Top-to-Bottom Support

Through intensive mentoring and training for everyone from novice instructors to top district leaders, a long-troubled California system is seeing teacher turnover fall and test scores rise.

By Lynn Olson | Education Week

March 28, 2007 – East Palo Alto, Calif. – When Erik G. Brown launched his teaching career at the Cesar Chavez Academy here four years ago, he wasn’t alone: Seventy-five percent of the teachers in the 400-student middle school were new to the district, and two-thirds of those were new to the field.

The school had gone through six principals in six years, and its largely Hispanic, low-income student population was struggling. That year, only 1 percent of 8th graders scored at the “proficient” level on the state algebra test.

“We had one other 7th grade math teacher at the school site,” Mr. Brown recalled, “and she was brand-new as well. There wasn’t too much we could do to help each other.”

Cesar Chavez Principal David Herrera, left, listens to students during a spelling exercise with Lorie Chamberland, right, his coach from the New Teacher Center.

—Jessica Brandi Lifland/Education Week

This year, the once-troubled school retained more than eight in 10 of its teachers. It has enjoyed the highest student-attendance rate in the district for three consecutive years. And 22 percent of last year’s 8th graders scored at the proficient level on the state algebra exam—nothing to write home about, but a huge improvement from where the school started.

The transformation is part of a major push to turn around the 3,000-student Ravenswood City School District, which serves East Palo Alto and part of adjoining Menlo Park. The effort involves intensive mentoring, staff development, and leadership training up and down the K-8 district—from novice teachers to principals to the superintendent herself.

While a national debate has focused on recruiting teachers to hard-to-staff schools and districts by offering signing bonuses and other financial incentives, Ravenswood and its partner, the New Teacher Center, based at the University of California, Santa Cruz, are taking another tack.

They are gambling that the key to improving student achievement, teaching, and teacher retention is to build human capital and create environments in which educators want to work.

As Miakje Kamstra, the project director, put it: “We’re mentoring the system one conversation, one relationship, at a time.”

Casting a Wide Net

For a district of only 2.5 square miles, Ravenswood has had its share of problems. Separated from its more affluent neighbors by a major thoroughfare, East Palo Alto is overwhelmingly poor and minority.

At a Glance

The K-8 Ravenswood school district serves East Palo Alto, a largely disadvantaged community, and a small part of neighboring Menlo Park.

Ravenswood City School District
County: San Mateo, Calif.
Enrollment: Approximately 3,000 students, grades K-8
Average Teacher Starting Salary: $39,128
School Population:

Teachers With Full Credentials (2005-06):

SOURCE: California Department of Education

In 1992, it was dubbed the “murder capital” of the United States, notorious for its high rates of gang violence and gun assaults. A court-ordered desegregation plan, now in its 20th year, permits students to transfer out of the school system to neighboring jurisdictions, starting in kindergarten.

And since 2000, the school system has been under a court-ordered consent decree because of deficiencies in its special education program that nearly led to a state takeover of the district in 2001. Five area charter schools compete with the school system for students.

“Ravenswood has historically been involved in a lot of controversy and conflict and lawsuits, and turmoil at the top,” said Maria Meza-De La Vega, who was named the superintendent of the district in December after serving in an interim capacity for 1½ years. “The high turnover of teachers,” she added, “was a huge impediment to us moving forward.”

In 2003, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, based in neighboring Menlo Park, Calif., provided a $350,000 grant for the New Teacher Center to provide intensive mentoring support to novice teachers in two schools: Cesar Chavez and Green Oaks Academy, a K-4 school that also had a teacher-turnover rate of about 75 percent.

But project participants soon realized that in order to mentor novices, they had to address other aspects of the district—from getting paychecks and purchase orders out on time to supplying reading books and math materials for classrooms.

“Suddenly, for me, the job description widened and shifted,” Ms. Kamstra said. “We started going to the district office and building relationships very carefully with each stakeholder—with the person involved with purchase orders, with the person in the human-resources department, with the person involved in business. That became a huge part of our job, just having conversations and finding out what we could do at the district-office level to support them.”

In 2005-06, a third school, Willow Oaks Elementary School, asked to join the project. And this school year, the New Teacher Center scaled up its work to provide mentoring and professional development to all seven schools in the system.

The New Teacher Center is a national, nonprofit organization focused on providing systematic support to new teachers, and more recently principals, through the work of highly trained, full-time mentors.

Under the more intensive model being used in Ravenswood, the typical ratio of one mentor for every 13 to 15 novices is reduced to one mentor for every nine new teachers, all of whom work in the same school. By working closely with a small number of teachers in one site, said mentor Michael Russo, mentors are able to develop deep, trusting relationships and to tap into the “heartbeat” of the school.

Coaching Leaders, Too

The project also provides a coach for every principal and for the superintendent. And it has made available ongoing professional development, focused primarily on literacy instruction, to teachers and administrators throughout the school system.

Ms. Kamstra and her colleague Kitty Dixon, the director of school/district support and innovation for the center, serve as liaisons between the school-based efforts and the work at the district office. Ms. Dixon, for example, participates in the superintendent’s leadership team in an ex officio capacity.

Erik G. Brown, a 7th grade math and science teacher, talks to his students at the Cesar Chavez Academy in the Ravenswood school district in East Palo Alto, Calif.

—Jessica Brandi Lifland/Education Week

“As we are on the ground, supporting teachers, we really have a good sense of what is working and what’s not working, and what level of support is needed,” Ms. Dixon explained. “Although our individual work with teachers is confidential, my job is to listen to my mentors and my administrative coaches and think about the patterns and trends.”

Those messages are then fed back to district leaders, she said, to focus on what needs to happen for teachers and students to move achievement forward.

Ellen Moir, the director of the New Teacher Center, said the kind of “full-court press” being applied in Ravenswood is needed, because the nation’s hardest-to-staff schools are often in districts that themselves face so many challenges and complexities that they can’t pave a path for success for new teachers.

“What we have found is that by really intensifying the support services for new teachers, we’re able to not only accelerate their development and retain them in the profession,” she said, “but we’re [also] trying to change the culture of the school.” In essence, Ravenswood and the center are trying to create a “community of practice” across the district, said Ms. Moir.

That has meant doing everything from writing grant proposals to pay for book corners and math manipulatives for classrooms, to working with teachers to supplement the Open Court reading program with strategies and materials to address individual students’ needs. It has also entailed helping the district revise its professional-development policies and even draw up a strategic plan that will link its after-school programs to instruction.

Grade-Level Teams

One of the biggest breakthroughs came last school year, when the district formed a professional-development committee to address teachers’ concerns about the lack of time for planning and collaboration. The committee—which included teachers, administrators, and providers of professional development—met once a month throughout the spring.

Now most Wednesday afternoons, which previously had been devoted to district workshops and activities, are reserved for novice and veteran teachers to meet in grade-level teams at their school, with a mentor providing support. At the middle school level, 7th and 8th grade teachers meet in subject-specific teams across schools in the district.

The teams follow a standard “cycle of inquiry,” developed by the New Teacher Center, in which teachers analyze student data, plan an activity, and go back and implement it in their classrooms. They then meet the next time to reflect on what’s worked and what hasn’t, and either revise their plans or begin a new cycle.

Each of the meetings is led by a teacher facilitator who receives training once a month from the New Teacher Center, helping prepare a corps of future leaders for the school system.

“This year has been awesome,” said Mr. Brown, who was a member of the professional-development committee. Before the school year began, members of his 7th grade math and science team were able to agree on the units they wanted to cover and their sequence.

“Each meeting, we had something tangible to work on,” he said. “Sharing ideas definitely helps people teach certain concepts and avoid some of the mistakes. And building up the morale and teamwork and enthusiasm of teachers helps people get over rough spots.”

He also predicted that it will keep people like him in the Ravenswood district, “because when you feel isolated and frustrated and unsuccessful, I think that’s one of the big reasons for teachers quitting or moving to a different district.”

Scores on the Rise

Because the charge to be advocates for teachers and help them navigate the district bureaucracy is novel work for mentors, they also receive intensive, continuing training in addition to that regularly provided for mentors through the New Teacher Center.

In Ravenswood, the mentors get together three or four hours every other week to focus on systemic issues in the district. “It’s very powerful,” Mr. Russo said. “In tough-to-teach settings, you need that.”

Principals also meet once a month to do walk-throughs of one another’s schools and learn how to create and nurture professional learning communities, in addition to more frequent, one-on-one meetings with their coaches.

“The walk-throughs have been tremendously helpful,” said David A. Herrera, the first-year principal of Cesar Chavez Academy. Joan E. Talbert, a senior research scholar at Stanford University who is conducting an evaluation of the New Teacher Center’s work in Ravenswood for the Hewlett Foundation, said that the center’s focus on improving teaching and learning at all levels of the system is starting to pay off.

Last year, Green Oaks had a 101-point gain under California’s accountability system, known as the Academic Performance Index, or API, the largest for any elementary school in San Mateo County. In 2004, 84 percent of Green Oaks’ students scored “below basic” in language arts; in 2006, that figure dropped to 53 percent.

At Cesar Chavez Academy, the proportion of students reading “below basic” dropped from 62 percent to 48 percent from 2004 to 2006; at Willow Oaks, it declined from 61 percent to 46 percent. A similar pattern has occurred in math.

“So the schools the New Teacher Center was working in before this year are definitely showing a real bringing-up of the bottom,” said Ms. Talbert, who is a co-director of Stanford’s Center for Research on the Context of Teaching.

A Sense of Hope

Equally important, teachers and principals here say, the initiative has brought back a sense of hope, collaboration, and stability to the district. The retention rate for new teachers has jumped to 87 percent in the three schools in which the New Teacher Center began its work.

Students walk between classes at Cesar Chavez Academy. The 400-student middle school has seen its formerly sky-high teacher-turnover rate plummet and its student attendance and test scores climb.

—Jessica Brandi Lifland/Education Week

But sustaining such an intensive effort is a challenge, and the proof will come in whether Ravenswood can continue to hold onto teachers and improve student achievement over time. Last year, the Hewlett Foundation provided $2.46 million for the New Teacher Center to scale up its work in Ravenswood, or about $800 per student. In February, its board approved another $3.8 million over the next two years. (The Hewlett Foundation also helps support Education Week’s coverage of district-level improvement efforts.)

The plan is to reduce foundation support over the next five years as the district builds its own internal capacity. The center calls the approach a “gradual-release model,” in which leadership is increasingly assumed by the district.

“People have seen a shift in working conditions,” said Amy R. Gerstein, an independent consultant who is helping the center evaluate its work in Ravenswood. “The schools are safer. It’s a lot calmer, and their systems are a lot smoother. The leadership opportunities for teachers are significantly different.”

But salaries still lag well behind those for teachers in neighboring school districts, she said, and the overall workload for teachers and administrators has not changed.

“Our pay scale is one of the lowest in the area,” acknowledged Superintendent Meza-De La Vega, who has worked to increase teacher salaries and benefits and to improve practices within the human-resources department.

“How, then, do we try to hold on to teachers?” she said. “We believe that it’s through the support that we can give them, and the voice to participate in the learning and teaching process.”

Coverage of leadership is supported in part by a grant from The Wallace Foundation, at www.wallacefoundation.org.

EdWeek | Vol. 26, Issue 29, Pages 24-26

Why I Believe in Public Education

by Jon Samuels | from the Public Education Network Newsblast

In 1832, Alexis de Tocqueville came to America to assess the notion that our democracy was a beacon for the world. His astute observations remain a classic guide to America’s success.

American prosperity, he concluded, was founded on several conditions unique to this society.

First, we did not let class determine a person’s stature. A ruffian with a good idea and a work ethic could exchange places with a son of wealth who felt innovative thought and labor were beneath a gentleman’s dignity.

Second, movement within the country was unfettered. This lack of internal passports, documents common in eighteenth century Europe, was essential to the vibrancy found in American society. Regardless of their station, Americans could go where opportunity beckoned.

Third, our system of public education, raucous as it was, provided the skills and knowledge that our citizens could employ to take advantage of a classless and mobile society. Unlike old Europe, we did not fear an educated proletariat.

Despite our flawed application of these principles, opportunity, mobility and education remain the pillars supporting American democracy, and education makes the others worthwhile. In the truest sense, we do not pay taxes to support the education of our individual children, we pay taxes to support the role public education plays in civilizing and enriching our society.

Writing today, de Tocqueville might note the erosion of our public schools and the roles played in that by racism, failed discipline, missing parents, rote teaching and testing gone berserk. But, he would be confident in our defense of public education. He would argue that it was not within the American character to shrink in the face of challenge. He would expect that we would tax ourselves sufficiently to provide for the common educational good.

He would not be surprised when we raised the station of our teachers. He would anticipate our solution of the dropout problem and our reinstitution of discipline and mutual respect in our schools. He would expect that we would use tests surgically to expand an improved curriculum.

de Tocqueville loved an America whose citizens cared little for self-pity but cared much about bringing in the harvest.

That is why I support public education for it may well produce our most important harvest.

That is why I do not support any “choice” that would further impoverish our public school system, that, however unintentional, could result in a few fleeing the problems that affect the many, that could create educational slums to warehouse an overwhelmingly poor and minority population. That would not be the America that enthralled de Tocqueville. That might be a fatal harvest.

I am sure that those who disagree with me are acting out of the courage of their convictions. I would ask, however, that they also have the courage of the consequences of their convictions.

I have no children in our schools and I have reached an age when it is tempting to leave the driving to someone else. On the other hand, I remain a passenger on our national bus and I would like to ensure the driver knows the route.

Public education is one of the bedrock guarantees that America will continue down freedom’s road.

• Jon Samuels is a Board Member Public Education Partners, Aiken, South Carolina and a founding partner of Synergem Emergency Services , L.L.C.

• Walking the Walk/more on Samuels

DEJA VU TIMES TWO: ALBUQUERQUE MAYOR MOVES TO TAKE OVER SCHOOLS - or - Someone check city hall, the mayor's playbook may have been stolen!

By Martha T. Moore, USA TODAY

20 March 2007 - ALBUQUERQUE — Even with students on split schedules to limit crowding, the central court of Cibola High School between classes is a chaotic, noisy swirl of adolescence. The school on Albuquerque's fast-growing West Side was built in 1974 for 1,600 students; now it has 3,200.

Just one of the city's 12 high schools made "adequate yearly progress" last year under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, and it wasn't Cibola. Of Albuquerque's 128 public schools, only 47 met the standard, according to the state Public Education Department.

The overflowing classrooms and sagging test scores have convinced Mayor Martin Chavez that the city's schools are failing. So he wants to follow the example of mayors in Boston, Chicago, New York and several other cities: Take over the schools himself.

If Chavez can get the New Mexico Legislature to agree to his plan — he hasn't so far — Albuquerque would become part of a movement that began 15 years ago, when Boston switched control of its school system from an elected board to one appointed by the mayor.

The push for mayoral control reflects rising frustration and desperation over poor student achievement, crumbling buildings, bureaucratic wrangling among school officials and revolving-door superintendents.

Schools in Boston, Chicago and New York have improved test scores, avoided teacher strikes and had longer-lasting superintendents since mayors took over.

The districts have standardized their curriculums, ended "social promotion" of kids who fall too far behind, opened new schools to give students more choice and brought in millions of dollars in corporate donations.

But education specialists continue to debate whether kids really get a better education under such arrangements, whether any academic gains will be permanent, and how much credit mayors should get for the successes.

Kenneth Wong, a Brown University education professor, examined test scores of the 100 largest school districts from 1999 to 2003. He found that students in mayor-controlled school systems often perform better than those in other urban systems. Test scores in mayor-run districts are rising "significantly," he says.

However, Wong says in his study that "there is still a long way to go before (mayor-controlled) districts achieve acceptable levels of achievement."

On the other hand, Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank, says his review of previous studies finds that it's "inconclusive" whether mayors can raise test scores more than elected school boards.

Solid data on student achievement have not been collected long enough, Hess says. And test scores also are up in Houston and other cities with elected school boards, he points out.

Eliminating an elected board — which in New York also included eliminating smaller neighborhood school boards — removes direct public involvement in school decisions. That can leave many parents feeling shut out, says Michael Kirst, a Stanford University education professor.

A controversial move can set off a wave of parental fury at the mayor.

In January, New York schools reorganized bus routes, doubling commute times for some children and leaving others stranded. Parents were outraged. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg last month named a parent as the city education department's first "family engagement officer."

Chicago, Boston and New York schools are still under the watch of the mayors — Richard Daley, Thomas Menino and Bloomberg — who first took them over. But what happens when the next mayor comes into office? Will the commitment to improving schools continue?

"Most mayors who are going to take over the schools are ready for it or want it," Hess says. "But there's no guarantee that the next mayor in eight years is going to feel the same."

In Albuquerque, Chavez sees the potential benefits of controlling the school system as outweighing any drawbacks.

"I don't want to run the schools, I assure you," he says of the 87,000-student system. "But I do want to have accountability. And this is the best way to do it."

More districts taking action

About a dozen of the 75 largest school districts now are under mayoral control. Boston's mayor was given control of the schools by the Legislature in 1992, Chicago's in 1995, and New York's in 2002.

More appear ready to follow:

•In Washington, Mayor Adrian Fenty is poised to gain control of the troubled school system next month. Under his plan, which most members of the city council have said they approve, the mayor would oversee the school superintendent and the system's management and budget.

•In Los Angeles, a state law passed in September gave Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa substantial power over the Los Angeles Unified School District, which includes 27 cities. However, a California court declared the law unconstitutional. Villaraigosa is appealing to the state Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, Villaraigosa is hoping winners of a school board runoff election in May will support his proposals to lengthen the school day, expand preschool programs and end social promotion.

•In Hartford, Conn., where the mayor appoints five of nine school board members, Mayor Eddie Perez named himself to the school board in December 2005, three years after the troubled school district emerged from state supervision. Perez is now its chairman.

"The relationship between the mayors and the schools has changed fundamentally," Stanford's Kirst says. "It's not whether the mayors will be involved in city schools, but how."

City mayors increasingly see poor-performing schools as a hindrance to economic development and see themselves as supermanagers who can fix them.

"In order to make the cities more competitive, (mayors) can no longer just revitalize downtown, or build bigger buildings or a museum or an aquarium," Wong says.

"These mayors fancy themselves as better-trained public administrators," Kirst says. "They have the hubris, or the guts, to take this on."

Proponents of mayoral control say schools must be well-run before they can teach well, and having the city's top leader run the schools often brings stability and better financial management.

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley balanced the school district's budget and negotiated a long-term contract with the teachers union. Boston Mayor Thomas Menino's first pick as schools chief, Thomas Payzant, led the district for more than 10 years.

"You need a lot of political stability on which to build. Boston and Chicago desperately needed that," says Michael Usdan of the Institute for Educational Leadership, a foundation that promotes collaboration between schools and other agencies and corporations.

Paul Vallas, who ran Chicago's schools from 1995 to 2001, says having the mayor in charge can bring more resources to schools with disadvantaged students.

"We're not fighting to get cops in schools, we're not fighting to get social services, we're not fighting with the regulatory departments to get permits to build new buildings," says Vallas, who now heads the school system in Philadelphia, where the mayor and governor jointly appoint the school board. "Why? Because any delay becomes the mayor's responsibility."

Wong says mayor-appointed school boards are more accountable than those elected by voters because so few people vote in school board elections — typically 10% or less in big cities. A mayor elected with turnout in the 50% range has a stronger public mandate, Wong says.

"Nobody knows who the school board reps are," Chavez says. "Everybody knows who the mayor is."

In Cleveland, where the mayor was given control of schools by the state Legislature in 1998, voters reaffirmed mayoral control in 2002. But they booted Mayor Jane Campbell in 2005 after one term, partly because she didn't improve schools fast enough.

A visionary or 'a bully'?

In Albuquerque, Chavez says he's ready to make unpopular decisions.

He wants the school board to turn over its capital budget to the city, including $351 million from a tax increase approved by voters last year. The recently approved capital budget will build five schools during the next five years, including one intended to relieve crowding at Cibola. But Chavez says he can build more schools faster.

Some school board members call Chavez a power-hungry politician with an eye on the New Mexico governor's race in 2010. (Chavez formed an exploratory committee in January.) "A bully," outgoing school board member Miguel Acosta says.

As evidence that the elected school board has produced results, Albuquerque Superintendent Elizabeth Everitt cites schools such as La Mesa Elementary. It's in a low-income neighborhood with mostly Spanish-speaking families and has met federal education standards for three years in a row.

"We are not in the toilet," Everitt says. "We are not broken."

Thanks to Chavez's continued criticism of the school board, a flurry of school governance proposals went to the state Legislature this year. A bill that would let Chavez appoint three of the school board's seven members died last month. A proposal to break up the city's sprawling school district into three smaller ones also failed. Even so, Chavez is pressing his takeover plan and is boosting the city's role in the school system.

Last June, he appointed an education coordinator to push his agenda with the school board and New Mexico's Legislature.

Albuquerque's city government supplements the schools' police force by assigning cops to schools. It recently kicked in $100,000 so that parents who volunteer in the schools no longer have to pay $36 each for their own background checks. And it pays $12 million annually for after-school programs, which Chavez wants to be run by teachers and focused on academic improvement.

"No city can be fully successful if its school system isn't fully successful," he says.

BINGO STRIKES AGAIN

I am out of town at a conference, and while I am away Bingo the Homework Eating Dog – whose only known picture is reproduced below – has hacked into the 4LAKids server and posted the following two jokes. - smf

The above cartoon by Peter Steiner has been reproduced from page 61 of July 5, 1993 issue of The New Yorker, (Vol.69 (LXIX) no. 20)only for academic discussion, evaluation, research and complies with the copyright law of the United States as defined and stipulated under Title 17 U. S. Code.

---

NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND — FOOTBALL VERSION

1. All teams must make the state playoffs and all MUST win the championship. If a team does not win the championship, they will be on probation until they are the champions, and coaches will be held accountable. If, after two years, they have not won the championship, their footballs and equipment will be taken away until they do win the championship.

2. All kids will be expected to have the same football skills at the same time even if they do not have the same conditions or opportunities to practice on their own. NO exceptions will be made for lack of interest in football, lack of desire to perform athletically, or genetic abilities or disabilities from themselves or their parents. ALL KIDS WILL PLAY FOOTBALL AT A PROFICIENT LEVEL!

3. Talented players will be asked to work out on their own, without instruction. This is because the coaches will be using all their instructional time for the athletes who aren't interested in football, have limited athletic ability, or whose parents don't like football.

4. Games will be played year round, but statistics will only be kept in the 3rd, 8th, and 11th games. It will create a New Age of Sports where every school is expected to have the same level of talent and all teams will reach the same minimum goals. If no child gets ahead, then no child gets left behind. If parents do not like this new law, they are encouraged to vote for vouchers and support private schools that can screen out the non-athletes and prevent their children from having to go to school with bad football players.

A LEGAL HYPOTHETICAL

Students unfurl a banner across the street from a school. It reads: "Antonio Villaraigosa is a big poo-head."

Is this:

1. Protected free speech?
2. Prohibited hate speech?
3. A passing essay in the California Kindergarten Exit Exam?

UPDATE: THE APPEAL ON AB 1381 MENDOZA v. STATE OF CALIFORNIA

The hearing in the court of appeal is scheduled for Monday, April 2, at 9:30 a.m.
The court of appeal is located in the Ronald Reagan State Office Building on the third floor, at 300 S. Spring Street in LA. [MAP]

The appeal will be heard by a three-judge panel.

This time the mayor's (Appellant's) side will get to go first and last; the Respondents go in the middle. It will be similar to the trial court hearing, although somewhat more formal. This is the only action on the court's calendar, it will probably start right away.

The plaintiffs believe we have the facts and the law on our side - we are confident that the action was decided correctly in the Superior Court and in the strengths of our argument and our legal team. We understand that the law is a surprising thing and that our adversaries are strong and capable of the unexpected.

The issues haven't changed much since the trial court, but we'll just have to see how it goes. - smf

Links and more:

Case Summary Docket Scheduled Actions Briefs
Disposition Parties and Attorneys Trial Court

Case Summary

rial Court Case:	BS105481
Court of Appeal Case:	B195835		Supreme Court Case: S149380
Division:	3
Case Caption:	Los Angeles Unified School District et al. v. Hon. Antonio Villaraigosa et al.
Case Type:	Civil
Filing Date:	12/22/2006
Oral Argument Date/Time:	04/02/2007 09:30 AM

Click here to request automatic e-mail notifications about this case.

SCHOOLS VIE FOR AID, BUT MAY GET LEMONS

The state has a jackpot of nearly $3 billion to spend, but in L.A. and elsewhere many needy campuses will get nothing.

By Howard Blume | LA Times Staff Writer

March 18, 2007 — Santee High in South Los Angeles ranks at the very bottom of high schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District, but it won't get a penny of the most substantial infusion of new state funding in years for low-achieving schools.

Nearby Belmont High, another struggling school to be sure, almost certainly will get these funds — some $1,000 per student for seven years.

So it goes with the big-stakes, lottery-like Quality Education Investment Act, the result of a $2.9-billion litigation settlement between Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the California Teachers Assn. and state Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell. Because the goal was to provide enough money to have a significant effect, the funds will be narrowly targeted, going only to about one-third of the 1,455 California schools that rank in the lowest 20% in student achievement. The Los Angeles Unified School District, which dwarfs other school systems, is expected to receive funding for about 80 schools.

How many local schools will receive money — and which ones — is up to the state, although most slots will be filled by a lottery. L.A. Unified, for its part, is responsible for listing its schools in order of priority and making sure applications are accurate. The school board is scheduled to vote on that list Thursday, with the state announcing the final picks in early May. The money starts flowing in the next school year, which for year-round campuses begins in July.

The priority ranking of schools has been the subject of debate. And so have the requirements: The district will need to hire many more experienced teachers, for example, and classroom space is an issue.

Unavoidably, there will be losers.

As for the winners, they will enjoy relative plenty for seven years. They will have that time to prove that a major influx of resources works, that class-size reduction, intense teacher training and adding counselors — three mandated features of the program — will raise student achievement. These campuses could embody the argument that other low-performing schools need a lot more money, too.

But if these richer times are squandered, then these schools could become evidence that money is not the issue, weakening the case for substantially greater education funding that a small army of researchers made in high-profile reports released last week.

Decades-long federally funded efforts have yielded unpersuasive results, as have state-funded initiatives of recent years, critics say.

L.A. Unified school board member David Tokofsky called the infusion "the most significant investment in public education" since President Johnson made federal aid to schools part of his war on poverty.

For the winners, that is.

"This is not permanent money, and this is not a very well thought-out program, but it is being driven by all of our feelings that we can wait no longer," said Tokofsky, who chaired last week's special school board meeting on the subject. "That the kids most in need — the students at Locke, Jordan and Garfield, schools overburdened by the number of kids and the intensity of poverty — can wait no longer."

This attempt also is a bet on particular strategies, especially class-size reduction, and a wager that failing schools and the state education system are ready to succeed where they haven't before. Doubters abound.

"Pouring more money into failing schools doesn't work," said Caprice Young, head of the California Charter Schools Assn., offering one critique. "If you've got money to improve the quality of education in a neighborhood, the best thing you can do is start a new school." She, of course, favors publicly funded, independently run charter schools.

Santee High, a traditional school, suffers precisely for its newness. Eligibility is first determined by 2005 test scores. Santee didn't open until July 2005 — after that year's testing.

Jefferson High and Jordan High, also in South L.A., follow Santee as the next lowest academic performers. They would appear to be certain winners, but both schools lack space to reduce class sizes in core academic subjects to 25 students or less.

But such schools are not automatically out of the game. The rules set aside 15% of the program's total student enrollment for schools that would have to submit alternative plans, such as putting more than one teacher in a classroom. These alternative strategies, say state officials, must be supported by research. And they must be in state hands by month's end.

In recent months, community groups have entered the debate, descending on district headquarters for demonstrations or meetings three times last week. At some schools, they've found principals who either knew little about the program or showed a lack of interest, said parent Martha Sanchez of the grass-roots group Los Angeles ACORN.

District officials insist that all schools will be required to submit applications and that schools applying under the alternative program will get the help they need to submit top-notch proposals.

Another worry is that the district's ranking system could unfairly deny some schools in the poor neighborhoods south and east of downtown, said Sheilagh Polk of the group Community Coalition. Activists said they worry about irresistible pressures to spread the money to schools represented by each of the seven board members.

At last week's meeting, Tokofsky asked the groups to bring to Thursday's meeting any specific injustices they identify. He has some issues of his own, including the automatic preference district staff gave to middle schools over elementary schools.

An added challenge will be filling 2,000 new teaching positions in L.A. Unified over the next four years for this effort and other initiatives. And under this reform, the teaching corps at participating schools must be at least as experienced as elsewhere in the school system.

The settlement ended a lawsuit over Schwarzenegger's 2005 decision, during a budget crisis, to reinterpret his agreement to fully fund K-12 education. CTA and O'Connell sued. The resulting 2006 settlement restored the contested funds, while undermining portrayals of the Republican governor as a foe of education just when he was running for reelection. Although the money technically belonged equally to all schools, the parties to the lawsuit opted for a targeted plan.

"We're trying to clearly help the most challenging schools," said O'Connell recently. "We'll help a generation of students in the next seven years. We know we've underfunded education for far too long."

Thank you to Howard Blume for a fine piece of reporting; California's Byzantine system of school finance gives that ancient empire a bad name.

What is missed is that the money being dispensed in what David Tokofsky says is "the most significant investment in public education" since the war on poverty is the exact same money cut in years past from school budgets because of the legislature and governor's "borrowing" from the Prop 98 constitutional guarantee of adequate funding to schools.

First, a math lesson: Less than "adequate" is "inadequate".

Second: School Boards up and down the state made painful local decisions over the past few years where to cut from their budgets when the state cut the amount it paid for public education. Now the state is paying back what it borrowed ...but on a lottery basis ...to only some schools ...and with strings attached formulated by politicians in Sacramento.

Pay back the money to the programs it was cut from. - smf

Setting the Record Straight: DROPOUTS ARE TRUANTS ACCORDING TO THE LAW

by Dan Basalone in the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles (AALA) Newsletter

March 12, 2007 — For months, politicians in Los Angeles and Sacramento have used dropout statistics as a means to bludgeon LAUSD as a mediocre, failing district. Even worse, it has been implied that the district, meaning all employees, don’t really care whether students finish school or not. In the broader sense, all urban and rural school districts with high dropout rates have been castigated as failing districts. First, let’s set the record straight: Dropouts are actually truants according to the State Education Code …if any politician cares to read the law.

In its continuing effort to educate politicians and the general public, AALA provides the following information from the Education Code of the State of California:

· Section 48200. Each person between the ages of 6 and 18 years not exempted under the provisions of this chapter or Chapter 3 (commencing with Section 48400) is subject to compulsory full-time education.

· Section 48430. Children who hold work permits shall be exempted, but such children shall be subject to compulsory attendance upon part-time classes.

· Section 48450. Each parent, guardian, or other person having control or charge of any minor required to attend special continuation education classes, shall compel the attendance of the minor upon the classes. He shall retain a copy of the permit to work and shall present it upon request of any officer of the law, or other person authorized to enforce provisions of this chapter.

· Section 48460. (a) Any pupil subject to compulsory full-time education or to compulsory continuation education who is absent from school without valid excuse three full days in one school year or tardy or absent for more than any 30-minute period during the school day without a valid excuse on three occasions in one school year, or any combination thereof, is a truant and shall be reported to the attendance supervisor or to the superintendent of the school district.

· Section 48291. If it appears upon investigation that any parent, guardian, or other person having control or charge of any child has violated any of the provisions of this chapter, the secretary of the board of education, except as provided in Section 48292, or the clerk of the board of trustees, shall refer such person to a school attendance review board. In the event that any such parent, guardian, or other person continually and willfully fails to respond to directives of the school attendance review board or services provided, the school attendance review board shall direct the school district to make and file in proper court a criminal complaint against the parent, guardian, or other person, charging the violation, and shall see that the charge is prosecuted by the proper authority.

AALA encourages every citizen, including illustrious politicians, to go online to the California Government Code website and read the complete text of the sections dealing with compulsory school attendance that are referenced above.

It is a disservice to the many hardworking teachers, administrators and classified staff personnel of LAUSD to blame them for dropouts when the primary responsibility for attendance is parental. AALA acknowledges that schools have a legal and professional responsibility to provide the best education possible given the resources available. Districts also have the responsibility to provide the counseling and intervention programs mandated by the State, as well as district initiated retention strategies. Secondary schools especially need to implement a comprehensive curriculum in order to meet the learning needs of all students. Career education, the arts, physical education, industrial arts and other curricula are needed in addition to A – G academic classes. Motivation for learning comes in many forms depending on individual needs because one size does not fit all, and it must be culturally relevant.

AALA reminds the naysayers that the thousands of students who matriculate through the grades and graduate annually should be applauded for doing the daily work of attending school and learning. The parents of matriculating students and the graduates should be praised for making sure that their children attend school on a regular basis and complete work assignments. Isn’t that what all parents are supposed to do? Any politician who says that it is the school’s responsibility to keep students in school, blithely dismisses this parental role in their pathetic attempt to make a political point. They also contribute to the denial of those parents who are neglectful of their children’s education.

AALA encourages parents, nonparent community members and politicians to visit their local schools in LAUSD and other districts to discover the learning that is taking place. At the same time, they will observe the thousands of dedicated students who are attending school and learning because their parents or guardians make sure that they attend to their learning activities. It is sad that other students are not in attendance; however, that is not the fault of the school because it is truancy and the responsibility of the parent or guardian. AALA encourages school officials and parents or guardians to follow the compulsory education laws referenced above and to be their child’s primary advocate and cheerleader. If a parent is unsure of the advocacy role, 10th and 31st District PTA chapters provide the support needed to learn this role.

Learning is work and by its very nature not easily acquired. It takes persistence and fortitude to deal with failure that is inevitable when attempting to learn new skills. Despite any learning frustration, the Education Code is very clear that not attending school is TRUANCY.

smf opines: Thank you Dan; PTA’s role IS to advocate for kids and to educate parents – I thank AALA for the plug and for reminding their members what PTA is supposed to do!
PTA is NOT a fundraising engine to make up for budget shortfalls and wish lists!

WHICH BRINGS ME TO THIS: In California we have a compulsory education system. Parents are compelled by law to send their kids to school until they are 18 and/or graduate. Children are compelled to attend school; like gravity and Dan said earlier: IT’S THE LAW!

In the good old days, when Lucy was still married to Desi and television (if not the world entire) was in black-and-white there were truant officers. Boys in blue from LAPD – city employees – enforced compulsory attendance. They stopped kids on the street between 8AM and 3PM and asked questions; they hauled students without an excuse back to school.

Later truant officers became Pupil Services and Attendance (PSA) Counselors, school district employees who sought out truants, chronic absentees, “skippers” and “ditchers” – and their parents – and brought them to school and saw that they kept coming. The advent of year ‘round calendars made the work a little harder (one third of a given school's student body could be legally out of school at any one time) – but that in itself didn’t make the job impossible, only harder.

But when the budget needed cutting those PSA jobs were the first to go — the focus was on the classroom and PSA Counselors doing their job weren’t there. Laudable on the face of it; but dumb. Dumb because it served to allow those kids not in the classroom to remain that way – and dumber still because the PSA program was fiscally self-sustaining: Every truant returned to school produces revenue in the form of Average Daily Attendance money. ADA IS the school district’s primary source of revenue …the PSA program paid for itself and more!

Rounding up the dropouts and truants isn’t the only answer; school needs to be made more relevant and appealing to kids at risk of being lift behind. Parents that allow their kids to skip school and drop out should be held accountable. And maybe the cops on the street in their radio cars need to turn off the air conditioning, roll down the windows and do the most basic of community policing: “Excuse me …why aren’t you in school?”

Three Different Perspectives on "Getting Down to Facts"--A Groundbreaking Report on California's Educational System

“Getting Down to Facts”
a list of the 23 studies, with links to them all.

March 16, 2007. | from THE CALIFORNIA PROGRESS REPORT

By Frank D. Russo

"Getting Down to Facts", over 20 studies examining the adequacy and efficiency of education funding in California and what is needed to prepare all students for success in the global economy of the 21st century, has been released over the last two days. 18 months in preparation, the project that produced this series of reports, convened "an extraordinary array of scholars from 32 institutions with diverse expertise and policy orientations."

These reports were requested by Superintendent of Public Instruction, Jack O'Connell, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, and Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata. It was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the James Irvine Foundation, and the Stewart Foundation.

It is going to take some time for the information and perspectives in the hundreds of pages contained in these reports to percolate through California's political system. Arriving just three months before the state budget is required to be adopted, it may not affect this year's spending plans and educational policy, but it will be talked about, and parts will be cited for various propositions by many.

Here are just three statements on the report that have been made. There will be a lot more.

Jack O'Connell, California State Superintendent of Public Instruction

This research is bold, and the findings may make many of us uncomfortable. But let's remember that a decade ago many were uncomfortable when California adopted its high standards and when we built a system of accountability and when we first began to use data to shed light on student achievement. We knew that high standards and accountability were the right steps to take, and this research is the next right step in California education reform. We must use it as our guide to make the changes that are necessary to prepare our students and our state for a successful future.

Quite frankly, many of the findings were obvious to me: We need to find multiple ways of entry into the classroom for new teachers. Our data systems are inadequate. Our system is overly burdensome and regulatory.

But this research in its entirety makes overwhelmingly clear that our next step must not be piecemeal reform. It clearly shows that we need a holistic approach that includes things like: less regulation and greater local flexibility, better focus on recruiting and developing effective teachers and educational leaders, and more school site innovation, along with the clear need for additional resources to offer things like more time and individualized instruction. We simply cannot demand a more efficient system and expect results without also investing in our schools at a level that will enable them to achieve those results.

No matter what our perspective, I think we can all agree that our public school system must be focused on results for students - outcomes, not inputs. Our goal must be a public school system that equips all students with the knowledge and skills to excel in college and careers, and to excel as parents and as citizens.

I requested this research to begin a necessary statewide discussion on what is needed - both in investments and reforms - to reach this goal. The work done by these outstanding scholars gives us a starting point for that discussion. It provides an important blueprint for designing a better system for California's students. Now our work begins."

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger

Today's studies show that no amount of money will improve our schools without needed education reform. We need to focus on critical school reform before any discussion about more resources. And as I have always said, our schools need more accountability, teachers and administrators need more flexibility, and parents need more information about how their children are performing.

California needs an integrated, transparent system that allows parents, the public, educators and policymakers to access useful information about our schools. The Governor has directed his administration to work with the Legislature, Superintendent of Public Instruction and others to make the School Accountability Report Card parent-friendly and include relevant information so that schools can easily be compared to one another.

Schwarzenegger's office provided the following additional comments:

Over the past decade, the state has invested significant resources to collect an increasing amount of data from school districts. From demographic data of students and teachers to student performance and financial expenditures, California school districts collect extensive data and make over 100 reports to the California Department of Education and other state educational agencies to meet state and federal reporting requirements. Yet currently, there are few useful tools available to easily access this data. The Governor's proposal addresses this shortfall. According to a 2006 poll by Public Opinion Strategies, 92 percent of voters favor "Requiring better and more accessible information so that we can understand where our education tax dollars are being spent.

This past fall, Governor Schwarzenegger signed into law SB 1209 and SB 1655 by Senator Jack Scott (D-Altadena) to streamline the teacher credentialing process, improve support and incentives for new and experienced teachers and help low-performing schools hire the best teachers.

Governor Schwarzenegger has kept his commitment to education by ensuring that every student has access to a quality school principal and quality teachers and has invested in restoring music, art and physical education to support a well-rounded education. The Governor's 2007-08 Budget includes $66.3 billion ($40.5 billion General Fund and $25.8 billion other funds) for K-12 education programs. This reflects an increase of $2.8 billion ($495.4 million General Fund and $2.3 billion other funds) or 4.4 percent over the revised 2006-07 budget. The total per-pupil expenditures from all sources are projected to be $11,240 in 2006-07 and $11,584 in 2007-08 - both all-time records for the state.

Furthermore, the budget proposes a number of new one-time and ongoing education initiatives. These proposals, along with the major education investments made by the Administration in the last three years, will continue to address the most pressing needs facing students and parents, including:
• Teacher shortages
• Transparent school-site information
• Career Technical Education
• Low-performing schools
• Preparing students to graduate from high school
• Improving student health

Democratic Senator Tom Torlakson, Former Chair of the Senate Democratic Caucus and widely rumored candidate for State Superintendent of Public Instruction in 2010

As you know, a series of education Adequacy studies has been released.
This body of research provides us with valuable information about what is needed to provide every child in California with a quality public education.

Democratic leaders in the Legislature, the Governor and the Superintendent of Public Instruction asked education experts to provide us with detailed, thoughtful, and comprehensive information about the many challenges facing California’s public education system.

As a public high school teacher, a parent, and a legislator, I want to share my thoughts with you on this important research.

These independent studies focus specifically on the effectiveness of our current education spending and practices.

They highlight a need for more local flexibility, reduced paperwork, and increased focus on students, while at the same time they indicate the necessity to attract, train… and retain great teachers.

The top two questions every policymaker should be asking today are:

How do we target and refocus our current education resources to ensure the best results?

And, How do we develop new financial resources to make our schools the best in the nation?

Overall, I believe the information provided by these studies creates an historic opportunity to take bold action to improve education.

This means investing time, energy, and resources into every aspect of our education system.

We must maintain the integrity of our high standards, while presenting each student with an individual pathway for success.

We can start, by increasing the length of the school day, while, at the same time, raising teacher salaries.

It is also critical, to provide meaningful and cutting edge professional development, as well as ongoing training and planning time for our teachers and administrators.
And, most importantly, we need to offer more applied, hands-on learning opportunities, for all of our students.

The curriculum should engage students, and class choices should open doors, not close them. We must have a pathway to success for every child.

Students need to see the relevance of their courses, and the connection to their future career and higher education opportunities, because a real world context fosters deeper learning and increases knowledge retention.

I welcome your feedback, because by working together, we can once again provide a world class education for all of California’s students.

IREEP Studies: REPORT SAYS PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN CALIFORNIA ARE ‘BROKEN’

“Getting Down to Facts”
a list of the 23 studies, with links to them all.

by Carolyn Marshall | New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO, March 15 — A scathing 18-month evaluation of California’s public schools has concluded that the state’s educational system is “broken,” crippled by a complex bureaucracy, flawed teacher policies and misspent school money, leaving it in need of sweeping reforms that could cost billions of dollars.

The report, a compilation of 22 university studies titled “Getting Down to Facts,” was released in two parts on Wednesday and Thursday. The long-awaited report, requested by a bipartisan group of state educators and legislators in 2005, cost $3 million and evaluated why California’s 6.8 million school-age students have lagged behind children in almost all other states.

“The structural problems are so deep-seated,” a summary of the report said, “that more funding and small, incremental interventions are unlikely to make a difference unless matched with a commitment to wholesale reform.”

The report, financed by private nonprofit foundations and coordinated by investigators at the Institute for Research on Education Policy and Practice at Stanford University, revealed “deeply flawed” problems in both the management and financing of the schools.

Among the findings were these: state financial policies so “complex and irrational” that they thwart school and district efforts to educate and school data systems that are poor and ineffective, making it impossible for districts to share vital information. ; the state suffers from “regulationitis,” a condition that has schools paralyzed by rules and buried in paperwork.

In a statement, about the education studies released Thursday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said, “Today’s studies show that no amount of money will improve our schools without needed education reform. We need to focus on critical school reform before any discussion about more resources.”

▲GETTING DOWN TO FACTS: Cost Studies Remarks

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Bullet points/Headlines from the studies:

If there is anything Californians, policy-makers, educators and advocates take away from the full body of research it is the following headlines:

· California’s K-12 spending is below the national average, even factoring in recent budget increases. After adjusting for regional cost differences, the research finds that Texas spends 12 percent more per pupil than California; Florida, 18 percent; New York, 75 percent, and the rest of the country, 30 percent.

· Not all students cost the same to reach the same achievement level. One of the most important findings of the research is that because some students come to school less prepared and others have challenges that require extra program support, some districts will require additional resources. The studies do not suggest that California reduce funding to one school to pay for another — only that some schools will need even more dollars to help their students meet the standards we’ve set for them.

· Regions have different costs. A special concern researchers identified is that the price of highly educated people — such as teachers — may differ across the state. In addition, schools may differ in their ability to attract teachers because of a lack of college graduates more generally in a given region. These differences should be accounted for to the extent that they impact the quality of teachers a school can attract at a given wage.

· Among schools that serve a high proportion of students in poverty, even the most successful schools rarely meet state-achievement goals. As a result, there is very little information about how high-poverty schools can achieve state goals or about the level of funding needed for success.

· Getting Down to Facts cost estimates should not be viewed as a specific price tag for the needed level of education spending in future years. The science is not precise enough to rely upon the cost estimates in that way. Rather, these estimates should be used to help policy-makers assess whether the current spending is enough to expect to meet student achievement goals.

· Increased funding without governance reforms is unlikely to lead to significant gains in student achievement. We have to do both together. The findings of all 22 Getting Down to Facts studies indicate that solely directing more money into the current system will not dramatically improve student achievement and will meet neither expectations nor needs. What matters are the ways in which the available resources and any new resources are used.

· Meaningful reform to meet student outcome goals may require substantial new financial investments. But such investments are only likely to benefit students if they are accompanied by significant and systemic reforms directed at fixing our schools’ troubled finance and governance system.

- from IREEP press release

3onELL

¡Día de Santo Patrick feliz! 4LAKids looks for good things from the English Language Learners' Conference in Long Beach this (3/17-3/18) weekend. There is a lot of new thinking and direction happening — all of which directly impacts every student and stakeholder in LAUSD.


You are directed to these three recent articles on English Language Learners and new directions in English as a Second Language instruction:

3onELL: E PLURBUS UNUM: The democratic case for bilingualism.

3onELL: THE DREAM ACT | ELL | Learning the Language

3onELL: Focus on Adolescent English Language Learners

3onELL: Focus on Adolescent English Language Learners

March 2007

March 2007 | Volume 64 | Number 6
Responding to Changing Demographics Pages 90-91

Special Report / Focus on Adolescent English Language Learners

Deborah Perkins-Gough

The United States can no longer afford to ignore the pressing needs of the English language learners (ELLs) in its middle and high schools, write Deborah J. Short and Shannon Fitzsimmons in Double the Work: Challenges and Solutions to Acquiring Language and Academic Literacy for Adolescent English Language Learners. These students represent a growing proportion of middle and high school enrollments in virtually every part of the country—including states and districts that have rarely encountered them in the past. Although more than 60 percent of ELLs in grades 6–12 still reside in five states (California, Texas, New York, Florida, and Illinois), other states have rapidly growing numbers of adolescent ELLs. For example, from 1993 to 2003, North Carolina experienced a 500 percent growth, and the numbers of adolescent ELLs in Colorado, Nevada, Nebraska, Oregon, Georgia, and Indiana more than doubled.

Education research has concentrated on elementary-level ELLs, and education policymakers have often overlooked the needs of the growing population of older language-minority students. To fill the gap, the Carnegie Corporation of New York asked the Center for Applied Linguistics to convene a panel of researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to identify ways to improve the academic literacy of adolescent ELLs. The panel's report emphasizes the importance of this challenge by presenting sobering statistics about the literacy crisis within this group. For example, only 4 percent of 8th grade ELLs scored at the proficient or advanced levels on the reading portion of the 2005 National Assessment for Educational Progress. ELLs also drop out of high school at much higher rates than do native English speakers—31 percent compared with 10 percent.

Adolescent ELLs differ from native English-speaking students in the dual challenge they face: They must learn to speak, read, and write in English and master complex academic content at the same time. Aside from this common characteristic, however, adolescent ELLs come to the classroom with widely diverse education backgrounds and socioeconomic circumstances. Some are recent immigrants who received effective schooling in their countries of origin, are literate in their native language, and have excellent content knowledge even though they lack English skills. Others came to the United States as refugees fleeing violence, have attended school only intermittently or not at all, and lack basic literacy skills. Some are undocumented, which can affect both their socioeconomic status and, in some states, their postsecondary education opportunities. The largest group of adolescent ELLs (57 percent) were born in the United States but have not developed academic literacy in English for various reasons, such as high mobility.

The advisory panel found that the U.S. education system faces major institutional obstacles in responding to the needs of this diverse and growing population. For example, federal and state policymakers have developed no common definition of ELLs, nor are there consistent and reliable methods of measuring these students' status and progress. Existing standardized assessments are unequal to the tasks of gauging individual ELL's strengths and weaknesses, making placement decisions, and tailoring instruction to meet student needs. Few educators in secondary schools have had training to teach second-language literacy to adolescents. Therefore, teachers typically make little use of such promising practices as integrating reading, writing, listening, and speaking across the curriculum; focusing on vocabulary development; and building background knowledge.

The report recommends the following policy responses to strengthen instruction for adolescent ELLs:

• Set common criteria for identifying these learners and tracking their performance.
• Develop new and improved assessments of their native language abilities, English language development, and content-knowledge learning.
• Build capacity among preservice and current educators to instruct ELLs effectively.
• Design appropriate and flexible secondary school programs that offer time and coursework that account for the second-language development process.
• Use research-based instructional practices more widely and consistently.
• Fund and conduct more short-term and long-term research on new and existing interventions and programs and on the academic performance of adolescent ELLs.

The U.S. education system is committed to ensuring appropriate educational opportunities for all students, write Short and Fitzsimmons. “By helping ELLs learn and perform more effectively in the nation's schools, America's educational system and society as a whole will be strengthened and enriched.”

Double the Work: Challenges and Solutions to Acquiring Language and Academic Literacy for Adolescent English Language Learners was published in January 2007 by the Alliance for Excellent Education. The full report is available at www.all4ed.org/publications/DoubleWork/DoubleWork.pdf.

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Deborah Perkins-Gough is Senior Editor, Educational Leadership; dperkins@ascd.org.