Friday, December 21, 2007

Friday Blog Round-Up

This week, we have a few reflections from teachers who are actually working in the trenches and giving their all to educate our kids. Here, Ms. Frizzle has a very interesting and artistic reflection on an interaction with one of her students. Another NYC teacher, who writes the Syntactic Gymnastics, blogs about the "sinking ship" that is her school. I include her link with much sympathy and empathy for her, as the description she gives of her school reminds me all too much of where I taught last year.

The Daily Grito will be on hiatus from December 21st through January 2nd. Have a wonderful holiday and we look forward to seeing you in the New Year!

Thursday, December 20, 2007

New Students, New Schools

Here's a nice complement to two issues I've been writing about recently: bilingual education and how schools are coping with the recent influx of Spanish-speaking immigrants. Seems like the NYC suburbs aren't the only towns that are being forced to redesign their curriculum to address the needs of English Language Learners; the suburbs of Dallas are doing the same.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Wednesday Issue: Bilingual Education y Los Candidatos

When asked during last week's GOP debate how he would work to improve our nation's public schools, Mitt Romney pointed to his work in Massachusetts as a model for the nation, declaring, " ...we also fought for English immersion. We wanted our kids coming to school to learn English from the very beginning."

Romney is not the only presidential candidate to support English immersion programs and he is certainly not the most vehement supporter. Case in point: Tom Tancredo, who skipped the Univision debate because he opposed the idea of having his remarks translated into a language other than English.

Compared to other issues, such as affordable health care and the war in Iraq, bilingual education has gotten fairly little airtime during this the presidential race. However, with immigration being a hot-button issue on the table, bilingual education is sure to come into the spotlight soon.

And the candidates are prepared. When Hispanic Link, a weekly newspaper on Latino issues, surveyed the campaigns on this issue, most candidates had statements ready. The outcome? Clinton, Richardson, Dodd, Edwards and Obama were for bilingual education - including instruction in the students' native languages*. Romney and Tancredo were against bilingual education and support English-only instruction.

* I've specified this because the term "bilingual education" sometimes includes English-only ESL programs (although the reason for that is...unknown).

What are the candidates basing their decisions on? Well, it's probably not conclusive research. As EdWeek's Mary Ann Zehr notes, high-quality research about English language instruction programs is scant. There are a lot of different methods for teaching English as a second language, but none can be ranked as the absolute best form.

My suspicion is that their positions on bilingual education are too-closely linked to their immigration stance. Candidates who want to make a show of their patriotism and their "tough stance on illegal immigrants" cry "English-only, English-only." In doing so, they deny important opportunities to both ELLs and native English speakers - opportunities like two-way dual immersion schools.

At a time when America's international test scores are dropping, we should be seeking ways to make ourselves more globally competitive - and that means not isolating ourselves linguistically. Imagine the possibilities of a bilingual or trilingual America where all students were able to speak, read, and write in at least one other language. Their opportunities - and those of our country - would be endless.

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Chiming in on the selective teaching pool...

The Quick and the Ed points out that although the new ETS study shows that America's teacher pool is improving, it is still sorely lacking in minority teacher candidates.

I agree with them that this is a major issue that needs to be addressed quickly. It needs to be addressed form two angles: attracting more minorities to teaching as a career AND getting more minorities to the point where they could actually BE a teacher (i.e. a college degree). After all, if only 12% of Latinos have a bachelor's, it would seem a bit idealistic to imagine that a large percentage of the nation's teaching corps would be Latino.

Therefore, this is an issue that reflects on (and affects) the teaching profession, but our education system as a whole. Let's start the reform from the bottom up: How can we get more minority students into 4-year college programs and THEN attract them to teaching?

Seems like a big question.

Monday, December 17, 2007

"Que Ningún Niño Se Queda Atrás:" Take That, NY Times

Catching up on some weekend reading, I came across the NY Times Article, "No Child Left Behind? Say It in Spanish." I followed their advice with the title of this post.

The article explains how the schools in NYC's suburbs are coping with the large influx of Hispanic immigrants that have recently settled in the area. In recent years, the 19 suburban counties closest to NYC have experienced a 17% growth in the Hispanic population under age 15, forcing schools to re-evaluate their ESL and Hispanic outreach programs.

Randolph, NJ was chosen as a example of one suburban district that is learning to cater to the needs of Spanish-speaking families. After noticing a drop in the test scores of an elementary school with a high number of recent immigrant students, the district initiated a multi-pronged plan to improve the academic performance of its ELL students. This included reducing class sizes, hiring a reading specialist and a full-time social worker, and initiating a "Noche Latina" outreach event for Spanish-speaking parents.

So far, test scores seem to be rising, but the ultimate result remains to be seen.

Amazingly enough, there hasn't been political backlash against these new expenditures, despite the fact that other schools in the district have seen budget cuts. Randolph's superintendent said the following: “...[I]t costs more to educate some kids, and it’s going to cost more to educate immigrants,” Mr. Riley said. “Once you accept that, everything falls into place.”

In this case, the new programs seem like a thoughtful, reasonable investment. We'll see what other districts follow their lead and how they work to find cost-effective ways to educate their ELL students.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Wednesday Issue Delay

The Wednesday Issue is in the works, but as I am scrambling to finish a surprise project, it looks like it will be delayed until tomorrow. Apologies to all.

Wednesday Issue: Bilingual Education y Los Candidatos

When asked during the final GOP candidate debate how he would work to improve our nation's public schools, Mitt Romney pointed to his work in Massachusetts as a model for the nation, declaring, " ...we also fought for English immersion. We wanted our kids coming to school to learn English from the very beginning."

Romney is not the only presidential candidate to support English immersion programs and he is certainly not the most vehement supporter. Case in point: Tom Tancredo, who skipped the Univision debate because he opposed the idea of having his remarks translated into a language other than English.

Compared to other issues, such as affordable health care and the war in Iraq, bilingual education has gotten fairly little airtime during this the presidential race. However, with immigration being a hot-button issue on the table, bilingual education is sure to come into the spotlight soon.

And the candidates are prepared. When Hispanic Link, a weekly newspaper on Latino issues, surveyed the campaigns on this issue, most candidates had statements ready. The outcome? Clinton, Richardson, Dodd, Edwards and Obama were for bilingual education - including instruction in the students' native languages*. Romney and Tancredo were against bilingual education and support English-only instruction.

* I've specified this because the term "bilingual education" sometimes includes English-only ESL programs (although the reason for that is...unknown).

What are the candidates basing their decisions on? Well, it's probably not conclusive research. As EdWeek's Mary Ann Zehr notes, high-quality research about English language instruction programs is scant. There are a lot of different methods for teaching English as a second language, but none can be ranked as the absolute best form.

My suspicion is that their positions on bilingual education are too-closely linked to their immigration stance. Candidates who want to make a show of their patriotism and their "tough stance on illegal immigrants" cry "English-only, English-only." In doing so, they deny important opportunities to both ELLs and native English speakers - opportunities like two-way dual immersion schools.

At a time when America's international test scores are dropping, we should be seeking ways to make ourselves more globally competitive - and that means not isolating ourselves linguistically. Imagine the possibilities of a bilingual or trilingual America where all students were able to speak, read, and write in at least one other language. Their opportunities - and those of our country - would be endless.

Monday, December 10, 2007

Sound Bites: The Univision Republican Debate

The first Spanish-language Republican debate was hosted on Univision last night. This was an opportunity for GOP candidates to win back the Hispanic vote, which, as I noted last week, has declined significantly.

The questions ranged from immigration to making English THE official language of the US, but here are some quick bites from the candidates on education:

Question: How do you explain the decline of support to Republicans by Hispanics?

Mike Huckabee: I think Hispanics want the same thing everybody wants. They want jobs. They want education.... If we're really serious about truly saying we want more than 30 percent of the vote, then as we look at issues like education we'll understand that while the dropout rate from high school is 30 percent among all populations, it's 50 percent among Hispanics. We've got to change that by creating personalized education that focuses on perpetuating what's good for students, not just making what's good for the school.

***

Question: Do you think that you're taking a risk to come here and lose support from the more conservative base of your party?

Rudolph Giuliani: Don't see any risk at all in coming before a Hispanic audience. Hispanic Americans are Americans, just as much as all other Americans. They have the same values, the same interests.... Hispanics have a tremendous interest in giving more freedom back to people, giving more people -- giving people more of a chance to decide on the education of their child. That's why I think school choice would be a very good thing to do for Hispanics, for Hispanic parents, for all parents. The decision on where the child goes to school should primarily be made by the parent, and the parent should decide what school the child goes to, not the government bureaucrat.

That's one of many, many things that really unites what Hispanics want and need and what all parents want and need, which is more control over their child's education. And that's something that I would fight very hard to bring about.

***

Question: A recent survey done for La Raza National Council show that nine out of 10 Hispanic voters think that improved public education should be a priority for the next president of the United States. Let's start with Senator Thompson. What should we do to improve the public schools so our children will be educated in this country from coast to coast?

Fred Thompson: First of all, I think we need to recognize where the responsibility lies. It would be easy enough for someone running for president to say: I have a several-point plan to fix our education problem. It's not going to happen. And it shouldn't happen from the Oval Office.

We spend about 9 percent of education dollars now at the federal level. The responsibility historically and properly is at the state and local level. I think, however, we can do things that would support choice, do things that would support vouchers, do things that would support homeschooling, and recognize that we need to speak the truth.

One of the advantages of being in the Oval Office is having a bully pulpit. And the fact of the matter is, if families would stay together, if fathers would raise their children, especially young men when they get into troublesome ages, we would solve a good part of the education problem in this country.

John McCain: Choice and competition is the key to success in education in America. That means charter schools, that means home schooling, it means vouchers, it means rewarding good teachers and finding bad teachers another line of work. It means... rewarding good performing schools, and it really means in some cases putting bad performing schools out of business.... I want every American parent to have a choice, a choice as to how they want their child educated, and I guarantee you the competition will dramatically increase the level of education in America.

Mitt Romney:
Well, we've got a pretty good model. If you look at my state, even before I got there, other governors and legislatures worked real hard to improve education. And they did a number of things that made a big difference. One is, they started testing our kids to see who was succeeding, making sure that failing schools were identified and then turning them around. They fought for school choice. When I became governor, I had to protect school choice because the legislature tried to stop it.

And then we also fought for English immersion. We wanted our kids coming to school to learn English from the very beginning. And then we did something that was really extraordinary. We said to every kid that does well on these exams that we put in place before you can graduate from high school, we're going to give you a John and Abigail Adams scholarship, four years tuition-free to our state university or state colleges for all the kids that graduate in the top quarter of their class.

We care about the quality of education. I want to pay better teachers more money. Teachers are underpaid, but I want to evaluate our teachers and see which ones are the best and which ones are not.... These principles of choice, parental involvement, encouraging high standards, scholarships for our best kids -- these turn our schools into the kind of magnets that they can be for the entire nation.

***
Question: We're going to continue talking about education. One our of three Hispanic students don't finish high school. What would you do to stop dropouts of school?

Mike Huckabee: An education is empowerment. The lack of it leads us to incredible, just all kinds of obstacles in our path.... And we always talk about we need more math and science, and we, and we're doing a better job. But one of the reasons we have kids failing is not because they're dumb, it's they're bored. They're bored with a curriculum that doesn't touch them.

We have schools that are about perpetuating the schools, not helping the students. I propose launching weapons of mass instruction, making sure that we are launching not only the math and science... but music and art programs that touch the right side of the brain, and not only educate the left side of the student's brain.

Because without a creative economy and a creative student, you have a bored student, and that's one of the reasons we see so many of them dropping out.

Rudy Giuliani: Well, you know, Governor Huckabee reminds me of the fact that I'm the product of a Catholic school from the day I started in kindergarten until the day I got out of college....It was my parents' choice. They made that choice for me. I wouldn't have known. They made that choice. It was hard for them to afford it. I was fortunate enough to get scholarships along the way to help.

But the reality is, that's really the answer. And we're all saying it in a different way. We can revolutionize public education in this country by allowing for choice.

Has it ever occurred to you that we have the best higher education system in the world, and we have a weakening K-12, including for Hispanic students? Now, why do we have the best higher education in the world and this K-12 that's under great stress?

Because higher education is based on choice. It's based on you pick a college because you want to go there. The government doesn't force you to go there. We should allow parents, like my parents were able to do; we should empower them by giving them the money, giving them scholarships, giving them vouchers, let them choose a public school, a private school, a parochial school, a charter school, homeschooling. Let's give the power to the parents, rather than to the government bureaucrats. And we will turn around education within three years.

Duncan Hunter:...What we have to do in this country is to take away all this old credentialing. We've got to bring in aerospace engineers and pilots and mathematicians and scientists and business-people, and we have to bring in people who can inspire kids at a young age to reach for the stars, and then convince them to work hard enough to get there.

Inspiration, that's how we increase our capability in education.

The debate's transcript can be found in its entirety here.

Friday, December 7, 2007

Friday Blog Round-Up

The blogosphere has been subdued this week, but here's my favorite writing:

TMAO at Teaching in the 408 on "The Ledge" that high-performing teachers navigate.

Thursday, December 6, 2007

Data, Data, Data

A few new wonk-y things out and about:

The Cato Institute's Policy Analysis #605: The Public Education Tax Credit, which I was halfway through and is proving to be an exceptional policy brief.

The Pew Hispanic Center's report on Hispanic voters' party affiliation. Surprise! They are leaning back towards Democrats. I wonder if the immigration thing had any influence....?

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Wednesday Issue: Hispanic Achievement and Acting White

Inspired by Eduwonkette's recent analysis of the "Acting White" theory, I've decided to do a small spin-off here. Although much attention has been paid to "acting white" within the Black community, there has been little discussion of how this mentality affects Hispanic students' academic achievement.

In his 2006 study, Harvard economist Roland Fryer and his colleague Paul Torelli released a study which showed that minority students' social popularity suffered when it was known that they were academic high-achievers. The researchers found that for Black students, popularity began to decline once students achieved a 3.5 GPA or higher, but for Hispanic students, the bar was even lower. Latino students began to lose standing with their peers once they attained a 2.0 GPA. This data led to the conclusion that minority students deliberately under-perform in school to avoid "acting white" and keep their social standing intact.

Below is Fryer's graph of how a GPA affects students' popularity (thanks to the Hoover Institution):





















Roland and Fryer make no hypotheses about why Hispanic students' popularity decline begins so much earlier than that of Black students. Thankfully, this leaves room for our further inquiry.

The following questions are important ones that need to be raised in our analysis of Hispanic student culture. They do not yet have answers, but are sure to result in important knowledge about attitudes towards academic achievement in Hispanic culture(s).

1.) Do Latino immigrant children and native-born Latinos share the same attitude towards academic achievement?

According to John Ogbu's theory, recently emigrated individuals - called voluntary minorities - often have more optimistic attitudes towards America and its various opportunities. They value education and hard work highly and therefore, are more likely to trust and do well within the school system. Therefore, it should follow that Latino immigrants are more academically successful than native-born Latinos. But is this true?

2.) To what extent does the "acting white" stigma affect low-income, middle class, and wealthy Latinos? Does one group experience more pressure than others to under-perform?

3.) For immigrant Latinos, does the desire to assimilate into American culture have positive or negative effects on academic achievement?


There are a number of ways to assimilate into this culture: on the one hand, Latino students could swing towards the "acting white" mindset. On the other hand, they could swing to the other side (see above: voluntary minorities). Which actually plays out in real life?

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

The Price of English Language Education

Following up yesterday's news about the price of "adequate" education for Special Education students, today we learn that in Arizona, the Flores v. Arizona case has been resurrected. The legal battle, which first began 15 years ago, has had an immense impact on the way that English Language Learners are educated in the state.

In this appeal, the court will decide how much money is necessary to educate an ELL student and what, if any restrictions, can legally be placed on their English Language Education.

Monday, December 3, 2007

"Acting White" and Student Motivation

Eduwonkette has an absolutely dead-on analysis of the NYC Dept. of Education's new cell phone plan and how it relates to the theory of "Acting White." I was going to leave this comment on her own site, but quickly realized that it was turning into a blog post of my own, so here goes:

Eduwonkette,

I agree with you that the battle is not getting kids to believe that education leads to better opportunities.

So here ARE some the issues that need to be addressed:

1.) Promoting a "college culture." At the affluent high school which I attended, everyone had their reach schools and safety schools picked out by spring of their Junior year. At the urban high school where I was a teacher, I had my senior students coming to me in February asking how to apply to college. There is a great lack of information in urban communities about the process of applying to college. This needs to be addressed - not just by a few assemblies for 11th graders, but by teachers, coaches, and other influencers constantly reinforcing the college message. These adults need to talk about college, their experiences, and what it takes to get in. English teachers (which I was), have a special role in this, as they can prepare their older students for the application process by assigning application essays as part of the curriculum. The students get writing practice AND learn about the admissions process - win-win.

2.) Students need to know real people who have gone to and benefited from college.

Sadly, when I surveyed my students, very few of them had friends and relatives who had graduated from 4-year colleges. So although they knew that a college education could give them better "future opportunities," that idea was a very vague concept. Students need to be able to have role models who they can point to and say, "Wow, if he hadn't gone to college, he would never have been so successful." If they have legitimate examples of the types of opportunities that college provides, this can help keep them focused on attending. And these shouldn't be from "phone messages" from the NYC Dept. of Education. They need to be from real people in their own lives. Mentoring, like you said, is essential.

3.) Students need to be able to understand the connection between their work inside school (and their behavior outside school) and their future education.

I wish that I was making this up, but when I was in the classroom, literally dozens of my students with sub-2.0 GPAs and sub 600 scores on the SATs insisted that they were eligible to attend prestigious 4-year colleges. It was not fun to explain to them the actually reality of their situation.

I think that this was caused by two things that plagued my school in particular. Firstly, teachers' bizarre and inconsistent grading were the main cause. There were numerous teachers in the school (this was well known), who would simply give everyone A's, because they didn't want to fail anybody and have to explain it to their parents. There were also teachers who assigned random grades, usually because they weren't actually teaching and had their students watch movies or do irrelevant worksheets nearly every day.

So many of my students never understood or respected the value of a grade, until they met me (or so I like to think). I remember that my first semester, almost half of my students came complaining to me about why they had failed when they had handed in 2 assignments (we had about 30 assignments per quarter). Why didn't they just get an A, since they had shown up to class and done some work?

It took a lot of effort to get them to see the correlation between their academic effort, personal behavior, and their grades. But they eventually got the message - almost all of them, anyways. And what helped is that every week, I posted their grades on the wall (anonymously, of course), so that they could see that, "Hey, I did well on my quiz, so my grade went up!" or "Wow, I missed two homework assignments, so my grade went down."

The other problem within my school was that so much attention was focused on building up kids' self-esteem, giving them second chances, and basically being their cheerleaders that nobody told them, "Hey, you are going to have to really work to get into college." There needed to be a better balance between the "You Can Do It!" mentality and the reality of how the college admission process works. And FYI, I'm not just thinking of the admissions process of highly selective schools - just of schools in general.

These are the three most prominent that I have seen in my career, but I am sure that there are others. What additional tools do you think urban students need to prepare them to do well in school and be admitted to college?

- Anne

Special Ed Vouchers in Texas

A Latino family in Texas is battling their local school district to cover the cost of sending their special needs son to a private school. They allege that the school district, Coppell ISD, has not fulfilled the requirements of their son's Individualized Education Plan (IEP) and has allowed for him to suffer bullying and attacks by other students. The Dallas Morning News has the whole story, along with a brief history of this type of legal case.

The deciding word of this case will be "adequate," as in, is this child receiving an "adequate" education from his public school? If the court decides that he is not, the legal requirements of the IDEA Act will require the district to pay for his private school education.


Other states have formal programs to serve the needs of special education children. One example is Washington, DC, which follows the IDEA Act's requirements.

DC's current program pays the private school tuition of special education students who cannot be "adequately" educated within the existing public school system. This program has come under fire in the past because of its cost. Earlier this year, Mayor Adrian Fenty pledged to reform the city's special education programs that are offered in public school, so as to reduce the amount spent on sending students to private school.

In contrast, Florida offers a private school scholarship program to ALL special education students, regardless of whether or not their public schools are serving them adequately. Any student who attends a public school and has an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) is eligible. This program is called the McKay Scholarship Program.

Last year, the more than 18,000 students who participated in the McKay Scholarship Program received an average of $7,206 to attend private schools. The program has been ranked as exemplary amongst school choice supporters, especialy because of its broad reach and few participation restrictions.