Why Your Child May Not Graduate from High School

[Felt this was something to think about]

Community Editorial: Why Your Child May Not Graduate from High School

Spring 2013

Written by  Melodía Gutierrez

15 March 2013

Forty percent of the students pictured at Backman Elementary in the image above will not graduate from high school. Our state legislature continues to ignore this achievement gap in the academic performance between at-risk minorities and their white classmates. Parents, teachers and elected officials should be outraged that nearly fifty percent of Latino, Pacific Islander, African American and Native American students will drop out of high school.
These statistics beg for something to be done. In recent years, much of the legislation that is presented to address the achievement gap rarely makes it out of committee hearings, and consequently to the governor's desk to become law. Currently, Utah's legislative session is in full swing and despite legislation on classroom sizes and funding, there is not a single piece of legislation that tackles the injustice of this vital issue. Lawmakers have offered no solutions and worse, many simply don't see the achievement gap as an issue.
In mapping out the economics surrounding the achievement gap, we get a better sense of what leads to this disregard of many students. Governor Gary Herbert's budget for the 2014 fiscal year almost entirely neglects Title I schools, like Backman Elementary, that are identified as schools with large at-risk student populations. In his budget, Herbert sets aside $10 million for early intervention programs. While that amount sounds like a good start, it won't even cover expanding all-day kindergarten to all of our at-risk children, which would go a long way to providing our children the basic skills needed for educational success. For the children left out of all-day kindergarten—disproportionately minority students or students from lower socio-economic status—they begin their educational experience behind their peers and, as the evidence shows, they often stay there. Another token offering in Herbert's budget is the $3.9 million allotted to deal with the "educational needs of at risk children." Again, these millions are not enough to make any meaningful and desperately needed education reform, but merely allow Herbert to score some political points while conveniently serving as a distraction from the real problem.
Worse still, while these small expenditures are added, Herbert's 2014 budget makes big cuts to Head Start programs and Title I funding. Backman Elementary Substitute Teacher Cori Redstone explains, "Governor Herbert supports cutting Head Start and Title I funding for these kids. I strongly disagree he is a friend of education. 70,000 kids living in poverty will lose their access to early reading. Head Start makes a huge difference in their lives." Of course, those most affected by these cuts are those who need this funding the most.
Achievement gap avoidance will only create problems for the entire state of Utah. Minority students are struggling to meet standards in math and are barely meeting standards in reading and writing. 64 percent of Latino students are passing reading and writing exams, with just 47.7 percent succeeding in math. Black students average the same as Latinos in reading and writing, but only 45 percent succeeded in math. Native American students only average 62 percent passing reading and writing, but their math scores are frighteningly low at 44.7 percent. All this data indicates that our minority children are not prepared to enter college or the workforce, which leaves us to wonder why our students of color remain excluded from their shot at American Dream. Herbert's educational priorities encouraging students interested in math, science, technology and engineering may be needed skills for the jobs of the future, but by failing to address the achievement gap, he lacks the foresight to be inclusive of our minority and less advantaged white populations that are slated for marked growth within the next decade.
Utah's avoidance of the achievement gap issue is hazardous for our communities, our future economy and for our families. Every student lost is a future denied, a hope extinguished, a dream shattered. We can no longer afford to pretend this isn't happening, the achievement gap must become a top priority now so that each child pictured above has a chance at success and a chance at the American Dream.

Esperanza Library

[The findings from this study are important for us to consider as we make Esperanza decisions.]

Study: Pennsylvania students with access to full-time librarians do better

November 26, 2012 12:24 am

By Eleanor Chute / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

As school districts look for ways to save money, supporters of school libraries point to a recent study showing Pennsylvania students do better on state tests in reading and writing if they have access to strong school libraries.
The study found students with access to a better-staffed, funded, equipped, stocked and accessible school library are more likely to score advanced and less likely to score below basic on the state reading and writing tests.
The study looked at the impact on test scores of each of 12 types of resources, ranging from electronic databases to flexible scheduling.
"The most important thing a strong school library program can have is a full-time certified librarian with support staff," said Keith Curry Lance, a consultant with RSL Research Group and the lead member of the study team.
The study also found the library effect is greater in writing, with students who have access to good resources, in most cases, two to five times more likely to score advanced than those without.
For example, 13.2 percent of students scored advanced in writing in schools with a full-time certified librarian while 5.3 percent did so in those without.
"These differences are not explained away by the socioeconomic, racial/ethnic or disability status of the students," the study stated.
That's because the study took each subgroup and compared test scores within the subgroup based on whether various resources were available.
The study concluded that some student subgroups that tend to have academic achievement gaps -- such as racial minorities, economically disadvantaged and special education -- "benefit more proportionally than the general school population."
For black students, it found six times as many who have flexible access to their school library during the day scored advanced on state writing tests as black students lacking such access.
The study found that higher scores were more common in schools spending at least $21 per student annually on library resources.
The study estimated it would cost $128.9 million in 2012-13 to have a full-time certified librarian in every Pennsylvania public school.
Libraries are among the resources threatened in the days of tight school funding.
Mary Kay Biagini, director of the school library certification program at the School of Information Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh and an analyst for the study, said that 56 percent of public schools in the state didn't have access to a full-time school librarian in 2011-12.
With the economic conditions and resulting library cuts of the past two years, she said, "Students are getting even less of a chance to have access to library resources and information literacy curriculum."
She believes school libraries will be even more important as schools implement the new Common Core State Standards in English language arts and math that call for the curriculum to go deeper in fewer areas rather than skimming the surface in many.
"They are more rigorous and they go hand in hand with the various kinds of content and processes that school librarians are teaching, which is in the area of information literacy, evaluating diverse media, selecting informational text, drawing evidence from primary and secondary sources, developing research questions, synthesizing information.
"All of these are areas the school librarian is an expert in and works collaboratively with teachers."
The study used 2011 data from a Pennsylvania State Board of Education school library survey and test score data from the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment tests.
The project partners were the Pennsylvania School Librarians Association, Health Sciences Library Consortium and the Education Law Center of Pennsylvania.
The Institute of Museum and Library Services provided support, but the views expressed in it do not necessarily represent those of the institute.
The study is called "Creating 21st-Century Learners: A Report on Pennsylvania's Public School Libraries."
The study states it is the first library study in Pennsylvania to look at the relationship between libraries and test scores and the first in the nation to look at the impact on subgroups.
Ms. Biagini said a school library obviously isn't the only factor contributing to student success, but she said, "There have been a number of studies in 22 states that have done fairly the same amount of research in a similar way that have come up with replicable results."
She said the Pennsylvania study had what may be the widest sampling of school libraries, with 78 percent of school districts and 73 percent of school libraries participating.
The 12 library components in the study were certified librarian with support staff; certified librarian working at least 35 hours a week; more than $11 spent per student; eBooks; more than 10 newer computers; databases; more than 12,000 books; more than 150 videos; audio; flexible scheduling; hours beyond the school day; and more than 21 group visits a week.
The report can be found at http://paschoollibraryproject.org/research
Education writer Eleanor Chute: echute@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1955.

First Published November 26, 2012 12:00 am

The Classroom Teacher

1. Econometric analyses continually confirm that an effective classroom teacher is the most powerful in-school instrument currently available to propel student academic achievement.
2. An effective teacher [three] years in a row can set a student on a remarkably productive schooling trajectory and if all students were so fortunate as to have such a beneficial sequence of teachers the achievement gap between have and have not students would virtually disappear.
3. An ineffective teacher is the flip side. Three years in a row of an ineffective teacher is remarkably damaging to a student, often triggering a virtually irrecoverable lifetime learning deficit.
4. Terminating the lowest five percent of ineffective teachers and replacing them with teachers who are only average in effectiveness would of itself elevate U.S. achievement to among the highest in the industrial world.
5. United States public school teachers are more highly paid, on average, than those of OECD nations or Euro zone teachers.
6. When salaries are annualized, stretched over twelve months, and fringe benefits are included, U.S. teachers are paid more, on average than those in other occupations requiring comparable training.
7. U.S. Education school enrollees are among the lowest scorers on the Scholastic Achievement Test (SAT) and education school classes routinely award their enrollees the highest grades of any major in college.
8. No differences in student achievement gains can be discerned statistically between teachers who have obtained their pedagogical preparation through an education school or through a truncated alternative training route, such as Teach for America.
9. Turnover among beginning first and second year teachers is about the same as turnover among other professionals in fields requiring comparable training.
10. The greatest amount of gain in teaching effectiveness appears to occur during the initial three years of a classroom teacher's career. After that, gains to student achievement from teaching experience alone are quite low.
11. There is no consistently positive correlation between a teacher's accrual of advanced college academic credits and the achievement gains of his or her students.
12. Teachers holding a National Board of Professional Teachers Certificate display a slight positive advantage in terms of student achievement gains over those teachers not similarly certified.

James W. Guthrie is Nevada's superintendent of public instruction. This essay first appeared on the Nevada Department of Education Superintendent Blog.

Bring On the Music

Last night we watched the movie The Music Never Stopped based on a true story about the impact music therapy had on a young man who had experienced brain damage. If music can be this powerful in an extreme case such as this it can definitely have an impact on our Esperanza scholars.

A study mentioned in the journal Social Science Quarterly in 2009 reveals that music participation, defined as music lessons taken in or out of school and parents attending concerts with their children, has a positive effect on reading and mathematic achievement in early childhood and adolescence.

The study went onto to mention that certain groups are disadvantaged in access to music education. Families with high socioeconomic status participate more in music than do families with lower socioeconomic status. In addition to social class as a predictor of music participation, ethnicity is also a factor. Asians and Whites are more likely to participate in music than are Hispanics.

We are committed to providing a schoolwide violin/mariachi program for all our Esperanza scholars. We will also encourage teachers to incorporate a variety of music in all feasible ways in their classrooms to not only learn vocabulary and concepts but also to feed the soul.

Please--No Excuses

It was reported yesterday that Utah is among five other states including the District of Columbia to have a racial gap between white and Latino students larger than the national average. What was especially disturbing to me was the excuses that were being made as to why this is the case.

One excuse made by Mark Peterson from the State Board of Education was that Utah's Hispanic population is exploding. He said, "Over the last 20 years in Utah, our population has gotten much more diverse. We've gone from 3% Hispanic students to 15%, or from 1 in 26 students to 1 in 7 students." There are other states that have the Hispanic population growing at a faster rate that have more success with their Hispanic students.

Another excuse Peterson made was that the sort of remedies needed to address the issue are fairly expensive. Research has shown that one of the most effective methods for closing the achievement gap for Latino students is a quality dual immersion program. From my research and experience dual immersion programs are cost effective.

Another excuse made by Peterson was that many of Utah's Hispanic students don't speak English while Hispanic students in California are more likely to be born in the U.S. and therefore, grow up learning the English language. It's true that Latinos who speak English do better academically, but California is not a panacea for its education of Latino students. Plus, there are other states that have a faster growing non-English speaking Latino student population that are experiencing greater success with this student population.

An excuse made by Christina Morales, a member of the state school board's Coalition of Minorities Advisory Committee, was that we have too few minority educators in schools. It's true that more Latino educators would be wonderful for a variety of reasons including making minority parents feel more comfortable as well as being role models and mentors for Latino students. Yet, more Latino educators is not sufficient. I recently read the book Words Were All We Had by María de la Luz Reyes and in this book she notes numerous examples of where Latino students had Latino educators who did a lot of damage and wounded their souls. I have also witnessed first hand a Latino administrator who was so out of touch with the Latino parents in the school that the parents fought for his resignation. Also, the research of George Monsivais found that Latino teachers felt as unprepared as White teachers to effectively teach Latino students. In other words, they, too, needed to learn the most effective methods and strategies.

Other excuses such as poverty, parents' eduction levels and/or lack of familiarity with the school system, stereotyping in schools, etc. were given as well as to why there is this disparity. It's true that these issues are real. Yet, there are schools throughout the nation that are succeeding in spite of these real barriers. We must learn from these success stories and quit making excuses if the achievement gap is to be closed.