behind this video [http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=f21r1HE6dNQ], which I just showed a group of hundreds of educators gathered together from 32 districts and states to learn from each other about designing high quality teacher development and evaluation systems.
As the video says, the focus of our education strategy in recent years has centered on helping teachers do their best work. We're working on this challenge from many angles and with many partners, including teachers themselves. We started with the most basic question: What does great teaching look like?
We hoped that if we could help come up with an answer, we could share what we learned and help all teachers be their best. So we worked with 3,000 teachers from across the country who volunteered to be part of a big research project. We now have results from that work, which we called Measures of Effective Teaching (MET). It found that effective teaching can be measured using multiple measures that teachers can trust.
Now, we're focused on giving teachers the support they need to excel in the classroom. That support should come in many forms, including individualized professional development, cutting-edge educational technology and state-of-the-art lesson plans. One of the things I hear most often when I talk to teachers is that they're eager for more chances to work together, to learn from each other.
New teachers want regular access to colleagues with experience who can help them grow into the profession. Experienced teachers, likewise, want to become leaders in their schools by mentoring new teachers. I was recently talking to teachers in Denver, an innovative school district that is trying some new approaches. They told me one of the best changes is a new emphasis to work in groups. They said the spirit of the collaboration reminds them of why they became teachers in the first place.
Perhaps most importantly, teachers must have a voice in creating the future of teaching. They have a unique understanding of where their profession needs to go - and what they need to do their best work for students. We have an obligation to benefit from their wisdom. That is why all the work we do at the foundation is in partnership with teachers.
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