News Articles
Summer School Focus: Reading
Tests This Month Will Determine Which K-3 Students Must Attend 14-Day Session
By Robert A. Frahm, Hartford Courant, May 11, 2007
The city's school system is making the summer classes mandatory for struggling readers. Under a new state law, school districts are required to offer summer classes to students who are substantially below grade level.
Just 15 percent of Hartford's third-graders met the state goal on the reading portion of last year's Connecticut Mastery Test, the lowest proportion of any school system in the state.
English Language Learners as Pawns in the School System’s Overhaul
By Samuel G. Freedman, New York Times, May 9, 2007
Just three years ago, Columbus was a traditional neighborhood high school with 548 ELLs among its 3,491 students. Fast-forward to the current school50 Years Later, Little Rock Can’t Escape Race
year. The Columbus building is now known formally as the Columbus campus. It includes a downsized version of the former high school and four minischools, part of the Department of Education’s adoption of the small-school model as the answer to what ails secondary education in New York City.
This much is certain: With the pressure of No Child Left Behind, which uses standardized test scores to determine compliance with the law, what school would seek out new immigrants, who may not score well? Columbus, after all, has failed to make “adequate yearly progress” in language arts.
“The situation at Columbus is, unfortunately, not unique,” said Ujju Aggarwal, an organizer for the Center for Immigrant Families, an advocacy group. “Rather, it points to a proactive strategy fueled by No Child Left Behind, to continue to marginalize low-income children of color. By dismantling schools that have historically been under-resourced into smaller schools under the pretense of ‘choice,’ immigrant children continue to be displaced by our public education system.”
By Adam Nossiter, New York Times, May 9, 2007
In the latest clash, white parents pack school board meetings to support the embattled superintendent, Roy Brooks, who is black. The blacks among the school board members look on grimly, determined to use their new majority to oust him. Whites insist that test scores and enrollment have improved under the brusque, hard-charging Mr. Brooks; blacks on the board are furious that he has cut the number of office and other non-teaching jobs and closed some schools.Opinions & Editorials
Dr. Greene, of the University of Arkansas, said he feared that the
dispute was really about patronage, not educational quality. “I think it would be hard to make strong criticisms of the superintendent on educational grounds,” he said.
Black parents remained largely silent at the board meeting. But several other black parents interviewed as they picked up their children at Dunbar Middle School were not following the board majority’s line.
Course for Families Enhances Math Test Scores
By Cara Bafile, Education World, May 2007
The process prompted Ladysmith Elementary School to create a preparatory course for standardized tests that focused on math skills. The weekly course was held on Tuesday night for six weeks. Charipar organized the classes and sent reminders home with students. The course had two main components: sharing test-taking strategies, which were taught by Charipar, and practicing with actual math questions, which was handled by classroom teachers.
"The key is that parents were taught, along with their children,
strategies for test taking," Charipar shared. "Not the least of those strategies
is the basic need for children to have a good night's sleep and breakfast in the morning."
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