Research Brief, Visiting Scholars Series

By Gary Orfield, Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles, University of California–Los Angeles

NEA Research periodically hosts the Visiting Scholars Series as a forum intended to help link policy initiatives with educational scholarship. Prominent scholars are asked to link their research to recommendations for closing achievement gaps. This article is a research brief from the Spring 2008 forum. 

We have become a nation that accepts separate and unequal schools as if nothing can be done about segregation. As a nation, we expect our schools to create equal outcomes for students who leave their homes severely disadvantaged by family and community poverty, who arrive at their schools to find sometimes unqualified or inexperienced teachers, and who leave those schools as soon as they can. This double and triple segregation has become far worse since the U.S. Supreme Court began dissolving desegregation plans 16 years ago—a dissolution that continues to deepen and intensify segregation. Across 21st-century America, segregation has reached levels for millions of students once found only in the Old South. It has produced schools that require massive resources to offer the kinds of opportunities and instruction routinely available to students in privileged schools and communities.

In our cities we now have many schools with Black and Latino students who are almost entirely poor and teachers who have little or no help in addressing the consequences of deep tensions that often exist in neighborhoods heavily affected by immigration, gangs, and other issues. We are currently in the midst of a vast migration of the Black and Latino middle class to suburban school districts, districts that have very little diversity in their staffs and little or no preparation to avoid the polarization, inequality, and resegregation so many urban neighborhoods and schools experienced in years past. We have to work on issues of race in a nation that will soon have no majority race and where the most dramatic growth is among the population with the lowest educational levels.

In a nation with 44 percent non-White students and extreme inequality in educational attainment, it's time we address these issues as seriously as we did during the Civil Rights era. If we don't have a plan for racial equity everywhere, and for integration where possible, we are all too likely to replicate the failures of the past. Although education policy has basically ignored the issues of racial change and integration since the Civil Rights era, no one has figured out how to make school systems separate but equal and no one has figured out how White, suburban, middle-class teachers are to work effectively with students of color and linguistic minority students in complex, changing, interracial settings without good professional training designed to support multicultural education and diversity. Doing educational reform while ignoring the fundamental cleavages in society is profoundly counterproductive. We need a new Civil Rights agenda for our schools.

A first step is for educators to recognize and demand changes in the racial conditions outside the schools that make their work so much harder. Housing policy, wages policy, health care, and day care are among the most urgent issues. A second is to demand that there be a Civil Rights agenda for our schools. A third is to develop and implement training and support plans to give the nation's teachers the skills they need to better work with students of all backgrounds and to teach with materials and practices that fully recognize the contribution of all cultures and races to the United States.

Educators are well aware of two things. First is that President George W. Bush was fundamentally right when he highlighted massive inequalities in education for minority students. Second was that he was fundamentally wrong in thinking it can be solved by high-stakes testing of children and sanctioning of schools. The NCLB law is a classic example of this latter problem, as we have shown in ten studies and two books on NCLB implementation.

Punishing schools serving students with the least preparation and the most negative outside influences for not having accomplished rates of gain never achieved on any scale anywhere punishes the victims of multiple segregation and encourages their teachers and administrators to leave even faster than they might normally do. But even ending or drastically modifying NCLB won't make our schools' racial inequality go away or create positive race relations in schools and communities. In fact, many causal state policies would remain in place. We need different, positive policies that address our racial issues, policies that respect and employ the talents of our teachers. But such policies can't be simply about more money, nor should they lose NCLB's good parts—such as, for example, collecting much needed data on all groups within all schools.

There is far too much evidence that simply increasing funds without using the money very carefully doesn't change outcomes much, though money is certainly necessary to do what needs to be done. The three things that most powerfully influence educational outcomes are families, teachers, and other students who create a climate and level of competition. Curriculum, materials, and many other things can, of course, make a difference, but families, teachers, and other students are at the core. It's important to use money, for example, to support social policies designed to improve the conditions of families with school-age children.

Our recent survey of a national sample of NEA teachers, done in collaboration with the Southern Poverty Law Center, shows that teachers are segregated, that a great many are in racially changing schools (particularly in the suburbs), that teachers believe they can and should treat all students the same, and that those in geographic areas that still have significant White populations are least prepared for the changes that are coming. Teachers sincerely want to serve all students well, but they have little support and are constantly blamed. We now know that, while more than half of Latino children in large metropolitan areas and nearly half of Blacks already live outside central cities, serious segregation and inequality follow migrations of the non-White middle class. We also know that many suburban schools are ill-prepared for the changes currently in motion.

Treating all children the same sounds good, but it's very problematic. Consider your own children. How effective would you think a school where all the teachers had cultural and racial backgrounds different from you? Where classmates who understood your children's background and heritage were few? Where your children faced incidents of harassment, prejudice, misunderstanding, and hostility? Where no teaching took place about the positive contributions of your race or culture to the common society? Where the school passively accepted various forms of in-school segregation? Where your children ended up in dead-end classes or special education? What if your children's school only taught classes in a language they couldn't understand and they had no teachers to talk to in their own tongue? I think that almost any parent facing such a situation would think that positive ways to address these issues were urgently important. And so they are, no matter whose children are involved.

There have been no significant federal funds to address issues of race in the schools since the Reagan Administration eliminated the popular federal desegregation aid program 27 years ago. That law funded programs that involved training teachers, working on curriculum, helping students address racial divisions within schools, and other related issues. It had demonstrated success in both improving school race relations and raising achievement. Relatively simple techniques such as Student Team Learning had clear, significant, positive effects on both relationships and achievement. The program's funding helped create many new magnet schools that were both effective and integrated, public schools with autonomy to innovate, and faculties composed of teachers committed to their special mission. These were schools with the obviously necessary Civil Rights provisions, including extensive outreach and recruitment targeting underrepresented groups, clear desegregation standards, free transportion for all students who wanted to attend, and no rejection of students with disabilities or language issues—much better in these respects than many contemporary charter schools, which typically have no Civil Rights provisions and are, on average, even more segregated than public schools.

Yet, we have used federal and state funds to expand charters, and the Supreme Court decided last June to undermine key parts of the Civil Rights policies of hundreds of magnet schools. Teacher organizations need to encourage school districts to carefully examine legal ways to pursue integrated schools, and they need to ask Congress to restore support urgently needed for managing the vast racial transition our country is currently undergoing. If we don't figure out how to increase the graduation rates and college success of Black and Latino students, major portions of America will soon experience declines in average educational levels—an economic disaster.

The U.S. Supreme Court decided in the 1990s to end most desegregation orders, but many communities wanted to voluntarily maintain successful elements like magnet schools. Some, such as Louisville-Jefferson County, Kentucky, fought long court battles to maintain long-successful, district-wide plans. Unfortunately, in a 5–4 decision last summer, the Supreme Court undermined most of those plans. This forces hundreds of communities to either give up their efforts and accept much greater segregation or find the best available alternative to keeping diversityin their schools. The decision permits some limited direct use of race and it leaves other criteria for assignment—poverty, test scores, geographic diversity, linguistic diversity, and many others—perfectly legal. It is important for education organizations to encourage local school boards to do the necessary work to maintain as much as possible of their successful plans. We've been working with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund as school officials to try to find workable answers.

There are also provisions in federal law that could serve as a basis for positive action, such as the now empty promise of a right to transfer from a school being sanctioned under NCLB. Although this right is defined poorly and unfairly in NCLB, and good schools are often sanctioned, the idea that a student in a persistently weak public school should be given a chance to transfer to another, stronger public school could be part of a good plan. The problem is that there are very few opportunities to transfer to better schools because the right is limited by school district lines and spaces. Many existing transfers are from one weak school to another weak school, sometimes to a weaker school from one that failed on one of NCLB's many technicalities. This needs to be changed to stop transfers that produce no real gain and
to open up transfers to definitely stronger schools, often across district lines. Similarly, charter schools, which are often independent of district lines, should be required to adopt some of the key Civil Rights provisions of magnet schools.

The resurgence and expansion of segregation haven't happened because we've learned how to make separate schools equal. With rare exceptions, we haven't. Nor have they happened because we've learned that desegregation and integration don't work. In fact, we've never had more solid evidence about their benefits. Five hundred fifty-three researchers from 201 universities and research centers presented the U.S. Supreme Court with a summary of a half-century of research on these issues, showing that the Court was right in Brown and that going backward deepens educational inequality. Segregation's resurgence and expansion have happened because a very powerful and insistent legal and political campaign to attack and reverse desegregation is succeeding, primarily through transforming the federal courts, the Justice Department, and the White House. This transformation is so deep that policies once
considered severely inadequate to protect the rights of minority students in the Civil Rights era are now prohibited by the United States Supreme Court, and practices producing segregation once held to be constitutional violations are now approved. The coming election will be very important in the next stage of the battle over the courts and over American justice.

Four decades after Dr. King's death, we are a very different nation. We are a nation where the White population will become the minority in the nation's schools in just a few years. We are a nation where nearly a fifth of public school students come from linguistic minority families. Even though there is no significant effort to desegregate our schools now, thousands of American schools, mostly in the suburbs, are going through racial and ethnic change as Black and Latino families move away from central urban areas and many city schools experience displacement of one minority by another. Since teaching is the one profession that must interact effectively and in great depth with nine-tenths of the nation's young people, lack of training and support means, at best, lost opportunities for deeper and more effective relationships. At worst, it means being helpless in the face of serious divisions coming into our schools from the outside community. American parents, by very large majorities, want their children to grow up understanding how to relate successfully with all groups in a diverse society. For this to happen, and for our society to avoid projecting into ever larger sectors of suburbia the kinds of poor race relations and resegregation that damaged so many urban neighborhoods, teachers must have the tools to understand and relate to students and parents from all backgrounds and to help children understand the very diverse and changing society they will live in.

Addressing these issues isn't a luxury or an optional part of education. It goes to the core of what makes our schools and communities work. We need new dedication to addressing these issues. Younger teachers are well aware of this necessity, but often find too little support and too many pressures. There are positive models and experiences we can draw upon. They don't take a great deal of school time or cost a lot of money, and they tend to produce real academic gains. Addressing these issues is part of the groundwork for successful education reform and community stability. It's time we insist that these issues find a place high on the agenda of all education and community leaders.

About Gary Orfield
Gary Orfield has written books and spoken out against standardized testing, particularly the use of test scores to deny high school graduation. His central interest is the development and implementation of social policy, with a focus on the impact of policy on equal opportunity for success in American society. In addition to his scholarly work, Gary has been involved with developing government policy and has participated as a court-appointed expert in several dozen Civil Rights cases, and he has been called to testify in Civil Rights suits by the U.S. Department of Justice as well as by many legal services and educational organizations.

About the Visiting Scholars Series
NEA Research hosts the Visiting Scholars Series as a forum intended to help link policy initiatives with educational scholarship. Prominent scholars are asked to link their research to recommendations for closing achievement gaps. Contact us for more information.

This paper, Race and Schools: The Need for Action, by Gary Orfield, Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles, University of California–Los Angeles, is a Research Brief from the NEA Research Visiting Scholars Series, Spring 2008, vol. 1b.

Research Brief, Visiting Scholars Series

By Patricia Gándara, Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles, University of California–Los Angeles

NEA Research periodically hosts the Visiting Scholars Series as a forum intended to help link policy initiatives with educational scholarship. Prominent scholars are asked to link their research to recommendations for closing achievement gaps. This article, a research brief from the Spring 2008 forum, is from a forthcoming Patricia Gándara book.¹

This Research Brief addresses three questions—

1. Is there really a Latino education crisis, or is it just a passing phenomenon attributable to recent high immigration?

2. If there is a crisis, what are its dimensions and what has caused it?

3. What are some of the policies that we must consider to effectively address the crisis?

Is There Really a Latino Education Crisis?
The most urgent problem for the American education system has a Latino face. Latinos are the largest and most rapidly growing ethnic minority in the country, but, academically, they are lagging dangerously far behind their non-Hispanic peers. For example, upon entering kindergarten 42% of Latino children are found in the lowest quartile of performance on reading readiness compared to just 18% of White children.² By 4th grade, 16% of Latino students are proficient in reading according to the 2005 NAEP, compared to 41% of White students.³ A similar pattern is notable at the 8th grade, where only 15% of Latinos are proficient in reading compared to 39% of Whites.⁴

With respect to college completion, only 11% of Latinos 25 to 29 years of age had a BA or higher compared to 34% of Whites. Perhaps most distressing, however, is the fact that no progress has been made in the percentage of Latinos gaining college degrees over a 20-year period, while other groups have seen significant increases in degree completion.

Percentage of 25–29-Year-Olds
Having Completed a BA or Higher, by Ethnicity

The Latino education crisis is not simply a result of immigration. Successive generations of Latinos do tend to outperform their parents, if those parents are very undereducated.⁵ In 21st-century America, however, it is not sufficient for each generation to advance from a 6th grade education to an 8th grade education and so forth. Educational progress for Latinos has for the most part stalled at high school, with virtually no progress made beyond that point.

Some scholars have noted that Americanization is bad for immigrants (as opposed to immigrants being bad for America). Based on data from over 2,400 8th- and 9th-grade immigrant students in the San Diego, California, area, Rubén Rumbaut concluded that "Americanization processes, all other things being equal...may be counterproductive for educational achievement."⁶ A number of other studies have similarly found what is often referred to as "immigrant optimism" that factors into the surprisingly higher educational achievement of many immigrant students than their native-born, co-ethnic peers.⁷ But the overwhelming majority of Latino students are native-born, and, in spite of the recent large increase in Latino immigration, the native-born population is still growing at a faster rate than is immigration.⁸ Therefore, the low educational attainment of Latino students is not just the result of large numbers of undereducated immigrants entering the public school system. Rather, it is the result of circumstances encountered by Latino students who were born in this country.

Dimensions of the Crisis
This lack of progress in college completion augurs poorly not just for Latinos, but for the society as a whole. Almost one in five students across the country is Latino; by 2050 one in three will be.⁹ In 2008, about 48% of public school students in California are Latino, about 46% in Texas, about 20% in New York. These students will form the workforce in the immediate future. The Center for Public Policy and Higher Education¹⁰ has projected that if the state of California does not immediately begin preparing more underrepresented students for higher education, by 2020 the state will experience an 11% drop in per capita income, resulting in serious economic hardship for the people of California. Arizona, Texas, and other states with high percentages of Latinos are also projected to see declines in per capita income over the period, although none so steep as California because of its very large and undereducated Latino population. To understand the impact of such a decline in per capita earnings, it is useful to know that the present day economy of California is the result of a 30% increase in per capita income since 1980.¹¹ As there is no evidence of an imminent turnaround in the rate at which Latino students are either graduating from high school or obtaining college degrees, it appears that there is clearly both a regional and national catastrophe at hand.

Cause of the Crisis
It would be simplistic to attribute the cause of the Latino education crisis to any single factor. It’s clearly the result of a complex web of social, economic, and educational conditions—inadequate social services, families with exceptionally low human and social capital, a polarizing economy with few entry level jobs that provide a living wage and benefits available to those without higher education or special skills, and schools that lack the resources to meet many students' most basic educational needs. Language difference is commonly perceived to be the primary educational barrier for Latino students, and, unfortunately, most attention has been placed on debates over what kind of language program to provide. This distracts educators and others from the more important questions about educational quality. While language is an issue for some Latino students, it's not the critical issue. A recent study¹² found that English Learners (primarily Latinos) received an inferior education along seven different dimensions, even when compared to other poor and low-income students. Chief among the educational inequities suffered are teachers unprepared to address their needs.

What Policies Must Be Considered toAddress the Crisis?
A review of research on effective strategies for supporting the healthy development of children from birth to young adulthood yields a series of target areas for policy development, including—

1. Begin cognitive enrichment early. Early intervention, if sustained over time, can change the intellectual development of children. The evidence suggests, though, that this early intervention needs to extend beyond the classroom, involving the homes of preschool children, helping their parents to understand the demands of school and how practices in the home can work hand in hand with the goals of schooling. Most important of all are literacy practices in the home—reading to and with children and also talking to them about ideas and inviting their curiosity about the world. Many low-income Latino parents have come to believe that they cannot help their children learn because they haven't experienced much formal education themselves, or because they don't speak English, and their skills and abilities are often overlooked by schools. Research shows, however, that such parents can and should be critical educators for their children. Policies that enable them to do so in their primary language—and that support them while they do it—could greatly assist students' learning. There is a critical role for teachers and schools in helping parents to support their children's schooling.

2. Establish housing policies that help desegregate neighborhoods and schools, and build social capital in the Latino community. It has been argued that housing is the fulcrum of opportunity, linked to many factors critical to the success of adults and children in American society. Such factors include access to good schools, but they also include "wealth, healthy and safe environments, positive peer groups for children, good local health care, convenient access to areas of greatest job growth, high-quality public services, networks to jobs and college, and many other forms of opportunity."¹³ Unfortunately, Latino students are even more segregated into low-income, low-opportunity neighborhoods in the western U.S. than Black students. Changing school boundaries, providing racially and SES-balanced magnet schools, and providing transfer opportunities to attend two-way language programs are among the many options schools can employ to help desegregate Latino students. There are also powerful social policies that can more radically change housing segregation. While such policies are not in the hands of schools to enact, teachers and school districts can give voice to the need for such policies and can cooperate with city and county government to implement them.

3. Integrate social services. A number of attempts have been made at state and regional levels to provide integrated health and social services for low-income students through cooperative arrangements between schools and county and regional health and welfare agencies. Such efforts have not been without challenges. But there is also evidence that, when implemented well, they can have substantially positive effects on children's physical and mental well-being, which can be at least indirectly related to schooling outcomes. Schools can spearhead these efforts.

4. Prepare and recruit specifically qualified teachers. Teachers must be given the specialized tools they need to be successful with Latino populations, and, contrary to the oft-heard mantra that good schools are good schools for all children, some additional and different things must be present in schools that serve this population. Teachers must have skills and the means for communicating with Latino parents and enlisting them as allies. They must be able to communicate with and motivate their Latino students. They must understand the circumstances of the students’ lives and histories. Critically, teachers must know how to provide deep, rich, and intellectually challenging instruction that pushes students to excel and, simultaneously, builds on the fund of knowledge that resides in students' communities. In the words of Michael Martinez,¹⁴ they must be able to cultivate intelligence, not just the acquisition of knowledge. They must be able to help children learn to think deeply and creatively about problems, and they must be able to build on the foundations of learning that students bring with them to school. This also implies that teachers must be given the autonomy to exercise their professional judgment and expertise in the classroom. Although most Latino students speak English, many come from families and communities that primarily speak Spanish, and most teachers have difficulty communicating with students' families and thus enlisting their support. In a recent survey of 5,300 teachers in California, we found this inability to communicate with parents to be the single greatest concern of teachers of English Language Learners.¹⁵ The fact that most Latino students come from backgrounds where mainstream and academic English are not spoken places them at an educational disadvantage that must be attended to with specific pedagogical strategies. Moreover, many of these students are labeled (reclassified) "fluent English proficient," R-FEP, when only yesterday or last week they were considered English Language Learners. Their language development in English must beviewed as occurring along a continuum that will require many years, and teachers need to be skilled at assessing and addressing those linguistic needs.

Teachers from the same communities as their students are not only much more likely to understand their students' challenges, they are also more likely to remain teaching in the same schools, developing expertise and gaining experience.¹⁶ Of course there is a problem in that so few Latinos successfully make it through the college pipeline that the prospective teacher pool is small. Providing incentives for Latinos to go into teaching would be good public policy, and should include tuition-free college and teacher preparation for those who serve the public schools in these communities—one-year free tuition for each year of successful teaching. Teachers from these communities should also be helped to purchase a home in the community through low interest, low down-payment home ownership programs. The costs of the proposed incentives to attract and retain these teachers are small by comparison to the lost tax-payer investment in teachers who leave the classroom early in their careers out of frustration and a desire to find a better paying or less stressful job in a more affluent part of the city. There is no consensus in the field on the critical competencies that teachers must have to effectively meet these students' needs. The field needs to develop this consensus.

5. Exploit the comparative advantage of many Latino students. If the U.S. is not to be left (further) behind in the education race in a globalizing economy, the ability of its people to work and interact across cultural and linguistic borders will become increasingly important. The notion of speaking a language other than English as an educational liability must be turned on its head. Languages must be seen as resources, as invaluable human capital, and as doorways to enhanced cognitive skills. This is the one area in which many Latino students arrive at school with an advantage over their non-Hispanic peers. It can be exploited for their educational benefit and that of their peers with whom they can share this asset.

Numerous studies of the academic and linguistic achievement of students in dual language programs, compared with similar students who are in English-only programs, find that in the two-way immersion students either perform as well as those students in English-only (as well as knowing another language) or they outperform the English-only students, across all academic areas. ¹⁷ Moreover, students in two-way or dual immersion programs tend to have more positive attitudes toward non-English languages and cultures and exhibit better intercultural relations with students who speak other languages. That is, these programs appear to prepare students better for the global village.¹⁸ Wherever possible, such programs should be promoted for the benefit of both Latino and non-Latino students to enhance cognitive and linguistic abilities.

Notes

1. Excerpted from my forthcoming, The Latino Education Crisis: The Consequences of Failed Social Policies (with F. Contreras), Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

2. Based on NCES data reported for the ECLS 1998 kindergarten sample.

3. Analyses of 2005 NAEP data.

4. Ibid.

5. James Smith (2003) argues that intergenerational mobility among Mexican immigrants is far greater than most studies have shown because they have examined the issue cross-sectionally, by looking at the education levels of first, second, and third generation group means in the same time period. Smith asserts that it is necessary to look backwards, charting grandparents, parents, and children's mean education levels to get a sense of the mobility that has occurred over time. While this argument makes some sense, it is flawed in that social and educational conditions have changed radically over time, and mobility in a prior time may be neither sufficient to keep pace with current labor market demands, nor replicated in the contemporary context. Nonetheless, we agree that some progress does occur across the generations. This is not in dispute.

6. Rumbaut, 1995, p. 52.

7. See, for example, Kao and Tienda, 1995; Suárez-Orozco and Suárez-Orozco, 1995.

8. Pew Hispanic Center, based on 2005 American Community Survey data.

9. Passel and Cohn, 2008.

10. These projections are based on recent work by Patrick Kelly of the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS).

11. The series of reports for 10 states and the nation as a whole can be found at the  National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education Web site.

12. Gándara et al., 2003.

13. Orfield and McArdle, 2006.

14. Martinez, 2000.

15. Gándara, Maxwell-Jolly, and Driscoll, 2004.

16. Murnane et al., 1991.

17. See discussion of this topic in Genesee et al., 2006, especially pages 200–205.

18. See Genesee and Gándara, 1999, for a discussion of the issue of intercultural relations and attitudes toward other language speakers.

Bibliography

Gándara, P., R. Rumberger, J. Maxwell-Jolly, and R. Callahan. 2003. "English Learners in California Schools: Unequal Resources, Unequal Outcomes." Educational Policy Analysis Archives. Downloaded March 10, 2008, from the Educational Policy Analysis Archives Web site.

Gándara, P., J. Maxwell-Jolly, and A. Driscoll. 2005. Listening to Teachers of English Learners. Santa Cruz, CA: Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning.

Genesee, F., K. Lindholm-Leary, W. Saunders, and D. Christian. 2006. Educating English Language Learners: A Synthesis of Research Evidence. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Genesee, F., and P. Gándara. 1999. "Bilingual Education Programs: A Cross-National Perspective." Journal of Social Issues 55: 665–685.

Kao, G., and M. Tienda. 1998. "Educational Aspirations of Minority Youth." American Journal of Education 106(3): 349–384.

Martinez, M. 2000. Education as the Cultivation of Intelligence . Mahwah, NJ: Laurence Erlbaum.

Murnane, R.J., J.D. Singer, J. B. Willett, J.J. Kemple, and R.J. Olsen. 1991. Who Will Teach?: Policies that Matter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard College.

National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. 2005. "Income of U.S. Workforce Projected to Decline if Education Doesn't Improve." Downloaded March 10, 2008, from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education Policy Alert (PDF, 8pp.).

Orfield, G., and N. McArdle. 2006. The Vicious Cycle: Segregated Housing, Schools, and Intergenerational Inequality. Cambridge: Joint Center for Housing Studies, Harvard University. Downloaded March 10, 2008, from the Civil Rights Project of Harvard University paper (PDF, 69pp.)

Passel, J., and D. Cohn. 2008. "U.S. Population Projections: 2005–2050." Pew Hispanic Center. Downloaded March 10, 2008, from the  Pew Hispanic Center report.

Rumbaut, R. 1995. "The New Californians: Comparative Research Findings on the Educational Progress of Immigrant Children." In R. Rumbaut and W. Cornelius, eds., California's Immigrant Children: Theory, Research, and Implications for Educational Policy. La Jolla, CA: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, University of California–San Diego. Pages 17–70.

Smith, P.J. 2003. "Assimilation Across the Latino Generations." American Economic Review 93(2): 315–319.

Suárez-Orozco, C.M., and M. Suárez-Orozco. 1996. Transformations: Immigration, Family Life, and Achievement Motivation among Latino Adolescents. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

About Patricia Gándara
Patricia Gándara is Professor of Education in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California–Los Angeles. Having earned her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from UCLA, she recently returned there after many years. She has been a bilingual school psychologist, a social scientist with the RAND Corporation, director of education research in the California Legislature(State Assembly), Commissioner for Post-secondary Education for the State of California, and Professor of Education at the University of California–Davis for 16 years. She is currently Co-Director of the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA and Associate Director of the UC Linguistic Minority Research Institute.

Patricia's research focuses on educational equity and access for low-income and ethnic minority students, language policy, and the education of Mexican origin youth. She has just completed a study, with her colleague Russell Rumberger, entitled Resource Needs for California's English Learners, as part of the statewide adequacy project funded by four major foundations. She is the author of numerous articles and several books, including the forthcoming, The Latino Education Crisis: The Consequences of Failed Social Policies, with Harvard University Press. A selection of other publications includes—

Gándara, P.,and R. Rumberger. Forthcoming. "Defining an Adequate Education for English Learners." Education Finance and Policy.

Gándara, P., and M.C. Gómez. Forthcoming. "Language Policy in Education." In B. Schneider, G. Sykes, and D. Plank, eds. AERA Handbook on Educational Policy Research. Washington DC:
AERA.

Gándara, P., and R. Rumberger. In press. "Immigration, Language, and Education: How Does Language Policy Structure Opportunity?" Teachers College Record.

Rumberger, R., and P. Gándara. 2007. "Resource Needs for Educating Linguistic Minority Students." In H.F. Ladd and E.B. Fiske, eds. Handbook of Research in Education Finance and Policy. New York: Routledge.

Abedi, J., and P. Gándara. 2006. "Performance of English Language Learners as a Subgroup in Large-Scale Assessment: Interaction of Research and Policy." Educational Measurement Issues and Practice 25:36–46.

Maxwell-Jolly, J., and P. Gándara. 2006. "Critical Issues in the Preparation of Teachers for English Learners." In E. Burr et al., eds. Crucial Issues in California Education 2000. Berkeley: PACE.

Gándara, P. 2006. "Fragile Futures: Risk and Vulnerability among Latino High Achievers." Policy
Brief. Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service.

Gándara, P., and J. Maxwell-Jolly. 2005. "Critical Issues in the Development of the Teacher Corps for English Learners." In H. Waxman, H. Tellez, and K. Tellez, eds. Preparing Quality Teachers for English Language Learners. Mahweh, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Gándara, P., R. Moran, and E. Garcia. 2004. "Legacy of Brown: Lau and Language Policy in the United States." Review of Research in Education 28: 27–46.

Callahan, R., and P. Gándara, P. 2004. "Nobody's Agenda: English Learners and Post-secondary Education." In M. Sadowski, ed. Immigrant and English-Language Learners: Strategies for Success. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.

Rumberger, R., and P. Gándara. 2004. "Seeking Equity in the Education of California's English Learners." Teachers College Record 106: 2031–2055.

Gándara, P., R. Rumberger, J. Maxwell-Jolly, and R. Callahan. 2003. "English Learners in California Schools: Unequal Resources, Unequal Outcomes." Educational Policy Analysis Archives.

About the Visiting Scholars Series
NEA Research hosts the Visiting Scholars Series as a forum intended to help link policy initiatives with educational scholarship. Prominent scholars are asked to link their research to recommendations for closing achievement gaps. Contact us for more information.

This article, The Crisis in the Education of Latino Students, by Patricia Gándara, Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles, University of California–Los Angeles, is a Research Brief from the NEA Research Visiting Scholars Series, Spring 2008, vol. 1a.

NEA is taking a leadership role in improving achievement for all students and closing the achievement gaps, particularly for low-income and minority students. To do this, NEA is collaborating with state and local affiliates and external partners on developing and implementing effective policies that facilitate this work and support the efforts of its members.

In 2006-2008, NEA is assisting at least 12 states with securing public policies and associated funding for closing the achievement gaps. NEA provides information, resources, and technical assistance to support state affiliates' efforts to secure policy changes to close gaps through:

• Passing statewide legislation
• Changing state regulations
• Modifying the scope or content of negotiated agreements or local contracts
• Changing state affiliate policy to position the affiliate for statewide action

The following resources highlight the work being done in NEA's state affiliates, and offer ideas on how to impact policy that will help to close the achievement gaps.

Resources from NEA

NEA Policy Briefs (Spring 2008)
These new briefs support our vision for creating Great Public Schools for every child.  

• Growth Models--A More Accurate Way To Determine Student Progress  ( PDF, 186KB, 4pp)
• Changing Role of School Leadership  ( PDF, 224k, 4pp)
• Full-Day Kindergarten Helps Close Achievement Gaps  ( PDF, 169k, 4pp)
• Parent, Family, Community Involvement in Education  ( PDF, 178k, 4pp)
• Disproportionality: Inappropriate Identification of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Children  ( PDF, 202KB, 4 pp)
• Mathematics and Science for Every Girl and Boy  ( PDF, 229KB, 4 pp)
• Class Size Reduction: A Proven Reform Strategy  ( PDF, 165KB, 4 pp)
• English Language Learners Face Unique Challenges  ( PDF, 205KB, 4 pp)
• Early Childhood Education and School Readiness  ( PDF, 202KB, 4 pp) 
• Closing the Gap through Extended Learning Opportunities  ( PDF, 210KB, 4 pp)
• Volatility in Census poverty estimates for ESEA Title I Grants Undermines Planning, Resource Allocation  ( PDF, 288KB, 4 pp)
• Reforming High Schools for the 21st Century—An Imperative  ( PDF, 212KB, 4 pp)
• Vouchers: What is at Stake?  ( PDF, 164KB, 4 pp)

Closing Achievement Gaps: An Association Guide (2006) ( PDF, 743K, 110 pp.)
This NEA report offers examples of advocacy in action at the state, local, and national levels; partnerships with policymakers and national organizations; research-based bargaining strategies; model legislative proposals; professional development activities, products, and other resources; organizing strategies for mobilizing members; and success stories from state and local affiliates grappling with this complex issue in creative ways.

The Workplace Matters: Teacher Quality, Retention, and Effectiveness (2006) 
Summary ( PDF, 315K, 6 pp.); Full Report ( PDF, 505K, 32 pp.)
Schools serving large student populations with achievement gaps may also have trouble retaining teachers. Recent research is revealing a great deal about how changes in educational practices and policies can revamp classrooms and schools to close the achievement gaps and promote excellence in learning for all students. Author Susan Moore Johnson describes what research says about workplace conditions that support effective instruction and professional growth. It also suggests that more talented teachers can be retained through improvements in workplace conditions, particularly at hard-to-staff schools.

"Truth in Labeling"  (NEA Today, January 2003)
African-American students show up in certain special education categories -- the ones where the diagnosis is largely subjective -- in numbers that so exceed their proportion in the general population, that some experts are now calling it a crisis. In "Truth in Labeling," NEA Today looks at the reasons why this happens -- and what can be done to ensure that a special education referral is based on a child's needs, not his race.

Theories of Learning and Teaching: What Do They Mean for Educators (2006)
Summary ( PDF, 410K, 6 pp.); Full Report ( PDF, 478K, 32 pp.)
Recent research is revealing a great deal about how changes in educational practices and policies can revamp classrooms and schools to close the achievement gaps and promote excellence in learning for all students. This new NEA report, by Suzanne M. Wilson and Penelope L. Peterson, describes what current research says about the learning process and details nine concepts of learning, knowledge, and teaching that have formed the basis for recent education reform.

NEA on Prekindergarten and Kindergarten (2004) ( PDF, 748K, 16 pp.)
NEA believes that all children ages three and four should have access to prekindergarten programs that are high quality, universal and publicly funded. Research shows that a child exposed to good preschool programs before age five will reap lifetime benefits. Quality preschool also increases the chances of a student doing better in early grades, closing the achievement gap and graduating from high school

Full-Day Kindergarten: An Advocacy Guide  (2007)
Full-day kindergarten is an essential bridge between pre-k and the primary grades. NEA believes that full-day kindergarten is a critical component of closing the achievement gaps for young children from non-English speaking and low-income families.

Prekindergarten Info on the Web
A list prepared by NEA of various resources related to topics involved in prekindergarten research, including reviews and meta-analyses of the literature, policy discussions, and cost analyses related to state-funded prekindergarten programs.

Talking Points on High School Attendance, Graduation, Completion and Dropout Statistics  (2006)
This research-based brief fills in the blanks on who stays and who goes, the benefits of a GED, and provides information on both the personal and societal costs of dropping out. It also highlights linked references for more information on the subject.

Talking Points on Small Schools  (2005)
This brief lists key research facts about small schools, including their bigger benefits to disadvantaged students. Benefits to all have been found to include raised student achievement, increased attendance, and improved school climate.

Talking Points on English Language Learners  (2005)
This brief of research-based talking points discusses the number and types of English language learners, or "ELLs," in schools, the specific challenges they face, what kind of programs are available to them, and how well they are doing academically.

Talking Points on High School Reform  (2005)
This brief discusses findings from a research review of national and state trends in high school reform, including sets of characteristics that high performing high schools share in common, such as a focus on closing achievement gaps.

State Legislative Successes (June 2007)
Brief stories of nine NEA state affiliates that have secured public policies and associated funding for closing the achievement gaps in 2006-07, seven of them with help from an NEA Grant to Close Achievement Gaps, which was made available to interested states.   

Reducing the High School Dropout Rate     
Recognizing that approaches singularly focused on only one contributing cause of dropouts have failed to curb the nation's growing dropout crisis, NEA has a 12-point plan that combines the efforts of parents, teachers, business leaders and lawmakers using tactics tried through research and professional experience.

Collective Bargaining for Improved Student Achievement: A Missed Opportunity    
Bill Raabe, director of the National Education Association's Collective Bargaining & Member Advocacy Department, makes a point that collective bargaining and improving student achievement aren't mutually exclusive.

Closing the Student Achievement Gap by Closing the Teaching Quality Gap: Reframing the Debate (2005) (  PDF, 222k, 17 pp.)  
A research brief from NEA's Visiting Scholars Series, presented by Barnett Berry from the Center for Teaching Quality, Inc. on April 7, 2005.

Resources from Other Organizations

Study Finds Acquiring Heritage Language Helps Native Students Achieve Academically (  PDF, 43 pp.)
Native American and Hawaiian children who learn their heritage language typically learn English no slower than their peers enrolled in English-only programs and generally outperform those same peers on standardized tests, according to "Language Planning Challenges and Prospects in Native American Communities and Schools," a study from the Language Policy Research Unit at the Education Policy Studies Laboratory at Arizona State University by Mary Eunice Romero Little and Teresa L. McCarty.

The National Task Force on Early Childhood Education for Hispanics: Para Nuestros Niños 
Funded by a grant from The National Child Development Foundation, The National Task Force on Early Childhood Education for Hispanics was established in May 2004 for the purpose of identifying major educational challenges facing Hispanic children throughout the United States from birth through the primary grades and making recommendations for actions.

The New Demography of America's Schools: Immigration and the No Child Left Behind Act  ( PDF, 46 pp.)
One in five school-age children, now, is a child of immigrants. NCLB poses challenges for children of immigrants, LEP students, and the schools serving them, particularly those with large numbers of children of immigrants. And, with its emphasis on testing, NCLB may narrow classroom focus to subjects covered by the standardized tests, especially in schools that have difficulty meeting their performance targets, changing the quality or nature of education received by children of immigrants and LEP students. But NCLB also has the potential to improve the education of children of immigrants and limited English speaking children. U.S. immigration, the challenges it poses for schools now, and the potential within policies for improvement, are each explored in this Urban Institute report.

The Rural School & Community Trust
The Rural School & Community Trust is a national nonprofit organization addressing the crucial relationship between good schools and thriving communities. Their mission is to help rural schools and communities collaborate. The Rural Trust provides a variety of services -- training, networking, technical assistance, coaching, mentoring, research -- and materials to increase the capacity of rural schools, teachers, young people, and communities to develop and implement high quality place-based education

Public Education and Black Male Students: A State Report Card  (2004) ( PDF, 52 pp.)
This report is both an invitation to learn and a call for action, and while it highlights the end results of the school experience, it also directs attention to contributing disparity factors, such as special education designations, in- and out-of-school suspensions, expulsions, and National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) results, where available. Other factors, such as in-school arrests, juvenile incarceration and college prep course participation must be examined thoroughly on a school-by-school and district-by-district basis as we begin to improve public education for our most vulnerable students. The report also provides a guiding set of benchmark indicators for demonstrating serious attention to the status of Black male students in the states.

Would Smaller Classes Help Close the Black-White Achievement Gap? (2001) ( PDF, 49 pp.)
Smaller classes would help reduce the achievement gaps according to Princeton University's Alan Krueger.

WestEd Policy Brief - Reforms That Could Help Narrow the Achievement Gap  
Richard Rothstein, Research Associate at the Economic Policy Institute, outlines a series of reforms, in addition to school improvement, that could help narrow the achievement gap. 
 
The National Indian Education Study (NIES), Part I: NAEP 2005 Performance by American Indian and Alaska Native Students   
NIES is a two-part study designed to describe the condition of education for American Indian Alaska Native students in the United States. Part I looks at students' NAEP performance.

Tracking Achievement Gaps and Assessing the Impact of NCLB on the Gaps: An In-depth Look into National and State Reading and Math Outcome Trends (2006) ( PDF, 82 pp.)
The report compares the findings from the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) to state assessment results and concludes that that high stakes testing and sanctions required by NCLB are not working as planned under the NCLB.

The Toolbox Revisited: Paths to Degree Completion From High School Through College (2006) ( PDF, 223 pp.)
This Education Department study of college completion predictors finds that rigorous high school coursework, no delay in college enrollment, and taking college courses over the summer (after enrollment) are what help keep college students on track. These same predictive scenarios help close attainment gaps for minority and disadvantaged students.

From Teasing to Torment: New National Report on School Bullying (2005) ( PDF, 19 pp.)
GLSEN (The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network) announced the results of a new survey conducted on its behalf by Harris Interactive.  The national survey of over 3,400 students aged 13-18 and over 1,000 secondary school teachers, explores students' and teachers' experiences with bullying and harassment, and their attitudes about this serious problem in America's schools. "This study clearly illustrates the prevalance of bullying and harassment in America's schools and that students who experience harassment are more likely to miss classes which can impact a student's ability to learn," said Kevin Jennings, founder and executive director of GLSEN.

Family Involvement and Student Success
Children's academic success is linked to the learning supports that are around them.  The family is one support that is closest to the child. How to cultivate awareness, promote discussion, and encourage family involvement in a child's education is part and parcel of the Harvard Family Research Project's complementary learning approach to help close the achievement gap.

National Collaborative Report: Assessment of Diversity in America's Teaching Force  (2004) ( PDF, 515k, 16 pp.)
Focusing specifically on the roles ethnicity and cultural competence play in student achievement, participants reviewed research on the impact of culturally responsive pedagogy on children. They also studied demographic data on the growing diversity of America’s schoolchildren and the static composition of the teaching force. After this review, participants voiced widespread concern about these demographic disparities and their negative impact on the quality of education for all children. In addition, participants noted that although teacher quality has been accepted and internalized as a mantra for school reform, the imperative for diversity is often marginalized rather than accepted as central to the quality equation in teaching.

As a result, the participating organizations agreed on the need to create the National Collaborative on Diversity in the Teaching Force (the Collaborative). The Collaborative’s primary mission is to infuse the issues of teacher diversity and cultural competence into the education policy debate, at both state and national levels, with the same vigor and frequency as the issue of teacher quality.

Status and Trends in the Education of American Indians and Alaska Natives  
The National Center for Education Statistics, within the Institute of Education Sciences, has issued a report on the status of American Indians and Alaska Natives. This report describes the  educational experiences of American Indians and Alaska Natives.

Local, state, and national news and events on closing the achievement gaps.

Achievement gaps debate
Los Angeles Times, week of November 25, 2007 [registration required]
Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute and Russlynn Ali of The Education Trust-West engage in a weeklong debate on the achievement gaps. They look at causes of and solutions to the gaps, and whether the No Child Left Behind law is helping or hurting, in these segments:  "Mind the (Achievement) Gap," "No Child to the Rescue?", and "What's Causing the Gap?"

Students scoring ACES
Herald News (NJ), November 20, 2007
Paterson's Eastside High School offers an Academic Community English Skills (ACES) program, which serves students who are new to the U.S. and who don't have an eighth-grade diploma, required for entry to high school. The program tries to bring the students -- who may have significant gaps in their schooling -- up to speed within two years by providing a middle school curriculum and English language instruction.

Simple steps would close racial gap, educator says
San Francisco Chronicle, November 14, 2007
California Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell convened a two-day summit on achievement gaps between Black and Latino students and their White and Asian counterparts. On the second day students took the stage to talk about what teachers can do to help them achieve. The Chronicle's editorial on the summit advocates for providing the resources necessary to close the gaps.

The Teacher Effect
Teacher Magazine Web Watch, September 12, 2007
A new study from Pittsburgh public schools suggests that improving teacher quality across the board may be the surest way to close the racial achievement gap.

St. Paul school conquers the education achievement gap
Minneapolis Star Tribune, September 11, 2007
How do you beat the odds on the achievement gap? At Farnsworth in St. Paul, they make learning fun -- and expected.

Schools Add Learning Hours
San Mateo County Times, September 10, 2007
Increasingly, districts and schools across the nation are exploring expanded instructional time to speed up children's learning and close a persistent achievement gap among students of different races.

Blacks in Suburbs Failing Md. Exams
Baltimore Sun, September 6, 2007
Minority students, especially African-Americans, are struggling to pass the exams in the suburban classrooms their families had hoped would provide a better education.

Great Public Schools Criteria

Great Public Schools Criteria refers to the seven elements needed for closing the achievement gaps and raising achievement for all students. The seven elements are: (1) readiness to learn, (2) high expectations, (3) quality conditions, (4) qualified staff, (5) accountability, (6) parental involvement, and (7) funding.

Read more below about the Great Public Schools Criteria in Wyoming.

Readiness to Learn

Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) provides reimbursement for nutritious meals and snack served to children birth to 12 on participating child care center, home day care providers, head start programs, outside-school-hours programs, and emergency shelters based on Income Eligibility Guidelines. (WDE)

According to the ACCESS Web site Wyoming lost a lawsuit filed by school districts demanding state-wide funding for local pre-kindergarten programs. The presiding judge appointed an Early Childhood Standards Task Force that created the Early Child Wyoming Readiness Standards in 2002. (WDE)

A state bill was recently introduced that called for a high quality child care system with a quality rating system, incentive payments (50 percent of state market price of childcare), scholarships for professional development, technical assistance and quality support run by the Department of Family Services with preference given to at-risk children. (ECS)

Full-day Kindergarten:

• State Policy: A definition of the minimum number of hours for full-day kindergarten is not specified in Wyoming state statutes. Districts are not required to offer full-day kindergarten and children are not required to attend. Wyoming funds both half-day and full-day kindergarten at a lower rate than grades 1-12.
• Definition, District Offering, Pupil Attendance: Kindergarten is defined as 450 hours per year. Kindergarten attendance is not mandatory in this state.
  Source: Education Commission of the States (ECS) Kindergarten Database, 2007

Wyoming offers no state funding for Head Start programs.

High Expectations

According to the WDE Web site, "Standards specify what students must master. They are not instructional curricula or technical documents used by teachers to guide day-to-day instruction. Teachers ensure that students achieve standards by using a range of instructional strategies that they select based on their students' needs." (WDE)

Wyoming has developed extensive standards in math, science, reading, writing, literature, social studies, fine and performing arts health, foreign language, and physical education for the fourth, eighth and eleventh grades. The standards aim to incorporate specific learning groups (e.g., special education and ELL) as well. (WDE)

The State Legislature began the WYFLES program, which provides school curriculum for instruction in foreign languages' in elementary schools.(WDE)

Quality Conditions

Wyoming takes part in NCLB state grant Title IV, Part A—Safe and Drug-Free Schools

Education code says each district "shall endeavor to maintain when practicable" an average class size of no more than 20 students per teacher in grades K-3. (CEPM)

Teacher quality and enhancement programs must substantially address one or more components of What Works in Schools… Translating Research into Action by Dr. Robert Marzano which includes:

1. Guaranteed and viable curriculum
2. Challenging goals and effective feedback
3. Parental and community involvement
4. Safe and orderly environment
5. Staff collegiality and professionalism
6. Instructional strategies (as detailed in Dr. Marzano’s work)
7. Classroom management
8. Classroom curriculum design
9. Home environment
10. Learned intelligence and background knowledge Motivation (WDE)

Wyoming schools received top marks in the latest Technology Counts 2003 Study Pencils Down: Technology’s Answer To Testing. The study analyzes the amount of technology that is available to, and used by, students and teachers in all 50 states. Some of the categories considered included students per Internet-connected computer and percent of schools where at least half the teachers have school based e-mail addresses.

Schools in Wyoming landed in the top ten in a majority of categories. Some of those top finishes included having the second highest percentage (78) in the United States of teachers whose students use computers during class time.

Also Wyoming ranked in the top four in the U.S. for having 3.9 students, on average, per Internet-connected computer.

Wyoming is one of 31 states that have incorporated technology into the state standards for administrators and one of the 42 states that regularly collects data on technology in schools.

Wyoming appears dedicated to providing access to technology to all students despite the rural nature of many of the districts. This is demonstrated by the creation of the Wyoming Equality Network or WEN which connects 98 percent of the schools in Wyoming to a T1 line.

Video conferencing is available in every high school in the state.

Qualified Staff

NCLB has provided state grant money for the development of highly-qualified teachers and principals. WDE has made a strategic decision to target the majority of these grant funds to provide professional development for K-12 teachers/principals and other educators in the core academic subjects for reading/language arts or foreign language. (WDE)

$343,906 will be available for grant distribution on a competitive basis. The amount awarded per project proposal is expected to be in a range upward from $25,000. (WDE)

Funds will be awarded to worthy proposals to begin project activities in April 2006 and to finish by the end of September 2007. (WDE)

Accountability

Statute
Wyo. Stat. § 21-2-304, § 21-2-202
Administrative Code: WCWR 005-000-006 § 1 – 15

State does not reward but it sanctions districts on the basis of performance. State sanctions on district include offer of technical assistance, requirement that district create and implement a plan for improvement, or loss of accreditation.

Great Public Schools Criteria

Great Public Schools Criteria refers to the seven elements needed for closing the achievement gaps and raising achievement for all students. The seven elements are: (1) readiness to learn, (2) high expectations, (3) quality conditions, (4) qualified staff, (5) accountability, (6) parental involvement, and (7) funding.

Read more below about the Great Public Schools Criteria in West Virginia.

Readiness to Learn

Legislation requires that universal pre-k be made available for all of West Virginia's four-year-olds by the 2012-2013 school year, and that 50 percent of the programs be in collaborative settings with Head State childcare, or private pre-kindergarten programs. (WVDE)

Health and safety standards are now a part of the policy. Included in these standards are requirement that meals must be provided if a pre-k classroom is in operation for more than four hours; all children who enter a program must have age-appropriate immunizations; and classrooms size will be limited to no more than 20 children. All pre-k classrooms not administered by the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources Day Care Licensing.

Health and safety standards are now a part of the policy. Included in these standards are requirements that meals must be provided if a pre-k classroom is in operation for more than four hours; all children who enter a program must have age appropriate immunizations; and classroom size will be limited to no more than 20 children. All pre-k classrooms not administered by the West Virginia Department of Education (WVDE) must be licensed through the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (WVDHHR) Day Care Licensing.

Full-day Kindergarten:

• State Policy: Full-day kindergarten is universally available in West Virginia. Districts are required districts to offer full-day kindergarten and attendance is mandatory. West Virginia distributes funding to districts based on a teacher:student ratios.
• Definition, District Offering, Pupil Attendance: West Virginia defines kindergarten as programs for children who shall have attained the age of 5 shall be full-day everyday programs (WV ST § 18-5-18).
  Source: Education Commission of the States (ECS) Kindergarten Database, 2007

Quality Conditions

Fully 100 percent of public K-12 schools in West Virginia are connected to the Internet via direct frame relay technology. Over 92 percent of our classrooms are networked and more than 80,000 computers are connected to the Internet. At least 34,000 electronic mail accounts have been issued since 1994 for the Department's mail server located in Morgantown at the West Virginia Network for Educational Telecomputing (WVNET).

The West Virginia Department of Education offers extensive technological support, ranging from grants for local districts, to curriculum and power point presentations

School Safety. West Virginia's state enacted anti-bullying statute requires West Virginia's state board to develop a model policy to guide districts in approving their own policies and programs.  West Virginia's comprehensive state anti-bullying policy includes the following components:

• Defines bullying (either statewide or local definition)
• Prohibits bullying by students
• Informs students and others of anti-bullying policy
• Enables students and parents to report bullying incidents
• Requires teachers and school staff to report bullying incidents
• Provides immunity to those reporting bullying incidents and protection from reprisal, retaliation or false accusation against victims, witnesses or others with information regarding a bullying incident
• Requires administrators to investigate reported incidents
• Encourages or requires bullying prevention education in schools.

Basis: W.VA. CODE ANN. § 18-2C-1 through -6

Accountability

Statute:
W. Va. Code § 18-2E-5
Administrative Code:

W. Va. Code State R. 126 § 13-1 – § 13-12

West Virginia does not reward but it sanctions districts on the basis of performance. State sanctions include a written warning, offer of technical assistance and more funds, requirement that either district or another entity create and implement a plan for improvement, placement on probation, loss of accreditation, or state take-over of the school district.

West Virginia does not reward but it sanctions schools on the basis of performance. State sanctions of schools include written warning, offer of technical assistance and more funds, requirement that either the school or another entity create and implement a plan for improvement, placement of the school on probation, loss of accreditation, and the state taking over the school.

The state board of education of West Virginia is given the authority to intervene in the management and operation of low-performing schools. These interventions may take the form of: providing instructional programs; and replacing the principal and placing him/her under the sole supervision of the state board.  

This policy was enacted as part of the state accountability system that was in place prior to the enactment of NCLB and appears to be unrelated to NCLB's AYP timeline. [18-2E-5]

Great Public Schools Criteria

Great Public Schools Criteria refers to the seven elements needed for closing the achievement gaps and raising achievement for all students. The seven elements are: (1) readiness to learn, (2) high expectations, (3) quality conditions, (4) qualified staff, (5) accountability, (6) parental involvement, and (7) funding.

Read more below about the Great Public Schools Criteria in Wisconsin.

Readiness to Learn

Early Learning Centers.The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, responding to increasing concerns at attitudes and practices which erode children’s legal rights to enter public school and participate in a beneficial educational program, adopted what the National Association of Early Childhood Specialists in State Departments of Education (NAECS/SDE) has developed in terms of principles for kindergarten entry and placement including: enrolment in kindergarten based on their legal right to enter, rejecting retention as a viable option for young children, not using tests at kindergarten entrance to create barriers to school entry or to sort children into homogeneous groups, and welcoming children as they are into kindergarten settings.

With the current fragmentation of early childhood programs, it is not uncommon for one child to move from child care, to school programs or Head Start, to specialized services, and back to child care all in one day. Transportation, dealing with various providers and different system expectations can have has a detrimental impact on children and their families. More and more communities and their early childhood programs are bringing the different programs into one building and children into the same classrooms. Responding to these conditions, Wisconsin created Early Learning Centers (ELC).

ELCs differ from primary grade school on these 10 points:

1. Governance: Locus of control with staff and parents, i.e., charter status. Government units have oversight on the "intent" of all funding streams.
   Collaboration: At least four programs/funding streams should be included: Regular education, special education, Head Start and child care. Under the ELC roof, the programs are functionally blended. Space also available for health/social service providers as well as family/community functions.
   Hours of the center would be open a minimum of 2,000. Operation: hours/year (9 hours a day, 45 weeks a year).
   Family-Centered: Consumer friendly, designed to meet parent "where they are at." Most important question, "What do you want your child to be like when they grow up?"
2. Staffing: Team teaching, career ladder, continuous improvement, Patterns: adult child ratio low. Teacher child ratio may be high.
3. Facilities: Designed expressly for young children, staffing patterns and parents.
4. Funding: Business manager handles funding streams. Under the roof are endless variations on one program.
5. Accountability: Results based. (How did the kids turn out at age 25?) The ongoing question, "How do we know we're getting there?" Shared responsibility, TQM, portfolios.
6. Curriculum Choices: responsive to child's learning style and respectful of parents values. Developmentally appropriate practices.
7. Community : Multiple connections to the neighborhood. Center Based: serves as hub with satellite connections to other providers (e.g., family day cares, private preschools)
   Source : Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction

Full-day Kindergarten:

• State Policy:Wisconsin state statues do not require or prohibit districts from offering full-day kindergarten. Kindergarten attendance is not mandatory. Full-day kindergarten is funded at a higher level than half-day kindergarten.
• Definition, District Offering, Pupil Attendance: Kindergarten is defined as 437 hours per year, the same number of hours as 1^st grade.
• Funding: Wisconsin spends at least $5,090,000 annually to expand its half-day kindergarten program to a full-day program.
  Source: Education Commission of the States (ECS) Kindergarten Database, 2007 

Quality Conditions

Class Size. Legal Basis: WIS. STAT. ANN. § 118.43.  Enacted 1995.
The statute creates a program called Student Achievement Guarantee in Education (SAGE). The program requires the districts to enter into a five-year achievement guarantee contacts with the department of public instruction.   Class size reduction is one of several requirements for the grants.

Current Average Elementary School Class Size: 20.8

Accountability

Wisconsin does not reward or sanction districts on the basis of performance. Neither does it reward nor sanction schools for the same.

Who Is Affected by Achievement Gaps?

The term "achievement gap" is often defined as the differences between the test scores of minority and/or low-income students and the test scores of their White and Asian peers. But achievement gaps in test scores affect many different groups. Some groups may trail at particular points -- boys in the early years, girls in high school math and science. Differences between the scores of students with different backgrounds (ethnic, racial, gender, disability, and income) are evident on large-scale standardized tests. Test score gaps often lead to longer-term gaps, including high school and college completion and the kinds of jobs students secure as adults.

Student Groups Experiencing Achievement Gaps

• Racial and ethnic minorities
• English language learners
• Students with disabilities
• Boys/girls
• Students from low-income families

Indicators of Achievement Gaps

• Performance on tests (statewide tests, SATs, etc.)
• Access to key opportunities (advanced mathematics, physics, higher education, etc.)
• Attainments (high school diploma, college degree, employment)

The following resources offer more information on groups affected by achievement gaps.

American Indians and Alaska Natives
Report on the Status of American Indians and Alaska Natives in Education (NEA, 2005)
This report looks at educational attainment and performance of American Indian and Alaska Native students and includes the following best practices: using native language and culture to promote success in Indian students; preparing educators to be effective supports for student achievement; reaching out to the community to create success in the classroom; promoting policies that benefit Indian students; and the dilemma of No Child Left Behind and Indian education.

Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders
A Report on the Status of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Education Beyond the "Model Minority" Stereotype (NEA, 2005) ( PDF, 604 KB, 46 pp.)
Describes the diversity among AAPI students and their academic achievement, the racism experienced by AAPI students in our nation's schools, the challenges of creating policies and classroom practices that address AAPI students, and recommendations and resources for action.  

Blacks
A Report on the Status of Blacks in Education—Moving Beyond Barriers Strategies for Black Student Success in the 21st Century (NEA, 2008) ( PDF, 4098 KB, 78 pp) (Note: this file may take a long time to load)
Leading academic, community, and industry experts address three top challenges in the education of today's Black students: closing Black student achievement gaps, educating Black males, and high-school dropout prevention. This report, which opens with a vivid historical and pictorial timeline on Black education, includes a comprehensive overview of each challenge area, pertinent statistics, NEA actions, and strategic recommendations from the experts.

Hispanics
A Report on the Status of Hispanics in Education: Overcoming a History of Neglect (NEA, 2007) ( PDF, 633KB, 90 pp.)
This NEA report finds Hispanic students often face unique challenges in student achievement, influenced by the fact that Hispanics have poverty rates that are two to nearly three times higher than whites; Hispanics cite Spanish as their dominant language and more than 20 percent say they do not speak English or do not speak English well; and 40 percent of the Hispanic population is foreign born. The result is that many Hispanic students must overcome language, cultural and socioeconomic barriers to succeed in school.

Fragile Futures: Risk and Vulnerability Among Latino High Achievers  (Educational Testing Service, 2005) ( PDF, 38 pp.)
This report profiles high-achieving Latino students and the language, culture, and immigration-status issues that can affect their motivation and achievement. The author examines policy options that can potentially increase the academic achievement and educational attainment of Latino high achievers, and makes recommendations for programs and policies to help the many Latino high achievers.

Great Public Schools Criteria

Great Public Schools Criteria refers to the seven elements needed for closing the achievement gaps and raising achievement for all students. The seven elements are: (1) readiness to learn, (2) high expectations, (3) quality conditions, (4) qualified staff, (5) accountability, (6) parental involvement, and (7) funding.

Read more below about the Great Public Schools Criteria in Washington.

Readiness to Learn

Full-day Kindergarten:

• State Policy: A definition of the minimum number of hours for full-day kindergarten is not specified in Washington state statutes. Districts are not required to offer full-day kindergarten and children are not required to attend. Washington distributes funding to districts based on a teacher:student ratios.
• Definition, District Offering and Pupil Attendance: Washington defines kindergarten as 450 hours per year.
  Source: Education Commission of the States (ECS) Kindergarten Database, 2007 

Quality Conditions

Class Size. Legal Basis: WASH. REV. CODE ANN. § 28A.505.210. Enacted 2000.
For the state of Washington, the long-term goal is for class sizes to be reduced to no more than 18 students per teacher in grades K-4.  In 2000, voters approved Initiative 728,  which became effective in 2001. Districts receive funding for the purpose of achieving higher academic standards through smaller class sizes.

Current Average Elementary School Class Size: 23.9

Accountability

Washington does not reward nor sanction districts or schools on the basis of performance.

What are the characteristics of effective schools endorsed by the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction? High performing schools tend to show evidence of the following nine characteristics:

1. Clear and Shared Vision and Process
   Everybody knows where they are going and why. That vision is shared-everybody is involved. The vision is developed from common beliefs and values, creating a consistency of purpose.
   
   
2. High Standards and Expectations
   Teachers and staff believe that all students can learn and that they can teach all students. There is recognition of barriers for some students to overcome, but the barriers are not insurmountable. Students become engaged in an ambitious and rigorous course of study.
   
   
3. Effective School Leadership
   Effective leadership is required to implement change processes within the school. This leadership takes on many forms. Principals often play this role, but so do teachers and other staff, including those in the district office. Effective leaders advocate, nurture, and sustain a school culture and instructional program conducive to student learning and staff professional growth.
   
   
4. High Levels of Collaboration and Communication
   There is constant collaboration and communication between and among teachers of all grades. Everybody is involved and connected, including parents and members of the community, to solve problems and create solutions.
   
   
5. Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment Aligned with the Standards
   Curriculum is aligned with the Essential Academic Learning Requirements (EALRs). Research-based materials and teaching and learning strategies are implemented. There is a clear understanding of the assessment system, what is measured in various assessments and how it is measured.
   
   
6. Frequent Monitoring of Teaching and Learning
   Teaching and learning are continually adjusted abased on frequent monitoring of student progress and needs. A variety of assessment procedures are used. The results of the assessment are used to improve student performances and also to improve the instructional program.
   
   
7. Focused Professional Development
   Professional development for all educators is aligned with the school’s and district’s common focus, objectives, and high expectations. It is ongoing and abased on high need areas.
   
   
8. Supportive Learning Environment
   The school has a safe, civil, healthy, and intellectually stimulating learning environment. Students feel respected and connected with the staff, and are engaged in learning. Instruction is personalized and small learning environments increase student contact with teachers.
   
   
9. High Level of Community and Parent Involvement
   There is a sense that all educational stakeholders have a responsibility to educate students, not just the teachers and staff in schools. Parents, as well as businesses, social service agencies, and community colleges/universities all play a vital role in this effort.

Great Public Schools Criteria

Great Public Schools Criteria refers to the seven elements needed for closing the achievement gaps and raising achievement for all students. The seven elements are: (1) readiness to learn, (2) high expectations, (3) quality conditions, (4) qualified staff, (5) accountability, (6) parental involvement, and (7) funding.

Read more below about the Great Public Schools Criteria in Vermont.

Readiness to Learn

Full-day Kindergarten:

Started in 1987, Vermont's Early Education Initiative (EEI) provides grants to increase the accessibility of preschool programs in the state’s communities. In 1987, the legislature established the program in response to concern that some children were "falling between cracks" and not ready for kindergarten. The goal was to ensure kindergarten readiness for children and to increase parent involvement. (ECS) Public school, Parent-Child Centers, private child care programs, and Head Start agencies receive direct funding from the state. Collaborative planning is an EII requirement, and state Prekindergarten funds must be coordinated with other resources and programs. The Vermont Early Learning Standards have recently become a curricular requirement for EEI programs, and professional development programs for Pre-K and kindergarten teachers have been aligned with those standards. (NIEER)

Even Start Family Literacy. The Even Start Family Literacy program is a federally funded program model that integrates adult, parenting and early childhood education into a comprehensive family literacy program to break the intergenerational cycle of poverty and low literacy. Even Start programs offer educational services primarily children from birth through age 7 and their parents. Families are selected for services based on their level of economic and educational needs. Even Start builds on existing high-quality adult, early education and parenting services to provide family-centered programming of sufficient duration and intensity to support high educational achievements and economic self sufficiency.

Essential Early Education (EEE). This statewide program coordinates early childhood special education services for children ages 3 through 5. Services are administered by local school districts in conjunction with local early childhood service providers to ensure inclusive educational environments.

For more information go to: http://www.state.vt.us/educ/new/html/pgm_earlyed/pubs.html

Quality Conditions

School Safety. Vermont's anti-bullying statute requires Vermont's superintendent to develop a model school plan on student discipline that includes an intervention strategy for school staff to deal with bullying. Under this statute, schools are also required to collect data on the number of reported incidents of bullying and the number of incidents that have been verified, and to make such data available to the commissioner and to the public. In addition, on or before January 15, 2007, the commissioner of education shall report on the implementation of the anti-bullying provision (Vt. Stat. Ann. Tit 16, § 165) to the senate and house committees on education. The report shall include pertinent data such as incidences of bullying gathered by school districts.  Vermont's comprehensive state anti-bullying policy includes the following components:

• Defines bullying (either statewide or local definition)
• Prohibits bullying by students
• Informs students and others of anti-bullying policy
• Enables students and parents to report bullying incidents
• Requires teachers and school staff to report bullying incidents
• Provides immunity to those reporting bullying incidents and protection from reprisal, retaliation or false accusation against victims, witnesses or others with information regarding a bullying incident
• Requires administrators to investigate reported incidents
• Encourages or requires bullying prevention education in schools.

Basis: VT. STAT. ANN. tit. 16, § 11, 165, 565, 1161a

Great Public Schools Criteria

Great Public Schools Criteria refers to the seven elements needed for closing the achievement gaps and raising achievement for all students. The seven elements are: (1) readiness to learn, (2) high expectations, (3) quality conditions, (4) qualified staff, (5) accountability, (6) parental involvement, and (7) funding.

Read more below about the Great Public Schools Criteria in Virginia.

Readiness to Learn

Full-day Kindergarten.  Virginia defines kindergarten as 3 hours per day for 540 hours per year. Districts are not required to offer full-day kindergarten and children are not required to attend. Virginia funds full-day kindergarten at the same level as grades 1-12. Source: Education Commission of the States (ECS) Kindergarten Database, 2007

The Virginia Preschool Initiative, established in 1995 distributes state funds to schools and community-based organizations to provide quality preschool programs for at-risk four-year-olds unserved by Head Start. (VDOE) The Virginia Preschool Initiative offers full-day (six hours) early care and education, parent involvement, child health and social services, and transportation to families with four-year-olds at risk of school failure. Specific risk factors for admittance are chosen and identified at the local level. (NIEER) Most programs are operated by public schools and some by community-based organizations. Local coordinating teams include public schools, as well as Head Start, child care, health and social service providers. (ECS)

Even Start Family Literacy. The Virginia Department of Education administers the Even Start Family Literacy program. This is a federally funded program that is designed to improve the academic achievement of young children and their parents, especially in the area of reading.
Even Start Family Literacy is a family-centered program which embraces the whole family as "the student". It provides participating families with an integrated program of early childhood education, adult education and basic skills instruction, parenting education, and interactive literacy activities between parents and their children. All projects have some home-based instruction and provide for the joint participation of parents and children.

Even Start is a state-administered discretionary program. In addition, the United States Department of Education administers direct discretionary grants to federally recognized Indian tribes and tribal organizations, for migratory families, and to the outlying areas.

Virginia has also created Virginia's Foundation Blocks for Early Learning: Standards for Literacy, Mathematics, Science, and History and Social Science. The purpose of this document, then, is to provide early childhood educators a set of minimum standards in literacy, mathematics, science, and history and social science with indicators of success for entering kindergarten based on scientifically based research. The standards reflect a consensus of children's conceptual learning, acquisition of basic knowledge, and participation in meaningful and relevant learning experiences. Alignment to Virginia's Kindergarten Standards of Learning (SOL), to Virginia's Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening (PALS), and to the national guide, Teaching Our Youngest, A Guide for Preschool Teachers and Child-Care and Family Providers, produced by the Early Childhood-Head Start Task Force (2002), US Department of Education and US Department of Health and Human Services is evident. (VDOE)

The Arlington Public Schools implements the above policy. Results from the Program Evaluation of the Early Childhood Programs revealed that:

• Kindergartners who attended Arlington Public Schools preschools passed the kindergarten literacy screening at a higher rate than the average entering kindergartner.
• Kindergartners who attended Arlington Public Schools preschools and qualify for lunch subsidies passed the kindergarten literacy screening at higher rate than the average entering kindergartner.
• 100 percent of African-American children who attended APS preschools passed the kindergarten literacy screening.
• Hispanic students who attended APS preschools passed the screening at higher rates (VPI: 75.6 percent, Montessori: 83 percent) than the rate for all Hispanic students (56.3 percent).
• Children who attended any preschool passed the screening at higher rates than those who did not attend any preschool (APS preschool: 87.5 percent, all non APS preschool: 86.3 percent, no preschool: 57.4 percent).
• Children who qualify for lunch subsidies benefit more from attending preschool (children with lunch subsidies with APS preschool: 84.4 percent, with other preschools: 71.1 percent, with no preschool: 47.5 percent passing rates on kindergarten screening).
• One hundred, forty-one (141) children who qualify for lunch subsidies did not attend any preschool. These children scored the lowest of any group on the kindergarten readiness test.
• An additional 162 children who did not qualify for lunch subsidies did not attend any preschool (making a total of 303 children who attended no preschool). These children scored the second lowest of any group on the kindergarten readiness test.
  For more information go to:
  http://www.doe.virginia.gov/VDOE/Instruction/Elem_M/early.html

Quality Conditions

Class Size. Legal Basis: VA. CODE ANN. § 22.1-199.1. Enacted 1996.
The Virginia Legislature established a long-term goal of reducing pupil-teacher ratio and class size for K-3 in those schools with high or moderate concentrations of at-risk students.   Local districts are to provide matching funds based on the composite index of local ability to pay. The State Board of Education is to budget accordingly.
Current Average Elementary School Class Size: 19.4

School Safety. The state enacted an anti-bullying statute that mandates the state board to define "bullying" in its Student Conduct Policy Guidelines. The character education program in every school must also address the inappropriateness of bullying.
Basis: VA. CODE ANN. § 22.1-208.1, 22.1-279.3:1, 22.1-279.6; § 8.01-220.1:2; 2004 H.B. 629 (new section)

Accountability

Statute:
Va. Code Ann. § 22.1-19, § 22.1-253.13

Administrative Code: 8 VAC § 20-131-10 – § 20-131-340

Virginia does not reward nor sanction districts on the basis of performance.

Virginia does not reward but it sanctions schools on the basis of performance. State sanctions of schools include the offer of technical assistance and more funds, a requirement that the school create and implement a plan for improvement, placement on probation, and loss of accreditation.

NEA Grant to Close Achievement Gaps

The Virginia Education Association plans to use its NEA Grant to Close Achievement Gaps to pass legislation to bring teacher salaries to the national average and attain legislation and funding for statewide pre-school. They also plan to create regional teams that will organize and lobby for sound policies to close achievement gaps, and will host four regional conferences to heighten awareness of achievement gaps. For more information, contact project coordinator Betty Lambdin (blambdin@veanea.org).

Great Public Schools Criteria

Great Public Schools Criteria refers to the seven elements needed for closing the achievement gaps and raising achievement for all students. The seven elements are: (1) readiness to learn, (2) high expectations, (3) quality conditions, (4) qualified staff, (5) accountability, (6) parental involvement, and (7) funding.

Read more below about the Great Public Schools Criteria in Utah.

Readiness to Learn

Full-day Kindergarten:

• State Policy: A definition of the minimum number of hours for full-day kindergarten is not specified in Utah state statutes. Districts are not required to offer full-day kindergarten and children are not required to attend. Utah provides the same level of funding for both half-day kindergarten and full-day kindergarten.
• Definition, District Offering and Pupil Attendance: Utah defines kindergarten as 450 hours per year.
• Funding: Utah provides less funding for full-day kindergarten than for grades 1-3. Source: Education Commission of the States (ECS) Kindergarten Database, 2007

In 2002, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awarded $3.9 million to Centro de la Familia  in Salt Lake City to continue its Migrant Head Start program for one year. Centro de la Familia de Utah is a private, nonprofit organization founded in 1975 to address the unmet needs of the Latino community. The center's Migrant Head Start program offers comprehensive child development services that include education, health and family services, parent involvement, services to children with disabilities, transportation, and nutrition components for low-income, mobile migrant children and their families. Seven sites throughout Utah serve over 2,000 children and their parents. (UDE)

Quality Conditions

Class Size. Legal Basis: UTAH CODE ANN. § 53A – 17a-124.5. Enacted 1992 This statute mandates that districts must reduce average class size in grades K-8, with emphasis on K-2.  The budgeted state contribution, for the 2004-5 fiscal year, toward the class size reduction program is $65,902.946. (UTAH CODE ANN. § 53a-17a-1404) Current Average Elementary School Class Size: 23.7

Accountability

Utah does not reward or sanction districts on the basis of performance. The schools too are neither rewarded nor sanctioned on the basis of performance.

Great Public Schools Criteria

Great Public Schools Criteria refers to the seven elements needed for closing the achievement gaps and raising achievement for all students. The seven elements are: (1) readiness to learn, (2) high expectations, (3) quality conditions, (4) qualified staff, (5) accountability, (6) parental involvement, and (7) funding.

Read more below about the Great Public Schools Criteria in Texas.

Readiness to Learn

Full-day Kindergarten:

According to a study by NIEER, Texas' Public School Initiative was established in 1988 and provides half-day preschool primarily for four-year-olds from low-income families. Children qualify for the program if they are eligible for free or reduced price lunch, unable to speak and understand the English language, or homeless. Public School Prekindergarten programs are part of the K-12 system, and are thus supported by a combination of state and local funds. Individual school districts are responsible for operating prekindergarten programs but are encouraged to consider using Head Start or local child care providers as program sites. All districts with 15 or more eligible children who are at least four years old are required to offer the prekindergarten program. Although not required, full-day programs and access for three-year-olds are provided in some locations with the use of additional district and state funding.

Annual grants that have allowed some districts to provide full-day services have been reduced by the Legislature for the 2003-2004 and 2004-2005 schools years from $100 million to $92.5 million. These expansion grants are awarded on a competitive basis, with priority going to districts with low third-grade reading scores. (NIEER)

The Texas Early Childhood Education Coalition (TECEC) was created out of interest from a set of meetings hosted by the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health in the spring and summer of 2002. Participants from 23 organizations were in attendance and identified their overarching goal as working to ensure access to quality early childhood education for all children in Texas.

At the same time, Children's Defense Fund, along with 27 groups organized a statewide conference called "Child Care: Because We All Do!" on October 23, 2002, in order to capture the local needs and priorities for quality early childhood education programs in Texas and to further investigate potential support for a statewide Coalition. In January 2003, the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health awarded a grant to Children's Defense Fund Texas to house TECEC in order to develop a statewide Coalition with a mission of building a system of quality early care and education that prepares children in Texas for success in their education and life.

In the summer of 2003, TECEC developed a formal partnership with the Texas Program for Society and Health in order to create a long-term public policy agenda to improve early childhood education and development in Texas to ensure that every child entering kindergarten is well prepared for school. Preliminary policy recommendations for The Texas Plan were developed over a six-month period through the work of many early childhood, education, and health professionals; elected officials; and community and business leaders throughout the state and were unveiled at a statewide summit at Rice University in January 2004.

During the 78th Legislative Session, TECEC played a critical role in the passage and implementation of Senate Bill 76, which represents a significant first step towards integration of Pre-Kindergarten, Head Start, and Child Care through community partnerships in the state of Texas. Currently, the Coalition is represented on committees to guide implementation. Texas Senate Bill 76 seeks to provide voluntary full-day, full-year care to Texas parents whenever possible.

Senate Bill 76, authored by Senator Judith Zaffirini, represents a significant first step towards the coordination of pre-kindergarten, Head Start and child-care in the state of Texas. In the midst of severe budget shortfalls and difficult cuts to social services, SB 76 is a bipartisan, revenue-neutral solution designed to increase efficiency and simplify access. The bill creates more flexibility for service providers to innovate with new and existing programs, as well as develop a model for quality of service to guide the success of these efforts. While allowing for room to experiment, it provides a clear path for integrating early education with childcare to ensure that resources are used efficiently to support Texas families.

The bill includes several areas of action to assist providers in coordinating services and to create a foundation for further legislation next session. SB 76 requires that school districts considering the creation of a pre-kindergarten program to examine co-locating with an existing Head Start or childcare program in the area. It empowers the Commissioner of Education to provide for coordinating programs including the waiver of rules to ensure the greatest flexibility available under federal law and the creation of model program standards for early childhood care and education.

Programs will also be required to coordinate with the Texas Education Agency (TEA), the Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) and local workforce development boards regarding subsidized childcare services. In particular, this coordination will require that childcare providers supply parents with information on the childcare and early education resources in the community including referral agencies, pre-kindergarten programs and Head Start opportunities. The intent of coordination will be to ensure that parents are able to take full advantage of available services and that full-day, full-year childcare and early education is available to low-income parents whenever possible.

Senate Bill 76 also takes concrete action towards the development of standards to evaluate the effectiveness of childcare and early education programs in considering