November 2007
	A Tale of Three Sisters

From Fishing Village to Tourist Town

Immigrant Families Experience Culture Clash, Causing Impressionable Students to Drop School

by John Rosales

For the sake of appearance, 12th-grader Tu’uali’i Pele would wake up early, grab her books and catch a city bus to school with her two younger sisters.

After the 15-minute ride to Honolulu’s President William McKinley High School, Tu’uali’i, nicknamed Stuki, would walk to the beach or mall to meet others who had dropped out. This went on for almost three months last year.

“I didn’t find out until the Friday before the Sunday she was supposed to graduate!” remembers Mareta Pele, still stunned by the memory of her daughter’s action. “When her counselor called to tell me, I couldn’t believe it. She (Stuki) got a licking.”

Stuki joined the 15 percent of students who drop out in Hawaii, according to the Hawaii State Department of Education (HSDOE). Even more, she became another Pacific Islander student who was discouraged from finishing school for one reason or another.

“I started hanging around with the wrong people and trying to please my friends and what they think,” says Stuki, 18. “They would call me a loser and a geek for going to class.”

Typically, peer pressure is but one of several barriers affecting Asian and Pacific Islanders (APIs), a diverse population whose heritages represent more than 50 ethnic groups and over 100 languages. One of the fastest growing groups in the nation, APIs comprised 5.4 percent of the U.S. population in 2006, compared to fewer than 3 percent in 1990 and 1.5 percent in 1980.

Chronic absenteeism, poverty, lack of role models or a combination of all of the above pose particular challenges for some students. For immigrant students like Stuki, senior Miriama, 17, and Beatriz, a 14-year-old freshman, the struggle to finish school is compounded by poor English skills and culture clash.

Like many immigrants students who leave their motherland setting, Stuki was a good student during her primary schooling in her village of Amaluie, where most teachers hold Samoan teachers’ certificates and the medium of instruction is Samoan. The government maintains secondary schools in which the language of instruction changes to English.

The spark that led to Stuki’s disenchantment with school involved a teacher’s cultural insensitivity, she says. When the teacher intimated that Samoans who excel “think they’re all that,” Stuki felt she and her culture had been insulted.

“A lot of teachers don’t understand our (Samoan) traditions,” she says. It was another teacher’s remark about a particularly good assignment Stuki submitted that also struck her as derogatory.

“She (teacher) said, “I never knew you were that smart,” says Stuki. Eventually, Stuki began to skip classes taught by those teachers, then others, according to her mother.

“She only went to classes she liked,” says Pele. Skipping school was sporadic at first, and then became habitual.

“When I knew I could do it, I just kept on doing it,” Stuki says of her truancy.

Like many immigrant and first-generation families, the Peles do not have the extended family support system in Honolulu that would have intervened on Stuki’s behalf. They are newcomers, if not strangers in a strange land. Their family’s base in American Samoa is about 2,500 miles southwest of Hawaii and about 1,800 miles northeast of New Zealand.

Mrs. Pele’s motivation to move from her village to Honolulu in 2002 is typical of many Pacific Islander families. Many leave the tranquil blue waters and slow pace of village life to find jobs and opportunity in Mainland America.

Approximately 990,000 Pacific Islanders and 14.3 million Asian Americans (two-thirds foreign born) reside in the U.S. While Hawaii is the nearest state, California, New York, Texas, New Jersey, Illinois, Washington, Florida, Virginia, and Massachusetts also contain large API populations. Native Hawaiian, Samoan, Guamanian, Tongan, Fijian and Marshallese are the six largest Pacific Islander ethnicities in the U.S. Many, like Pele, arrived ready to take whatever jobs they could find in order to build a future for their children.

“I brought my kids here for the education,” says Pele, who earns almost $17,000 a year as a packer for Kakaako Bakers. “You want the best for them.”

With an almost 18 percent poverty rate among Pacific Islanders, Pele knew that the family  would be living paycheck to paycheck in low-income housing.  The sacrifice that Pele is making for her children is apparent when she explains about leaving a steady job at an Amaluie tuna cannery and five-bedroom, two-bath house across from the beach.

“It’s our family home,” she says. “I want to retire there.”  

Pele, 45, finished high school in 1980 at an all-girls Catholic school near her island village. She is proud of her oldest daughter, Elizabeth Emanuele, 26, a community college graduate who lives with her husband in Pele’s modest three-bedroom apartment. Pele shares a room with Miriama and son Peo, 7, while Stuki and Beatriz occupy the third room.

Though modest in appearance and furnishing, the living room has a computer with Internet access, TV, microwave and well-stocked refrigerator. A sofa and dining table also compete for space in the living area. Photos of family members, cherubs and a Sacred Heart of Jesus tapestry hang side-by-side with the children’s school certificates and achievement awards. The $225 the Pele family pays for rent is reasonable considering Honolulu’s high cost-of-living.

As is customary in American Samoa, every evening the family gathers for prayers voiced in Samoan.  “I don’t want them to forget to speak Samoan,” says Pele. “It’s who they are.”

Samoa is a traditional society with a distinctive Polynesian cultural heritage. There are over 360 villages in Samoa. In Pele’s village, it was inexpensive to live and “everyone knows everyone.” Even more, Pele’s father was the village chief, a role in which he was considered a wise elder who must be consulted on important village matters.

“He had a lot of influence,” she says of her dad, a welder by trade who died in 2000. There are about 18,000 chiefs in Samoa. Villages are made up of customary land owned by the extended family units whose head is a chief.  In addition to missing the slow pace of Amaluie, Pele admits the schools there did not fully prepare her children for Honolulu ’s public schools.

“No way,” she exclaims.

Since leaving school last spring, Stuki has been unable to find a job though has enrolled in an alternative education program which leads to a high school diploma. She is scheduled to graduate in May 2008. Miriama is set to graduate June 1 from McKinley. Beatriz, Class of 2010, is on track at school and still a member of the Polynesian Club.

“I had a downfall and it changed my life,” Stuki says. “I’m trying to make up for it now.”

Return to Tale of Three Sisters

November 2007

Teen Pregnancy

Hawaii's Program for Young Parents

Most public schools in Hawaii offer programs designed to help pregnant mothers and teen parents learn parenting skills while earning credits toward a high school diploma. Through the Comprehensive Student Support System (CSSS), the state offers general counseling support services to students and individualized programs designed for groups with specific needs—from the gifted and talented to those confronted with temporary incarceration or an unplanned pregnancy. Hawaii has the 12th highest teenage pregnancy rate in the nation.

President William McKinley High School in Honolulu has a teen dropout program for student parents. While many schools across the country provide instructional programs for teen parents, most do not have an on-campus day care center as McKinley's. The Infant and Toddler Program is for pregnant and parenting students, female and male who are in grades 7-12. The center, located about 100 yards west of the administration building and class buildings, is a portable administration building that was renovated in 1998 to serve as a care center. The babies there are fondly known as “Tiger Tots,” after the school mascot.

“We want to guide these young women and men in caring for their babies and moving toward  a high school diploma and future goals,” says the center's teacher Heather Itokazu. “A baby can be distracting, but a lot of the student-parents are pretty focused.” Students pay a one-time registration fee of $25 and do daily housecleaning chores at the center in exchange for fulltime, free day care.

The center's Teen Parents Program follows a curriculum titled: GRADS (Graduation, Reality, and Dual-Role Skills) which offers classes on pregnancy, parenting, economic independence and developing a positive self-image. Student-parents must be enrolled in the program before they can leave their children at the center. Participants can earn a half-credit per semester toward their diplomas for attending the parenting and child development classes on feeding, diapering and toilet training.

“Mothers are able to nurse their babies between classes,” says Itokazu. “We're (center's staff) always here for advice.” The center provides for infants and toddlers ages six weeks to three years, and can accommodate up to babies. Itokazu says the student-parents need this child care program: “Without it, they would probably drop out.”

 In addition to Itokazu, the center employs two full-time educational aides, and provides a variety of courses in job preparation, prenatal care, parenting and child-development skills, delaying subsequent pregnancies, and how to balance school, work and family. Before class, student-parents drop off their toddlers (who must be at least six weeks old) and then are required to visit them at recess and lunch time, especially nursing mothers.

Teen parents, like 17-year-old senior Jasmine Chang, spend almost two hours a day several times a week working and studying at the center. Currently, the center has two infants whose parents are seniors, with another baby scheduled to arrive next month. The pregnant student is a ninth-grader. The center can provide daily care for a maximum of nine infants.

Seventeen-year-old Healani Matthews, the only father in the center, says what he learned at the center has been inbvaluable. He speaks about changing his daughter’s diapers and monitoring her coughs and sneezes for symptoms of a cold.

"There are a lot of things you don’t know about babies,” he says, “I’m here because it’s my baby and my responsibility.” 

What's more, Healani explains, his daughter has been added motivation for him to graduate in May.

- John Rosales

Math Wars: Time for a Truce
December 18, 2007 - Pittsburgh public schools conducted an interesting experiment on how to teach math, and they seem to have learned both less and more than they expected.

No More Apples
December 13, 2007 - We asked teachers to tell us about the best -- and worst! -- holiday gifts they've ever received. And, wow!, did they ever.

Don't Drop Out -- Boost Up!
December 10, 2007 - Sometimes all a potential drop out needs is a little boost.

A Centennial Celebration
December 7, 2007 - Elva Cook, 100, receives a long-overdue diploma.

Monkeying With Science
December 6, 2007 - Eighty-two years after Scopes, the head of science education in Texas has resigned because of views on intelligent design.

Survey: U.S. students aren't ready for global economy
December 4, 2007 - U.S. students again ranked in the lower half among the other 56 countries participating and scored below average in student achievement, according to the Programme for International Student Assessment.

Teachers in Georgia Stand Up for Safe Working Conditions
November 30, 2007 - Staff at Lindley Middle School force the administration and district to pay attention to the often-neglected issue of teacher safety.

 

Back to Making the Connection

Resource Spotlight The NEA Foundation has awarded a toolkit planning grant to Pennies for Peace, a service learning program that helps children broaden their cultural horizons, as well as discover their own capacities as philanthropists. Recently highlighted as a model program in President Clinton's new book Giving, Pennies for Peace is finding grassroots support in America's classrooms thanks to NEA members.

Earth Force engages young people as active citizens who improve the environment and their communities now and in the future.

The International Partnership for Service-Learning and Leadership, founded in 1982, is a not-for-profit educational organization incorporated in New York State serving students, colleges, universities, service agencies and related organizations around the world by fostering programs that link volunteer service to the community with academic study.

Learn and Serve America's National Service-Learning Clearinghouse supports the service-learning community in higher education, kindergarten through grade twelve, community-based initiatives and tribal programs, as well as all others interested in strengthening schools and communities using service-learning techniques and methodologies.

Learning In Deed, a $13 million, four-year initiative, will encourage more school systems across the country to adopt service-learning, making quality service-learning opportunities available to youth in every classroom in grades K-12 throughout the country.

The National Center for Learning and Citizenship provides information about service-learning through publications and on the Web site, including a series of issue briefs that address critical service-learning issues. Most of our publications are in a format to download and print. Resources include case studies highlighting successful K-12 programs linking service with learning; research findings, studies and stories about the impact of service, service-learning and volunteerism on students, schools and communities.

National Service-Learning Partnership, founded in 2001, is a national network of members dedicated to advancing service-learning as a core part of every young person's education. Service-learning is a teaching method that engages young people in solving problems within their schools and communities as part of their academic studies or other type of intentional learning activity. 

National Youth Leadership Council For more than two decades, NYLC has led a movement linking youths, educators, and communities to redefine the roles of young people in society. That movement is service-learning, and it empowers youths to transform themselves from recipients of information and resources into valuable, contributing members of a democracy.

Back to Making the Connection

November 2007

Try This!

Write a Grant

Getting a grant doesn’t require a Ph.D. A solid idea and a simple plan can go a long way.

By Cynthia Kopkowski

Educators with a plan to improve their students’ learning environment often have to turn to grants. But just the thought of writing the requisite proposal sends many diving for the extra-strength aspirin.

We talked to those who are well-versed in the grant game to get their suggestions for crafting the ideal pitch. “If you can write a lesson plan, you can write a grant,” says the NEA Foundation’s Michael Thompson. He reviews the hundreds of grant applications sent each year to the Foundation, which awards roughly $2.3 million annually through 250 separate grants. Here are tips for catching his attention, or the notice of government agencies, private groups, corporations, and others willing to open their wallets and help.

Be brave!

Don’t let self-doubt take you out of contention. When Nate Meyer, an eighth-grade language arts and social studies teacher in Downs, Illinois, came up with a plan to create a history-themed mini-golf course for his students, he took a deep breath and filled out an application for a small, $300 grant from the Association of Illinois Middle Schools. To his surprise, he got it. “While this was a drop in the bucket funding-wise, it gave me the confidence to apply for an NEA grant,” Meyer says.

Keep the writing simple

It’s a grant proposal, not a doctoral thesis. This is where many folks get hung up. “Some read like term papers,” says Thompson. While it’s important to follow the grantee’s instructions, few will want a 25-page dissertation. Keeping it simple starts with the abstract or objective. For the grants that he reviews, Thompson wants a two- or three-sentence summary of the project. Then lay out the specifics of the program in bullet points. Don’t try to compete with J.K. Rowling on page count.

Ditto with the organization

When it comes to organizing the narrative part of your application, the authors of Getting the Grant: How Educators Can Write Winning Proposals and Manage Successful Projects encourage thinking like the reviewer who will be examining it. Make that person’s job easier by matching your headings and subheadings directly with the major and minor selection criteria laid out in the request for proposals. “When the reviewers can quickly and efficiently find the narrative associated with each of the selection criteria, they can happily proceed,” write the authors.

Junk the jargon

Impose a ban on “eduspeak” and unfamiliar acronyms. Nowhere in your grant should the following sentence appear: “Using a group of school-age learners, we will endeavor to capitalize on NCLB-specific requirements and shift the paradigm for meeting tangible literary and technological benchmarks.” Reviewers will be much happier to read: “We want to provide one class of third-graders the equipment needed to produce an audiobook.”

Identify measurable points and objectives

Follow up that straightforward statement with specific, measurable goals. Action phrases like “students will demonstrate,” or “they will complete a three-segment project” are a must, Thompson says. Nebulous terms like “students will learn,” or “my class will come to understand,” aren’t specific enough when trying to explain how the project will benefit them.

Bring in other disciplines, technology

It’s a fact of life these days that no classroom is an island. Science teachers have to work on reading skills, and social studies teachers have to add lessons on angles while teaching about the pyramids at Giza. Grantees are often looking for this type of cross-pollination, too, to get more bang for their buck. Pulling in one or two other subjects will bolster your proposal.

Also, analyze your activity and determine whether there is a way to strengthen it with the use of electronics or the development of a related Web site or podcast. The technological “gee whiz” factor can go a long way with grant committees.

Ask for help

San Luis, Arizona, math teacher Jesus Arrizon wouldn’t have considered writing a proposal until his district grants coordinator encouraged him and offered to help him apply for a grant for his program for high-risk middle school students. Coordinators can also be invaluable when it comes to carving out the time to tackle a grant proposal. Arrizon was worried that lack of time would be an issue, but “at the end of [the first grant process] I said, ‘Okay, I’m not going to let these opportunities go by,’” he says.

And the help doesn’t have to come from someone who’s on the district payroll. When Beth Swantz, a fourth-grade teacher in Kalona, Iowa, was trying for a technology grant recently, she asked her husband—who is neither a teacher nor a techie—to read it and see if it made sense to him. Fresh eyes can scan your proposal for embarrassing typos or grammatical errors.

Beyond Candy Bars and Pizza Kits

Teachers from tiny Kalona Elementary aren’t afraid to hunt down big money.

What is it about the tiny school of 250 students perched in rural Kalona, Iowa, (population, 2,293) that makes people want to give it so much money? In the past year, teachers at Kalona Elementary snagged nearly three-quarters of a million dollars in grants.

Fourth-grade teacher Beth Swantz and media specialist Phyllis Casper got a $25,000 grant from the state and a $5,000 grant from the NEA Foundation to teach students oral history skills through podcasting. Gym teacher Jackie Bailey and guidance counselor Nora Kehoe earned $10,000 from the state for a program to get students eating a “mystery vegetable or fruit” every Friday and to outfit every student with custom-fitted bike helmets. Colleague Suzie Swartzendruber, a Title I reading and math and ESL teacher, landed the biggest fish of all: $600,000 in federal grant money for a three-year program teaching Arabic to all students at Kalona and a neighboring elementary school. “It’s very, very unusual,” acknowledges Swantz, who is proud of the staff’s prowess.

It starts with educators’ desire to innovate, to stretch the limits of required curriculum even if it means doing the legwork to fund the extras. “Teachers like me are saying, ‘What else can I do because I’m tired of all the textbook rigamarole,’” Swantz says. “With all the testing...I had given up almost all the fun things about teaching.” She brought the fun back with a plan to get money for iPods and microphones for her students to record interviews that would ultimately become oral history podcasts (Swantz made sure her idea aligned with state standards).

A supportive administration is crucial, Kalona’s teachers say. Their former principal encouraged those who were interested to seek grant opportunities to enhance required lessons, Swantz says. Colleagues can provide invaluable feedback, too, says Swartzendruber. “If I have an idea and take it to my administrators, if it sounds lousy, they’ll let me know.”

Going for a grant isn’t limited to teachers of core subjects, says Bailey. “I knew that there are quite a number of PE grants. My problem is just finding the time to sit down and write it and know what I’m doing.” When she feels unsure, Bailey taps her fellow teachers who have more experience with grants. “We have such a community spirit here that if someone finds out about a grant, they share the information.”

Illustration: David Clark

November 2007

The Guide...to Technology

Tech-induced Tranquility

The right 21st-century tools can help you channel your energy.

By Kevin Savetz

Technology is supposed to make our lives easier, but don’t you sometimes wish it would get with the program and, well, make your life easier? Bountiful junk e-mail, demanding mobile phones, and overburdened schedule-keepers seem to conspire to complicate our lives. Here’s a roundup of technologies that really can lend a digital helping hand.

Start with your e-mail inbox: If junk mail is rampant, a better spam filter can separate the mail you want from the mail you don’t. For the Mac, you can’t do better than SpamSieve ($30). For Windows, MailWasher Pro ($37) fights the good fight against those obnoxious commercial e-mail messages. Your e-mail program may already have a spam filter built in, but these tools are more meticulous mail sorters.

The mobile phone is a miracle of our time, but some days it might seem more of a curse (and that might depend on who’s calling). While new cell phones are loaded with an incredible array of features, a free service called GrandCentral (GrandCentral.com ) can make the phone you already have more useful. GrandCentral provides you with a phone number, and lets you control what happens when people call it. The number can ring all of your phones at once (home and mobile, for example) so callers don’t have to find you. You can screen incoming calls before accepting them, or choose to have peskier acquaintances go directly to voicemail without disrupting you. Checking your messages won’t be such a chore, either; GrandCentral will deliver them to your e-mail inbox as audio files.

HOW I…Chose My New Computer When it came time to invest in a new computer, Marsha Chevalier, who teaches grades 1-8 in Santa Rosa, California, and travels a lot, knew she wanted a laptop. Her other requirements were: compatibility with computers at her school; a big, clear display; lots of memory; and a solid guarantee. Chevalier turned to several sources for advice, including salespeople, a computer-savvy friend, and Web sites. “I checked online first for pricing, features, and specials,” she said. Next she test drove all the laptops she could and grilled the sales floor folks about the differences between models. In the end, Marsha chose the Apple MacBook Pro laptop, and is “more than delighted” with the computer and the software that came loaded on it.

Here’s another phone tool, this one from Google: Call 800-GOOG-411 for free directory assistance instead of paying your provider’s inflated 411 fees.

Struggling to keep your family organized and in touch? Cozi can be the tech solution. The free service includes a calendar that can be shared among everyone in the house—when one person adds something to his calendar, everyone in the house can know about it. When you’re away from the computer, the service will send you schedule reminders via a phone call or text message. Although geared to families, teachers can use Cozi for team teaching and other collaborative work.

Finally, when you hunker down on the couch to watch some TV or a movie at the end of the day, technology can make relaxation time better, too. If you haven’t tried a digital video recorder such as TiVo, you are missing out: The device lets you pause live TV, or better yet, you can skip right over the commercials. (Boxes start at $99, plus activation fee) TiVo can also make trips to the video store a thing of the past: The new Amazon Unbox service lets you rent or buy movies using your remote control. It’s just like watching movies in a hotel room, without the overpriced mini-bar.

200 billion compact discs have been sold since the first CD—ABBA’S The Visitors—rolled off the presses 25 years ago. Today, sales of CDs are declining, in part because of the popularity competition from online music services. (Source: www.tgdaily.com/content/view/33437/113 )

It’s New! NEA Click & Save

Deals and discounts for NEA members at hundreds of local and national retailers, including leading technology and electronics providers such as Circuit City, Dell, Panasonic, Toshiba, ViewSonic and Sharper Image. You can create a customized shopping profile to receive e-alerts on only the types of products you want. Get your holiday shopping started at www.neamb.com/clickandsave.

Photo: Meiko Arquillos

 

Go Green in Time for the Holidays
	Support Sustainability Americans spent roughly $4.5 billion during the 2006 holiday shopping season. Imagine if that money all went to green businesses—those committed to environmental sustainability, sweatshop-free labor, fair trade, and cruelty-free products. Using Co-op America’s National Green Pages™ (www.coopamerica.org ), you’ll find nearly 3,000 businesses that fit the bill and offer everything from recycled glass goblets to chocolate treats that are not the product of child labor.
	Gifts We Could All Use Longing to replace frenzied mall runs with peaceful family time this holiday season? You’re not alone. The Center for a New American Dream—a group that helps Americans consume responsibly—says their national surveys consistently show most Americans “feel put upon by the commercialization of the season and want more of what matters…not just more stuff.” Among the host of resources on the center’s site is a downloadable template for Gift of Time Cards, which pledge the giver to spend time, not necessarily money, on loved ones. www.newdream.org/holiday/
	Eco-friendly, Year Round It’s been dubbed “The Green CNN.” TreeHugger.com is a media outlet with a global network of writers offering newsletters, videos, and radio shows for green news, solutions, and product information. Want to find out how other treehuggers keep their holiday season merry and bright? Get gift ideas for the environmental activist and the eco-challenged alike in treehugger’s annual gift guide. And don't miss their year-round feature “How to Green Your Gifts.” www.treehugger.com

Photo: Andresr

 

Comparing Online Photo Services Online photofinishers’ prints rival or exceed the quality from your local drugstore. Once you’ve uploaded your pics, these online services let you get creative. Here’s a breakdown on what the leading sites have to offer. *per 4x6 print KODAK EASYSHARE WEBSHOTS EZ PRINTS SNAPFISH SHUTTERFLY Price* $.15 $.15 $.19 $.12 $.12 – .15 URL Kodakgallery.com Webshots.com ezprints.com Snapfish.com Shutterfly.com Special features 35mm and Advantix processing is available, using pre-paid mailers. Spend way too much time viewing and rating other users’ best shots. The site may be sparse, but it’s easy to use. Send pictures from your cell phone to an online album. You can have prints shipped to you or pick them up at your local Target store. Online sharing Unique Photo Voice feature lets you narrate to friends as you share photos online. Primarily a photo sharing community, Webshots sharing features outdo other sites. Picture sharing is only available in the “classic” version of the site. You can share pictures with friends, but they will need to sign up for a (free) account. Share your pictures with password protection or choose to let anyone see them. Fancy, fun picture products “Collage prints” let you put oodles of pictures on one page, up to a 20”x30” poster size. “Canvas prints” put your picture on mounted canvas, like a painting. Picture jigsaw puzzles and calendars are among the items you can order. Order mugs, greeting cards, and other products emblazoned with your best pics. Custom framing service delivers framed and matted pictures. Our panel says: You can share photos with friends, family, and colleagues without flooding their inbox...they can just click on a link. —John Allman, counselor, Virginia This site offers the most sharing choices. You can publish pics to your own site or blog. You can view professional photographers’ work, and the staff blog is a fun read. —Staff tester Creating personalized greeting cards is less expensive on ezprints than on some of the other sites. —Staff tester   Uploading is push-button simple, although re-arranging photos is still a little clunky. —Staff tester My friends and family love the convenience of ordering their own prints from my “shared pictures” online. —Kristi Carpenter, 7th grade teacher, Iowa

 

November 2007

President's Viewpoint

Every Coin Has Two Sides

Uncovering the Model Minority Myth

What group comes to mind when you read the following: top of the class, high test scores, and hard working?

If you guessed Asian Americans, you are seeing the power of the “model minority” stereotype. It is true that Asian Americans, examined statistically as a single group, have in many ways done extraordinarily well. Among the major racial and ethnic minority groups in the U.S., Asian Americans have the highest rate of college degree attainment, the highest number of advanced degrees, and the highest percentage of workers in high-skill occupations.

Because of this success, some have held Asian Americans out as the defining example of what it means to achieve the American dream, declaring Asian Americans as the “model minority.”

Yet, if we take a closer look at the numbers, they reveal a more complex side to this remarkable story. Without question, the model minority myth has camouflaged the unique history and socioeconomic characteristics of widely-differing Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. In particular, it has hidden the widespread challenges facing Southeast Asian and Pacific Islanders in the public education system.

This month we explore the dropout crisis through the eyes of three sisters who attend McKinley High School in Hawaii,  which has the highest percentage of Asian Pacific Islanders in the country. NEA members in Hawaii point to cultural and language barriers in the classroom as well as prejudice and unrealistic expectations as contributors to the academic hurdles faced by Asian Pacific Islander students and the high school’s 15 percent dropout rate.

The myth that all Asian Americans are high-achievers can be detrimental because it fails to address those students who need help, support, and focused resources to succeed. Team NEA, to continue to allow these challenges to go unnoticed and unaddressed would be irresponsible and perilous to a community that is seeking our help.

In response, we are urging a number of initiatives to improve API achievement. They include expanding the research on APIs by disaggregating the data and experiences of each ethnicity. This will lead to the creation of support services and instruction where they are most needed.

NEA also supports federal policies to ensure schools have more capacity to serve English-language learners and to ensure that there is more outreach to API parents, including bilingual support.

Providing every child, regardless of race, income or ethnicity, with a quality education is a basic right that our public schools and policymakers must deliver. To make this happen, we must provide all students with the tools to fulfill their limitless potential.

-NEA President Reg Weaver

Photo: Dima Gavrysh

November 2007

Leading the Way

Changing the Course of NCLB

by Tim Walker

Take your time, just get it right. That was the message delivered in person by NEA President Reg Weaver to the House Committee on Education and Labor on September 10. Weaver was on Capitol Hill to testify on the proposed changes to Title I of the No Child Left Behind law, the current version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, outlined in a 435-page draft bill submitted two weeks earlier by Chairman George Miller (D-CA) and ranking member Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA).

While praising the inclusion of several NEA priorities, including multiple measures for evaluating school quality and student learning and growth models, NEA officials concluded that the changes fell short of meeting the goals necessary to truly reform the law.

In his testimony to the committee, Weaver, speaking on behalf of NEA’s 3.2 million members, urged committee members to seize the opportunity to address the numerous philosophical and structural flaws that underpin NCLB. Merely tinkering with the law is not enough. What is needed, Weaver said, is a “major course correction.”

“The bottom line is this: While we applaud the committee for identifying most of the problematic provisions of current law, we do not believe the committee’s first discussion draft of Title I adequately remedies them,” said Weaver.

NEA has long championed using multiple sources of evidence to establish a more accurate accounting of student performance. Although the committee’s draft bill accepts this idea in principle, the list of measures in the bill is too restrictive. The statewide reading and math test scores would still be the overwhelming factor in measuring school accountability, with such scores counting for at least 75 percent of the rating for a high school and at least 85 percent for an elementary or middle school.

Weaver urged the committee to remedy the wide disparities in educational opportunities and resources. Congress should tailor a bill that delivers tangible results across the board to children of all backgrounds, including provisions for early childhood education, safer schools, smaller class sizes, and school modernization.

Such comprehensive legislation, Weaver said, would send a loud, clear message to educators across the country that students are more than test scores, and “the art and practice of teaching is and must be about more than test preparation.”

Because NEA members have lived under the flaws of NCLB for five years, they are counting on a thoughtful, substantive reauthorization process.

“Our members are united,” Weaver told the committee, “and will stand firm in our advocacy for a bill that supports good teaching and learning and takes far greater steps toward creating great public schools for every child.”

For video of Weaver’s testimony, visit www.nea.org/ref?nclbdraft.

NEA President Reg Weaver testifies in front of members of Congress about proposed changes to NCLB. He was part of a panel of education leaders.

Photos: Sandy Schaeffer

Corzine: NJ Gov. Web site; Sizemore: Official Web site

November 2007

Kozol Book Excerpt

"Dear Francesca"

Jonathan Kozol writes to a Young First-Grade teacher about ‘Lady Marmalade’ and No Child Left Behind.

Jonathan Kozol’s new book, Letters to a Young Teacher , qualifies for one of his favorite adjectives: “incandescent.” It’s based on letters he wrote after watching a young first-year Boston teacher in action and ranges from daily life in elementary school—"the small...world of colored crayons, chalk erasers, pencil sharpeners, and tiny quarrels, sometimes tears and sometimes uncontrollably contagious jubilation"—to the devastating impact of high-stakes tests. Also featured: Kozol’s own harrowing days as a beginning teacher, his memories of Mr. Rogers, and a recipe for green slime.

When I visited your class the first time, there was a child who gave you so much trouble that you had to put him at a table in the corner where he could not constantly distract the other children. I knew that you felt bad about this. You said, “I kind of love him for his style, his defiance, but he has no common sense and absolutely no politeness.”

One of the other kids told me, “He is mean!...”

The next time I was there, you had moved him to a desk beside the blackboard where you had a better chance to keep an eye on him and where you could try to bring him in from time to time to join some of the class activities....

In academic terms, the first sign of a breakthrough I would sense was when he started filling up his spiral pad with bits of narrative that opened up some of those angry memories and fears he’d been reluctant to reveal to you before....

The letter that he gave you a few days ago will, I bet, soon earn a place up on your wall. “Dear Lady Marmalade,” he wrote—he had asked you what you liked for breakfast and you said that you loved orange marmalade and butter on your toast—“I think you wunder full, plus also cheesy, plus also good and wunder full. Love, Captin Black.” I liked especially what he squeezed in down at the bottom of the page: “P.S. And you beter tell me Thank You for this leter be kuz I worrkt hard on it!”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I hate to have to switch gears…to the miseries of high-stakes testing...but you have told me several times how much this troubles teachers at your school....

In most suburban schools, where students tend to do well on…standardized exams, principals and teachers do not feel the pressure to distort curriculum and resort to other drastic measures to protect their schools from federal sanctions….

It’s a different story in too many inner-city schools.…

At P.S. 65,…fifth-grade teachers had to set aside all other lessons for two hours of the day to drill the children for their tests for three months prior to exams….On top of this, two afternoons a week, children had to stay from 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. for yet another session of test-drilling, and on Saturdays they had to come to school again for three additional hours of the same routine during the final four weeks just before exams.

Nobody believed test-drilling was of educative worth. Its only function was to…defend the school from state or federal punishments.

In Atlanta, schools have been intentionally constructed with no playgrounds, so that no time can be wasted on activities that will not raise [test] scores. Chicago has largely abolished recess too; the only exceptions that I know are some high-scoring schools, mostly in affluent communities.

In other districts, standardized exams are now administered to children in their kindergarten year, sometimes beginning in the first weeks of the fall, in order, as the principals say, “to get them ready” for the tests that lie ahead.…Many kindergarten children haven’t yet learned how to hold a crayon or a pencil. They look at these tests in terror. They start to cry. They pee in their pants. The teacher’s not allowed to help them other than by offering some faint encouragement: “Keep going. The whole page. All by yourself.”

November 2007

In Person

Robert Tadjiki

Bend, Oregon
High school special education teacher
USA Today All-Star Teacher, philanthropist

USA Today recognized your skill at getting students with disabilities and mainstream students to mingle. What’s your secret?

Create a fun environment [like “Tadjiki’s foosball lounge”] that lets kids be kids, with or without disabilities.

What kind of field trips do you take with your students?

We go to either Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Seattle every year and always take a trip to the Oregon coast or Portland. Also, we rock climb and explore caves locally.

Favorite thing a student’s ever said to you?

Sometimes students who are not very verbal say “thank you” to me on their last day of high school. That is very powerful.

What’s the biggest project you’ve ever undertaken with your students?

Currently we are fundraising to build a 36-by-48-foot greenhouse. We also created a documentary called “Ready,” about a young girl with learning disabilities, which has been accepted to the Bend Film Festival.

What misconception about students with disabilities would you love to eradicate?

That they can’t do things. My students have dreams and want to achieve them. Also, people with developmental disabilities can work and are an asset to employers.

You adopted a second child from China this year. What’s been the most surprising part of adoption?

How quickly you can come to love a baby you don’t know, and how easily she can become part of the family. I was also surprised at how many children are left in orphanages. My wife and I now support several hundred other orphans through our art business, www.scrollsfromchina.com .

Why did you become an NEA member?

There are three generations of proud teachers in my family.

See the trailer to Tadjiki’s students’ documentary at http://readymovie.com.

Miriam Lynn

Nyack, New York
School nurse
International volunteer nurse, most recently went to Honduras

What injuries have you treated for children in South America?

Cleft lips and palates, deformities from burns.

What was the most intense part of the work there?

Deciding who will be a good surgical candidate and who will not, then having to tell the family.

What items did you take for the people in Honduras?

Medical supplies, bubbles (they’re therapy for cleft lips), coloring books, crayons, dolls, and soccer balls, which are a major hit with the boys.

What’s worse—paperwork for school or for volunteering?

Paperwork for school.

Why did you become an NEA member?

I work in public education and have children of my own.

Is there a misconception about school nurses that bugs you?

“It must be an easy job.” It’s great, but not easy.

November 2007

Service Learning

Making the Connection

Service-learning links curriculum to the real world

by Cindy Long

In 1986, millions of people — many of them students — planned to form a human chain across the continental United States as a charity event. The much-hyped “Hands Across America” was supposed to raise money to fight homelessness and teach students something about civic action. Unfortunately, it fell short of its goal, and students who took part remember little more than having to give up part of their Sunday to join a confused jumble of people clasping hands.

Like “Hands Across America,” mandatory community service requirements of the 1980s and 90s sometimes fell short of their lofty goals. But times have changed. Today’s trend is service-learning, where teachers help students devise service projects that meet a community need as well as the requirements of the curriculum. A classroom lesson on the Vietnam War might be followed by a project that helps local disabled veterans, for example. With a little planning and imagination, service learning can have a profound impact on how students absorb course material. And by meeting the needs of their own towns or cities and interacting face-to-face with the people they’re helping, students witness how their actions can make a lasting difference, like these science students in Nevada and northern Virginia did.

Project: Star Party

Curriculum Tie-in: Native American heritage meets astronomy as students from McDermitt Combined School plot an economic revival.

The ranching and farming town of McDermitt sits on the Nevada-Oregon border. The state line runs right through the old White Horse Inn, where patrons used to order food on the Oregon side to avoid Nevada sales tax. Like many local businesses, the hotel and saloon have long been shuttered. When the mercury mine shut down about 15 years ago, the town’s already feeble economy collapsed and the jobless rate for residents — many from the Paiute-Shoshone Indian reservation — shot up to more than 50 percent, bringing crime and substance abuse with it. So the students of the McDermitt Combined School came up with a project that not only fulfills their state science standards, but also aims to get their town’s economy back on track.

“They don’t want to sit back and let us continue living in poverty,” says John Moddrell, principal of the K-12 school, which has about 156 students. “A lot of kids leave our community when they graduate, but [these students] want to make a difference.”

Click here for more Service-learning resources

Led by science teacher and service-learning coordinator Mary Baird, junior high and high school students surveyed members of the community to find out their hopes for the town. Residents overwhelmingly said they wanted a better job market and to attract the legions of tourists rolling across the West in campers and RVs. But they were against bringing more casinos to the area.

A flash of inspiration arrived a couple of weeks later when four powerful telescopes were delivered to the school through a science education grant. The students decided to hold a stargazing party where community members and visiting tourists could look at the stars and planets while they shared what they’d learned about the solar system in astronomy class. To weave in a piece of their culture, the students would also share Native American traditions and star myths, like the story of a clumsy coyote who tipped over a jar and scattered the stars into the constellations.

At the first star party held last fall, the telescopes were set up in the football field and pointed toward the vast nighttime sky. High school students designed exhibits about the solar system in the gym for visitors to pass through before gathering outside on the field. The older students also teamed up with elementary students to help the younger kids explain to visitors what they’d learned about the universe and to share Native American lore.

“The first party was so successful, we’re holding one each quarter, and the students have invited amateur astronomers from across Nevada to hear their presentations,” says Baird. “After that, they’ll publicize the event in nearby states.”

At the “star parties,” students also perform Native American dances wearing traditional attire. Junior Martica Crutcher performs the “Fancy Dance,” which represents the movements of a butterfly. Each part of her attire has significance, from the eagle feathers in her hair to the brightly colored buckskin she wears.

“When you dance, it’s like a prayer for your people,” she says. “I live on the ‘res,’ and not too many of our people there were doing the old dances or learning about our traditions. They learned a lot about their own culture at the star party, and it got them interested. Now more people are learning the traditional dances and performing them with us.”

Mary Baird says the star parties have not only brought the tribe closer to its culture, they’ve increased pride and empowered the community to build on the momentum created by the students. The tribe has voted to fund an RV park for visiting tourists, complete with teepees and RV hookups, and plans are underway to tap into the small hot springs scattered throughout the Quinn River Valley to create a local pool and park facility.

“The real strength of service-learning is in allowing the kids to develop and plan out their own ideas, and to build stronger ties to the community through their schoolwork,” says Baird. “The payoff is the growth you see in the kids. It’s incredible.”

Project: Computer Cleanup

Curriculum Tie-in: Taking their earth science education to heart, these students became environmental activists.

When a group of kids in an Arlington, Virginia, neighborhood hustled away from one house after another with armfuls of computers, printers, and TVs, residents didn’t call the police. Instead, they held their doors wide open for the H-B Woodlawn School students, who were removing unwanted household electronics as part of a curbside recycling drive they’d instituted.

The students hit on the idea during a field trip to a local stream where they were collecting water samples with their sixth grade science teacher, Kathy Molina. In order to fill their vials, they had to step around an accumulation of garbage—and not the beer bottle/fast-food container/odd tennis shoe kind of trash typically found in suburban creeks. The stream was littered with computers, VCRs, cell phones and batteries, the runoff of a 21st-century neighborhood that doesn’t know what to do with its obsolete electronics.

Arlington County has a facility for recycling or safely disposing of electronics and hazardous materials, but many people don’t know about it and materials must be dropped off at the site. “Realistically, most people aren’t going to do that,” says Molina. “It’s much easier to throw it away.”

Molina’s class was studying water quality as part of a lesson called “Protecting Our Watersheds,” developed by Earth Force, an environmental service-learning organization. The lesson plan takes students through a six-step analytical process to identify environmental problems or threats in their watershed. It then helps them select a problem to address, devise a solution, and take action.

The students agreed the technotrash was the most obvious problem, and th ey knew they could change peoples’ bad habits if they offered an easy, convenient solution. They also realized that, even if they educated people about the recycling facility, many wouldn’t take the time to drive to it. So they dubbed their civic action project, “We’ll Bring it To You.”

On a drizzly Saturday morning, they launched their efforts. Students set out with Molina, their parents, and volunteer teachers to load computer monitors, scanners, radios, and TVs from street curbs into pickup trucks. By the end of the day, they’d delivered 433 items to the recycling facility that might have otherwise wound up in a landfill.

Click here for more Service-learning resources

And they didn’t stop there. After learning that 85 percent of their survey respondents favored quarterly curbside electronics pickups, the students decided to take their case to the County Board. They attended two board meetings, presenting their findings and recommendations in a slideshow.

The board was supportive of the idea and promised to investigate the possibility, Molina says. In the meantime, the students learned about environmental activism, teamwork, problem solving, and decision making.

“We learned that even young people like us can do great things to help the environment,” says Elliot Grace, 12. “It’s kind of neat to think that one day you’ll see a computer and electronics recycling truck and think, ‘Hey, that’s because of us.’”

Please send comments on this story to Cindy Long at clong@nea.org .

]]>http://www.nea.org/neatoday/0711/feature4-right1.htmlhttp://www.nea.org/neatoday/0711/feature4-right1.htmlWed, 24 Oct 2007 04:00:00 GMTSleep with a Virgin [ 34:47 ]

HIV/AIDS awareness meets the arts in an eye-opening play. Watch “"Sleep With A Virgin...A Perspective On AIDS" a play written by Rose McGee, ” with your students and get the discussion going.

This video is a part of the National Youth Leadership Council's service-learning and HIV/AIDS prevention initiative, Y-RISE. For more information, visit www.nylc.org/Y-RISE. (C) 2007 National Youth Leadership Council. All rights reserved.

---

SERVICE LEARNING GLOSSARY

Authentic Needs Assessment: Service learning projects should meet real community needs, and students must actively engage community members in identifying the needs.

Curriculum Integration: The intentional tying of service activities to learning objectives. The service experience enhances the learning of identified concepts, content, and skills. The learning strengthens and enhances the quality and value of the service experience.

Community partnership - Partnerships with community agencies are used to identify genuine needs, provide mentorship, and contribute assets towards completing a project. In a successful partnership, both sides will give to and benefit from the project. In order for this partnership to be successful, clear guides must be implemented as to how often a student engages in service to a particular community agency.

Reflection: The critical component of successful service-learning programs is "reflection," an opportunity for students to think, talk, and write about the service experience. The balance of reflection and action allows a student to be constantly aware of the impact of their work. It is often through reflection that the service activities and the learning objectives connect.

Service-Learning: A method of teaching that enriches learning by engaging students in meaningful service to their schools and communities, and integrating that service with established curricula or learning objectives.

Student Voice: Students being allowed to select, design, implement, and evaluate their service activity.

Contact Cindy Long if you would like a DVD copy of "Sleep with a Virgin...A Perspective on AIDS."

]]>http://www.nea.org/neatoday/0711/esp.htmlhttp://www.nea.org/neatoday/0711/esp.htmlWed, 24 Oct 2007 04:00:00 GMT

November 2007

ESP

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A Magnificent Comeback

How one Arkansas local fought injustice, lost its bargaining power, then won it back.

By John Rosales

The Pulaski County Special School District surrounds North Little Rock and Little Rock School Districts like a doughnut. With 39 school campuses spread over 750 square miles of scenic Arkansas countryside, it can take school bus drivers an hour to reach their first passenger.

Until recently, Pulaski County drivers were not paid for the time they spent driving from the bus compound to the first pick-up point. They were not compensated for conducting pre-trip safety checks or for their drive back to the compound after the last drop-off. Their pay was tied not to hours worked, but to the number of miles driven with at least one student on board, usually about 115 miles.

We lost some good drivers, but "we're rebuilding..and getting stronger," says Emry Chesterfield of his local's long struggle to regain bargaining rights.

“Our bus drivers were on the job for an hour or so before they started getting paid,” says Emry Chesterfield, a bus driver for 31 years and president of the Pulaski Association of Support Staff (PASS). “After you dropped off your last student, your pay just stopped.”

When you multiply 325 drivers times two donated hours per day, “that’s a bunch of time we were giving away,” Chesterfield says.

PASS legally challenged this injustice, and when the superintendent refused to reconsider how drivers are compensated, the drivers went on strike in January 2004. The school board called an emergency meeting during the six-day strike where they stripped PASS of its bargaining rights and began discussions to outsource transportation services to Laidlaw International.

Leaders of PASS—a wall-to-wall unit with more than 400 members representing education support professionals in 60 job positions—began working with the Arkansas Education Association (AEA) and NEA to plan a comeback.

Chesterfield and other PASS members joined Sandi Roy, UniServ director, and Laura Montgomery, president of the National Council of ESPs and vice president of PASS, to devise the following strategy to get their union back:

Go to the Community —Meeting with community leaders and parents to inform them about the impact ESPs have on schools was key. “Our drivers are career people,” Roy says. “They drove the parents of some of the children they are driving now.” PASS members also contacted labor unions, the media, and other AEA locals, who “were willing to do anything we asked,” Chesterfield adds.

Do Research — When the superintendent threatened to contact Laidlaw, Association members “did a lot of research on Laidlaw and privatization,” Roy says. A task force of members contacted school trustees, parents, and teachers armed with research, press clippings, and testimonials from other districts about Laidlaw’s performance record. For example, Roy learned that if Laidlaw drivers miss picking up a student, they aren’t required to return. “PASS drivers always return for students,” she says. They pointed out that Laidlaw was a typical privateer with poor benefits and minimum job security.

Parents began contacting Roy and Montgomery to express their support.

“They had faith and trust and respect for our ESPs,” Roy says. “They realized the relationship between [ESPs] and their children....The students and parents learned there is a team working here.”

Make Your Argument — Staging a comeback included developing a message and driving it home to members, community organizations, the school community, and the media.

“We said over and over again that the bus is an extension of the classroom,” Roy says. They also stressed the long-term relationship between career ESPs and students, parents, and teachers.

The strategy also impressed board members. Last July, they voted to return recognition and bargaining rights to PASS. At press time, negotiators were determining how best to compensate drivers for their time on the job, including the pre-trip safety inspection, and other job issues.

We lost some good drivers, but “we’re rebuilding...and getting stronger,” says Emry Chesterfield of his local’s long struggle to regain bargaining rights.

 

]]>http://www.nea.org/neatoday/0711/desegregation.htmlhttp://www.nea.org/neatoday/0711/desegregation.htmlWed, 24 Oct 2007 04:00:00 GMT

November 2007

Integration Matters

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Is Desegregation Dying?

Schools still seek to promote integration despite a setback in the Supreme Court

By Alain Jehlen

A visitor to Nina Grow’s history class at Westport Traditional Middle School in Louisville, Kentucky, might be surprised to witness her Civil War lesson: A Black student stands in front of the class role-playing a White, pre-Civil War slave owner, vigorously defending slavery as essential to the economy, while a White student argues it’s immoral.

Candace Foster sees both good and bad in Louisville's desegregation plan.

Several miles closer to downtown, in Roger Thomas’ room at Highland Middle School, multi-racial groups of students compare notes on what’s happened in their lives over the last 10 years, discovering that some of their experiences are similar, but others are wildly different.

These students are stretching their minds to understand how the world looks to people with very different backgrounds, and learning valuable lessons for life in a diverse nation. Grow and Thomas couldn’t pull it off without the diversity they see in their classes, which is the result of the school district’s effort to bring children of different races together. But last June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 that Louisville’s integration program is illegal, leaving teachers there wondering what their classes will look like a few years from now.

Louisville has had one of the country’s more successful integration programs, made possible by the fact that the city and the mostly White surrounding area are all part of the same Jefferson County district. The county’s students are about 55 percent White, 35 percent Black, and 10 percent Hispanic and other minorities.

Like most integration plans these days, Louisville’s was not court-ordered; the district wanted to integrate. Now Louisville and many other school systems are scrambling to come up with new ways to accomplish the same goals, namely to:

• End the racial isolation of Black and other minority children.
• Reduce the number of schools with overwhelming majorities of low-income children.
• Help middle-class and affluent White children get to know children from different backgrounds.

Educators have long been among the strongest supporters of efforts to integrate schools by both race and class. Many teachers know firsthand how tough it can be to teach a class full of students who live in poverty. Although there are many poor White students and affluent members of minority groups, racially segregated schools are often overwhelmingly poor.

America’s schools were resegregating even before last June’s court ruling. Research by The Civil Rights Project (www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu ), an authoritative research group, found that after the 1954 Brown school desegregation decision, racial isolation for Black students in the schools fell until the 1980s, but has been gradually rising since then.

Civil Rights Project researcher Erica Frankenberg says one reason is that there are fewer White students in urban areas to integrate the schools than there used to be. Also, she says, an increasingly conservative Supreme Court has been lifting desegregation mandates, district by district.

Meanwhile, isolation of Hispanic students has risen steadily as their numbers have grown. Hispanic students have rarely been included in desegregation efforts, Frankenberg says.

To teacher Roger Thomas, the latest Supreme Court decision was very bad news. “Until housing is integrated, schools need to be intentionally integrated or students from different backgrounds will not have the advantage of learning from each other,” he says.

But Nina Grow has mixed feelings. On the one hand, when her students learn together, it helps them “get ready to go out into the world and deal with a variety of people.” Still, Grow also is beginning to think the advantages of Louisville’s integration program may be outweighed by the disadvantages: the long bus rides, the extra travel problems for students in after-school activities, and the barrier to parent involvement.

Resources for Teaching Diverse Classes Teaching Tolerance www.tolerance.org, founded in 1991 by the Southern Poverty Law Center, provides educators with free educational materials that promote respect for differences and appreciation of diversity in the classroom and beyond.  Share your thoughts on the Supreme Court desegregation decision and efforts to integrate classrooms on our discussion board .

At Shelby Elementary School, which, like Westport, is split almost evenly between White and Black students, physical education teacher Candace Foster shares Nina Grow’s mixed feelings. She says some Jefferson County schools have racial tensions, but “Shelby is like a family, and each side gets to see the other side of the picture, so I do think the kids come out on top.” But Foster, like Grow, doesn’t like the travel headaches for students and parents, especially low-income Black parents without cars.

In the wake of the Court decision, Louisville and many other districts are looking into using social class instead of race in their student assignment plans.

About 40 school systems already integrate students by social class, according to a report by Richard Kahlenberg of The Century Foundation. Among them are big districts like 135,000-student Wake County in North Carolina, and smaller ones like 5,800-student Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Like Jefferson County, Wake County includes a city—Raleigh—along with suburbs and rural areas. It has students of all social classes. Wake NCAE President Jennifer Lenane says the district’s social class diversity is essential to making integration work: There are enough middle class kids to go around so that few schools are mostly poor.

There’s also a dedicated school board, says Lenane. “They are remarkable people. They’ve sometimes had to take a lot of heat” defending integration, she says.

Besides income, Wake County also looks at reading ability. The target is to have no more than 40 percent of a school’s students eligible for subsidized meals, and no more than 25 percent reading below grade level.

The county is divided into small geographic areas that are assigned to schools in a way that’s intended to integrate the schools with the shortest possible bus rides, according to Charles Delaney, the assistant superintendent in charge of making that system work.

But the “shortest possible” bus trip can be long. The district says average rides are roughly 30 minutes each way, with some clocking in at 45 minutes or even longer.

More Separate The racial isolation of Black students fell after desegregation efforts took hold, but today it is rising again. More trends: Hispanics and region-by-region   Blacks in 50-100% Minority Schools   Blacks in 90-100% Minority Schools Source: Civil Rights Project.

Some of the travelers are volunteers. Wake County has an array of impressive magnet schools in low-income areas that pull suburbanites’ offspring into the city—about 9 percent of all students. But, as in many other desegregation programs, the children who take long rides because of school assignments, not choice, are disproportionately low-income and Black. Delaney acknowledges that’s a problem, but says, “by and large, the community accepts that if we’re going to have a real mix, you’ve got to do that. Otherwise, more and more low-income and high-needs students wind up in a particular school because of housing availability, and the middle-class families leave.”

Wake County bus driver Chris Bridges rode the bus himself when he was in high school—an hour and a half each way. “It was my decision,” he stresses. “The school I went to offered a concentration in music. I got up at 5:30 and it was worth it.”

But he thinks children, particularly elementary students, should not be made to take long trips just for the sake of integration.

Cambridge, Massachusetts, is only 6.4 square miles, compared with Wake County’s 850 square miles, so distance is less of a problem there. But integration has still been highly controversial. Some middle-class parents fear their children will be slowed down by poorer children with weaker educational backgrounds and less motivation to learn.

Cambridge resident Julie Craven lives integration both as a parent and a teacher. Her school, King Open, was founded with an individualized, learn-at-your-own-pace philosophy that appealed mostly to middle-class parents, but five years ago, it moved to a building near a housing project. Now it’s about 40 percent low-income, a change that took some adjusting. “Some of the kids coming in had lower test scores and struggled over big words, but they were readers and thinkers,” she says. “They forced us to teach better.” Craven and her colleagues work to expand their children’s vocabularies, move through the material more slowly, and explain things more thoroughly. Craven says many middle-class students benefit from the new approach: “I realized that a lot of them weren’t getting it as much as I thought they were.”

Craven’s 9-year-old is at the same school, and “he’s got a whole range of friends. That will help him move around in the world.”

Resources for Teaching Diverse Classes Teaching Tolerance www.tolerance.org, founded in 1991 by the Southern Poverty Law Center, provides educators with free educational materials that promote respect for differences and appreciation of diversity in the classroom and beyond. Share your thoughts on the Supreme Court desegregation decision and efforts to integrate classrooms on our discussion board .

But some affluent Cambridge parents don’t see it that way. Over the years, they’ve repeatedly tried to maneuver their children into elite settings, followed by efforts by school officials to close loopholes, followed by angry complaints from affluent parents.

To Cambridge Teachers Association president Jack Haverty, that’s just plain elitism. “Everybody should be on an equal playing field,” he says. “This is public education and it should serve everybody the same way.”

Researcher Kahlenberg says studies indicate that having low-income students in a class won’t hurt the test scores of middle-class students so long as the majority are middle class, presumably because the majority sets the school culture. He says solid evidence backs Julie Craven’s belief that diversity is good for all students.

Gary Orfield, head of The Civil Rights Project, is in favor of integrating students by social class, but he urges educators not to give up on other approaches that can bring students of different races together. For example, he says, the Court did not forbid districts from assigning students on the basis of where they live, so schools can legally set aside a certain number of seats at a school for each neighborhood. Ironically, since housing is often segregated, guaranteeing seats to every neighborhood is likely to produce integration in school. The Civil Rights Project, he says, is ready to help schools explore this and other approaches.

Orfield also says the Supreme Court ruling is a wake-up call to educators to get more active in politics. “If the last Presidential election had gone differently,” he says, “the ruling would have been 6 to 3 in the other direction.”

The Ruling Does the Supreme Court’s 5–4 ruling against desegregation in Louisville and Seattle block any effort to integrate White and minority children in our schools? Not quite. Justice Anthony Kennedy, who provided the crucial fifth vote against Louisville and Seattle, wrote that school districts can use “race- conscious measures” to counter segregation if they do it without treating individual students differently on the basis of their race. As examples of allowable measures, he mentioned magnet schools, site selection for new school buildings, and redrawing attendance zones. It’s the particular way these two districts used race in deciding student assignments that Kennedy felt was unconstitutional—he didn’t say using race is always unconstitutional. Kennedy also said that the other four justices who voted against the desegregation plans were “too dismissive of the legitimate interest government has in ensuring all people have equal opportunity regardless of race.” Some school leaders believe the race-conscious techniques that Justice Kennedy endorsed can’t do much to stop segregation. But others say desegregation dodged a bullet with this decision.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Send comments on this story to ajehlen@nea.org.

]]>http://www.nea.org/neatoday/0711/coverstory1.htmlhttp://www.nea.org/neatoday/0711/coverstory1.htmlWed, 24 Oct 2007 04:00:00 GMT

November 2007

 

A Tale of Three Sisters

 

Will they drop out or graduate? The academic journey of the Pele girls is the first story in our series on dropout prevention.

By Sabrina Holcomb and John Rosales

Honolulu's President William McKinley High School has a tradition so sacred, even teenagers dare not tread on it: Stay off the oval.

Even the redbirds and sparrows perched high on the 100-year-old banyan and palm trees seem to circumvent the ellipse surrounding the eight-ton bronze statue of the school's namesake.

"You're only allowed to walk on the oval as a graduating senior on Commencement Day," explains Tu'uali'i Pele, flanked by her two younger sisters, both McKinley students. One piece of campus is strictly reserved for graduates. [ 0:57 ] 

The younger siblings fall quiet and look away. Eighteen-year-old Tu'uali'i, nicknamed Stuki—so smart she skipped sixth grade in her birthplace of American Samoa, who can quote obscure Bible passages at will, and who co-founded a thriving school club celebrating Polynesian culture—will never walk the oval.

Stuki (left) now offers support for younger sisters Miriama (middle) and Beatriz (right).

Stuki dropped out of school in her senior year.

"I started hanging around with the wrong people and trying to please my friends," Stuki explains. "They would call me a loser and a geek for going to class."

Peer pressure, along with language barriers, economic hardship, and culture shock profoundly impede the performance of many Asian American and Pacific Islander (API) students. Though the dropout rate in Hawaii is by most accounts almost 16 percent, the scant data monitoring Pacific Islanders indicate their dropout rate is higher.

The numbers are hard to pin down because more than 50 ethnic groups (representing about 100 languages) are categorized under the umbrella term API. Even Hawaii, with the highest percentage of API students in the country, isn't required to separate the subgroups on its No Child Left Behind state report card.

McKinley's diverse API population has a proud legacy of high-achieving graduates who attend Ivy League schools, military academies, and mainland universities from California to Maine. Yet the picturesque school, whose students and teachers seem to embody the aloha spirit of Hawaii, also has one of the highest dropout rates and ninth-grade retention rates in the state, with nearly a third of the freshman class repeating their first year of high school.

But Vice Principal John Hammond is not deterred. "The kids have a lot more potential than they think," he says. He has seen a direct correlation between students' involvement in extracurriculars and academic performance. "The more involved in school they become, the better they start to do."

The Polynesian Club

At the beginning of her senior year, Stuki was concerned that some API students were skipping school and partying too much. Determined to do something about it, she dedicated herself to founding (with her best friend Hiramo) the Polynesian Club.

"Pacific Islander" is a geographic term that describes inhabitants of the following three sub-regions:   Polynesia More than 1,000 islands grouped within a triangle covering the east-central region of the Pacific Ocean, bound by the Hawaiian islands in the north, New Zealand in the west, and Easter Island in the east. Melanesia The independent state of Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and various smaller islands. Micronesia This region includes the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the islands of Guam and Palau, among others. Take the Famous Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders Quiz

"I wanted [Pacific Islanders] to take pride in their culture," she says. But at first, it was hard to get students to attend.

Discouraged, and floundering academically themselves, Stuki and Hiramo started skipping class. They eventually dropped out, just a few months before school ended.

By that time, however, the Polynesian Club was increasing in popularity. It has since become a lifeline for Pacific Islander students, including Stuki's sisters, Miriama, almost 17 and currently enrolled in a "last chance" seniors program, and Beatriz, a 14-year-old freshman who stumbled at McKinley after a stellar record in middle school.

"I was, like, nervous and shy when I first got to school," says Miriama, who has bright eyes and a ready smile. "When I found out there were Samoan kids [at school], I started to know what to do and where to go."

Representing a dozen ethnicities, the club's 60 members meet once a week. Through song, dance, and storytelling, students from Samoa, Tonga, Hawaii, and other Pacific Islands discuss each other's history, language, and cuisine. They've been known to debate, for example, how best to prepare kalua pork, which is slow-roasted in an underground oven and shredded. A club serves as a lifeline for Pacific Islander students at McKinley High. [ 0:42 ] 

"When you come here," says senior Darlene Samau, "you don't feel like a lost Polynesian child."

Before the club, some Pacific Islander students felt like they didn't have an identity on campus, explain staff advisors Akenese Nikolao-Mutini and Clarisse Tuasivi, who are both Polynesian.

"If they don't have strength in the academic areas, they feel shunned," says Nikolao-Mutini. "They feel they're fighting against a stereotype as soon as they walk into a classroom," adds Tuasivi.

Many students stay late to do their homework in the club's classroom, where the floral-scented breezes from nearby orchid gardens waft through the six-foot-tall windows. It's a marked contrast to most students' homes, where there can be two and three generations of family under one roof. Often, teens must help with child rearing, which takes time away from working on assignments.

"The Polynesian Club is helping us do better in school," says Miriama, who along with other members must complete one career and two community projects a year. Last year, members conducted a groundbreaking student survey inquiring about, among other items, whether they plan to finish high school and continue their education. Responses to why they might quit school ranged from "English is hard to understand," to "teachers are racist," to "hate doing homework," and "school is not a priority at my home." Most students indicated either that they plan to continue their education or "have not thought about it."

Safety Nets

Part of a McKinley educator's role is to get students thinking about their futures, says Laverne Moore, the school's curriculum coordinator. "The students who make it have a caring adult following them through their school years to graduation."

Many members of the Polynesian Club, including Miriama, are enrolled in one of the school's nine support programs, which offer different kinds of reinforcement to help students attain the 22 credits needed to graduate. Beatriz will have a harder time than her sister because the class of 2010 will need 24 credits to graduate.

How long does it take to get there? Six hours by air between California and Hawaii. Hawaii uses the Hawaii Time Zone (HTZ) and is six hours behind U.S. Eastern Standard Time, or three hours behind Pacific Standard Time (PST). Hawaii does not observe Daylight Saving Time. Five hours by air between Hawaii and American Samoa. The islands are in a time zone (Coordinated Universal Time/UTC-11) that is seven hours behind EST, or four behind PST.

The majority of students enrolled in the programs are English language learners (ELLs). Like most ELL students, Miriama and Beatriz speak their native tongue at home and with friends. They only use English when talking with teachers, they say, or writing on their MySpace pages (where they proudly label themselves "100% certified Samoan").

When students do speak English, it's often a mixture of English and their native language, says Patricia Meyer, transition coordinator and Polynesian Club advisor. Meyer helps place incoming students at the proper grade level and outgoing students find a job, a vocation or other training.

She says when students hear Standard English in school, they don't always understand the teacher.

"They have to think about it and translate it into their language," says Meyer. "If there's no vocabulary for a word or concept in that language, they don't know what we're talking about."

She stresses the importance of early intervention.

"If we can keep them through ninth grade, we can usually hold on to them," she adds.

Barely three months into her freshman year, Beatriz is becoming a poster child for the ninth-grade blues.  "She's like me," says Stuki, who is worried about her younger sister. "We're the kind of people who think we know everything."

When students stumble, school counselors step in, confer with teachers, and determine whether to enroll the student in an immersion program where the same group spends all day with one or two teachers—like the Po'okela Academy, an intensive "last chance" program designed for seniors with fewer than 15 credits, or the Special Motivation Program (SM