January 2006
IN THIS
ISSUE:
ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL REQUIREMENTS HURT LAREDO CHILDREN
Guadalupe M. Cortes and her fellow teachers in Laredo,
Texas, understand what it's like for the students who must straddle two worlds.
All of the teachers at the J. Kawas Elementary School in Laredo's Independent
School District must be certified in K-12 bilingual education. Roughly 95
percent of the children in the heavily Latino school do not speak English as
their first language.
And now that a culture of one-size-fits-all, standardized
testing has reached this district, Cortes says she and her fellow teachers feel
even more pressure to teach to the test under No Child Left Behind.
"When are we going to teach?" said Cortes.
"In the end we will have little to measure if I haven't taught anything
and I am just giving tests."
For half of her 20 years in teaching, Cortes has served
the children in this Webb County community. She's seen many challenges. Some class sizes in the elementary
school are as large as 29 students in the younger grades. At the high school, the dropout rate
has risen.
Like thousands of school districts across the nation, a
new burden has landed on this Laredo district in the form of cost federal
regulations that do little to address, let alone even recognize the challenges
to bilingual students. And the law often gives little credit to schools for any
progress bilingual students make in learning English as their second language.
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PROFESSOR RECEIVES $1.4 MILLION TO STUDY SCIENCE TEACHER
RETENTION
Dr. Julie Luft is on a mission to answer one of the most
pressing questions of school districts around the nation: How do you
effectively mentor and support new science teachers so that they stay in the
classroom?
Luft is an associate professor in the College of
Education's Department of Curriculum and Instruction Department of the
University of Texas at Austin. She recently received a $1.4-million, five-year
grant from the National Science Foundation to study four different groups of
beginning secondary science teachers. With this study, Luft hopes to
comprehensively describe the development of beginning science teachers during
their first three years on the job and offer insights into useful retention techniques.
"Most induction programs for new teachers are
general in nature and address challenges that all teachers may face, such as
classroom management or lesson planning," said Luft. "But science
teachers face their own unique brand of challenges and we want to look at what
will work best for them specifically as they make that transition into teaching
during their initial years. We know that safety issues surrounding student
labwork and setting up labs can cause stress for new teachers, for example, and
be a huge challenge. These are unique issues that an English or mathematics
teacher will not encounter."
Teacher Retention Facts:
In 1998, science and mathematics teachers had a
16-percent turnover rate.
Beginning teachers have the highest turnover rate, with
roughly 40 percent of those who are going to leave teaching doing so in the
first five years.
Top three reasons science and mathematics teachers leave
the profession:
- family
or personal
- general
dissatisfaction with work environment (i.e., salary, administration, student
problems)
- to
pursue another job
The study, which is building upon a similar but more
abbreviated study Luft did while at the University of Arizona, is in its pilot
year this first year.
Dr. Luft said the following about the results of the
study she conducted at the University of Arizona: "Beginning teachers who
participated in first and second-year support programs that focused on the
teaching of science were more likely to implement reform-based strategies than
peers who were in other types of support programs."
The science teachers who enjoyed the benefits of a
science-specific induction program also felt fewer constraints on their
teaching than did teachers in the other two groups. They also implemented more student-centered inquiry lessons.
According to Luft, the Arizona study reinforced the notion that specialized
support programs for beginning science teachers are crucial. Armed with the
study results, she recommended that universities and schools make it a priority
to work together to develop effective programs.
Realizing that teacher recruitment practices may hold the
key to increased teacher retention, Luft is also conducting research with the
University of Texas at Austin's UTeach program, studying how prospective math
and science teachers develop from the very beginning of their teacher education
program to their first years in the classroom. UTeach is a collaborative effort
between the College of Natural Sciences, College of Education, and Austin
Independent School District to actively recruit undergraduate students in
natural sciences and train them as secondary teachers.
"Teacher education programs do produce enough
teachers, but for some reason a lot of them are not entering teaching or are
leaving right after their first years," said Luft. "Some of the
attrition may indeed have to do with being able to get a higher salary at
another job, but, overall I don't think it's that simple. The reasons people go
into teaching are complex, and we're finding that the reasons they leave are
just as complex. Working with these UTeach students, we want to see what
recruitment techniques can be improved so that we'll have what we all want -
more effective teachers. For however long they stay on the job."
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'NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND' LAWSUIT DISMISSED
On November 23, 2005, Judge Bernard Friedman of the
United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan granted the
United States Department of Education's motion to dismiss in Pontiac, et al. v.
Spellings, the first lawsuit filed to prevent the No Child Left Behind Act
(NCLB) from imposing "unfunded mandates" on states and school
districts. The National Education
Association (NEA) and its co-plaintiffs will appeal the decision to the United
States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Filed on April 20, 2005, by NEA, several NEA affiliates,
and nine school districts, the lawsuit is based on a specific provision of the
NCLB-Sec. 9527(a), which states:
"Nothing in this Act [i.e., the NCLB] shall be
construed to authorize an officer or employee of the Federal government to . .
. mandate a State or any subdivision thereof to spend any funds or incur any
costs not paid for under this Act."
In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs allege that the federal
government is violating this unfunded mandates provision by insisting that
states and school districts spend their own money to comply with the
requirements of NCLB despite the fact that federal funding falls billions of
dollars short of covering their costs of doing so.
"Parents in communities where school districts are
financially strained were promised that this law would close the achievement
gaps," said Reg Weaver, president of the 2.7-million-member NEA. "Instead, their tax dollars are
being used to cover unpaid bills sent from Washington for costly regulations
that do not help improve education."
The Department of Education moved to dismiss the lawsuit
on two grounds: that the
plaintiffs lack standing to bring the lawsuit, and that Section 9527(a) does
not mean that there can be no unfunded mandates imposed on states and school
districts by the NCLB Act. In
granting the Department of Education's motion to dismiss, the court rejected
the standing objection, finding that "standing had been adequately
alleged."
The court concluded, however, that Section 9527(a) does
not prohibit Congress from imposing unfunded mandates. According to the court, the section
only prohibits "federal officials and employees from imposing additional,
unfunded requirements, beyond those provided for in the statute."
"We obviously are disappointed with the
opinion," said Weaver, adding that the plaintiffs "find it
particularly troubling that the court did not even address - much less provide
any basis for rejecting-the arguments that we presented as to the meaning of
Section 9527(a)." Weaver
indicated that the plaintiffs will appeal.
"We are hopeful," continued Weaver, "that
the appellate court will agree with our arguments, reverse today's opinion, and
allow this litigation to move forward.
The need for the requested relief is even more urgent now than it was
when the lawsuit was filed, since Congress is considering cutting funding for
NCLB programs by $780 million in the next school year."
For more information about the lawsuit, visit:
www.nea.org/lawsuit
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THE WAGES OF TEACHING
Newsweek opinion by Anna Quindlen
Nov. 28, 2005
A couple of years ago I spent the day at an elementary
school in New Jersey. It was a nice average school, a square and solid building
with that patented classroom aroma of disinfectant and chalk, chock-full of
reasonably well-behaved kids from middle-class families. I handled three
classes, and by the time I staggered out the door I wanted to lie down for the
rest of the day. . . .
The National Education Association has been pushing for a
minimum starting salary of $40,000 for all teachers. Why not? If these people
can teach 6-year-olds to add and get adolescents to attend to algebra, surely
we can do the math to get them a decent wage.
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TEXAS HIGHLIGHTED IN EDUCATION WEEK'S "QUALITY COUNTS AT 10"
Texas has made strong progress in student achievement
over the past decade, according to Education Week's "Quality Counts at
10" report. Texas is one of five states-along with Delaware,
Massachusetts, New York and North Carolina-to be highlighted in this annual
report of states' educational progress.
Texas was one of only seven states with gains in
mathematics that significantly outpaced the nation as a whole in both grades 4
and 8, the two grades assessed through NAEP. The other noteworthy states in
this category are Arkansas, Delaware, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina,
and South Carolina.
To see the complete report:
www.edweek.org/ew/toc/2006/01/05/index.html
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Queue
Inc.
1 Controls Drive
Shelton, Ct. 06484
(800) 232-2224
Fax (800) 775-2729
Email jdk@queueinc.com