Archives for 2010

Welcome back.  For many of you it seems that the summer went too quickly.  I understand that having been in the classroom.  Hopefully,  you had a chance to rest and recharge your batteries.

While you were gone, lots of things have happened in the field of education.  One of the most productive is that the Congress passed and  President Obama signed legislation which would stop 300,000 educators from being laid off.

As for me, my latest book, 162 Keys to School Success, was published.  One book dealing with high performing classrooms is at the publisher and I am working on two new books which, hopefully will be published at the end of this year or early 2011.  You will find excerpts from 162 Keys at the Resources Section of my copyright-free website.

Again, my best wishes for a smooth and productive school year.

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The Status and Trends in the Education of Racial and Ethnic Groups report examines educational progress and challenges in the United States by race and ethnicity. This report shows that over time, the numbers in each race/ethnicity who have completed high school and continued their education in college have increased. Despite these gains, the rate of progress has varied. Differences on key indicators of educational background, performance, and attainment persist among the various races and ethnicities studied.

·        In 2008, a higher percentage of children who identified as Asian (51 percent) had a mother with at least a bachelor’s degree than did children who identified as White (36 percent), as two or more races (31 percent), as Black (17 percent), as American Indian/Alaska Native (16 percent), and as Hispanic (11 percent).
·        Forty-eight percent of public school 4th-graders were eligible for free or reduced-price lunches in 2009, including 77 percent of Hispanics, 74 percent of Blacks, 68 percent of American Indian/Alaska Natives, 34 percent of Asian/Pacific Islanders, and 29 percent of White 4th-graders.
·        From 1999 to 2008, the total number of Black and Hispanic students taking an Advanced Placement (AP) exam more than tripled, from 94,000 to 318,000 students. In 2008, Asians had the highest mean AP exam score (3.08) across all exams, while Blacks had the lowest (1.91).
·        Among 8th-graders in 2009, 63 percent of Asians/Pacific Islanders had no absences in the past month, compared to 35 percent of American Indians/Alaska Natives.
·        In 2008, 44 percent of White 18- to 24-year-olds were enrolled in colleges and universities (a 16 percentage point increase from 1980); approximately 32 percent of Black 18- to 24-year-olds were enrolled in colleges or universities (an increase of 12 percentage points from 1980); and 26 percent of Hispanic 18- to 24-year-olds were enrolled (an increase of 10 percentage points from 1980).

The report additionally notes that more than 11 million elementary and secondary school students speak a language other than English at home.

To view the full report please visit https://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2010015

President Obama has requested an additional $989 million in funding for
Head Start in the next fiscal year, which would ratchet up Head Start’s budget to about $8.2 billion. (Head Start also got an extra $2.1 billion as part of
last year’s economic stimulus.)

The latest indication: a study of 5,000 students earlier this year by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which found virtually no difference in academic achievement by the end of first grade between those
who attended Head Start and those who were eligible to attend but didn’t. The HHS study followed the students from 2002 through 2006, showed that before entering kindergarten, the children in the Head Start group did score higher academically in some areas than the non-Head Start group. But that gap virtually disappeared in less than two years.

Yasmina Vinci, Executive Director of the National Head Start Association offers a counter argument.

“Right now, because of tight budgets, Head Start serves only 41% of at-risk
preschool students, and Head Start for infants and toddlers serves a minuscule 3.5%.

People who experience the outcomes have affirmed Head Start’s value. Just ask police chiefs who know that people who began in Head Start commit
fewer crimes and go to jail less often. Just ask school administrators. For example, Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland recently found
that kindergarteners with special needs who had been in Head Start needed 3.7 hours of special education per week on average, versus 9.8 hours for non-Head Start children “” a huge financial saving.”

The problems seem to be more with Head Start than with the concept of early education generally. Low-income children often begin school academically
behind their more affluent peers, and early education offers these children a chance to start at less of a disadvantage.

What can states do instead?  One option is state-funded preschool programs. Three states “” Oklahoma, Georgia and Florida “” have universal preschool for 4-year-olds, while 35 other states help fund preschool programs. A 2009 Georgetown University study of free-lunch eligible students in Tulsa-area Head Start and Oklahoma Pre-K programs found that students in the state program showed more progress, in both cognitive development and social-emotional skills, than their Head Start peers.

There are new results of an ongoing study from the Alliance for Excellent Education that demonstrate the economic benefits of reducing the dropout rates for students of color in the nation’s forty-five largest metropolitan areas.
Earlier this year, the Alliance broke new ground by releasing metropolitan area-level data underscoring the powerful connection between decreasing the dropout rate and strengthening local economies.  They released a new report that looks at the economic benefits that would come from improving the dropout rate of students of color in particular, who we know are among the most at risk of not graduating from high school.  The findings estimate the contributions that additional high school graduates would likely make to a number of key economic factors, including job and economic growth, annual earnings, and home and automobile sales. They demonstrate the significant stake that community members””even those without children in the school system””have in the effectiveness of their local high schools. These findings also bring to light the return on investment that local areas would likely see if community members were to address the dropout crisis that exists among students of color in their local high schools, underscoring the notion that the best economic stimulus package is, indeed, a high school diploma.

Information about these reports areavailable at https://www.all4ed.org/files. or by visiting the Alliance’s website.

Check to see if your community is listed and then show the findings to your federal and state representatives and to members of your business community.  Maybe this will stimulate a discussion on the implementation of cutting funding for education.

An article appeared in the New York Times, (6/11/2010) identifying a growing problem.  The growing pressure of  schools to succeed with student’s testing has led to cheating among teachers and school administrators. In a number of schools, this has been caused by teachers receiving extra pay for increased school test scores.  Some inflated scores have been reported by principals and superintendents in order for them to hold on to their positions.

In the  Galena Park Independent School District, outside of Houston, Texas,  the principal, assistant principal and three teachers resigned May 24 in a scandal over test tampering.  The district said the educators had distributed a detailed study guide after stealing a look at the state science test. The district invalidated students’ scores.

Investigations in Georgia, Indiana, Massachusetts, Nevada, Virginia and elsewhere this year have pointed to cheating by educators. Experts say the phenomenon is increasing as the stakes over standardized testing ratchet higher “” including, most recently, taking student progress on tests into consideration in teachers’ performance reviews.

Colorado passed a sweeping law last month making teachers’ tenure dependent on test results, and nearly a dozen other states have introduced plans to evaluate teachers partly on scores. Many school districts already link teachers’ bonuses to student improvement on state assessments. Houston decided this year to use the data to identify experienced teachers for dismissal, and New York City will use it to make tenure decisions on novice teachers.

The federal No Child Left Behind law is a further source of pressure. Like a high jump bar set intentionally low in the beginning, the law “” which mandates that public schools bring all students up to grade level in reading and math by 2014 “” was easy to satisfy early on. But the bar is notched higher annually, and the penalties for schools that fail to get over it also rise: teachers and administrators can lose jobs and see their school taken over.

While there isn’t any national data is collected on educator cheating. Experts who consult with school systems estimated that 1 percent to 3 percent of teachers “” thousands annually “” cross the line between accepted ways of boosting scores, like using old tests to prep students, and actual cheating.

I am not going to excuse teacher or administrator cheating on test results.  Obviously as educators, we do not excuse it when it is done by students.  But  high stakes testing is not the only way, and in my opinion, the best way of measuring student performance.  When you add in performance pay, promotions, tenure and rehiring and AYP to the list, there is enormous pressure.

The Dallas Morning News reported that Black flight out of Dallas is changing the racial makeup of the Dallas public schools.  Hispanics are replacing black students, a trend that is taking place nationally.  The 41,000 black students in the Dallas Independent School District make up 26% of the student population.  That is a drop of over 33% in the past 10 years.  Meanwhile, the district’s Hispanic population now comprises 68% of the students in the district.

Hispanic children present a different set of challenges than other minority groups familiar to American educators.  In addition to learning subject material, many of them must learn a new language. In a time of national recession, deep educational cut by hard-pressed states and decreased spending for education, schools have to provide additional services for these students. They need to hire more multi-lingual instructors, new textbooks, and set up more ESL classes.