PSFA Daily News Digest

12-14 January 2013

www.nmpsfa.org 

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

Santa Fe/ State Lawmakers to Consider Best Course for Struggling Elementary School Students

By Robert Nott

The New Mexican

January 12, 2013

Nearly half of New Mexico's third-graders cannot read to grade level, according to the results of a 2011 state standardized test.

And if you listened to the rhetoric in the debate over what to do with those students, you might think the choice is simple: hold them back or pass them on to fourth grade without any consequences.

But the debate is more complex.

Gov. Susana Martinez and Education Secretary-designate Hanna Skandera have worked toward compromise with lawmakers on the issue for two years. Last year, a deal was close. A majority of lawmakers in the House and Senate agreed in principle to focus first on helping struggling students read in earlier grades, and then holding back students in third grade only when they failed to meet certain criteria. But the two chambers passed different versions of the proposal, and neither made it to the governor's desk.

With many new legislators taking office this year, whether compromise is possible in 2013 isn't clear. But during the legislative session that starts this week, Martinez and Skandera are expected to ask state lawmakers, for the third straight year, to limit social promotion - the practice of promoting a student who isn't reading to grade level.

They cite New Mexico students' low scores on standardized tests and the state's high school dropout rates, which are among the worst in the nation, as reasons to change state law.

Opponents say current law is working and doesn't need to be changed. It allows parents and teachers, who they say are equipped to know a student's capabilities, to decide whether to hold students back on a case-by-case basis.

• "Retention is an option that should remain an option," said Alyssa Agranat, an Albuquerque Public Schools teacher who has been an outspoken critic of Martinez's proposals.
• "I think a policy of 'en masse depending on test score' is not the way to go. The teacher, the principal, the student action-team members and others who know the students need to make the decision."

During last year's negotiations, Martinez agreed to support House legislation that would strip parents of the right to veto a recommendation to hold their child back. Under current law, New Mexico parents have the right to say no - at least the first time - if a school suggests retention for a child. Had the House bill become law, local school officials could have considered a parents' petition to promote their struggling child when their child had completed all remediation programs in earlier grades and maintained a 95 percent attendance rate. Martinez also supported Senate legislation that focused even more on remediation before allowing the possibility of retention.

But limiting social promotion has eluded Martinez so far. Resistance can be found among lawmakers and educators, including staff members at an elementary school in Southern New Mexico that Martinez has held up as a model of achievement.

• Anthony Elementary School in Anthony, N.M., near Las Cruces, scored an "A" on the state's new grading system and ranks fifth in achievement. However, Principal Linda Perez and the school's instructional coach, Lisa Quintis, insist that close student monitoring and remediation - not retention - are the keys to success.

Martinez's advocacy for changing the law, contrasted with opposition from staff at Anthony Elementary and other educators around the state, spotlights a central question in the debate over limiting social promotion: whether to lay out in state statute when to retain a student if he or she hasn't met certain expectations by the end of third grade.

The governor's take

The governor has long emphasized the importance of teaching kids to read based on her own experiences. Working as a prosecutor, she encountered many kids who could not read, dropped out of school and pursued lives of crime, she has said.

• New Mexico's literacy rate could serve as a backdrop for Martinez's stump speech on the issue. About 46 percent of adult New Mexicans read below the sixth-grade level, according to Heather Heunermund, executive director of The New Mexico Coalition for Literacy.

Martinez, a Republican, also could point to some Democrats who support retention, including many state lawmakers who sponsored and voted for the legislation last year and U.S. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

• "If your students keep being allowed to leave third grade and fourth grade without being able to read, you're not doing them any favors," Duncan said last year.

The public also appears to back Martinez's campaign to limit social promotion. In the fall of 2012, an Albuquerque Journal poll of some 400 likely voters revealed that 75 percent favored retaining a child if he or she could not read at grade level. Another 7 percent were undecided, leaving just 18 percent to oppose the deal.

• "Why are we letting politics get in the way of success for our kids?" Skandera asked during an interview at the Roundhouse in November.

A little history

Under current law, 287 students were held back across the state in the third grade during the last school year out of a class of 25,738, said Larry Behrens, a spokesman with the Public Education Department.

• The administration estimates that, at most, an additional 1,500 students would be held back if the proposals pass muster with the Legislature.
• Under the proposals, holding back students wouldn't begin until the 2014-15 school year to allow time for proposed remediation efforts to reduce that number.

The administration has proposed $13.5 million to pay for remediation and intervention for students struggling to read in kindergarten through third grade, said Enrique Knell, spokesman for the governor. Additional dollars are being proposed to help students in early grades, Behrens said.

But at Anthony Elementary School, some 60 percent of its 420 students are English-language learners. Nearly all the school's students qualify for the federal government's free and reduced-priced lunch program - an indication of poverty.

Yet the school is achieving, according to New Mexico's grading system. And it isn't relying heavily on a policy of holding back struggling students.

In the 2006-07 school year, the school's average reading score was 44.6 percent, based on Standards Based Assessments. Five years later, it is 62.4 percent. Principal Perez, who has been on the job three years, works with her staff to ensure early intervention procedures are put into place to keep kids on track.

Quintis, Anthony Elementary School's instructional coach, works weekly with teachers to continually assess students' reading and math skills. The school also has set up weekly and nine-week assessment blocks to monitor progress.

• "Progress monitoring and being held accountable is what makes a huge difference," Quintis said.
• "We have block time - about an hour every day - so I can meet teachers a couple of times a week. Administrators have to hold teachers accountable for this type of program, but everybody has to be given time during the day to have this reflective conversation. It doesn't take any more money, but it does take time - and an administrator saying, 'I want you to collect this data every week and have that conversation with the instructional coach.' "

Getting children to think about what they are reading is key, too, Quintis said. "They need to analyze what they think the author's questions are as they wrote the article or novel, what the main theme is, and what is the supporting evidence of that theme within the text. What are the implications? How do you think about the characters differently?"

• Other factors, including poverty, speaking English as a second language and dyslexia, shape a child's potential. "But in this school, there are no excuses," Quintis said.

Facts, figures and friction

Holding kids back a grade if they are not learning is probably as old as the schoolhouse itself.

• An August 2012 Brookings Institution report titled "Is Retaining Students in the Early Grades Self-defeating?" noted that by the 1960s, many educators called for students to be advanced to the next grade regardless of academic performance because of concerns that retention hindered the "social, emotional, and cognitive development of at-risk students."

So many factors revolve around an educator's decision to hold back a student that it is impossible to incorporate them all into any sort of sound analysis, according to the report.

• An April 2012 Manhattan Institute For Policy Research paper examining a decade-old retention/intervention policy in Florida echoes that thought, noting that studies often don't account for "maturity level or home environment" that can affect a student's achievement.

Martinez's proposals have borrowed from a program in Florida, where Skandera served as deputy commissioner of education from 2005 to 2007. New Mexico's grading system comes from Florida, too. Florida is the only state that's had a ban on social promotion in place long enough to study.

• The Manhattan Institute report set out to compare two groups over several years - Florida students who were passed on from the third grade despite displaying only borderline knowledge of what they were reading, and students who were held back even though their knowledge was only slightly less than that of students in the other group.

Florida held back about 21,800 students in the first year, about 75 percent more than it had the year before. Those students received more intense literacy lessons and additional reading lessons every day. The report found that those who were held back and given additional help "did better academically, in both the short and long term" - at least through seventh grade, which was as far as study was possible - than those who were promoted.

Florida's system, the study's author wrote, "is an example for policy makers across the country to emulate."

• But to Trina Raper, literacy coordinator for Santa Fe Public Schools, the key word in that study is remediation - the process of identifying struggling students and ensuring they get extra time with teachers and materials to master reading - and not retention.

Raper cites two sources.

• One is a 2007 National Association of School Psychologists paper. It emphasizes helping a struggling student to read instead of holding him or her back, which the study states is ineffective and possibly harmful, she said.

Critics of retention policies often say holding a child back affects a student's self-esteem and, because of that, many students fall behind and eventually give up on the system, dropping out before graduation.

• Raper's other source is John Hattie's meta-analysis-driven book published in 2009, Visible Learning. The book argues that promoted students still score better when it comes to social and emotional adjustment, as well as gaining confidence within school.
• "Being retained one year almost doubled a student's likelihood of dropping out," Hattie writes.

"It's better to take the kid to the next tier and keep them with their peers. Everybody has a story about the student who is retained and ends up fine, but there is a risk of sending the wrong message to students: 'You can't do school,' " said Raper, who cautioned that she was speaking for herself, not the school district.

• Donald J. Hernandez, a sociology professor at Hunter College in New York and author of the 2011 report "Double Jeopardy: How Third-Grade Reading Skills and Poverty Influence High School Graduation," agreed.
• "Whether it will work or not remains something of an open question - and how will it work and whether it will last," he said of social-promotion bans. "My fear is, putting it all on a child at the third grade will lead to other problems."

Reading ahead

Democrats control both the New Mexico House and Senate, meaning the governor will need bipartisan support this session to pass a bill limiting social promotion. She also must contend with a batch of new state lawmakers who will serve in both chambers following the November election.

But there are signs that any reading bill that involves retention might face long odds, despite bipartisan support in 2011 and 2012.

Rep. Mimi Stewart, D-Albuquerque and a former educator, opposes altering the state's current policy that gives parents the right to say no - at least the first time - if a school suggests holding back a child.

• "It gives you a safeguard and parent buy-in," she said, explaining that the responsibility for a child's growth should fall on the shoulders of the experts - teachers, parents, principals, intervention specialists and diagnostic experts. They, not the state's governor, know whether the child would be helped or harmed by retention, she said.

Sen. Gay Kernan, R-Hobbs, an early supporter, said though compromise was almost struck last year, there are so many new faces in the New Mexico Legislature this year that the bill's chances are unknown.

• "There is still a lot of opposition to that particular bill, and it is going to be difficult to pass that," she said. "I can't say enough about Secretary Skandera and her dedication to improving education in New Mexico. But it's going to be a whole new ballgame with a lot of new legislators coming in."

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Taos/ UNM-Taos Kids' Campus Earns National Accreditation

By Matthew van Buren

Taos News

January 14, 2013

The UNM-Taos Kids' Campus has reason to celebrate the New Year, having recently achieved accreditation through the National Association for the Education of Young Children.

The Kids' Campus Center for Early Learning, located at UNM-Taos' Klauer Campus in Ranchos de Taos, opened in spring 2008 and serves children from 6 weeks to 5 years old.

According to information from the National Association for the Education of Young Children, the organization has "worked to raise the quality of programs for all children from birth through age 8" for more than eight decades.

• The National Association for the Education of Young Children's accreditation process includes examining 10 program standards, which focus on four groups of early childhood education stakeholders: children, teachers, family and community partners, and program administration.
• The standards look at a program's physical environment, teacher qualifications and professional development, curriculum, health and child progress, among other factors.

Kids' Campus Director Tracy Jaramillo said the accreditation started with a year of "self-study," which involved examining the program and looking at areas that could be improved. A year of self-assessment then followed, involving parents, teachers and multiple surveys.

"It's a pretty rigorous process," she said.

Jaramillo said she started in her position about two years ago and has seen it grow in population and in quality. She said the Kids' Campus now serves about 85 families.

"We now have four separate classrooms," she said.

At the end of the accreditation process, Jaramillo said the Kids' Campus ended up scoring particularly high in the category dealing with relationships with children's families.

"That's an area that we really worked closely on to make adjustments," she said.

Jaramillo said the Kids' Campus emphasizes regular communication with parents, as well as involving them in the day-to-day operations. She said out of the accreditation process was developed a "classroom-parent representative" arrangement in which parents assist in classrooms and act as liaisons with families.

"They were very supportive," Jaramillo said of the parents. She said the National Association for the Education of Young Children accreditation process resulted in good gains.

"Our main motivation was to increase the quality of our program," she said. "This does give us the highest mark of quality that can be achieved."

She also said the UNM-Taos Early Childhood Resource Center provided technical support during the accreditation process, including weekly visits from a mentor.

UNM-Taos Executive Director Kate O'Neill credited Jaramillo and Margaret Mactavish, who helped found the Kids' Campus, for many of its advances.

"We're very excited," O'Neill said of the accreditation. "This has been a long time coming ... It's just been brick by brick."

O'Neill also spoke to the importance of the Kids' Campus as a resource for UNM-Taos students, who get hands-on experience at the facility.

"The goal has always been to run it as a lab school at the highest level, so that we can serve not only the students there but use it as a training environment for our students in early childhood education," she said.

The Kids' Campus is open weekdays from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and is open to children of students and non-students alike. For more information about the UNM-Taos Kids' Campus, including rates and scholarships, call (575) 737-6255 or visit www.taos.unm.edu/kids-campus/index.html.

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Bloomfield/ James Olivas: Golden Apple Winner Brings Own Spin to Learning

By Joshua Kellogg

Farmington Daily Times

January 13, 2013

For James Olivas, Naabi Ani Elementary sixth-grade teacher and one of this year's Golden Apple award winners, his teaching goal is to engage students with project-based learning in a manner that allows them to become creators instead of just passively learning rubric.

Presented by the Golden Apple Foundation of New Mexico, the award was presented to seven teachers to recognize the quality of their teaching being the single most important factor in their students' academic success, Executive Director Brian O'Connell said.

Olivas was excited to win the award after the intensive review process where multiple interviews were conducted with students, their parents, co-workers and the principal before his two and a half hour interview.

• "It kind of validates what I am doing in the classroom with the students is significant and notable," Olivas said. "It's pretty neat they can see what I do and the passion that I have and be able to recognize it and see it's genuine."

O'Connell said the review team which interviewed Olivas were impressed with his ability to be creative with technology and merging them together into project-based learning.

"They were fascinated with my use of technology," Olivas said. "They got to see me using the SMART board and other things."

For pre and post-testing, Olivas' students enjoy using a clicker system, where they answer questions via a remote control and get to see the answers projected on the SMART board as they respond.

As a sixth-grade teacher, Olivas is able to leverage the fact he is required to cover a variety of subjects and combine them into a single lesson.

• "I like to not just require them to do a worksheet, not regurgitate the material," Olivas said. "If I am integrating social studies and language arts, I can tackle two things together and have the kids use the skills in language arts to explain and discuss what they learn in social studies."

Students previously had the ability to produce a mini-movie for a project on ancient Egypt, one of many choices listed on a poster board in the classroom. Olivas said it gives the students options on how to report their learning to him.

That's the nice thing about project-based learning, you can go in-depth and the students have great questions," Olivas said. "I turned them loose and asked them, where do you want to go with it,' and they set their sights on the target and they go in and start discovering things."

Lining the classroom walls are a number of K'Nex structures, an plastic toy construction system, built by former students as part of a lesson covering the exploration into forces of motion.

Students would examine how motion is affected by friction and the angle of drop of a toy vehicle would increase or decrease the speed at which it traveled.

A solar panel helps provide insight into how solar energy is harvested and hydrogen fuel cars will be used in lesson about electrolysis, where the stripping of hydrogen from the oxygen to make a gas to power the car.

As a science lesson, Olivas would take his class on a field trip to the Bloomfield water treatment center and the students would learn to build their own water filtration unit using sand and rock.

"They would use a PH sensor and test it (water) before," Olivas said. "Then they would filter the water and see the colors change on the PH scale."

Olivas was proud to show off a robot a group of students built using the Lego NXT programmable robotics kit that was programmed to travel and stop when it detected a magnetic field.

For the future, Olivas was prepping a lesson comparing and contrasting the ancient civilizations of Greece and Rome.

"We can compare and contrast their art and even though they were so close to each other, we can talk about how they are different and how they are the same," Olivas said.

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Santa Fe/ COLUMN: Education Issues at Forefront of Legislative Session

By Robert Nott

The New Mexican

January 13, 2013

The 51st legislative session opens at noon Tuesday - and education will likely be at the fore of many discussions during the 60-day session.

Gov. Susana Martinez announced last week that she is proposing a $5.8 billion budget, with nearly $2.5 billion of that devoted to education, including more than $101 million in new education spending. Whether she and Secretary of Education-designate Hanna Skandera will succeed in winning bipartisan support for any of their education proposals - including implementing a ban on promoting third-graders if they can't read up to par - remains unclear at this point.

Already, some veteran legislators have pre-filed some interesting education bills.

• Rep. Jimmie C. Hall, R-Albuquerque, for instance, is pushing House Bill 50 to stop general-fund support for public post-secondary institutes that do not teach prospective educators how to teach reading based on smart practices. A big subplot to this whole reading initiative revolves around whether our state colleges are doing enough to prepare teachers to teach reading.
• Sen. Tim M. Keller, D-Albuquerque, has filed Senate Joint Resolution 2 to amend Article 12 of our state constitution to limit class sizes in public schools by school year 2020-21: 18 students per class for K-3, 22 students for grades 4-8, 25 students for grades 9-12. The resolution calls for the Legislature to find money to implement this by 2015.
• Rep. Sheryl Williams Stapleton, D-Albuquerque, filed HB 54, requiring local school boards to declare that they will establish guidelines to prevent cyberbullying by August of this year.
• Even more importantly, Stapleton filed HB 27, which would extend the state's lottery scholarship availability to students who attend a state college or university within two years of completing high school or completion of military service with an honorable or medical discharge.

The Legislative Lottery Scholarship pays 100 percent of tuition for eligible New Mexico high school graduates or those who earned a GED degree - but as it stands now, students must immediately enroll and enter college in the semester following their senior year. Her bill would give students the option of waiting up to two years to enter college.

More education bills will pop up once the session begins. It is not difficult to find or keep track of them. Visit the Legislature's website at www.legis.state.nm.us, where you can easily click on the "bill finder" link and search for bills under sponsors or topic (education). That site also has a helpful document on how bills get through both the house and senate - find the link marked "Passage of a Bill."

Monday, Jan. 14, the House Legislative Education Committee will meet in Room 317 of the Roundhouse to discuss proposed legislation it will support during the session. This event serves as a good way to familiarize yourself with how that committee works and what educational bills will likely pop up.

That committee, as well as other education committees, will meet throughout the session to discuss legislation. Committees can respond to bills in various ways: Do Pass, Do Pass As Amended, Do Not Pass, Without Recommendation or Without Recommendation As Amended. If a bill gets tabled, the odds are good that it's dead.

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ABQ/ OPINION: Ensure Teacher Observation Implemented Correctly

By Julie A. Radoslovich  [National Board Certified Teacher]

ABQ Journal

January 13, 2013

Next year New Mexico's Public Education Department plans to fully adopt and implement a new observation protocol and evaluation rubric as one of several measures to rate teacher effectiveness. Such tools are only valuable, however, if school leaders receive proper training and support and use them as intended rather than as an administrative hurdle.

One current PED evaluation requirement I have been closely involved with at my school, South Valley Academy, is the professional development plan. The state of New Mexico requires all teachers to create annual professional development plans that set improvement objectives, action steps and measures of results.

With a desire to systematically improve teaching and learning, South Valley Academy embraced the professional development plan process over the last four years. We created a model that holds teachers accountable for addressing student-performance challenges and requires classroom-generated data for measuring student learning as a result of teaching practices.

While our story is a success, it is also a cautionary tale. A mandate does not translate into productive action, particularly if there is little guidance and support.

As I have presented our school's work here in New Mexico, most teachers and school leaders I speak to admit the professional development plan process is not followed with fidelity at their academic institutions. What training and support have school leaders received? Based on my knowledge as a school administrator, little to none.

Next year, 25 percent of a teacher's overall evaluation will be based upon a summative, year-long assessment of teaching practice as observed by instructional leaders. The challenge with this part of the teacher evaluation process is to ensure school leaders receive adequate training and ongoing guidance for correct implementation, especially since Gov. Susana Martinez intends to rate and award teacher bonuses based upon the accuracy of these evaluations.

As one of 120 participants in the teacher observation pilot this year, our school is receiving invaluable preparation and practice on the use of these tools. However, the current implementation schedule for next year does not provide such extensive training on use of the observation protocol and 13-page evaluation rubric.

Rather than spend $11 million to reward good teachers next year, New Mexico's Public Education Department should spend time and money to phase in the observation protocol and evaluation rubric, or consider a year of training before the additional 1,600 principals and instructional leaders are expected to implement the new process.

Only then can we have a meaningful dialogue with teachers and reach our shared goals of improving education for students in New Mexico.

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ABQ/ OPINION: Why Schools Merit More Money

By Linda M. Trujillo  [Santa Fe Public School Board member Trujillo represents Dist. 4, on the city's south side]

ABQ Journal

January 13, 2013

While much attention has been focused on the self-imposed fiscal cliff, it is time to turn attention to local issues. New Mexico's legislative session begins Jan. 15 at noon. Prior to opening day, elected officials from all around the state will begin the trek to our amazing capital. They will remain here, at least during the weekdays, until the session ends March 16. If you live in or near Santa Fe, you will likely meet these individuals while shopping or dinning at one of our exceptional restaurants. I'm confident we will make them feel welcome and their experience in the City Different will be memorable.

Of course, at the top of the legislative agenda is the budget. One of the most important pieces of the budget is funding for public education. We all agree that education in New Mexico needs to improve. Where we seem to part ways is the how. Some have said that we can't fix education by just throwing money at the problem. Sarcastically, I respond that it would be a great experiment to try it at least once. However, that doesn't get us to a solution, so my more practical, and yes, fiscally conservative, side explains why New Mexico needs to increase public education funding rather than just divide the pie differently.

• First, we've all seen reports that place New Mexico educational achievement and graduation rates near the bottom of the list. It's not coincidental that we're also low on the educational funding list. A report published by Education Week last January placed Massachusetts, New Jersey and Maryland at the top of the list for student achievement. Those states are also in the top 10 for funding.
• Second, states investing in education are also at the top of the list for economic growth. Again, it's not coincidental that increased spending on education impacts economic growth. In 2011, Huffington Post reported the best and worst educational rankings for math and science as determined by the Science and Engineering Readiness Index (SERI); Massachusetts ranked "well above average." Last month, Forbes rated Massachusetts 17th in economic growth using six factors, two of which are labor supply and quality of life. New Mexico ranked 46 on SERI, "far below average," and last month Forbes ranked New Mexico's economic growth 43rd in the nation.

Ask a local real estate agent or an economic development expert what's important to a business considering starting a business or moving a business to New Mexico. They will tell you a business leader wants to know how good our educational system is performing. It's a strong indication of the available workforce.

• Finally, education reduces crime. There are plenty of research papers about education's relationship to crime reduction. But let's be honest, you don't have to read UCLA's report, "The Effects of Education on Crime" or any other report to know that a high percent of those incarcerated have very little education. In fact, low academic achievement and high truancy are early signs of potential criminal behavior.

For the last six months I've been attending the local Juvenile Justice Board meetings. An ongoing topic is education. In fact, Santa Fe Schools Superintendent Joel Boyd attended the December meeting and the conversation focused on identifying poorly performing students, community intervention and the increasing problem of student truancy even in elementary school. Bottom line: It is much more expensive to incarcerate an adult than to educate a child.

If, by chance, you happen to bump into or have the pleasure of meeting one of the many representatives and senators who will be visiting our community, please explain to them why it is important to increase funding for education. I've given you at least three solid reasons, and I could go on for hours; these don't even begin to address the equitable pay issues for our teachers or the compelling need to increase early-childhood education.

In the words of John F. Kennedy, "Let us not think of education only in terms of its cost, but rather in terms of the infinite potential of the human mind that can be realized through education. Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream, which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength for our nation."

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ABQ/ OPINION: We Need Crystal Ball for Education Reform

By Moises Venegas  [Director of Quinto Sol, an educational improvement, community development and research organization]

ABQ Journal

January 14, 2013

Have you ever attended a legislative committee in New Mexico to see democracy in action? The Dec. 5 Legislative Finance Committee would have been a perfect example. A presentation on teacher education and student learning; debates; questions; but no agreements or decisions made.

The process reminds me of the 1994 book by Philip Howard, "The Death of Common Sense." The bureaucracy cannot make a decision. Technicalities get in the way.

The December meeting included a program evaluation that "reviewed the status of New Mexico's educator accountability reporting system." The report analyzed relationships between teacher, administrator education programs and student performance.

The question raised was, are students learning based on teacher preparation at the different colleges in New Mexico?

Participants in the December meeting included LFC legislators, who number 17; two evaluators making the presentation; three deans from New Mexico colleges of education; and three LFC staff members. Parents and community members were not present for the most part.

As parents and students, do we know whether students are learning? Do you remember the good and bad teachers in your life? At present, when our children go to a different school or to a higher grade do we ask around which teacher to seek and which ones to ignore?

You know the answer!

The legislators asked many questions, or should I say, made many political commentaries. Was there agreement on measuring student learning? No, because the New Mexico Student Based Assessment is "not a good measurement of student learning and the value-added of a teacher or school is too difficult to assess."

• The consensus among the legislators and the college deans was skepticism about the measures that are perhaps too complex to be meaningful. Michael Morehead, College of Education dean at New Mexico State University said it "best": It has more statistical manipulations than the bond derivative market that collapsed the economy of this country, I can't trust it."

Perhaps New Mexico policymakers should learn from history.

• In 1972 the state superintendent of education stated: "New Mexico is a pioneer in the nation attempting to develop a system of evaluation based upon individual goals or objectives for each separate school district, with the ultimate aim of judging, through proven, sound test items, how well each school is performing in comparison to what they said the level of their performance would be. ... New Mexico has blazed the trail in statewide evaluation across the nation, and the marks of this effort will be seen nationally for many, many years onto the future."

Finally, I am looking at the current hero in probabilities and predictions, Nate Silver and his book, "The Signal and the Noise." In the 2012 race between President Obama and Mitt Romney, Silver correctly predicted the winner in all 50 states. In the U.S. Senate he made the correct decision in 31 of 33 races.

As one observer states, "that" we need data for educational decisions should by now be a settled matter. The precise form that data should take is, obviously still under development.

Nate, help us in New Mexico with this question: What is the probability that New Mexico will improve its current educational ranking of 48th in the nation in the next five years?

Eliminate the noise and give us the signal.

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Clovis/ OPINION: Ms. Mae Gilbert Taught More Than English

By Karl Terry [Clovis Media Inc., Writer]

Clovis News Journal

January 12, 2013

There are no do-overs in life or junior English. Just lessons learned.

One of those lessons learned for all of us has to be how to get their foot out of their mouth from time to time. I learned this one the hard way several years ago.

Right after I got back to my hometown of Portales in 2005, I was asked to speak at the Retired Educators monthly potluck. Most of you wouldn't think that getting up in front of your teachers to talk about your career nearly 30 years later wouldn't be that much fun but I enjoyed renewing old acquaintances.

Because I had come back to town as editor of the local paper I made the crack that Mae Gilbert would roll over in her grave if she knew that I was editor at the News-Tribune. Ms. Gilbert was my junior English teacher at Portales High School, known far and wide for creating great writers at the college level and beyond.

I got lots of questions after my presentation and a nice round of applause. After the program one lady politely pulled me aside and said, "I don't believe Ms. Gilbert is dead."

Indeed, like Twain, the rumors of her death had been greatly exaggerated, now by one of her worst students. She just recently died at the age of 102.

The start of Gilbert's English composition class for me was not a good one. Within a few weeks of its start I had decided she didn't like me and was going to make it rough. To make matters worse, a nearly ruptured appendix (mine not hers) sidelined me from attendance in her class for a few weeks. Add to that a disinterest in attending her class later in the year that had nothing to do with my health and maybe there was a good reason hers was the single worst grade I received ever in my years of matriculation.

I didn't dislike writing, I just didn't much want to learn the rules and I sure didn't want to stop and diagram my sentences.

My grades related to writing had been good prior to Gilbert's class and they were good after that too. I won an essay contest in junior high and I got an "A" on my freshman English term paper in college.

It used to irritate me in a big way whenever someone credited Ms. Gilbert as a great influence on his or her college or career life. I know she truly changed and influenced many. She was a tough taskmaster and made many realized their potential. I just didn't believe she ever did me any favors where my writing was concerned.

I think having her did teach me that not everything in life was going to turn out as I thought it should or expected it would.

She also taught me not to talk ill of the dead, especially when I've failed to pull together all the facts on that matter. Rest in peace Ms. Gilbert.

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Washington DC/ Social-Emotional Needs Entwined with Students' Learning, Security

Research and schoolroom practice show a supportive environment can promote achievement, and stress can be a hindrance

By Sarah D. Sparks

Education Week, Vol. 32, Issue 16, [Edweek.org]

January 10, 2013

Students' ability to learn depends not just on the quality of their textbooks and teachers, but also on the comfort and safety they feel at school and the strength of their relationships with adults and peers there.

Most of education policymakers' focus remains on ensuring schools are physically safe and disciplined: Forty-five states have anti-bullying policies, compared with only 24 states that have more comprehensive policies on school climate.

• Mounting evidence from fields like neuroscience and cognitive psychology, as well as studies on such topics as school turnaround implementation shows that an academically challenging yet supportive environment boosts both children's learning and coping abilities.
• By contrast, high-stress environments in which students feel chronically unsafe and uncared for make it physically and emotionally harder for them to learn and more likely for them to act out or drop out.

As that research builds, more education officials at every level are taking notice.

• For example, the federal government has prioritized school climate programs in its $38.8 million grants for safe and supportive school environments, and
•  two states-Ohio and Wisconsin-have developed guidelines for districts on improving school life, according to the National School Climate Center, located in New York City.

Experts say that administrators who focus on using climate merely as a tool to raise test scores or to reduce bullying may set up their reform efforts to fail. Stand-alone programs targeting individual symptoms like bullying or poor attendance may not provide holistic support for students, and emerging research shows such a comprehensive approach is critical to improve school climate.

• "There's anti-bullying, which is sort of the top, the visible part of an iceberg, and those are the formal policies where we tell kids, 'OK, don't bully each other,' " said Meagan O'Malley, a research associate at WestEd who specializes in the research group's middle-school-climate initiative in Los Alamitos, Calif.
• "But then under that, there's everything else that happens in that school, the interactions between people every single day that create an atmosphere that's either supportive of a bullying atmosphere or not. Programmatic interventions have to be one piece of a much larger body of work."

Students who experience chronic instability and stress have more aggressive responses to stress, along with poorer working memory and self-control, studies show. Building those skills in individual students can raise the tenor of the whole school.

• "As much as we need to provide enriched experiences to promote healthy brain development," says Dr. Jack P. Shonkoff, the director of the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, "we also need to protect the brain from bad things happening to it. We all understand that in terms of screening for lead, because lead does bad things to a brain, mercury does bad things to a brain, ... but toxic stress does bad things to a brain, too-it's a different chemical doing it, but it's still a big problem interfering with brain development."

It's easy to focus too much on the visible parts of the school climate iceberg and have school improvement efforts run aground on the massive issues below the surface.

Studies routinely show that students learn better when they feel safe, for example. Yet interventions that focus on visible signs of safety-metal detectors, wand searches, and so on-have not been found to deter crime and actually can make students feel less safe at school.

What does reduce bullying and make students feel safer?

• According to an analysis of the National Crime Victimization Survey, only one intervention: more adults visible and talking to students in the hallways, a mark of a climate with better adult-student relationships.
• Likewise, students' ability to delay gratification has been proven to be so linked to academic and social success that the Knowledge Is Power Program charter schools offer T-shirts for students bearing the mantra, "Don't Eat the Marshmallow!" That's a reference to a famous study that used the sweet treat in.

A 2012 follow-up to Stanford University's original "marshmallow study," however, found that regardless of a student's innate willpower, the child will wait four times longer for a treat when the child trusts the adult offering it to keep his or her word, and when the environment feels secure to the child.

Security and Self-Control

How can a school build a culture of trust and self-control with children from disadvantaged and unstable environments that often work against those characteristics?

• At the Children's Aid College Prep Charter School in the Bronx borough of New York City, it starts as a classic game of telephone, with a class of excited kindergartners passing a message around their circle in theatrically careful whispers.

As is typical, the phrase that starts out as "stop and think" is comically garbled by the time it gets around the circle. But unlike in the traditional playground game, the school's "life coaches," Yvenide Andre and Patricia Li, take the students through multiple rounds, asking them to think about how to make the next round better: Listen to each other. Concentrate. Don't say the phrase louder than needed.

"It's all life skills: self-control, relating to other people, learning how to respond in the ways we want them to respond," Li explains.

The charter school, which was launched last fall, specifically recruits children from across the city who are homeless, in foster care, and in abject and concentrated poverty. It started with 132 children in kindergarten and 1st grade, and plans to add a grade each year up to 5th.

Drema Brown, the vice president of education for Children's Aid, says the school was founded on the premise of acknowledging students' challenges-but then deliberately putting that aside.

• "When you approach these kids from the deficit model of 'they have all these problems,' that seeps into everything you do," Brown says.
• "We look at it as promise; we make sure every adult in the building understands those vulnerable areas as opportunities to practice our skills as professionals, and not as problems."

In addition to teachers, the school has full-time life coaches, like Andre and Li, who bridge social services and instruction. Teachers and life coaches are hired for their "commitment to not just delivering content but understanding the child in front of them," Brown says. Staff members receive continuing training, not just on ways to incorporate character curriculum or social skills into math class, but also on how to respect and respond to students who are acting out.

• "Know who they are before they come in," Principal Ife Lenard tells teachers. "Don't find out about a student's problems because of an incident of acting out in the hallway."

Staff members like Andre and Li work with teachers to help students learn cognitive control and resiliency as well as social and emotional skills.

"People talk about things like 'caring is sharing,' but they don't talk about what to do if someone doesn't share," says Lenard, who also has a degree in clinical social work. "There are so many good things that can happen between an adult and a child or group of children, but that has to be modeled."

Each class in the school is named for a different high-profile college-Columbia, and Spelman and Yale, for example-and even in kindergarten, children are talking about what they want to study when they go to the "big school."

The administrators and researchers are building the path to college just a few steps ahead of the children.

Stephanie M. Jones, an associate education professor at Harvard, and Robin T. Jacob, an assistant research scientist at the University of Michigan Institute of Social Research in Ann Arbor, have partnered with the school to test and develop SECURe, a whole-school-climate model so named for incorporating instruction in "social, emotional, and cognitive understanding and regulation."

• "Executive function and cognitive regulation are a set of building blocks for many of the other skills that are targeted by other social-and-emotional-learning programs," Jones says. Among those skills: concentrating on a task or transitioning smoothly from one to another; identifying one's own and others' emotions and social cues; and engaging in planning and conflict resolution.
• "In aggregate," Jones says, "having a whole population of kids with those skills is going to change the nature of the set of interactions in the classroom, the climate of the school-and it would play out in the lunchroom and playground as well."

The approach already has shown promise in a pilot study of 5,000 children in kindergarten through 3rd grade at six schools in the 14,200-student Alhambra elementary district in Arizona.

• Students at schools using the SECURe model in combination with the Success For All literacy program were statistically significantly more self-controlled, less impulsive, and had greater attention spans than their peers at nonparticipating schools.
• Moreover, the SECURe students also showed some improvement in standardized math and reading tests compared with their peers.

During a life-skills class in October, Li and Andre discuss a picture book on the brain with the kindergarten classes. Though simplified for the kindergartners, the book talks about how children's brains work, what decision-making and self-control are, and how students can think more clearly when "taking care of their brain" by sleeping and eating appropriately.

In addition to the telephone game, the kindergartners play a more advanced game of freeze, in which they dance and wriggle while music plays but then have to freeze and hold a particular position when it stops.

The game is a big hit-producing some stillness but also massive giggle fits-but Andre and Li press the students afterward on what they found hard about the game.

"My body danced like this, and it didn't want to stop," says Jordan, a little boy with a curly Mohawk and a grin. A girl mentions having to stop and remember what to do next when the music stopped.

The game offers a chance for discussion about how children might act without thinking, relating to a previous class about feelings and how students respond to arguments and other negative emotions.

Throughout the week, Li says, classroom teachers will refer to these lessons and use what the pupils know about their own thinking process to help them work through discipline issues or other problems in class.

Involving Students

In the area of school climate, far more than academics, teachers and students have the opportunity to solve problems as equals.

While a student struggling in math may not be able to articulate his or her own misconceptions about algebra, Thomas L. Hanson, the director of San Francisco-based WestEd's middle-school-climate project and a senior research associate with the group, and others say, teachers and particularly older students often agree on the main problems when they're surveyed on school climate.

"In most of the strong school reform models, you see a focus on school leaders, educators, data, standards-but you seldom see students as part of the reform strategy. The progress we can make with students on the sidelines is terribly limited," says J.B. Schramm, the founder of the Washington-based College Summit, which uses students to encourage one another to attend college.

• "Students are not vessels to be filled with knowledge at schools," he says. "They can drive change."

Hanson and O'Malley of WestEd have seen that firsthand in 58 high schools and 15 middle schools in Arizona and California, which are implementing "listening circles."

Each such circle pulls in students from different social, racial, and interest groups from around the school to identify and solve problems related to campus climate. Adults sit outside the circle, in a "listen only" mode, Hanson says.

Being Assertive

Teachers and administrators have been surprised at how assertive students can be at those sessions, O'Malley says.

• For example, she recalls students at one high school who complained about trash regularly piling up on campus.
• In response, they raised money to buy 30 new trash cans and held a bin-decorating contest around the school.
• The district superintendent, who happened to be sitting in on the circle, was impressed by the students' initiative and agreed to pay to repaint the fading building in the school colors of green, white, and beige.

"It's a very, very powerful experience for a lot of people," O'Malley says. "Students want forums to express themselves about all things related to school. That's pretty typical for adolescent development; they want to be heard and understood as individuals."

Working Together

Getting students to work together to identify and solve problems can also reduce tensions and bullying among students of different races, social classes, or sexual orientations, the WestEd researchers have found.

A focus on climate can be particularly important in schools with changing demographics, according to research by Amy Bellmore, an assistant professor of human development in the education department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

• "Within a bully-victim dynamic, there's an important notion of power: The bully is larger, more popular-or their group is represented to a larger degree," Bellmore says.
• "Kids are tuned in to the perspective of decision-makers within their school environment."

Schools that celebrate all the different student groups and encourage students from different backgrounds to work together show lower intergroup bullying and more friendships across groups, Bellmore has found. Moreover, she notes, students with friends from a wide variety of backgrounds learn more strategies for coping with stress, be it bullying or a pop quiz.

Bringing students together to improve their campus climate can also help them build their own confidence and resiliency, Schramm says. Students will take more ownership of their learning and their school climate, he says, if school adults listen, help them understand the issues, and enable them to set measurable goals.

"But then you need to give them space," he says. "If you prepare them but then manage them too tightly, they won't take charge, because you're in charge. If you skip either the preparation or the space, it won't work."

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New York NY/ Will Longer School Year Help or Hurt US Students?

Associated Press

Wall Street Journal

January 14, 2013

Did your kids moan that winter break was way too short as you got them ready for the first day back in school? They might get their wish of more holiday time off under proposals catching on around the country to lengthen the school year.

But there's a catch: a much shorter summer vacation.

US Education Secretary Arne Duncan, a chief proponent of the longer school year, says American students have fallen behind the world academically.

• "Whether educators have more time to enrich instruction or students have more time to learn how to play an instrument and write computer code, adding meaningful in-school hours is a critical investment that better prepares children to be successful in the 21st century," he said in December when five states announced they would add at least 300 hours to the academic calendar in some schools beginning this year.

The three-year pilot project will affect about 20,000 students in 40 schools in Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York and Tennessee.

Proponents argue that too much knowledge is lost while American kids while away the summer months apart from their lessons. The National Summer Learning Association cites decades of research that shows students' test scores are higher in the same subjects at the beginning of the summer than at the end.

• "The research is very clear about that," said Charles Ballinger, executive director emeritus of the National Association for Year-Round School in San Diego. "The only ones who don't lose are the upper 10 to 15 percent of the student body. Those tend to be gifted, college-bound, they're natural learners who will learn wherever they are."
• Supporters also say a longer school year would give poor children more access to school-provided healthy meals.

Yet the movement has plenty of detractors - so many that Ballinger sometimes feels like the Grinch trying to steal Christmas.

"I had a parent at one meeting say, 'I want my child to lie on his back in the grass watching the clouds in the sky during the day and the moon and stars at night,'" Ballinger recalled. "I thought, 'Oh, my. Most kids do that for two, three, maybe four days, then say, 'What's next?''"

But opponents aren't simply dreamy romantics.

Besides the outdoor opportunities for pent up youngsters, they say families already are beholden to the school calendar for three seasons out of four.

• Summer breaks, they say, are needed to provide an academic respite for students' overwrought minds, and to provide time with family and the flexibility to travel and study favorite subjects in more depth.
• They note that advocates of year-round school cannot point to any evidence that it brings appreciable academic benefits.

"I do believe that if children have not mastered a subject that, within a week, personally, I see a slide in my own child," said Tina Bruno, executive director of the Coalition for a Traditional School Calendar. "That's where the idea of parental involvement and parental responsibility in education comes in, because our children cannot and should not be in school seven days a week, 365 days a year."

Bruno is part of a "Save Our Summers" alliance of parents, grandparents, educational professionals and some summer-time recreation providers fighting year-round school. Local chapters carry names such as Georgians Need Summers, Texans for a Traditional School Year and Save Alabama Summers.

Camps, hotel operators and other summer-specific industries raise red flags about the potential economic effect.

The debate has divided parents and educators.

School days shorter than work days and summer breaks that extend to as many as 12 weeks in some areas run up against increasing political pressure from working households - 30 percent of which are headed by women. These families must fill the gaps with afterschool programs, day care, babysitters and camps.

"Particularly where there are single parents or where both parents are working, they prefer to provide care for three weeks at a time rather than three months at a time," Ballinger said.

The National Center on Time & Learning has estimated that about 1,000 districts have adopted longer school days or years.

Some places that have tried the year-round calendar, including Salt Lake City, Las Vegas and parts of California, have returned to the traditional approach. Strapped budgets and parental dissatisfaction were among reasons.

School years are extended based on three basic models:

• stretching the traditional 180 days of school across the whole calendar year by lengthening spring and winter breaks and shortening the one in the summer.
• adding 20 to 30 actual days of instruction to the 180-day calendar.
• dividing students and staff into groups, typically four, and rotating three through at a time, with one on vacation, throughout the calendar year.

At the heart of the debate is nothing less than the ability of America's workforce to compete globally.

The U.S. remains in the top dozen or so countries in all tested subjects. But even where U.S. student scores have improved, many other nations have improved much faster, leaving American students far behind peers in Asia and Europe.

Still, data are far from clear that more hours behind a desk can help.

A Center for Public Education review found that students in India and China - countries Duncan has pointed to as giving children more classroom time than the U.S. - don't actually spend more time in school than American kids, when disparate data are converted to apples-to-apples comparisons.

The center, an initiative of the National School Boards Association, found 42 U.S. states require more than 800 instructional hours a year for their youngest students, and that's more than India does.

Opponents of extended school point out that states such as Minnesota and Massachusetts steadily shine on standardized achievement tests while preserving their summer break with a post-Labor Day school start.

• "It makes sense that more time is going to equate to more learning, but then you have to equate that to more professional development for teachers - will that get more bang for the buck?" said Patte Barth, the center's director. "I look at it, and teachers and instruction are still the most important factor more so than time."

The center's study also found that some nations that outperform the U.S. academically, such as Finland, require less school.

Many schools are experimenting with the less controversial, less costly interim step of lengthening the school day instead of adding days to the school year.

• Chicago's public schools extended the school day from 5 hours and 45 minutes to 7 hours last year after a heated offensive by unionized teachers and some parents. Mayor Rahm Emanuel, former chief of staff to Duncan's boss, President Barack Obama, initially pushed an even longer school day - a major sticking point in this year's seven-day teachers' strike. He and other proponents argued that having the shortest school day among the nation's 50 largest districts and one of the shortest school years had put Chicago's children at a competitive disadvantage.
• Wendy Katten, executive director of Raise Your Hand for Illinois Public Education, said opponents held back a push for a 7.5-hour school day, and got an extra staff person assigned to each school to handle the additional hour and 15 minutes of school time.
• In San Diego, year-round school has been a reality since the 1970s. District spokesman Jack Brandais said the concept was initially intended to relieve crowding, not improve performance test scores. The student body and staff were divided into four groups, with three attending school at any given time. Through decades of fine-tuning, Brandais said the district now runs both traditional and year-round tracks simultaneously.
• A 2007 study by Ohio State University sociologist Paul von Hippel found virtually no difference in the academic gains of students who followed a traditional nine-month school calendar and those educated the same number of days spread across the entire year.

Amid budget cuts and teacher layoffs, San Diego has cut five instructional days from both year-round and traditional schedules since last year.

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Online:

The National Summer Learning Association: http://www.summerlearning.org

National Association for Year-Round School: http://www.nayre.org

Coalition for a Traditional School Year: http://schoolyear.info

National Center on Time & Learning: http://www.timeandlearning.org

National School Boards Association's Center for Public Education: http://tinyurl.com/88zauew

Center for Public Education: http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org

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Seattle WA/ Standardized Test Backlash: Some Teachers Just Say 'No'

Resistance to standardized tests has been simmering for years, but now a group of Seattle teachers is in open revolt. No longer will they administer the tests, they say, citing a waste of public resources.

By Dean Paton, Correspondent

CSMonitor.com

January 11, 2013

Forty-five minutes after school let out Thursday afternoon, 19 teachers here at Seattle's Garfield High School worked their way to the front of an already-crowded classroom, then turned, leaned their backs against the wall of whiteboards, and fired the first salvo of open defiance against high-stakes standardized testing in America's public schools.

To a room full of TV cameras, reporters, students, and colleagues, the teachers announced their refusal to administer a standardized test that ninth-graders across the district are mandated to take in the first part of January. Known as the MAP test - for Measures of Academic Progress - it is intended to evaluate student progress and skill in reading and math.

First one teacher, then another, and then more stepped forward to charge that the test wastes time, money, and dwindling school resources. It is also used to evaluate teacher quality.

• "Our teachers have come together and agreed that the MAP test is not good for our students, nor is it an appropriate or useful tool in measuring progress," said Kris McBride, academic dean and testing coordinator at Garfield High. "Additionally, students don't take it seriously. It produces specious results and wreaks havoc on limited school resources during the weeks and weeks the test is administered."

Garfield's civil yet disobedient faculty appears to be the first group of teachers nationally to defy district edicts concerning a standardized test, but the backlash against high-stakes testing has been percolating in other parts of the country.

• The New York State Principals association recently issued a scathing letter, nearly four pages of "unintended negative consequences" it claims such tests foment.
• In Maryland, Montgomery County Public Schools Superintendent Joshua Starr has called for a three-year moratorium on standardized testing.
• In north Texas last year, superintendents of several high-performing school districts signed a letter to state officials and lawmakers saying high-stakes standardized testing is "strangling our public schools." As of Jan. 8, 880 districts that educate more than 4.4 million Texas students have adopted a resolution opposing these tests.
• "This high-stakes testing - there needs to be a moratorium on it, because it's out of control," says Carol Burris, principal of South Side High School in Rockville Center, Long Island, N.Y. "None of these tests really have anything to do with curriculum. Maybe they have a little bit to do with math. But that's it."

Dr. Burris co-authored the letter for the New York State principals. On Dec. 31, she started a petition in New York opposing high-stakes testing. In 10 days, she says, 5,500 administrators, teachers, and parents have signed it.

• "Parents are stressed. Teachers are stressed. Kids are stressed by these tests more than parents," Burris says. "And when you tie teachers' evaluations to these tests, the teachers end up focusing their lessons on the tests. And that's starting to destroy elementary education."

At Montgomery County Public Schools, America's 17th largest district, Dr. Starr says the conflicting demands of the No Child Left Behind Act and the emerging Common Core State Standards Initiative (sanctioned by 46 states and the District of Columbia) are overwhelming districts, teachers, and resources.

• "It's not because I'm opposed to all standardized testing. Standardized tests do have a place," he says. "But more and more folks are starting to recognize these standardized tests are not designed to do what we're being asked to do with them. They're a very narrow measure."

Starr says many standardized tests detract from teachers' ability to prepare students effectively: "This isn't about saying, 'Do away with all standardized testing.' It's about saying, 'Do away with tests that are not aligned with what kids will actually need to do in the 21st century.' "

Starr's words could well have been uttered here at Garfield.

• "In 26 years of teaching," says Kit McCormick, who teaches English, "this is the first time I've said, 'I'm not giving this test.' It's not that I think my ninth-graders should not be tested. I want my ninth-graders to be tested. I teach to the Common Core standards, and I am happy to teach those standards. Bottom line is: The test is not useful to my students."

Ms. McBride, the academic dean, said Garfield teachers "have a myriad of reasons for not administering the MAP test," including "no evidence" the test is aligned with state and local curriculum, that it's "filled with things that aren't a part of the curriculum at all," and that the district uses student test scores to grade teachers, even though the company that markets the test says it should not be used to assess teacher effectiveness.

• "We really think our teachers are making the right decision," said student body president Obadiah Stephens-Terry. "I know when I took the test, it didn't seem relevant to what we were studying in class - and we have great classes here at Garfield. I know students who just go through the motions when taking the test, just did it as quickly as possible so they could do something more useful with their time."

When someone asked the teachers if they were worried about what lessons students might take away from their collective defiance of the district,

• Mario Shauvette, chairman of the math department, stepped forward. "I'm teaching by example," he said. "If I don't step up now, who will? I'm taking charge of what I do here."

Officials from Seattle Public Schools refused to discuss the faculty's announcement, but it issued a three-paragraph e-mail that included a general admonition: "Seattle Public Schools expects our teachers to administer all required tests, pursuant to our policies and procedures."

Seattle school officials say the MAP test, which is given as many as three times per year, "helps improve academic decision-making and accountability."  Moreover, district officials say they are reviewing the effectiveness of the MAP program, including input from teachers and principals, and expect to report results this spring.

The teachers know they're violating district policy, as well as their union contract. They realize consequences could be severe. "But the people down at district headquarters are wise people, good people," said history teacher Jesse Hagopian. "We all want what's best for our students, and the faculty here is confident we can work together and come up with ways of evaluating our kids that are a lot more effective than this test."

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New York NY/ Gifted, Talented and Separated

By Al Baker

New York Times

January 12, 2013

It is just a metal door with three windows, the kind meant to keep the clamor of an elementary school hallway from piercing a classroom's quiet. Other than paint the color of bubble gum, it is unremarkable.

But the pink door on Room 311 at Public School 163 on the Upper West Side represents a barrier belied by its friendly hue.

• On one side are 21 fourth graders labeled gifted and talented by New York City's school system. They are coursing through public school careers stamped accelerated.

And they are mostly white.

• On the other side, sometimes sitting for reading lessons on the floor of the hallway, are those in the school's vast majority: They are enrolled in general or special education programs.

They are mostly children of color.

"I know what we look like," Carolyn M. Weinberg, a 28-year veteran of P.S. 163, said of the racial disparities as she stood one day in the third-floor hallway between Room 318, where she and a colleague teach a fourth-grade general education class, and the one where Angelo Monserrate teaches the gifted class, Room 311.

"I know what you see," said Ms. Weinberg.

There are 652 students enrolled at P.S. 163 this year, from prekindergarten through fifth grade. Roughly 63 percent of them are black and Hispanic; whites make up 27 percent; and Asians account for 6 percent.

This reflects the flavor of the neighborhood, and roughly matches the New York City school system's overall demographics.

• Yet in P.S. 163's gifted classes, the racial dynamics of the neighborhood, the school itself and the school system are turned upside down.
• Of the 205 children enrolled in the nine gifted classes, 97, or 47 percent, are white; another 31 of the students, or 15 percent, are Asian. And a combined 65 students, or 32 percent, are black and Hispanic.
• In the 21 other classes that enroll the school's remaining 447 students, only 80, or 18 percent, are white.

The disparities are most apparent in the lower grades.

Of the 24 students in Karen Engler's kindergarten gifted class, one is black and three are Hispanic. Ayelet Cutler's first-grade gifted class has 21 students, one of them black and two Hispanic. There are two blacks and two Hispanics among the 26 students in Athena Shapiro's second-grade gifted class.

On a recent morning, a line of Ms. Cutler's students moved from the classroom to the corridor, ahead of the general education class of Linda Crews. A string of mostly white faces and then a line of mostly black and Hispanic ones walked down the hall of a school named for a New York politician who sought to end inequities in education: Alfred E. Smith.

It was 11:25 a.m., and the classes wound their way to the cafeteria, a cavernous room at the school's western edge. Once there, the children sat with those in their own class, each one at a separate long white table that, for a moment, froze the divisions.

For critics of New York City's gifted and talented programs, that image crystallizes what they say is a flawed system that reinforces racial separation in the city's schools and contributes to disparities in achievement.

• They contend that gifted admissions standards favor middle-class children, many of them white or Asian, over black and Hispanic children who might have equal promise, and that the programs create castes within schools, one offered an education that is enriched and accelerated, the other getting a bare-bones version of the material.
• Because they are often embedded within larger schools, the programs bolster a false vision of diversity, these critics say, while reinforcing the negative stereotypes of class and race.

Despite months of repeated requests, the city's Education Department would not provide racial breakdowns of gifted and talented programs and the schools that house them. But the programs tend to be in wealthier districts whose populations have fewer black and Hispanic children, and far more children qualify for them in affluent districts than in poorer ones.

In District 3, which stretches for 63 blocks along Manhattan's Upper West Side and includes P.S. 163, there are five gifted programs for elementary school children, including the Anderson School, one of five citywide programs.

Farther north, for all of Districts 5 and 6, which are poorer and more heavily black and Hispanic, there are just two programs.

And though programs are clustered in affluent neighborhoods around Prospect Park, Brooklyn, and in northeastern Queens, the accelerated classes are absent from broad swaths of central Brooklyn and southeast Queens, where more families are poor and black or Hispanic.

In District 7, in the South Bronx, there is not a single gifted program. The area, dominated by Hispanic and black residents, is among the poorest in the nation, with many people living below the official federal poverty mark.

• James H. Borland, a professor of education at Teachers College, said that looking at the gifted landscape in New York City suggests that one of two things must be true: either black and Hispanic children are less likely to be gifted, or there is something wrong with the way the city selects children for those programs.
• "It is well known in the education community that standardized tests advantage children from wealthier families and disadvantage children from poorer families," Dr. Borland said.

And the city's efforts to fix the system seem to have only made it worse.

Until recently, each of the city's 32 school districts could establish the classes as it saw fit and determine its own criteria for admission. They varied, but educators often took a holistic approach; they looked at evaluations from teachers and classroom observations, relying on tests only in part, by comparing the results of students from within a district.

That changed in September 2008, when the Bloomberg administration ushered in admission based only on a cutoff score on two high-stakes tests given in one sitting - the Otis-Lennon School Ability Test, or Olsat, and the Bracken School Readiness Assessment.

The overhaul was meant to standardize the admissions process and make it fairer. But the new tests decreased diversity, with children from the poorest districts offered a smaller share of kindergarten gifted slots after those were introduced, while pupils in the wealthiest districts got more.

For the 2012-13 school year, 4,912 children qualified for gifted programs. The more affluent districts - 2 and 3 in Manhattan, 20 and 22 in Brooklyn, and 25 and 28 in Queens - had the most students qualify: 949 in District 2, which takes in Lower Manhattan and the Upper East Side, and 505 in District 3.

Some districts in poor and predominately black and Hispanic districts had too few qualifiers to fill a single class: in District 7, only six children qualified for gifted placements, and none for the most exclusive schools, like Hunter College Elementary School or the Anderson School, which require a score at or above the 97th percentile.

The number of classes over all fell sharply.

This year, the department changed the process again, substituting a new test known as the Naglieri Nonverbal Ability Test - Second Edition, or NNAT2, for the Bracken exam. This is what children competing for placements next year started facing this month, in tests that began on Jan. 7.

• Shael Polakow-Suransky, the city's chief academic officer, said data showed that a "more diverse range of kids" excelled on the new test because it was less rooted in test preparation and would allow educators to more accurately identify gifted pupils.

But focusing on the gifted classrooms is missing the point, Mr. Polakow-Suransky said. Though it is worthy to debate whether the "world of G.&T." is diverse enough, he said, the administration's "equity agenda" is much broader: It seeks to improve the quality of education and close achievement gaps across the entire school system.

• "We are not a system that is purely focused on running a good G.&T. program," Mr. Polakow-Suransky said. "We are a system that is focused on dramatically shifting educational opportunities for, particularly, kids of color and kids from high-poverty neighborhoods who have historically in this city been deeply neglected."

But the accelerated classrooms serve as pipelines to the city's highest-achievement middle schools and high schools, creating a cycle in which students who start out ahead get even further advantages from the city's schools.

And the numbers of black and Hispanic students who make it into the city's specialized high schools, long seen as its flagship institutions, have declined significantly over recent decades.

• Though about 70 percent of city students are black or Hispanic, from 2006 to 2012 the two groups, combined, were offered only about 15 percent of the seats at the specialized high schools, according to the Education Department.

"I don't think the fact that G.&T. programs are clearly and disproportionately white, and are so lacking, given the size of the population, in black and Latino students is the result of anyone's bad intentions," said Ellis Cose, a parent of a child who attends a gifted and talented program at P.S. 163. Mr. Cose is the author of "The End of Anger" (2011), which explores the issues of race and generational change.

"I think it is really the result of people committed to a system that can never work if the objective is diversity," he said.

"The only way it even conceivably can work is to give young poor kids the same sort of boost up that young affluent kids get, which is to make sure these kids get an excellent preschool education, make sure these kids get tutoring, make sure these parents know at what time in the circuit they are supposed to prepare their kids for what. And that is taking on a much larger task than tinkering with a test."

The idea of gifted education has drifted in and out of vogue in American schools.

• It was elevated in the 1950s, when educators and lawmakers pushed gifted programs in math and science amid fears about communism's rise.
• It waned in the 1960s but re-emerged with a White House task force on giftedness and the signing of several federal bills in the 1970s that recognized gifted children's needs.

Urban districts were seen as using the programs to help prevent white flight from the schools, in essence offering a system within the system that was white-majority and focused on achievement. "There have been claims that gifted education resegregates the public schools," Dr. Borland said.

"Certainly there was concern with keeping middle-class families involved in public schools, and to the extent that we use tests to select kids for gifted programs, that tends to skew the programs toward children from wealthier, white families," he added.

At P.S. 163, gifted classrooms date to at least the late 1980s.

Children take different pathways to the school's classrooms.

• For general education students, the school is open to those who live in the neighborhood zone, a U-shape area that stretches roughly from West 96th to West 102nd Streets, between Central Park West and just west of Broadway.
• It captures brownstones and co-ops with park views as well part of the massive Frederick Douglass Houses, a public housing complex whose 20-story towers rise between West 100th and West 104th Streets east of Amsterdam Avenue.
• Students from within District 3 whose combined scores on the gifted tests were in the 90th percentile or above can list P.S. 163's gifted program as one they would prefer to attend.
• The central office then assigns them to one of their chosen schools.
• Another choice is the school's dual-language program, which fosters bilingual learning among students who are split roughly 50-50, according to Spanish or English dominance. Students enter by choice, though priority is given to those in the neighborhood.

In the spring of 2004, P.S. 163's principal at the time, Virginia M. Pepe, helped create her own assessment of a subgroup of prekindergarten students for placement in the next year's kindergarten gifted program.

With one eye on the need for diversity and another on the need for objectivity, Dr. Pepe developed some cognitive tasks, like sorting objects, and mixed in an early childhood pre-literacy assessment and an assessment of language. Kindergarten gifted teachers also observed the children.

It was a "balancing act" that year, to find the right mix of students for the new kindergarten gifted programs, she said. An aid in diversifying that program, which lasted just one year, was a policy from the central office that allowed families from districts north of the school - Districts 5 and 6, for instance - to send their children to P.S. 163's gifted program if they chose to and if seats were available.

"Those districts did not have gifted and talented programs at the time," Dr. Pepe said.

"Families that were Caucasian liked us because we offered more diversity, and multiracial families liked us because they thought their children would have opportunities to be in a more diverse setting, and African-American families from up in District 5 appreciated us because they were closer to home."

In 2007, though, the Education Department stopped allowing out-of-district children to attend (a policy it has now reversed for the 2013-14 school year); the following year, it went to the testing-only admission policy. And that "slowed things down" in diversifying the gifted-and-talented program, said Nia Mason, an art teacher who began teaching at the school in 1988.

"The diversity changed overnight when they put that test in," Ms. Mason said.

IF P.S. 163 has little control over admission to the gifted programs or who ultimately gets seated, it does control what happens in its classrooms. According to the current principal, Donny R. Lopez, the school's leadership does its best to foster mingling between students in the gifted classes and others.

One day, half the students from Keira A. Dillon's fifth-grade gifted class mixed with half the students from Robyn Lindner's fifth-grade general education class and headed to the auditorium for a program run by the National Dance Institute.

There, onstage, the pupils from the two classes giggled and moved self-consciously as they followed the directions of Bianca Johnson, a teaching artist and choreographer.

At one point, when Ms. Johnson held up a photo of a man's face and asked for his name, it was Jamal Brown, a boy from the general education class, who identified him as Jacques d'Amboise, the founder of the National Dance Institute.

Some teachers at P. S. 163 use the word "enriched," rather than "accelerated," to describe the academics of the gifted programs.

Ms. Dillon said that even within gifted classes there was a spectrum of ability, and that she commonly arranged pupils into small groups, according to their abilities, for reading, writing, math and the like.

This fall, in studying the branches of the federal government, about a third of her students understood that some concepts of power also extended to the states and that there was an interplay between state and federal powers.

"The general education students might not have all covered this topic," said Ms. Dillon, whose class is more diverse than most of the gifted and talented rooms, with five black and eight Hispanic children among the 26 students.

Sara K. Bloch's triplets are all in different programs at the school. Leon is in Ms. Dillon's gifted class; Jason is in general education; and Felix is in what is known as an integrated co-teaching class, which mixes special education students with general education children like Felix. "To be completely honest, we feel that this class is probably similar to a regular fifth-grade class," she said on the day she visited Leon in Ms. Dillon's class. "Math is the same; all three - they have the same book."

But Leon does seem to be pushed harder, Ms. Bloch said. He is asked to think of things in complex ways, not just to memorize dates of the American Revolution or names like John Adams, for instance, but also to understand relationships between events and people, or to explain possible motives or forces behind certain events, like the Boston Tea Party. She also said that the relationship between the parents and the teachers was more intense at the gifted level, with an expectation of parent involvement and connectedness.

"There is none of that in the other classes," Ms. Bloch said.

In her experience in teaching those who teach gifted children in New York City's public schools, Christy T. Folsom, a professor at Lehman College and a former board member of Advocacy for Gifted and Talented Education in New York State, said gifted children got a "much deeper experience and, in some cases, more advanced curriculum."

"In the gifted classrooms that I've been in, the majority of kids are reading at grade level or beyond, and they can write well, and then so much time is not spent on basic skills so they can spend more time on content and on comparing historical eras," Professor Folsom said. "They are then able to do the more deep thinking work because less time has to be spent on the fundamental skills."

WHY parents embrace or reject public schools is a complicated equation.

At P.S. 163, several parents and teachers wondered whether white parents would stay if not for the gifted classes.

"You don't see any white kids in the general education classes," said one parent of a student in a dual-language class, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals. "You might see one or two, but I don't see any white families coming to register their children for general education. They come straight to gifted and talented."

"I guess it is a question of, 'How much diversity do you feel comfortable with?' " said the parent of one child in the gifted program, who did not want to be identified for fear of animosity from other parents. "Do I want him to be the only white kid in an all-black school? No. Would I like it if the racial mix was more proportionate? Yes, whatever the percentage of the makeup. That's an honest answer, from my soul. Is it hypocritical for parents to say, 'We're sending our kids to public school,' but they're sending them to an all-white gifted and talented program? But it's not our fault. We want the best for our children."

Carrie C. Reynolds, a co-president of the PTA, said parents seemed to be basing choices not on race but on the academic environment and on socioeconomic factors.

"If you were upper income, well educated, you want your kid to have a more enriched education," she said. "I think it is more economics than race. They tend to go hand-in-hand in New York City, but I certainly know families that have made a different choice, that are here at this school, that are white and are not in gifted and talented."

But one afternoon at the school, Ms. Lindner, the fifth-grade teacher, said she was "always surprised" when she saw more than two or three white children in her general education classes.

As a parent herself, and a resident of Manhattan's Upper East Side, she said, "there's no way I'd put my kid in a general-education class here, no way, because it's right next to the project and all the kids in general education come from the projects."

She said her experience was that many of the children in her general education classes were at grade level or below and did not get the same support from their parents that the children in the gifted classes got. "They're tougher kids," she said of the general education students in the school. "They're very street-savvy. They don't have the background; their parents are hard on them but don't know what to do with them."

Andi Velasquez, who as the school's parent coordinator has helped lead tours of the school for prospective parents over the last two years, said she had occasionally heard very "vocal" parents expressing surprise in seeing even a few black and Hispanic children in a gifted class.

"They say, 'It has too many minorities to be a G&T class; that can't be a G&T class,' " said Ms. Velasquez, 48, who is white and is married to a Hispanic man from Colombia, and whose two children attended the dual-language program at P.S. 87.

"And I say, 'We're proud of that,' " she said. "And those are the parents that haven't come in the past."

Sandra M. Echols, 46, a single mother who is black, has sent all three of her children to the gifted classes at P.S. 163, beginning with her oldest son who, in 1998, when he was entering fourth grade, gained admission to the program.

"It is an elitist program," Ms. Echols said. "They don't advertise it the way it should be advertised, but I'm glad I was savvy enough to navigate the system and give my children what they need."

She remembers taking her oldest son to his middle-school gifted program and being mistaken for "the nanny."

Her daughter got into the P.S. 163 program for kindergarten and was one of only two black girls in the class until second grade, when the other girl moved away, leaving her as the sole black child.

Now, Ms. Echols's youngest son, Kenyan, 10, is in the fifth-grade gifted and talented class taught by Ms. Dillon.

Ms. Echols recounted her story while standing in Kenyan's class one morning in the fall, when Ms. Dillon had invited parents to a "publishing party" to celebrate essays the children had written and edited.

"This class is the most diverse gifted and talented class I've seen," said Ms. Echols, as other parents and children swirled around her.

She said that now her son was "best buds" with Lucas Pulsifer, who is white, and Nicholas Urena, who is Hispanic, and that they often arranged weekend play dates. "They represent what New York City is all about: a truly diverse melting pot."

Minutes later, the party over, the parents began trickling out. Ms. Echols walked out with Lucas's mother, Anna.

"We're going to get coffee now," she said, her arm hooked around the white woman's elbow.