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Welcome to California Library Media Teacher Advocate, by Melissa Rentchler
Stacy L. Sinclair-Tarr, William W. Tarr, Jr., Barbara Jeffus. (2005) "Student Achievement and School Libraries: The First California Study" Research presented at the American Association of School Librarians 12th National ConferenceEveryStudentSucceedsAtYourLibrary
Section A. Re: Federal Legislation NCLB reauthorization and Advocacy:
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(2.)
March 16, 2007
Tell Congress to Provide the Resources Necessary for Great Public Schools
Congress has begun work on the Congressional Budget Resolution for fiscal year 2008 - the blueprint for how federal funds will be spent in the coming year. The Budget Resolution represents the first step in ensuring that our nation's public schools will have the supports necessary to succeed.
Funding increases for proven but underfunded programs like Title I, IDEA special education, and Pell Grants are needed to help states, local school districts and higher education institutions meet the demands of increasing enrollments and higher levels of accountability.
The Senate Budget Committee—part of the pro-public education Congress you helped elect last year—has already taken a major step in the right direction. This week, the Committee rejected cuts proposed by President Bush and, instead, approved a budget that provides $6.1 billion more for education programs than requested by the President.
Reminder: How Connected Are We?
Several weeks ago, we asked you to send us information about any personal connection you might have with any Member(s) of the U.S. House of Representatives or United States Senate. NEA is compiling this information so that we can ask for your help when we need to convince particular Members of Congress to support NEA's legislative agenda. Thank you to the hundreds of cyberlobbyists who have already responded to our request!
If you have not already doneso, please E-mail NEA at edinsider@nea.org if you have a personal connection with any Members of Congress. Please be sure to provide the Member's name and state, your name and contact information, and a brief description of how you know the Member.
(8.) Dozens in GOP Turn Against Bush's Prized 'No Child' Act
By Jonathan Weisman and Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, March 15, 2007; Page A01
More than 50 GOP members of the House and Senate -- including the House's second-ranking Republican -- will introduce legislation today that could severely undercut President Bush's signature domestic achievement, the No Child Left Behind Act, by allowing states to opt out of its testing mandates.
For a White House fighting off attacks on its war policy and dealing with a burgeoning scandal at the Justice Department, the GOP dissidents' move is a fresh blow on a new front. Among the co-sponsors of the legislation are House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), a key supporter of the measure in 2001, and John Cornyn (R-Tex.), Bush's most reliable defender in the Senate. Rep. Eric Cantor (Va.), the House GOP's chief deputy whip and a supporter in 2001, has also signed on.
Burson Snyder, a spokesman for Blunt, said that after several meetings with school administrators and teachers in southwest Missouri, the House Republican leader turned against the measure he helped pass. Blunt was convinced that the burdens and red tape of the No Child Left Behind Act are unacceptably onerous, Snyder said.
Some Republicans said yesterday that a backlash against the law was inevitable. Many voters in affluent suburban and exurban districts -- GOP strongholds -- think their schools have been adversely affected by the law. Once-innovative public schools have increasingly become captive to federal testing mandates, jettisoning education programs not covered by those tests, siphoning funds from programs for the talented and gifted, and discouraging creativity, critics say.
To be sure, key lawmakers would like to reauthorize the law this year. Ranking Republicans on the House and Senate education committees are pushing for a renewal. And key Democrats, including Rep. George Miller (Calif.) and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (Mass.), the chairmen of the House and Senate committees responsible for drafting an updated No Child Left Behind Act, are strong supporters, although they want large increases in funding and more emphasis on teacher training and development.
Still, Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), author of the new House bill, said the number of Republicans already backing the new measure exceeds the 41 House Republicans and Democrats who voted against the original legislation in 2001. Of the House bill's co-sponsors, at least eight voted for the president's plan six years ago.
"President Bush and I just see education fundamentally differently," said Hoekstra, a longtime opponent of the law. "The president believes in empowering bureaucrats in Washington, and I believe in local and parental control."
As Congress considers reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind Act, the GOP rebellion could grow, conceded Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon (Calif.), the ranking Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee and a key ally of the president on the issue. "It was a struggle getting it passed last time. It'll be even more of a struggle this time," he said.
Under Hoekstra's bill, any state could essentially opt out of No Child Left Behind after one of two actions. A state could hold a referendum, or two of three elected entities -- the governor, the legislature and the state's highest elected education official -- could decide that the state would no longer abide by the strict rules on testing and the curriculum.
The Senate bill is slightly less permissive, but it would allow a state to negotiate a "charter" with the federal government to get away from the law's mandates.
In both cases, the states that opt out would still be eligible for federal funding, but those states could exempt any education program but special education from No Child Left Behind strictures.
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) said that advocates do not intend to repeal the No Child Left Behind Act. Instead, they want to give states more flexibility to meet the president's goals of education achievement, he said. As a House member in 2001, DeMint opposed No Child Left Behind when it first came to a vote, but he voted for it on final passage.
"So many people are frustrated with the shackles of No Child Left Behind," DeMint said. "I don't think anyone argues with measuring what we're doing, but the fact is, even the education community . . . sees us just testing, testing, testing, and reshaping the curriculum so we look good."
Parent unrest in places such as Scarsdale, N.Y., and parts of suburban Michigan could affect members of Congress. Connecticut has sued the government over the law, while legislatures in Virginia, Colorado and heavily Republican Utah have moved to supersede it.
Republican lawmakers involved in crafting the new legislation say Education Secretary Margaret Spellings and other administration officials have moved in recent days to tamp down dissent within the GOP. Since January, Spellings has met or spoken with about 40 Republican lawmakers on the issue, said Katherine McLane, the Education Department's press secretary.
"We've made a lot of progress in the past five years in serving the children who have traditionally been underserved in our education system," McLane said. "Now is not the time to roll back the clock on those children."
But so far, the administration's efforts have borne little fruit, Republican critics said.
"Republicans voted for No Child Left Behind holding their noses," said Michael J. Petrilli, an Education Department official during Bush's first term who is now a critic of the law. "But now with the president so politically weak, conservatives can vote their conscience."
(9.) Petition to send to Federal Legislators NOW while they are debating!
You may wish to copy and paste the petition below and add your signature before sending to your Federal Representatives who are currently debating this legislation. Here is a very simple way to locate their email addresses:
This petition represents a pretty good digest of what's wrong with NCLB.
The petition was created by The Educators Roundtable (partners include
Stephen Krashen, Jim Trelease,Susan Ohanian...) and written by Dr. Philip
Kovacs, Chair of the Dept. of Ed at the U. of Alabama Huntsville (who
writes: "...the real issue isn't test scores, despite what politicians
and test companies would like Americans to think. Education in a
democracy such as ours must focus on preparing children to become critical,
engaged, and reflective participants in their classrooms, their
communities, and their country... "
To: U.S. Congress
We, the educators, parents, and concerned citizens whose names appear
below, reject the misnamed No Child Left Behind Act and call for
legislators to vote against its reauthorization. We do so not because we
resist accountability, but because the law's simplistic approach to
education reform wastes student potential, undermines public education, and
threatens the future of our democracy.
Below, briefly stated, are some of the reasons we consider the law too
destructive to salvage. In its place we call for formal, state-level
dialogues led by working educators rather than by politicians,
ideology-bound "think tank" members, or leaders of business and industry who have
little or no direct experience in the field of education.
THE NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND ACT:
1. Misdiagnoses the causes of poor educational development, blaming
teachers and students for problems over which they have no control.
2. Assumes that competition is the primary motivator of human behavior
and that market forces can cure all educational ills.
3. Mandates data driven instruction based on gamesmanship to undermine
public confidence in our schools.
4. Uses pseudo science and media manipulation to justify pro-corporate
policies and programs, including diverting taxes away from communities
and into corporate coffers.
5. Ignores the proven inadequacies, inefficiencies, and problems
associated with centralized, "top-down" control.
6. Places control of what is taught in corporate hands many times
removed from students, teachers, parents, local school boards, and
communities.
7. Requires the use of materials and procedures more likely to produce
a passive, compliant workforce than creative, resilient, inquiring,
critical, compassionate, engaged members of our democracy.
8. Reflects and perpetuates massive distrust of the skill and
professionalism of educators.
9. Allows life-changing, institution-shaping decisi ons to hinge on
single measures of performance.
10. Emphasizes minimum content standards rather than maximum
development of human potential.
11. Neglects the teaching of higher order thinking skills which cannot
be evaluated by machines.
12. Applies standards to discrete subjects rather than to larger goals
such as insightful children, vibrant communities, and a healthy
democracy.
13. Forces schools to adhere to a testing regime, with no provision for
innovating, adapting to social change, encouraging creativity, or
respecting student and community individuality, nuance, and difference.
14. Drives art, music, foreign language, career and technical
education, physical education, geography, history, civics and other non-tested
subjects out of the curriculum, especially in low-income neighborhoods.
15. Produces multiple, unintended consequences for students, teachers,
and communities, including undermining neighborhood schools and blurri
ng the line between church and state.
16. Rates and ranks public schools using procedures that will gradually
label them all "failures," so when they fail to make Adequate Yearly
Progress, as all schools eventually will, they can be “saved” by
vouchers, charters, or privatization.
While any one of these issues is serious enough to warrant discarding
No Child Left Behind, the law suffers from all of them. The number of
signatures on this petition should be a clear indicator to state and
national policy makers that it is time to move beyond this harmful, highly
restrictive law.
Sincerely,
The Undersigned
Section B. Re: California State Legislation and Advocacy
(2.) AP Article Yesterday, 3/15/2007, regarding Trillions of Dollars in costs to bring California Education up to expectations
11:29 a.m. March 14, 2007
SACRAMENTO – Overhauling California's schools will require tougher teacher standards and lots of money – as much as a mind-boggling $1.5 trillion per year, according to studies being released Wednesday.The reports are intended to kick start a discussion of major reforms to the nation's largest public education system, but make no concrete recommendations.
A summary of the findings and some of the studies' supporting material was obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press. The 1,700-page report, meant to inform the Governor's Committee on Education Excellence, is scheduled to be released during separate events on Wednesday and Thursday.In a statement prepared in advance of Wednesday's release at news conference, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said California schools need more transparency, more spending flexibility and more information for parents.
“For the governor, the key findings are the reforms students need to ensure success. Gov. Schwarzenegger, since coming into office, has been saying these kinds of reforms are critical,” his spokesman Adam Mendelsohn said Wednesday.
The cost figures come from panels of educators who estimated how much it would take to bring all California schools up to a score of 800 on the state's Academic Performance Index, the state's system of gauging the proficiency of a school's students in reading and math.Two estimates, both based on interviews with educators, put the cost of meeting the state's achievement goals at an additional $23 billion to $32 billion a year.It is not clear, however, whether that money would bring all students up to the federal goal of having all students proficient in reading and math by 2014. The qualifications of the educators also were not specified.One estimate in the documents obtained by the AP says California might need to spend as much as $1.5 trillion a year to meet its goals – an amount equal to about half the annual federal budget.California already spends nearly half its annual budget on education, a total of $66 billion in the current fiscal year, or about $11,000 per student in kindergarten through 12th grade.Many education advocates said including outrageous figures such as the $1.5 trillion figure could trivialize reform efforts. They say the number could scare away policymakers who otherwise might be open to making substantive reforms, leaving the studies to collect dust along with those from Schwarzenegger's advisory panels on prisons and government efficiency.
Among the changes suggested by the reports are more detailed evaluations for teachers coupled with tougher entry-level requirements and a sliding pay scale. Such suggestions, particularly those dealing with measuring teachers' effectiveness, are likely to meet resistance from powerful interests such as the California Teachers Association.
The summary notes that two common methods for gauging teachers' skills – years of experience and level of education – are poor measures for assessing how effective they are in the classroom.
The state also appears unlikely to meet the central mandate of the federal No Child Left Behind Act – to have every child reach grade level proficiency in math and reading by 2014.
Critics say the standard is impossible, especially given the 3.1 million students who are considered poor – half the students in the state – and the 1.6 million English learners.
One of the studies concludes that the state does not need to invest substantially more money to educate English learners, but rather should direct any additional funding toward poor students. The conclusion is based on cost estimates developed after researchers studied six successful English-learner schools.
Nearly a third of the 6,000 schools that receive federal funding for poor students failed to make annual yearly progress under the No Child Left Behind Act. Only a third have met the statewide achievement goals, some of the highest in the nation.
Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear said the governor, who named the bipartisan panel in 2005, will wait to hear the committee's suggestions later this year before deciding what action to take.
(4.) Possible Class Action Lawsuit Against the State of CA
(5.)
In Fairfax's 'No Child' Fight, A Refusal to Leave Children Behind
Thursday, March 22, 2007; Page B01
Jack Dale is no anti-testing zealot, shielding the little ones from the reality of a competitive world. He's not out there with the activists who believe the No Child Left Behind revolution in American schools has turned education into a grim, mechanistic culture.
But the superintendent of Fairfax County schools, who presides over one of the highest-achieving systems in the land, has taken a stand at the schoolhouse door: "The last thing I'm going to do is subject some third-grader to tears because someone's standing over them saying, 'You must complete this standardized test, you must complete.' That's not happening. Let them fire me for it."
In the next couple of weeks, either Dale or the U.S. government will blink. Until then, threats and counterthreats are flying across the Potomac. Dale, backed up by his school board and several other Northern Virginia superintendents, insists he will not require newly arrived immigrant children to take the same reading test that other kids take. And the feds reply: Oh, yes, you will -- and if you don't, you'll lose $17 million in federal dollars.
This is not about accountability; Dale's all for that. In fact, the children at issue are already tested twice a year on their English skills. When they reach a decent level of proficiency in their new language, they take the same test everyone else takes. But Dale refuses to make a kid who has just arrived in the country sit at a desk and be humiliated by a test that can only make him feel like a moron.
The federal approach to No Child Left Behind is what you might expect from an administration whose response to a failing strategy in Iraq is to throw good bodies after maimed ones. "We need to stay the course," Raymond Simon, the U.S. deputy secretary of education, told The Washington Post's Amit Paley. "The mission is doable, and we don't need to back off that right now."
No Child Left Behind is built on a mirage. At some point that's always just over the horizon, the law assumes, all children in the nation will miraculously read and compute at grade level, simply because they have been tested and tested and tested again. The theory is that somehow, when told the exact number of children who are lagging in achievement, teachers will agree to render the magic that they have thus far withheld and -- poof! -- those kids will become smart, cooperative and productive.
As we get closer to that utopia, it's becoming ever more clear that Some Children Remain Behind and that, gadzooks, Not Every Child Is the Same. Oh, and this: Staking everything on a test doesn't produce a flowering of inspired teaching, but rather what Dale, a former math teacher, calls an "obsessive focus on tests."
"You focus obsessively on multiplying two-digit numbers," he says, "as opposed to how to apply that knowledge in the real world and how to play with mathematics in a creative way."
The flaws in the nation's new education regimen continue to elude the Bush administration. Dale has met twice with senior officials in Washington to push for enough flexibility so schools are not condemned as failures -- even if 500 kids took and passed the tests, "two Hispanic children or two special education children didn't pass, and the rules say that makes the school a failure." Both times, senior Education Department leaders told Dale there would be no exceptions to the rules. (Virginia's two U.S. senators jumped in on Dale's side yesterday, filing a bill that would force the feds to give Fairfax schools and others a year's reprieve.)
In most of the country, the children in classes for non-English speakers were born in the United States, and Dale agrees that by third grade, they should be tested in English, as the law requires. But in Fairfax, 63 percent of children in such classes were born in other countries. Those children, Dale says, deserve a little time to soak in the language before they are subjected to high-stakes tests in English.
What this is really all about, the superintendent thinks, is an unresolved debate over whether there should be national education standards. Remember, the same people who now mandate Testing Uber Alles were pushing two decades ago to abolish any federal role in education. Under the No Child law, designed by a purportedly conservative administration, the amount of time that a superintendent such as Dale must spend satisfying the federal bureaucracy has skyrocketed from hardly any to hours and hours each week.
No Child Left Behind is built on a lie. Not every kid will go to college, no matter what you do. So you can either lower the standards enough to pretend that everyone is succeeding, or give up on the lie.
But the feds won't talk about that; they just repeat "Stay the course," and any school system that balks is threatened with punishment.
"I've been warned that to speak frankly in this area is not wise personally or professionally," Dale says. But he's speaking anyway, because, as a good teacher, he knows that "we don't succeed well when we go punitive. You need standards, but they should be aspirational; it needs to be about incentives, not punishment."
In Fairfax's 'No Child' Fight, A Refusal to Leave Children Behind
Jack Dale is no anti-testing zealot, shielding the little ones from the reality of a competitive world. He's not out there with the activists who believe the No Child Left Behind revolution in American schools has turned education into a grim, mechanistic culture.
(6.) http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-nclb28mar28,0,4232200.story?coll=la-opinion-leftrail
Son of No Child Left Behind
The education law -- up for reauthorization this year -- sets standards without looking at what's realistically achievable.
March 28, 2007
CREDIT THE No Child Left Behind Act for this: It helped to reveal how little learning was going on in many classrooms, especially those with poor and minority students. As a result, educators are working to change that. This is no small accomplishment.
Still, the law has not yet achieved its key goals: improvement in student scores and a narrowing of the achievement gap between white, middle-class children and their poor, minority counterparts. Flaws in the law have held back real educational progress and unfairly placed blame on public-school teachers for everything but the weather. The law has labeled many good schools as failures, which has led to a bipartisan uprising against legislation that once had true bipartisan support. While its basic tenets should remain intact, and even be strengthened, the law needs an overhaul to deserve reauthorization this year.
It's stated goal is to bring every child to academic "proficiency" by 2014, and it sets yearly guidelines for getting there. At the same time, it allows the states, not the federal government, to define "proficiency." Some states (though not California) have set the standard laughably low, making a mockery of the law.
In states where proficiency actually means something, on the other hand, it doesn't necessarily help the students who most need help. Teachers often work most with the children who are just below proficient, getting them above the bar so they'll count as successes. Children at the bottom, who need the help even more, receive too little attention. Gifted students, meanwhile, are left out of the equation, prompting many schools to cut their programs for gifted children.
The law should be rewritten to require yearly improvement for each student — a realistic goal that teachers can meet whatever their students' scores were at the beginning of the year. This would encourage more good teachers to work at the schools that need them most, and would relieve schools from being blamed for the low scores of a new student whose poor performance is no fault of theirs. To close the achievement gap between minority children and white, and between poor and middle class, more growth should be expected from the lowest-scoring groups.
Other areas in which the law needs revision: It places too much emphasis on teachers who are "highly qualified," meaning they've got a lot of credentials. Instead, schools need teachers who are effective — meaning their students do well. The law must help pay for and design better tests that are true measures of what students are supposed to learn and, as President Bush has suggested, define what "proficiency" should look like.
The success of a nation depends largely on the quality of its educational system, and the international standing of the U.S. system is embarrassingly low. The key to improving it is realistic standards, rigorously enforced. No Child Left Behind has the standards and the enforcement, but it could use more realism and rigor.
(7.) AASL Blog: Elementary Librarians Preparing for the Future? http://blogs.ala.org/aasl.php?blog=7&title=elementary_librarians_preparing_for_the_&page=1&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1&disp=single
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