These articles feature EDUCATION, not surprisingly, more than anything else.
The first piece (going in chronological order for convenience sake) considers the relative ease or difficulty in teaching reading. It is mostly a promo for a longer piece I am looking forward to reading.
The next piece considers one Pueblo's (ACOMA) tracking of educational data. While I really appreciate and support the idea of using data to make positive improvements, I am not sure if I see that or just another example of over-reliance on numbers on standardized tests:Teaching reading is fundamental, and not as simple as it sounds
Hailey Heinz / Journal Staff Writer/Published: Sep 28, 2012
You'll probably find that a refrain on this blog will be, "It's complicated." And no, not the movie, although I am fond of it. Many things in education sound simple, and everyone thinks they're an expert because they attended school. But when you dig a little deeper it becomes more nuanced.
This morning I sat down with Jami Jacobson, Albuquerque Public Schools' newly minted director of curriculum and instruction, to talk about how the district teaches reading. We chatted about the ongoing conflict between different philosophies of teaching reading: should reading instruction emphasize phonics and how to sound out words, or should it be all about context and meaning? You may be totally unsurprised to learn that the best strategies use some of both.
We also talked about how teachers can structure their classroom so students at all levels of reading ability can be learning at the same time, and how parents can help support their students in learning to read. My full story will run Oct. 9 on the Schools page of the Journal. ...
Laguna Acoma finds that tracking nearly everything improves student performance
Hailey Heinz / Journal Staff Writer/Published: Oct 2, 2012The staff at Laguna Acoma Junior Senior High School is really into writing things down.
Math teacher Berna Marquez writes down students' current grades in their notebooks every week. She has them make graphs that show their progress on test scores throughout the year -- an assignment that is partly an exercise in graphing, but she says it's more than that.
"Data is very important when it's personal," Marquez said. "They get to see, 'I'm not doing very well.' But numbers don't mean a whole lot if you just verbally tell them. But when you show them on a graph, it has much more impact."
That philosophy starts at the top, with the school's administrators, and traces to school leadership training that the principal and assistant principal received at the University of Virginia last year.
Gov. Susana Martinez announced last month she has set aside $3.5 million to provide leadership training to principals from the 319 schools that received "D" and "F" grades under the new school grading system. The leadership training, according to a news release, will be anchored in the Virginia program. In the same release, Martinez lauded the success of the program at Laguna Acoma Junior/Senior High School.
Test scores at Laguna Acoma still have a ways to go. Among high school students who took the SBA last year, 39.5 percent scored proficient or above in reading, and 44.2 percent scored at least proficient in math. But both numbers are up from spring 2011, when just 28.2 percent of students were proficient in math. Reading is up more modestly, from 36.6 percent.
Administrators point to the gains as proof the University of Virginia model is working.
Principal Tom Trujillo and assistant principal Gerald Horacek used money from a federal School Improvement Grant to travel to Virginia for the training, which combines strategies from the university's business and education schools. The idea is to give principals leadership strategies, which in some cases are borrowed from the business world. Horacek stressed that the training is not about running schools like businesses, but about giving principals the kinds of leadership skills chief executives have.
And like Marquez's emphasis on writing down student grades, Trujillo and Horacek put a strong emphasis on writing down things they've committed to do, like more frequent classroom observations, and writing down the school's achievement data.
On the wall of a conference room, they have posted charts showing the state standards students must know for the 11th grade Standards Based Assessment, and how each junior is doing on standard. It's the beginning of the school year, so many boxes on the chart are red, meaning the students did not show knowledge of the standard on a pre test.
That's OK, Trujillo said, because those topics haven't been covered yet. Students will be tested again throughout the year, to help teachers hone in on the standards that specific students haven't mastered, and help get them ready for the SBA in the spring. Trujillo said before he went to the leadership training, his school collected lots of data that were never put to use.
"The University of Virginia told us we were data rich, but information poor," he said. "We had all this data, but it stayed in the hands of people that didn't use it. We needed to get the data out of the hands of the administrators and into the hands of the teachers, and down to the students. That's an area that we drastically improved in."
Other changes also have been adopted at the school, which has about 360 students in middle and high school. Trujillo and Horacek spend more time observing teachers in their classrooms and giving them feedback, which sometimes means administrative work gets pushed to the early morning hours or the evenings. Schedules also have been rearranged to give those who teach the same subjects a common planning period to collaborate.
Several teachers said they think the changes in the school are working.
"I've been teaching for 18 years, and this is the second or third year we're trying to implement this, with the instruction being data driven," Marquez said. "And I totally support it, because I've seen tremendous growth with the students."
Even students say they see change over the past several years. Brent Riley, a high achieving senior, said the school is very different than when he started there.
He said he and his classmates are tested more often -- at the end of every three week curriculum unit to see whether they learned the standards the unit was intended to teach. But he doesn't mind, saying it helps him chart his progress toward getting ready for college.
"I'm the type of student who likes a challenge," he said.
Editorial: College Predictors Will Save Lotto Scholarships
Albuquerque Journal Editorial Board/Published: Oct 4, 2012In 1995, then Gov. Gary Johnson signed bipartisan legislation creating the New Mexico Lottery Authority. What made that legislation, and the subsequent 12 years of legalized gambling, more palatable to many New Mexicans is the program's mandated mission of raising money for higher education. It's time for the Legislature to face fiscal reality and finally focus that law so it goes beyond just handing out college tuition to all comers and instead awards it to students who have a decent shot at graduating. Currently the program guarantees eight semesters of full tuition for recent N.M. high school grads who maintain a 2.5 grade point average in a state college or university. The retooling is necessary because the New Mexico Lottery Success Scholarship fund is on the edge of insolvency - the Legislative Finance Committee is projecting it will be more than $5 million short in two short years. Declining ticket sales, skyrocketing tuition and increasing student applications - about 75,300 students have gotten a lotto scholarship - have made it a fiscal victim of its popularity with the looming potential of becoming an empty promise. And that has the Legislature flipping a coin with two unpopular sides: 1. Either give the scholarship to fewer students, or 2. Find more money. A 2010 LFC report wisely pushed option No. 1, linking qualifications for the scholarships with predictors for recipients actually graduating in nine semesters. Those included increasing the minimum course load from 12 to 15 hours, setting stricter eligibility requirements for research institutions and four year colleges compared to two year colleges, setting high school performance standards (GPA, college preparation or class rank), requiring remedial coursework be taken at lower cost institutions, and excluding remedial courses from the required course load. Option No. 2 is a non starter, considering the state sponsored gambling was sold to the public as a way to get kids through college and especially in this tight economy. LFC members appear reluctant to even go there - a good thing. Chairman Sen. John Arthur Smith says using general state funds is not an option, and vice chairman Rep. Luciano "Lucky" Varela says "we're trying to balance the budget. We're looking at not trying to divert recurring revenue from the general fund at this point in time." On the lottery's 10 year anniversary, one of the original sponsors of the enabling legislation, Sen. Stuart Ingle, R Portales, said "we want (the scholarship program) to where it stays something you can rely on." If that's going to happen, the 2013 Legislature will need to make adjustments to honor that sentiment, as well as the one about legalized gambling putting students through (not just into) college.This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.
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