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Second Language Learning, Brain Development and Content Mastery

February 29, 2012 – 10:31 am | By Nancy Connor | No comments yet

Chicago Tribune Holiday Giving Campaign - Pui Tak Center ESL Class

My granddaughter attends the Denver Language School, a charter school in the Denver Public Schools (DPS), where she is enrolled in the Mandarin immersion program. When I asked my son about this choice, he said that if China could someday be the world’s biggest economy, maybe it would be advantageous for his daughter if she grows up fluent in Mandarin.  He also cited some of the research on brain development in people who are fluent in more than one language, research that is summarized on the DPS website: “Brain development is enhanced because students in an immersion program utilize greater mental capacities when learning subject content in a new language, when that new language is not the commonly spoken language of the local environment….Children who learn in and through a new language, and eventually more than one language, learn more content than those who learn in one language only.” It got me thinking about schools and the work we are all doing to teach our immigrant students English and to close the achievement gaps between native English speakers and English Language Learners (ELL’s). There are many models of support for ELLs and a lot of controversy around their effectiveness. I am not an expert in this field, so I am in no position to discuss the merits of one approach over another, but in a perusal of articles on these topics, this is what I found: In the Winter 2004 edition of the National Association for Bilingual Education's Journal of Research and Practice, authors Virginia P. Collier and Wayne P. Thomas of George Mason University have a paper entitled The Astounding Effectiveness of Dual Language Education for All.  In the paper they say, “We use the word astounding in the title because we have been truly amazed at the elevated student outcomes resulting from participation in dual language programs. … After almost two decades of program evaluation research that we have conducted in 23 large and small school districts from 15 different states, representing all regions of the U.S. in urban, suburban, and rural contexts, we continue to be astonished at the power of this school reform model.” And then a few weeks ago, I read an article published online in Education Week by James Boutin called "How English Language Learners Have an Edge." He is a teacher of ELLs and in his experience, “When a student is good at memorizing dictionary definitions, it can be difficult to assess and enhance their understanding of an abstract concept like capitalism. ELLs, on the other hand, have the option of discussing the concept in another language, which can often give them insight unavailable to the English speaker. Furthermore, the act of translating often enhances the ELL’s comprehension, especially when the English words or phrases don’t exist or don’t make sense in their native language.  They’re forced to think more deeply about the concept.” Maybe my son is on to something.  I think most agree that here in the United States, English proficiency is necessary for jobs and economic success.  However, if learning a second language is so beneficial to brain development, maybe we ought to not only get our second language learners into English, but get our native speakers into another language to develop fluency at an early age.  Other countries have dual language fluency requirements for graduation. We don’t. That needs to change if we’re going to give a students the jump in brain development these experts have identified. Photo Credit: Pui Tak Center Nancy Connor is the director of federal programs for the Denver Public Schools.

Posted in English Learners |

Grant Reform: The Engineer’s Lament

February 27, 2012 – 7:00 am | By Chuck Edwards | No comments yet

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In the dramatic grants reform proposal released on Friday by the Office of Management and Budget and described here by guest blogger Jerry Ashworth, I thought one sentence aptly summarized OMB’s three core objectives  (my caps): In order to ensure that the public receives the most value for the tax dollars spent, it is essential that these programs function as EFFECTIVELY and EFFICIENTLY as possible, and there be a HIGH LEVEL OF ACCOUNTABILITY to prevent waste, fraud and abuse. It occurs to me that engineers have a similar trinity, with a cynical twist: “Better, faster, cheaper — pick any two of three.” Of course, we know that all three are indeed achievable, with enough effort and ingenuity. But, as engineers recognize, it is easy for CEOs to demand that they hit all three marks but tough to attain in practice. Likewise in the world of grants. “Efficient” and “effective” are much easier to achieve if you don’t have to worry about reducing losses from waste, fraud and abuse. Maintaining “accountability” introduces frictional costs in the form of paperwork and oversight  that inhibit achievement of the first two objectives. And public tolerance for losses in grant programs is much lower than in business. Retailers routinely expect  "shrinkage" of 1 percent or more. Can you imagine the reaction on Capitol Hill if the President in his annual budget acknowledged that 1 percent — $145 million — of the $14.5 billion Title I budget would be wasted? As most people with a knowledge of human nature would admit, any enterprise involving $1 billion or more will probably involve at least some “shrinkage.”  Even though public programs are subject to a much higher level of scrutiny than the world of business, there will always be losses. And preventing losses through an increase in accountability can mean reducing efficiency and effectiveness. It will be interesting to see if OMB’s proposals to streamline federal grants administration manage to achieve all three goals, or if the outcome will be another version of the cynical engineer’s lament.

Posted in Accountability, Auditing and Monitoring, Compliance/Reporting, Cost Principles, Title I | Tagged ,

OMB Releases Far-Reaching Draft Grant Guidance

February 24, 2012 – 5:07 pm | By Guest Contributor | No comments yet

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(The following guest blog was adapted from a post written by  Jerry Ashworth at our sister blog, Funding Attractions.) The Office of Management and Budget has released draft guidance that has the potential to significantly alter the landscape for grants management and single audits in the education world. The proposed revisions are now posted on the OMB website here, and are expected to be issued in the Federal Register early next week. One of the key proposals would establish a new three-tiered single audit threshold to replace the current $500,000 single audit threshold under OMB Circular A-133. Entities that spend less than $1 million in federal awards would not be required to conduct a single audit. Those that spend between $1 million and $3 million would be required to undergo a more focused version of the single audit in which auditors would review only two compliance requirements for those programs, one of the being allowable and unallowable costs. Entities that spend more than $3 million in federal awards would undergo a full single audit. The proposed guidance also would consolidate the cost principles (including Circular A-87, which governs allowable costs in K-12 schools) into a single document, with limited variations by type of grant recipient. For indirect (“facilities and administrative”) costs, the proposed revision would also require the use of flat rates instead of negotiated rates. The guidance is rooted in President Obama’s 2009 executive order to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the programs while strengthening accountability. Comments on the proposed changes are due no later than 30 days after they are published in the Federal Register.—Jerry Ashworth Photo Credit: Samuel Allen

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , ,

Professional is as Professional Does

February 23, 2012 – 4:12 pm | By Steve Peha | No comments yet

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We’ve had some excellent talk about professionalism here recently. In “HQT: What the Doctor Ordered?”, Nancy Connor, director of federal programs for the Denver Public Schools, wrote about the value of certification and of NCLB’s High-Quality Teacher provision. In regard to the notion that teachers should be paid like doctors, Connor linked us to a piece by Sara Mead. Mead pointed out that in Finland teachers are, in fact, paid more like doctors — but that this is due in part because Finnish doctors are paid more poorly than their American colleagues. While Connor and Mead make good points, I think there are three other aspects worth considering: 1. Performance on Demand. While everyone makes mistakes, or has an off day, we expect professionals to perform well every time we ask them to. My wife and I expect our accountant to prepare our taxes properly and punctually. We expect our lawyer to provide wise and consistent counsel. We also expect our electrician to wire our house safely and swiftly. This is performance on demand and it’s what makes us think that our accountant, lawyer, and electrician are professionals regardless of education, experience, or what they charge. 2. Pay for Play. Within the same profession, pay is differentiated based on what people do and how well they do it. In general, people who can do things other people in their profession don’t know how to do make more money; people who do things better than other people in their profession make more money; and people who handle more difficult tasks than other people in their profession make more money. Scarcity, quality, and difficulty provide a rough formula for differentiated compensation: the better you play, the better your pay. Most professionals accept, and even invite, highly differentiated pay based on these ideas. 3. Control of Standards and Practices. Differences in pay among doctors, lawyers, and teachers were once much smaller than they are now, even when accounting for inflation. But two of these groups took control of their professions while one did not. Doctors and lawyers created the American Medical Association and the American Bar Association. These organizations gave their members the power to control who could their join their clubs and reap the benefits of membership. Academics did not seek control of their profession in this manner. They did not seek to certify themselves, or to determine who could become like them, who could remain one of them, our how many of them there could be at a given time. In general, professionals exert control over what they do and how they define themselves. Regardless of past inequities, if educators want education to become a more respected and well-compensated profession, they will have to do the same things other professions have done: (1) Demonstrate performance on demand; (2) Demand "pay for play” differentiated by scarcity, quality, and difficulty; and (3) Take control of their own standards and practices. Only by doing as professionals do will educators come to be regarded as such, and be rewarded with the respect and compensation professionals enjoy. Photo Credit: Bruno Paiva

Posted in Reauthorization, Teacher Quality | Tagged

A Solution in Search of a Problem

February 21, 2012 – 3:57 pm | By Chuck Edwards | No comments yet

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For over a decade now, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) has been pushing state and local education agencies to adopt a federal accounting device that they apparently don’t want. Why? Because Congress is somehow convinced that school districts want it — sufficiently convinced, in fact, that they have mandated that states change their accounting systems to accommodate it.  The only reason you haven’t heard an uproar is because no one at the federal level has been so foolish as to actually attempt to enforce the mandate. Instead, ED has confined its efforts to persuasion. This accounting device — consolidation of state, local and ED funds in Title I schoolwide programs — has generated endless confusion as different divisions of the U.S. Department of Education (ED) argue over what “consolidation” means and how it can be carried out. After a decade, the arguments are getting sorted out, and some school districts are tentatively preparing to actually implement it, but many of the state and local administrators who will be responsible for the results are dubious of its value and leery of potential problems. It is important to understand that fund consolidation in a schoolwide program is different from program consolidation. Everyone likes the latter. Program consolidation means that Title I and other ED funds can be used to upgrade the entire program of a school. In general, all kids can be served with all federal education funds, without worrying about whether a given child is, for example, “Title I-eligible” or “Title III-eligible.” Fund consolidation takes this a step farther. As originally conceived, most of the funds coming into a Title I schoolwide program — from state, local and ED sources — would be blended into a single “schoolwide” account. There would be no need to track a given teacher’s salary to this or that revenue source. In the district’s books, the accounting code for most activities in the school would simply read “schoolwide.” The concept sounds attractive. In fact, many school districts take advantage of this flexibility to combine their federal ED funds. But it is an entirely different matter when it comes to combining state and local funds with federal funds. Some states simply don’t permit it. And in those states that do, the state has to direct the district how to carve out a separate accounting system for those schoolwide schools. All the other funds coming into the district have to be separately tracked and assigned to revenue codes. (And even in schoolwide schools, federal grants from agencies other than ED have to be separately tracked.) In many cases, the district tracking system is mandated by state law, and most administrators are perfectly comfortable with it. After all, roughly 40 percent of local school funding comes from the state, while only 10 percent comes from the feds. So, what’s in it for you? An opportunity to attach a broader “schoolwide” accounting code to certain expenditures — in essence, an accounting convenience?  Big whoop. Compounding this is a decade of debate within ED about what “consolidation” actually looks like. At one point, the Office of Inspector General censured the Columbus, Ohio, school district because it used a “theoretical” model that treated different budget codes as consolidated without actually dumping them into a single accounting code. ED ultimately gave the district a pass because, by the department’s own admission, its guidance was confusing.  And, finally, in 2008, it issued new uidance clarifying that a Columbus-style “conceptual” alternative — that is, treating different budget codes as if they are consolidated without actually changing their labels — is a permissible alternative to creating an actual, blended account. Notwithstanding this, however, I have seen little interest at either the state or local level in adopting fund consolidation. But someone on the Hill evidently envisioned a strong demand. So much so that in the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, Congress added the following provision: [T]he State educational agency will modify or eliminate State fiscal and accounting barriers so that schools can easily consolidate funds from other Federal, State, and local resources for schoolwide programs…(emphasis added) [ESEA Sec. 1111(c)(10)] When I read this for the first time, I nearly dropped my coffee cup. Talk about federal overreaching! Can you imagine sending a letter to 50 state legislatures demanding that the state change its accounting procedures? Fortunately for federal-state comity, this provision has been enforced on little cat feet. The one relevant OIG investigation that I can identify found that the state in question — Missouri — had no accounting barriers, but failed to implement a related provision [ESEA Sec. 1111(c)(9)] requiring states to encourage school districts to adopt fund consolidation. I am not an expert on state and local education finance, so maybe someone out there can enlighten me on the virtues of fund consolidation in schoolwides — I can only report what I hear:Even administrators in the very few school districts that have implemented consolidation speak less as advocates and more as experimenters. I sincerely invite comment on this issue. P.S. For some insiders’ views of the pros and cons of fund consolidation, see these comments on ED’s website.

Posted in Auditing and Monitoring, Title I | Tagged , , ,

HQTs Offer Portal to ‘A Wrinkle in Time’

February 16, 2012 – 3:10 pm | By Nancy Connor | 2 comments

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On February 15, 2012, the Obama administration proposed a $5 billion competitive grant program that Education Secretary Duncan said would “change society’s view of teaching from the factory model of yesterday to the professional model of tomorrow where teachers are revered as thinkers, leaders, and nation builders. No other profession carries a greater burden for securing our economic future.” Others have noted that our ability to meet the workforce requirements of our economic future rests on what students are learning today in science, technology, engineering and math, aka STEM.  Both of these align with something I thought about a couple of weekends ago when I was reading an essay by Pamela Paul in the New York Times Sunday Book Review on the 50th anniversary of Madeline L’Engle's classic science fiction book "A Wrinkle in Time." It was one of my favorite books when I was growing up. The idea of crossing the barriers of space and time was wonderful to me. It has always been difficult for me to understand why science, and the math that underlies it, are not a source of endless fascination for everyone. I wonder why so many are proudly math- and science-phobic and how that attitude might be reversed.   Perhaps the answer might be the sort of teachers envisioned by the new grant program…highly skilled professionals with both the knowledge and the leadership to teach STEM subjects and get kids excited about them. And it seems to me that, if the dream is to become a reality. a teacher’s knowledge of the subjects taught is critical to this process…which brings me around to the topic of "highly qualified teachers" (HQTs). In an editorial that appeared recently in the Dallas Morning News, syndicated columnist William McKenzie posed the question “What is effective teaching?” In his answer, he quoted David Chard, dean of Southern Methodist University’s Simmons School of Education and Human Development: “High-quality teachers must have two things: knowledge of content and effective instruction.”As noted in my previous blog, having a degree and a teachers license and demonstrating subject matter competence are the minimum requirements outlined in NCLB for being HQT in core academic subjects. It is a requirement, however, that is on the verge of elimination in the various reauthorization bills that are being floated in Congress, to be replaced with requirements for effective teacher evaluation systems. Given the priority that STEM initiatives have for our future, I really don’t understand why these minimal HQT requirements are being eliminated. In my opinion, they should be strengthened.  I have a hard time believing that students are prepared for rigorous high school science or math if the foundation has not been laid by well-grounded teachers in elementary and middle school. What do elementary school teachers tell first graders who ask why the sky is blue when they have very limited science backgrounds? How many teachers really understand why dividing by a fraction generates a bigger number? If middle school teachers are not required to have subject matter competence, will students be ready for Advanced Placement physics courses once they reach high school?  How will students meet the requirements of the Common Core Standards? What happens if even high school teachers don’t need to know the STEM subjects they teach? Serious thought needs to be given to developing teachers who love and appreciate these subjects and pass that enthusiasm on to their students. Teachers need to know how to make the subjects accessible to their students so that we have more students studying engineering and related fields in college. We need teachers who have strong knowledge of their content and know how to deliver effective instruction.  Watering down or eliminating the minimum requirements of HQT is not going to accomplish that end. If it is ever to move out of the realm of science fiction, the solution to space and time travel will only come from a well-prepared and properly educated workforce. Eliminating HQT could be a detriment to the new grant program’s ability to accomplish its goal. Photo Credit: Robert Couse-Baker

Posted in Congress, Teacher Quality | Tagged , , ,

Regulating the Good Old-Fashioned Way

February 15, 2012 – 8:00 am | By Chuck Edwards | No comments yet

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In fulfillment of a government-wide requirement, the U.S. Department of Education has just issued its semi-annual regulatory agenda: one completed action, nothing whatever either pending or planned. Zip. Nada. Zilch. By my reckoning — and I have been at this for over 25 years — this is its shortest-ever regulatory agenda. But it does not mean that ED has stopped “regulating” – it is just doing so with nonregulatory guidance. The old notice and comment process under the Administrative Procedure Act simply does not accommodate the fast pace of today’s programs. If Race to the Top had been implemented through the classic Notice of Proposed Rulemaking process, we might still be waiting for the money to appear. But if a lot is gained by this streamlining, something is lost: public input and a useful level of legal certainty and authority. Nonregulatory guidance has come to inhabit a kind of legal netherworld, where it is has no formal legal authority but is, for all practical purposes, treated as binding by both grantor and grantee. Prospective grantees coping with the hundreds of pages of ED’s ever-changing guidance might be excused if they wistfully recall the good old days of regulations.

Posted in Accountability, Compliance/Reporting | Tagged ,

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