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Star Ledger – N.J. to allow charter school lottery favoring low-income students
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By Adam Clark | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
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on December 16, 2015 at 8:15 AM
TRENTON — New Jersey will allow a Hudson County charter school to hold an enrollment lottery that favors students from low-income families — the first time the state has granted permission for a charter school to weight its lottery, according to the New Jersey Charter Schools Association.
After multiple unsuccessful attempts, the Hoboken Dual Language Charter School this month received approval for the weighted lottery, said Barbara Martinez, president of the school's board of trustees. It will announce the full details of its plan at a news conference Wednesday, she said.
The weighted lottery could combat a major criticism of both the Hoboken Dual Language Charter School and charter schools in general. Critics locally and across the country have accused charter schools of manipulating enrollment to take only the best students.
Hoboken Public Schools, which filed a lawsuit last year to stop the charter school from expanding, complained that the school consistently has a lower percentage of minority students than the district.
HoLa charter school will be able to expand, despite the district's opposition, because no "segregative" effect was found, state says.
The state's decision to allow the weighed lottery opens the door for other charter schools to ask for lotteries that favor students who are considered underserved.
In the approval letter, state Education Commissioner David Hespe wrote that charter schools can seek weighted lotteries that favor economically disadvantaged students in an effort to better represent a cross section of their school age population.
The New Jersey Charter Schools Association supports the Hoboken Dual Language Charter School's weighted lottery and hopes the school becomes a pioneer for the state, its president, Nicole Cole, said.
The Hoboken Dual Language Charter School has 22 open seats for kindergarten in 2015-16 and received more than 200 applications, Martinez said. Students at the school spend about 90 percent of their day in Spanish-speaking classrooms in the early grades and 50 percent in Spanish-speaking classrooms beginning in fourth grade.
In 2013-14, about 11 percent of the school's students were considered economically disadvantaged, according to state data. More than 90 percent of its students spoke English as their first language at home, and 62 percent were white.
Adam Clark may be reached at adam_clark@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on twitter at @realAdamClark. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
NJ Spotlight - HEAD START PRESCHOOLS: ENRICHING THE LIVES OF NEW JERSEY’S POOREST KIDS
MEIR RINDE | DECEMBER 16, 2015
But popular pre-K program faces challenges on several fronts, including critical report disputing long-term gains for youngest students
Credit: Martin Griff
Elaine Ruhl, executive director of the Center for Family Resources in Ringwood, NJ
Amid the tree-covered hills along New Jersey’s northern border, Elaine Ruhl and her staff run a preschool for poor children. In the classrooms and outdoor play areas, the kids keep busy all day with familiar preschool activities: building with blocks, learning letters and numbers, finger painting, getting dirty in the garden, and playing on slides.
But the facility in Ringwood, one of nine in Passaic County run by the Center for Family Resources, offers much more than a first educational experience. The center gets involved in the lives of its students -- and their families -- in many different ways.
“We work with the parents, we work with the community, we do health, we do dental, we do nutrition. Ours is an all-around family-and-child kind of program -- whereas a school is a school,” said Ruhl, the nonprofit’s executive director.
“We have social-service staff, we have health staff, we have a registered dietitian. We have a lot of agreements with other agencies, so if our families need mental-health services or help with rent or any of that, we have resources at our fingertips,” she said. “The philosophy is, the whole family has to be ready for school, not just the child.”
That, said Ruhl, is the difference between a federally funded Head Start program like hers and a regular preschool. For 16,000 children in New Jersey and more than a million across the country, Head Start centers offer learning and socialization to help them overcome the barriers associated with poverty, at the same time that the support staff work to foster family stability.
“We think of it sometimes as a two-generational program,” said Yasmina Vinci, executive director of the National Head Start Association and a former state education official under Gov. Jim Florio. “With children whose families’ lives are in turmoil, whether because of joblessness or addiction or family violence or because they're refugees or immigrants, you cannot just take the child and give them so many hours of good experiences. If a child's home life is not stabilized, then the child will not be as well off.”
Many of the Head Starts in New Jersey are also Abbott preschools. Through that program, which provides pre-K for all 3- and 4-year-olds in 35 disadvantaged school districts, the state shares the cost of eligible Head Start centers. The participating centers must also meet the Abbott standards, such as small class sizes and teachers with bachelor degrees and preschool certification.
Head Start has been hugely popular since it was started in 1965, maintaining support from both Republican and Democratic administrations. Its budget has steadily climbed to $8.6 billion, and President Barack Obama wants to add another $1.5 billion so every center can offer full-day care over a full school year in order to boost the benefits.
At the same time, the program faces substantial new challenges. A fiscally conservative Congress may be reluctant to approve the funding hike. A major federal study cast doubt on Head Start’s long-term educational impact. The expansion of good, state-funded preschools in New Jersey and several other states has created an alternate model for public pre-K that has been touted by Head Start skeptics and reform advocates.
Even the Obama administration may be open to taking preschool away from Head Start. Its proposed Preschool for All plan, though a long way from becoming reality, envisions Head Start as a program for infants and toddlers, and would help states run their own preschool systems for low- and middle-income children.
Play, sand, and songs
Like other Head Start providers, the Center for Family Resources (CFR) mostly enrolls children whose families are below the poverty line. Families receiving public assistance, children in foster care, and homeless kids are eligible regardless of income, and up to 10 percent of the children may be from families with incomes above the poverty guidelines. Under certain conditions, centers may also enroll additional children who are at up to 130 percent of the poverty line.
CFR has 347 preschoolers at its nine locations, including over 200 at three program sites in the Clifton public schools, Ruhl said. It also has 141 families in Early Head Start, the program for pregnant women, infants and toddlers, and oversees three small family childcare homes. The agency’s early education budget is $4.2 million, plus limited state subsidies for extended-day care.
None of CFR’s centers are in Abbott districts, but its programs in Clifton are part of a statewide preschool expansion that is bringing centers up to Abbott standards. In addition, all of CFR’s centers use a state-approved curriculum, its teachers have bachelors degrees, and most have or are working on getting preschool certification, Ruhl said.
As at most preschools around the country, much of the learning takes the form of play at differentiated activity centers. On a recent late morning at the Ringwood center, 13 preschoolers sat together in front of teacher Judy Herman and chose their center assignments. After each choice, the child put his or her name card in the corresponding pocket on a board.
“Avery, where are you going to play today?” Herman asked.
“I’m going to ‘play dough’ ,” said Avery, a big-eyed girl with a high side ponytail.
“Ok,” her teacher said, giving her a card. “Put it in the pocket.”
Avery and her classmates Laila and Aubrey went to a table where a box of red “playdough” and tools was set down along with colored trays. They got to work at their trays with little guidance, grabbing dough and borrowing each others’ tools. Leila flattened a chunk with a small rolling pin and started pressing out letter shapes with cookie-cutters. Avery reached into the box for more but came up short.
“Hey, there’s no more,” she said. She turned to Aubrey. “Can I have a piece?”
Aubrey obliged, handing over a blob of the red stuff with barely a glance up. Avery rolled it out and sectioned it with a cutter.
“I’m doing pizza,” she explained. A minute later all three were making tiny pizza wedges.
A teacher turned on a CD of a story being narrated to music, adding to the hubbub in the room. Four kids stood around a sensory table scooping up fine-grained sand with cups and pouring it through strainers. A girl sat at another table looking through a large jar of buttons and an assortment of shiny stones. Herman perched on a tiny overstuffed chair in a reading area next to two children on a miniature couch.
“Should we do a cute song for Miss Elaine?” she asked.
She pulled out a book, “Pete the Cat Saves Christmas,” and put on the accompanying music. In the song, Santa falls ill and Pete vows to take over his duties. “Although I am small, at Christmas we give, so I’ll give it my all,” the narrator read, and launched into the chorus.
“Give it your all!” the whole class sang together. “Give it your all!”
Bringing parents into school
Outdoors, behind the building, another group played in a new “outdoor classroom” that was built recently thanks to the Teaneck-based Taub Foundation and the nonprofit Nature Explore.
Bundled in their coats, the children danced on a low stage next to a wooden marimba and dug in the “messy play” area, with its mud kitchen and assortment of shovels, mixing bowls, and cooking utensils. As lunchtime approached, they lined up and trooped past the building-block area and nature-art area to go back inside, their cheeks smudged with dirt.
“Most of the teachers want the kids outside,” Ruhl said. “They see that it makes a difference in their eating habits, their sleeping habits, their behavioral habits, you know -- to get fresh air and not be stuck inside all the time.”
They also have a container garden where they plant and harvest vegetables and herbs, and a playground with slides and tubes to climb through.
As the children played and learned in their classrooms, administrative staffers were at work upstairs, including a few current and former Head Start parents. Parental engagement is a prominent part of the program’s mandate, through regular home visits by staff, membership on a parent committee and the center’s board, parenting classes, volunteering in the school, and employment.
The staff includes human resources assistant Linibeth Penaranda, a Colombia native and Pompton Lakes resident whose 4-year-old son Lucas Montoya is a CFR preschooler. Two years ago, she said, she lost her job as a store manager in New York as well as her home. She was looking for an alternative to the $1,000-a-month private childcare Lucas was attending and happened to drive by CFR.
After he was enrolled, the teachers noticed that he seemed to be having language problems and had him evaluated, Penaranda said.
“They helped me and my family to become involved with Lucas’s problems, helped to cope with him, to make sure that he develops the language. He was bilingual, so he was kind of getting confused, he was getting frustrated and things like that,” she said. “If I will have him in the regular daycare where I was paying, they probably would not be able to see that.”
Penaranda said her 14-year-old daughter probably had similar problems in preschool, but they had gone undetected at the private daycare she attended. Her daughter is doing well in school now but doesn’t particularly care for books. “Reading is not her forte,” she said.
Soon after Lucas started at Head Start, a teacher mentioned that Penaranda might qualify for the administrative position. The job does not pay well -- her family still qualifies for Head Start, after all -- but she is able to see her son frequently and counts herself lucky, she said.
“People will say, ‘Oh, a Head Start program, that's for poor people,’ and things like that. I think it goes beyond being poor or not, because they really, really dedicate their mission to the children,” she said. “I can see it. I see it with my own child.”
Doubts about Head Start’s impact
Head Start’s generally stellar reputation took a major hit three years ago, when the final phase of a congressionally mandated study of its effectiveness was released.
The study had initially found benefits for children, especially those who entered at age 3, compared to non-Head Start kids. At the end of preschool they were doing better on measures of vocabulary, spelling, literacy, math, certain child and parent behaviors, and health status, among others. But the benefits weakened by the end of kindergarten, and the follow-up study released in 2012 found they had disappeared by the time the children finished third grade.
The findings were seized upon by critics of the program. “The federal government’s 48-year experiment with Head Start has failed children and left taxpayers a tab of more than $180 billion,” the Heritage Foundationconcluded. “In the interest of children and taxpayers, it’s time for this nearly half-century experiment to come to an end.”
Education policy debates often center on the quality of studies, with dueling academics using technical arguments to undermine or defend data. A number of experts say the impact study was unusually strong because it compared Head Start kids to other children who applied to Head Start but were randomly denied admission. Preschool studies are often considered weaker because there may be more differences between the included and excluded children, rendering conclusions about the schools’ effects unreliable.
“The Head Start impact study is the best we have, and it's really good,” said Grover “Russ” Whitehurst, a Brookings Institution fellow and former federal education official who favors giving poor families preschool vouchers. “It means that compared to what else is available now, Head Start doesn't seem to be adding any value. It's not that it's doing worse than what else is available, but it's not doing any better.”
Head Start’s defenders argue that the study was flawed in part because of the “crossover” effect. A number of the control group kids -- those who didn’t get into Head Start -- simply found different Head Start programs and attended those instead. Vinci said that invalidates the comparison and contended the study has been “debunked”; Whitehurst, meanwhile, said crossover is a standard occurrence in studies and the researchers accounted for it in their analysis.
Another academic, Edward Zigler of Yale University, said the statistical procedures the researchers used to handle crossovers were unsatisfactory. Zigler, who supports a more expansive and better-funded program, also argued that the study attempts to measure Head Start against goals it has never aimed to achieve.
“Over the years scientists, policymakers, and the public have developed unreasonable expectations that Head Start should raise IQ scores, lift children and families out of poverty, and close the achievement gap between poor and more affluent children,” Zigler wrote. “Congress tried to quell this practice in 1998 by mandating the singular goal of improved school readiness. Measured against this outcome, Head Start is certainly a success.”
Education experts point to a body of research that suggests the program does have positive effects. “Studies with older data, using less airtight but widely accepted methods, found that Head Start graduates were better off even into their twenties,” two researchers wrote in a Brookings Institution paper said. But even they agree Head Start could be better.
Improvement, or replacement?
The research has fed a debate over Head Start’s future. Some conservative legislators criticize Head Start and Obama’s universal preschool plan as a “government-run, one-size-fits-all programs,” and propose transferring Head Start’s budgets to states, which could use the money for private preschool vouchers.
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin), who has since become Speaker of the House, said in a congressional report that Head Start was “failing to prepare children for school.”
Others, however, say Head Start doesn’t look as strong as it once did because there are now many high-quality preschool programs, such as the state preschools in New Jersey and Oklahoma. “Evaluations suggest that strong state preschool programs sustain gains in reading, math, or both in ways that Head Start doesn’t,” Robert Gordon and Sara Mead write in the Brookings paper. They note that some Head Start centers produce much better outcomes than others, and say that improving the laggards could provide “a big boost for our nation’s poorest youngsters.”
In an effort to spur improvements, in 2007 Congress required Head Starts to undergo quality reviews and made underperforming centers compete for funding. The Obama administration has “aggressively implemented” the system, according to Gordon and Mead. But Whitehurst said the program was unable to attract new and potentially better childcare providers, leading the administration to consider alternate strategies.
One has been to propose new Head Start program standards, which are currently under review. The biggest change would require centers to provide at least 6 hours of instruction a day for 180 days a year, rather the current minimum of 3.5 hours and 128 days. Full-day preschool has been shown to benefit children more than half-day. However, the change would cost $1 billion, requiring either new money from Congress or a reduction in the number of children in Head Start.
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The proposal would also address attendance and absenteeism problems, limit suspensions, allow centers flexibility in designing their programs, and trim the program’s massive rule book, which has more than 2,000 standards. Ruhl listed some of the areas she has to keep track of: governance, program management, planning, nutrition, health, social services, education, Early Head Start, and non-federal funding share, each with its own sets of requirements and procedures.
“It is hard to keep up with everything, and it changes, because Head Start changes their focus,” she said. “There are a lot of rules, but I think that’s what makes us so good.”
Another strategy may also be in the works. Whitehurst notes that Obama’s universal pre-K proposal conspicuously does not mention Head Start preschools. Though the details are not completely spelled out, it appears the states would get money to help fund pre-K programs at public schools and private providers, and Head Start would focus entirely on younger children.
“The president’s plan will maintain and build on current Head Start investments, to support a greater share of infants, toddlers, and three-year olds in America’s Head Start centers, while state preschool settings will serve a greater share of four-year olds,” the administration said.
Whitehurst said the Preschool for All plan came out of the failure of the previous effort to introduce competition.
“I talk with people in the administration. I know what they're thinking about these things. The administration is not a fan of Head Start,” he said. “The administration clearly prefers as a matter of policy that states be providing the pre-K programs, as they're doing in Abbott, rather than kids going to Head Start.”
Vinci dismissed Whitehurst’s comments -- as well as his support of vouchers -- saying she has a better sense of the administration’s goals.
“The White House education advisers have all said to me, we need Head Start to lead the way,” she said. “Head Start is the only system that has been around, and by system I mean it has the programs, it has standards, it has monitoring, it has professional development and parent engagement. If states try to build systems of universal pre-K, Head Start has a lot to teach them. That’s what I’m hearing from the White House.”
Star Ledger - N.J.'s graduation rate among best as national numbers climb
By Adam Clark | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com Email the author | Follow on Twitter Dec15, 2015 at 6:31 PM
TRENTON — High school students in the United States are graduating at the highest rate since 2011, and New Jersey ranks among the top states for graduating its students, according to new data.
The U.S. Department of Education on Tuesday announced that the country's high school graduation rate was 82 percent in 2013-14. That's the highest rate since the 2010-11 school year, when states adopted a uniform method of calculating graduation rates, according to the Department of Education.
New Jersey tied with Wisconsin for the third highest rate at 88.6 percent. Only Iowa (90.5 percent) and Nebraska (89.7 percent) ranked higher.
A look at some of the key components of the act and what they could mean for New Jersey schools.
State officials first announced New Jersey's 2013-14 graduation rate last December. At the time, they said comparisons between states are difficult to make because states have different graduation requirements.
The graduation rates are based on how many students graduate four years after they started high school, adjusting for students who transfer in and out of the state.
The nation's average graduation rate has improved for four consecutive years, according to the Department of Education.
Adam Clark may be reached at adam_clark@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on twitter at @realAdamClark. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
NY Times - U.S. Graduation Rates Reach New High - Graduation Rates Reach a High
By KATE ZERNIKE
The graduation rate for American public school students is at its highest ever, according to data released Tuesday by the United States Department of Education. In the 2013-14 school year, 82 percent of students who started ninth grade completed high school within four years. The increase held true across all demographic categories, including low-income students and students with disabilities or limited English proficiency. The largest gains were among black students, for whom the rate rose 5.6 percentage points since 2010-11, when states began using a uniform measurement, to 72.5 percent in 2013-14, and among students learning English, among whom the rate increased 5.6 percentage points in the same period, to 62.6 percent.
Star Ledger- Newark schools, feds strike deal to halt probe into civil rights complaints
By Dan Ivers | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
Email the author | Follow on Twitter on December 16, 2015 at 8:15 AM
NEWARK — The city's public school district has reached an agreement that will halt a federal investigation into whether the controversial "One Newark" reorganization plan unfairly harms minority students and their families.
The agreement signed Nov. 9 will require the state-controlled district to take a number of steps to address the alleged discrimination in the suit, including handing over an assessment of the academic performance of students whose schools were either closed, moved or transitioned into charter schools as part of the plan.
Officials will also need to submit data on transportation services provided to those students, the capacity and facilities of the schools where they were transferred, and whether students with disabilities or special needs were provided with appropriate services at their new schools.
Through the reporting, officials will need to identify any students harmed by the reorganization, and take steps to remedy the adverse effects. No monetary penalties were included in the deal.
District spokeswoman Dreena Whitfield said officials had no comment on the agreement.
In a letter to Superintendent of School Christopher Cerf dated Dec. 9, U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights Director Timothy Blanchard said a preliminary investigation into a number of schools closed at the end of 2011-12 academic year found that a "significantly disproportionate" number of black students were affected compared to their white peers.
Former superintendent Cami Anderson, who oversaw the closures, told federal investigators that the closures were not based on race or location, but were chosen because each had deteriorating facilities, low enrollment compared to building capacity and less than a third of students reading at grade level, according to the letter.
The "South Ward Community Schools Initative" is likely to be funded by the organization created to manage the $100 million Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg donated to the city in 2010
Since 2009, Newark has closed 13 schools — largely in the poor and heavily African-American South and West wards - several of which have since been turned over to charter management organizations.
Many of the displaced students have been transferred to eight so-called "Renew Schools", where the district concentrated efforts to turn around previously failing facilities by hiring high-performing teachers and extending learning hours. According to Blanchard, however, investigators found the efforts had made little impact in the year following their implementation in September 2012.
"OCR's preliminary review of data indicated that the NPS's closing of schools and transitioning of students did not appear to afford the affected students any measurable, improved educational outcomes," his letter reads.
Newark parents and national civil rights advocacy groups filed the trio of complaints that prompted the investigation between 2012 and 2014. Among their allegations was that black students made up 51 percent of the district, but comprised 86 percent of those affected by school closures.
Federal authorities revealed the probe in July 2014, as public ire over "One Newark" and other Anderson-backed reforms reached a fever pitch.
After repeated protests and calls for her resignation by city officials, Andersonleft her post in late June. She has since given way to Cerf, a former state education commissioner who appears to have forged a truce with Mayor Ras Baraka and other critics of state control over the district.
Tawanda Sheard, a parent who joined a complaint filed by advocacy group Newark PULSE, said Tuesday that school closures had had a "devastating impact on our children, families, and community", but was relieved to hear the district was addressing her concerns.
"I am excited about the agreement and hope it helps not just my daughter, but students across Newark," she said.
Dan Ivers may be reached at divers@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @DanIversNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
