But several communities in California have tried to buck the trend by developing innovative preschools, especially for children who are dual-language learners, live in low-income home or have faced adversity. A recently released report by New America highlights the work in these three communities, San Jose, Oakland, and Fresno, and explains how other areas can adopt these strategies.

1. Helping parents: In San Jose, the Educare California child care center has a family resource center where adults can attend parent education workshops, bring children for developmental screenings and receive referrals for medical care. In Oakland, the district is working with the Lotus Bloom family resource center to host playgroups where children can play while adults attend workshops, receive support the center’s staff members and learn about social services. In Fresno, the Helm Home Play & Learn Center supports families by providing a book and toy library, workshops for parents and caregivers and playgroups. The center is located in a public housing building and tries to educate adults about teaching children at an early age.

2. Teaching the teachers: Research shows that the training that early childhood teachers receive in preparation programs is often inadequate, and teacher qualification levels vary. The Fresno Language Project, a partnership between the local school district and educational organization is helping teachers work with children learning English. The collaborative hosts professional development sessions on Saturday mornings for teachers, administrators, and home care providers to boost teachers’ abilities to support home language, choose books and promote oral language development. The Franklin-McKinley School District in San Jose has launched sessions that help teachers learn to teach social-emotional skills followed up by coaching and opportunities to meet with other teachers. In Oakland, a pilot program teaches preschool teachers about classroom practices to support children with traumatic experiences.

3. Improving data collection to determine need: San Jose, Fresno, and Oakland have all adopted the Early Development Instrument, which is completed by kindergarten teachers and measures child health, development, and kindergarten readiness. Juan Cruz, the superintendent of the Franklin-McKinley School District, said in the report the results of a recent survey of need in his district were “eye-opening” and helped the district determine where to provide resources. Some districts have also surveyed parents and are training teachers to collect data and use this in their classrooms.

Although these districts have seen some success in rolling out these new initiatives, the authors of the New America report caution that several key ingredients are needed for other districts to replicate these strategies. Administrators are needed to support and coordinate programs, and coaches must be available to help teachers as they change or adapt their teaching. Partners are often needed to work with school districts and funding is needed to pay for substitutes for teachers to attend trainings during the week, as well as for classroom supplies and venues.

This story about preschool was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

The post How Three California Communities Are Trying to Improve Preschool for Vulnerable Students appeared first on Washington Monthly.

• Funding for English Language Learners: House Bill 8 would increase funding to districts in which 20 percent of enrolled students are English language learners. Nationwide, the population of ELL students has increased in recent years. During the 2016-17 school year, the achievement gap in English between English language learners and native English speakers grew, according to state data.
• Computer science curriculum: Senate Bill 2096 would direct the state Board of Education to develop a mandatory K-12 computer science curriculum, to include instruction on topics like coding and computer programming.
• Universal preschool: House Bill 340 would establish a voluntary universal prekindergarten program that would be available to all children who are at least 4-years-old. Mississippi’s current pre-K program was ranked at the top in terms of quality by the National Institute for Early Education, but served only 4 percent of 4-year-olds in 2016.
• Assistant teacher salary: Senate Bill 2203 would increase the minimum salary for Mississippi’s assistant teachers from $12,500to $16,500. Nationwide, the median salary for assistant teachers is $25,410.
• Alternate discipline: House Bill 68 would allow students with no disciplinary record to avoid suspension and expulsion for poor conduct by participating in at least 40 hours of community service.
• School calendar flexibility: House Bill 126 would establish a Trimester School Pilot Program that would involve up to 12 school districts during the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years. Nationwide, schools that have adopted this model say it offers students increased course flexibility, allowing them to take more classes each year than they could when following a semester schedule. At the same time, preparation time for teachers increases because they are teaching more classes.
• Remedial education: House Bill 198 would prohibit public funding of remedial education at the postsecondary level, and would instead require that remediation be provided before a student graduates high school. Data collected by The Hechinger Report as part of a year-long project found more than 42 percent of students who arrived at the state’s community colleges in 2014, and more than 17 percent of new students and transfers at Mississippi’s four-year public universities, required at least one remedial course. In 2013, a Mississippi legislator proposed making public school districts pay the cost of remedial courses for their graduates.
• Home Economics Curriculum: House Bill 16, authored by Rep. Tom Miles, D-Forest, would require the state Board of Education to develop a home economics curriculum and would require all school districts to provide home economics instruction. Topics would include cooking, child development, and sewing.

[Cross-posted at The Hechinger Report]

The post What Have Legislators Proposed for Education in Mississippi This Year? appeared first on Washington Monthly.

“Early Childhood Preparation for School Leaders: Lessons from New Jersey Principal Certification Programs” by the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California, Berkeley, found that principal familiarity with pre-K is a problem nationwide but researchers zeroed in on New Jersey, which has a highly regarded public pre-K program but no requirement for principals to have college-level coursework in early childhood education.

A 2015 report found only one in five principals nationally who were supervising a pre-K program at their school felt well-trained in early childhood concepts.  A 2017 report found most principal certification programs “do not provide comprehensive instruction focused on children prior to kindergarten.”

In New Jersey, during the 2015-16 school year, 30,000 children started a pre-K program in a state elementary school.

Twenty-three institutions of higher education offer principal certification programs in the state, and 18 were included in the study. Among those programs, only 23 percent required principal candidates to learn about the development of children’s and adolescents’ math skills. Only 39 percent required coursework on children’s and adolescents’ literacy skills. More than 75 percent of programs said they do not offer or do not require human development and learning from candidates in principal certification programs. These are topics that help educators understand “the course of typical and atypical development as well as age appropriate expectations for learning and behavior,” according to the report. Without this knowledge, adults may label normal behaviors as “problematic,” which leads to unnecessary discipline.

Only 56 percent of programs required course content on leadership and management of public pre-K programs and about half of the principal certification programs reported having insufficient course content focused on programs for children before kindergarten.

To improve principal knowledge and preparation, the authors of the report recommended that the state require early childhood education-specific education or experience before granting certification, develop and expand course content at principal certification programs that focuses on pre-K, and provide more ongoing professional development for principals. The report also suggests that principals are evaluated on early childhood competencies and standards.

[Cross-posted at The Hechinger Report]

The post As Public Pre-K Expands in Schools, Study Finds Principals are Unprepared to Support It appeared first on Washington Monthly.

“Click on a colored word,” said a cheerful voice from the computer. LeMya’s mother, Lakesha Vaughn, sat close by watching as her daughter considered which word to click on. “Find a word that has color,” Vaughn reminded her gently. LeMya thought for a moment and moved the mouse to click on the word “bake.”

“Very good!” her mother said. An animated baker danced on the screen, as the song “patty-cake” blared from the speakers. LeMya smiled.

LeMya logged on to the free program each evening for nearly nine months as she prepared to attend kindergarten this fall. The program, called UPSTART, was developed by a nonprofit company and advertises itself as a kindergarten-readiness program. LeMya’s mother hoped it would help her daughter learn more of the foundational skills she’ll need to get a leg up in school.

Research has found that quality early learning experiences are critical for children. In particular, students who attend high-quality center-based preschool are more likely to graduate from high school and are less likely to be held back.

Now, a small but growing number of nonprofits and for-profit companies are saying they can deliver at least some of these experiences — and benefits — via the internet, and thousands of parents are signing up.

Advocates say online preschool has the potential to address two serious problems with the current state of preschool: access and cost. In states like Mississippi, where state-funded pre-K only serves 4 percentof 4-year-olds, parents have to pay for preschool programs if their children do not get a pre-K seat. Nationally, less than a third of 4-year-olds are enrolled in state-funded pre-K programs. Advocates of online learning say programs like UPSTART, which is free for most families, may increase access to educational opportunities, which can be critical to ensuring the youngest learners don’t start behind and stay behind.

“During those early years, it’s somewhat of a window of opportunity to close what’s known as the achievement gap and really have students begin kindergarten for a solid foundation for their learning,” said Shannon Riley-Ayers, an associate research professor at the National Institute for Early Education Research.

But experts worry putting small children in front of the computer for hours each week is a bad idea. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no more than one hour of screen time per day for children ages 2 to 5. And kids sitting quietly, clicking on a mouse is the opposite of what preschool should be about, say many experts.

Related: New research finds “Magic 8” preschool classroom practices

Ideally, early learning opportunities teach kids about emotions, how to make friends and get along with other children, and important school-readiness skills like raising a hand to get attention, following directions and holding crayons.

Those learning experiences can’t be replicated in an online setting.

“I think [technology] should always be a companion,” said Chip Donohue, the director of the Technology in Early Childhood Center at the Erikson Institute, a graduate school for early education based in Chicago. “We have tools that are 24/7 learning in our hands. I’m all for that. But I would worry if we thought it was appropriate for all kids to not have to be in an early childhood environment where they’re learning social skills and how to get along with others and grit and resilience.”

There are dozens of online programs that promise kindergarten readiness, offering everything from educational games to a complete preschool experience. For the Vaughns, the UPSTART program was a supplement to a local public pre-K program in Jackson. Vaughn said she wanted her daughter to become better with technology, to know how to use a mouse and take tests on a computer, skills required of students in Mississippi. When LeMya started UPSTART, she didn’t know what a mouse was.

By the end of the program, the family was hooked. LeMya logged into the program right up until she graduated in August.

LeMya is one of 156 4-year-olds in Mississippi who participated in UPSTART’s 2016-17 school year pilot program. UPSTART began in Utah, and last year served more than 11,300 children across the country. In 2013, the program’s developer, the nonprofit Waterford Institute, received an $11.5 million grant from the federal government to expand UPSTART to children in rural Utah. It’s so popular in the state that now more than 30 percent of Utah’s 4-year-olds use it. UPSTART has recently expanded to Idaho, Indiana, South Carolina, rural Ohio, and Philadelphia.

Waterford’s UPSTART is free. But most kindergarten-readiness and online preschool software is offered by for-profit companies. For example, K12 Inc. is a for-profit company that offers a program it claims will “Fully Prepare Your Child for Kindergarten.” The program includes activities that are shipped to a student’s home and a teacher’s guide for the adult who will be working with the student. Program officials said they do not give out official numbers, but said they have served “thousands” of students and have seen steady enrollment numbers. K12 Inc. sells its preschool program to individuals as well as schools. A family can buy a 12-month subscription to the comprehensive online program for $99, and extras, like a teacher’s guide kit and materials are offered for $130 and $99 respectively.

Time4Learning, a website aimed at families that homeschool, also offers a comprehensive online preschool program, available to parents for $19.95 a month for the first student in the family who enrolls, with a discounted rate for additional students. ABCMouse.com Early Learning Academy advertises a full online curriculum for children ages 2 through 8, which parents can buy for $59.95 for one year. The program covers reading, math, science, art and colors and can be accessed on a computer, tablet or smartphone. CHALK Preschool Online, a spinoff of the brick-and-mortar CHALK preschool network, offers dozens of free videos through YouTube that cover topics like the weather and math. One video walks viewers through an explanation of state capitals. Another shows kids how to make a “cucumber boat” snack.

As online early learning opportunities expand, experts caution that there could be consequences for kids who spend too much time in front of computers and televisions. A 2016 policy statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) cited research that found “an earlier age of media use onset, greater cumulative hours of media use, and non-PBS content all are significant independent predictors of poor executive functioning in preschoolers.” PBS content refers to Public Broadcasting Service educational shows such as Sesame Street.

Related: Cramming for kindergarten

The largest body of research on youngsters and technology focuses on television use, or more passive forms of media entertainment. But researchers are now looking at the use of educational apps and interactive media found on handheld devices or computers. AAP, in its policy statement, said that studies have found the quality of this media varies but most of it is questionable. “Unfortunately, most apps parents find under the ‘educational’ category in app stores have no such evidence of efficacy, target only rote academic skills, are not based on established curricula, and use little or no input from developmental specialists or educators.”

Some of the most popular online preschool programs claim to be created by experts and aligned to educational standards. K12 Inc. officials said their programs were created by “content area specialists” and are aligned to early learning standards and best practices, including those of the National Association for the Education of Young Children and the widely adopted Common Core State Standards.

K12 Inc. officials provided general findings from internal research when asked about the effectiveness of their program. “A 2015 research study showed that pre-K students who used Embark showed significant improvement in math and language arts and thus were better prepared for kindergarten than if they hadn’t used it,” officials said. Company officials also said students are assessed throughout the program to see if they have mastered preschool-level skills before they move on to more challenging material.

Claudia Miner, vice president of development at the Waterford Institute, said UPSTART’s lessons are also aligned to national early learning standards and developmentally appropriate practices. The organization collects copious amounts of data to track progress and make sure UPSTART is effective, she said. This data is shared in reports to the federal government and the Utah Department of Education, and shows that the program has been successful at helping students master some prekindergarten skills.

The Waterford program’s lessons are individualized based on a child’s ability level. Children have access to math and science lessons, but reading is the priority. The lessons are often presented as games and walk students through basic literacy concepts like learning the alphabet and practicing simple word and letter recognition. In one lesson, an animated young girl sings a song about sounds and words that match up with each letter in the alphabet. In another lesson, three friendly “word birds” hold up letters as an upbeat voice instructs students to say the sound of each letter. The voice then walks students through blending the letters together into the simple word “lid.” There are also simple stories, presented through digital books, and upbeat songs and colorful characters sprinkled throughout the lessons. Students can access additional educational games after accomplishing the day’s objectives.

A Utah Department of Education report found that students who participated in UPSTART there outperformed their non-participating peers on standardized exams from kindergarten through fourth grade. The report also found UPSTART contributed to significant growth in certain early literacy skills, including pre-primer vocabulary and phonemic blending.

Utah does not offer state-funded pre-K. In 2008, the state’s legislature provided $2.5 million to fund a pilot program of UPSTART, with priority enrollment going to low-income families in the state. State funding has increased steadily since 2008. In 2013, the Waterford Institute’s $11.5 million grant from the federal government went toward expanding the program to children in rural Utah. UPSTART’s pilot programs have been funded through a mix of private and public funds.

Families who lack a computer or internet access at home are provided with free laptops and internet access for the duration of the preschool — an added incentive to join for families who might not otherwise have this access. In Utah, low-income students receive priority; the Waterford Institute spends about $800 per student, according to Claudia Miner. In pilot states, it costs about $1,000 per student if a family already has internet and a computer, or $2,000 per student if the program provides internet and laptop.

UPSTART’s highest per-pupil figures are still far lower than the average amount states spend on public pre-K. In 2016, that average was $4,976 per student according to NIEER. The public pre-K program in Rhode Island, which has been praised for its high quality, cost $6,650 per student in 2016.

Though it may seem more economical, experts caution that online learning is no replacement for high-quality preschool.

NIEER’s Shannon Riley-Ayers said online programs can increase “narrow skills,” like knowing the alphabet, being able to count, and recognizing colors, “quickly and very easily” through repetition. But when it comes to more complex skills and non-academic concepts, like self-regulation, oral language, and self-awareness, they fall short.

Narrow skills are “such a small slice in terms of what they need … and the many, many skills that we want our young learners to have,” Riley-Ayers said. “I don’t think [online preschool] could ever replace a high-quality early childhood brick-and-mortar type of place.”

In Indiana, the state recently invested an additional $2 million in a center-based pre-K pilot program and $1 million in a pilot of UPSTART, after rejecting the opportunity to apply for an $80 million federal grant to develop center-based pre-K last year. Legislators heavily debated UPSTART before approving it. State Sen. Mark Stoops, a Democrat, expressed concern over investing state money meant for preschool in an online program.

“We’re funding (preschool) at a $4 million increase,” Stoops said according to Chalkbeat Indiana. “But then we’re taking $1 million of that and we’re applying that to a really untested, kind of strange, virtual homeschool program.”

Sarah Young, Utah’s Coordinator for Digital Teaching and Learning at the

State Board of Education, said she doesn’t view UPSTART as a replacement for state-funded preschool, especially since the state does invest in some preschool programs for students with disabilities and low-income children, programs that also receive federal funding. Utah also has a new initiative to improve quality in “face-to-face learning opportunities.”

This year, the state allocated $7.7 million to UPSTART. That’s more than some states invest in starting up new, free center-based programs. Young said the state chose to go with online in part because it’s cost-effective, but also because the demand from parents has been so high. “As with any state dollar, it’s always possible it could be put toward something else,” she said when asked if those funds could have been used for a brick-and-mortar pre-K program. But UPSTART has continued to receive state support because of its outcomes, she said, and the state’s goal is to fund programs that show success and give the most “bang for our buck.”

Young also pointed out that the state has yet to fund full-day kindergarten, making it even more challenging to find “fiscal resources” for preschool.

Claudia Miner of UPSTART says the program is meant to be used to supplement, not replace, in-person early education experiences. Miner says this is especially true if a child is in a care setting that isn’t focused on academics. “If [a child] is in a situation where they’re at a neighbor’s during the day, and a neighbor doesn’t know how to do a curriculum, then they can get good care during the day and do this during the night,” Miner said.

Related: Digital storybooks might be just as good as an adult reading to a child

Miner also sees UPSTART as a solution for rural students who often lack any access to good early childhood learning opportunities. In Mississippi, more than 40 percent of students live in a rural area, one of the highest percentages in the nation. “In rural areas where there isn’t access to something else, or no transportation to a [child care] site, they can do [UPSTART] by themselves,” Miner said. “We’re here to provide additional access and to respond to parent choice.”

Ohio Parent Jessica Aragon found UPSTART after searching Google for “online preschool.” A mom who works from home and has five other children and several bus schedules and school start times to manage, she thought online preschool would be the most convenient education option for her second-to-youngest daughter, Lourdes, when she was 4. Lourdes participated in the 2016-17 Ohio pilot program and spent 20 minutes a day, five days a week on the program. Aragon said she was surprised at how much she learned. “She was starting to put words together, and put letters together to create words,” Aragon said. “I was impressed.” Aragon said her daughter is more interested in reading. than her other children, none of whom went to preschool. Aragon has already put her name on a waiting list, to be notified if the program launches formally in the state.

Mississippi mom Crystal Cooper was also pleased. She signed up her daughter, Mikyla, for UPSTART at age 4 to give her more exposure to academic concepts, even though Mikyla was enrolled in a Head Start program. Mikyla was learning her ABCs and how to write her name, but “they didn’t really do reading,” Cooper said. Mikyla started the UPSTART program and worked up from 20 minutes a day to 30 minutes a day, five days a week. Cooper said it helped her learn words she hadn’t learned in Head Start, and she was able to read more challenging books. Her reading ability shot up to a first-grade level.

“I’m pretty shocked,” Cooper said.

Shannon Riley-Ayers agrees that technology has a place in early learning settings, and online learning may be a viable option if children aren’t enrolled in quality preschool programs. “For instances where we have low quality [early learning opportunities] or no access, it is an opportunity to get some exposure for young children to some basic skills,” Riley-Ayers said.

LaTasha Hadley, director of UPSTART in Mississippi, said most of the children in Mississippi’s program are low-income. Hadley believes UPSTART offers several benefits, including the impact it has on parents when they work through the program with their child. “They see they can actually contribute to early learning for their kids,” Hadley said.

In all states using UPSTART, families are trained at the beginning of the program. UPSTART officials say a key part of their program is the support they give to families. They frequently suggest activities families can do to hammer home program topics, like searching for letters on everyday objects. Weekly progress reports are e-mailed to parents, and if families fall below the required 15 minutes a day, they are guaranteed to receive a phone call from an UPSTART official to check in.

This is one aspect of technology use that the Erikson Institute’s Chip Donohue says is essential. “I’m concerned about kids spending time at a screen without that adult mediation,” Donohue said. “And it doesn’t mean the adult needs to be sitting with them all the time. They can be adjacent and working on other things.” But ultimately, Donohue added, technology should support a “healthy relationship and parent-child interaction.”

In Mississippi, student scores grew from the beginning to the end of the pilot in all six literacy areas tested, according to internal research. During nearly every week of the program, average student use exceeded the recommended amount of 75 minutes. In Mississippi, the average weekly usage was 82.15 minutes. UPSTART is currently searching for funding to roll out the program beyond the pilot phase in the state.

Vaughn says LeMya learned her colors and numbers by working through UPSTART’s various lessons. Vaughn liked it so much she signed up her eldest daughter, kindergartener Lindsey, age 6, to work on more advanced literacy topics through the program.

The program made learning fun, she said. While her daughters worked on UPSTART after school, Vaughn either sat with them or stayed close, in the kitchen or living room, so she could help if they needed it. “She’s excited to come home and do [it],” Vaughn said of LeMya. “It made her smarter and more ready to learn.”

This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Read more about early education and sign up for our newsletter.

The post Thousands of Parents are Enrolling Their Children in Online Preschool appeared first on Washington Monthly.

Mississippi’s plan, which ran to 108 pages by mid-June, covers a myriad of topics and provides some insight into the educational areas the state may prioritize in the next few years. If you don’t have time to read the plan in its entirety, here are five upcoming initiatives to look for:

1. A ‘Grow-Your-Own’ teacher initiative

The Mississippi Department of Education is planning to launch a program that will create a “sustainable pipeline of educators who are members of the community in which they teach, particularly in urban and isolated rural districts.” Similar programs have been used in other parts of the country, especially in rural areas where teacher recruitment can be challenging. Mississippi’s plan would address the problems of poor teacher recruitment and retention and would also try to increase teachers’ cultural competence and community connections. MDE’s goal is to have teacher academies, which will introduce minority high school students to the teaching profession, in every critical-shortage school district.

2. Strengthen training for school leaders

The state is planning to improve opportunities for school leaders to receive training and support to better coach teachers and ultimately improve outcomes for students.

3. Improve teacher preparation

Mississippi will work with teacher preparation programs to improve the training teachers receive before entering the classroom. This includes increasing opportunities for aspiring teachers to practice their skills in local schools.

4. Increase access to advanced courses and ‘well-rounded’ classes

Since 2015, Mississippi has required all 11th-grade students to take the ACT assessment, which measures whether students are ready for college and careers. Based on the state’s ACT scores, students are not necessarily prepared. In 2016, Mississippi’s average composite score on the ACT was 18.4 for seniors, compared to the national average of 20.8. To better prepare students for higher-level work and for jobs after graduation, Mississippi plans to expand access to college-level Advanced Placement courses and invest more in career and technical education. According to Mississippi’s plan, the state also intends to improve access to arts education and world languages.

5. Create a computer science pipeline in schools

During the 2016-17 school year, a pilot program called Computer Science for Mississippi launched in 38 school districts in the state. Students in K-5 were instructed in coding, robotics, and keyboarding from teachers who received specific computer science training. The state plans to expand the program to all Mississippi public schools by 2024.

Seventeen states have submitted ESSA plans to the federal government so far; and this week a peer review of the plans was released. The peer review, completed by 32 education experts from across the country, looks at each plan’s strengths and weaknesses and also sees whether states are going beyond federal requirements. Because Mississippi has not yet submitted its plan, the state is not included in the review, but you can check out the results from other states, including Tennessee and Louisiana, here. (Spoiler alert, New Mexico received praise for its plan, which included a goal to reduce the number of students who need remedial education after high school. Michigan and Arizona received some of the lowest marks, in part due to leaving information out of their plans.)

This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our newsletter.

The post Mississippi Learning: Five Programs You Should Know About in Mississippi’s ESSA Plan appeared first on Washington Monthly.

But in those early days, Fair had no idea how to handle her students with disabilities, whose educational challenges ranged from learning deficits to behavioral disturbance disorders. Calling out a child with a behavioral disability in front of the class usually backfired, and made the situation worse. They saw it as “an attack and a disrespect issue,” Fair said.

Over time, Fair figured out how to navigate these situations and talk students “down from the ledge.” She also learned how to keep students with disabilities on task and break down lessons into smaller, easier bits of information for students who were struggling.

No one taught her these strategies. Although she earned a bachelor’s degree and teaching certificate in math instruction for both elementary and middle school, she never had to take a class about students with disabilities. She was left to figure it out on the job.

The need for teachers who have both the knowledge and the ability to teach special education students is more critical today than ever before. A national push to take students with disabilities out of isolation means most now spend the majority of their days in general education classrooms, rather than in separate, special education classes. That means general education teachers are teaching more students with disabilities. But training programs are doing little to prepare teachers; Fair’s experience is typical.

Many teacher education programs offer just one class about students with disabilities to their general education teachers, “Special Ed 101,” as it’s called at one New Jersey college. It’s not enough to equip teachers for a roomful of children who can range from the gifted to students who read far below grade level due to a learning disability. A study in 2007 found that general education teachers in a teacher preparation program reported taking an average of 1.5 courses focusing on inclusion or special education, compared to about 11 courses for special education teachers. Educators say little has changed since then.

A 2009 study concluded that no one explicitly shows teachers how to teach to “different needs.” Because of time constraints, the many academic standards that must be taught, and a lack of support, “teachers are not only hesitant to implement individualized instruction, but they do not even know how to do so,” the report stated.

Fair says teacher preparation programs should be doing more. At the very least, “You should have a special education class, and an English language learner class,” she said. “You’re going to have those students.”

Related: What should new teachers know before they set foot in a classroom?

Between 1989 and 2013, the percentage of students with disabilities who were in a general education class for 80 percent or more of the school day increased from about 32 percent to nearly 62 percent. Special education advocates have been pushing for the change — especially for students who have mild to moderate disabilities like learning disabilities or a speech impairment — in some cases by suing school districts.

Some research shows as many as 85 percent of students with disabilities can master general education content if they receive educational supports. Supports can include services, such as access to a special education teacher, or accommodations and modifications, such as having test questions read aloud, or being allowed to sit in a certain part of the classroom.

Students with disabilities who are placed in general education classrooms get more instructional time, have fewer absences and have better post-secondary outcomes, research shows. Studies also show there is no negative impact on the academic achievement of non-disabled students in an inclusion classroom; those students benefit socially, by forming positive relationships and friendships and learning how to be more at ease with a variety of people.

Alla Vayda-Manzo, principal of Bloomfield Middle School about 30 miles outside of New York City, said she’s seen the benefit of inclusion for students. The school serves about 930 students, nearly 20 percent of whom have a disability, according to state data. When students with disabilities are included in classrooms with their peers, Vayda-Manzo said the high expectations and instructional strategies “lend themselves to those students being more successful than they would be had they been in a separate, self-contained environment.”

But as more districts move to make classrooms inclusive, they’ve been caught flat footed when it comes to finding teachers prepared to make the shift. Academic outcomes for students with disabilities have remained stagnant for years, even as more students with special needs are integrated into general education classrooms. Students with disabilities are less likely to graduate and more likely to earn an alternate diploma that is not equivalent to a general diploma in the eyes of many colleges and employers. And year after year they score far lower than their peers on standardized exams.

Experts say the problem is that it takes much more than just placing students with disabilities next to their general education peers: Teachers must have the time, support, and training to provide a high-quality education based on a student’s needs.

Mike Flom, a parent and co-founder of the advocacy group New Jersey Parents and Teachers for Appropriate Education, said many factors impact inclusion’s effectiveness. His twin daughters, now in seventh grade, were placed in an inclusion classroom beginning in fifth grade. Initially, Flom said his daughters had “mixed reviews” on whether inclusion was beneficial.

“I think the teachers were really motivated to be helpful,” Flom said. “I don’t know the extent to which they were permitted to do the things, or had enough training to do the things, that were required to be more effective.”

“It’s not just getting a child included … that is only a small portion of the battle,” he added.

Inclusion done right

These days, Mary Fair navigates her classrooms with ease. She has learned through experience how to teach students with a variety of disabilities, and works with a veteran special education teacher to modify lesson plans and tests.

On a recent morning in a seventh -grade math inclusion classroom at Bloomfield Middle School, Fair and her co-teacher, special education teacher Christina Rodriguez, were starting a lesson on the order of operations.

Fair stepped up to the front of the classroom as Rodriguez circulated to make sure students were on task.

“We’re starting order of operations,” Fair said. “It’s something you did in sixth grade, but today we are doing it differently.”

“Ms. Fair, I want to see if they remember,” Rodriguez said to Fair, who smiled and nodded.

“Put your hand up if you remember what the order of operations is,” Rodriguez said.

More than half of the students raised their hands

“Who remembers ‘PEMDAS’?” Rodriguez asked, referring to the mnemonic device used to remember order of operations (Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication and Division, Addition and Subtraction). More students eagerly shot their hands in the air.

Fair cut in and explained that although they learned PEMDAS in sixth grade, they were going to learn a new rule about the order of operations today. “Take your yellow paper and fold it horizontally,” Fair said, referring to a yellow sheet of paper that sat on each student’s desk.

“Like this,” Rodriguez said, holding up a piece of paper and demonstrating how to fold it horizontally.

“Like a hamburger,” Fair added.

To an outsider, it’s impossible to tell who is the general education teacher and who is the special education teacher. Both Fair and Rodriguez have desks at the front of the room. They switch off during lessons, effortlessly picking up where the other has left off. They both give directions and explain content. They are careful not to fall into what educators say is a common trap: seeing general education students as the responsibility of one teacher, and special education students as the responsibility of the other.

Related: Ready for Day One? Maybe not: What two new reports show about teacher preparation

That’s how a good inclusion class should be, Rodriguez said, but it takes practice and time. Like Fair, Rodriguez didn’t receive any training in special education before she entered the classroom. She became a teacher through an alternate program. When she got a job teaching special education six years ago, she relied on strategies she learned while working as an aide in a class for students with autism. In 2014, she received her master’s degree in teaching students with disabilities from New Jersey City University; she now teaches a class for Montclair State University’s dual-certification teacher preparation program.

Although most traditional teacher preparation programs nationwide do include some training on students with disabilities, usually in the form of one course over the entirety of the program, educators say this course is often generic and perfunctory. Aspiring teachers also may be given assignments in other classes that require them to adapt a lesson for a hypothetical special education student.

Fair said she had some assignments like those, but “we didn’t really know what we were talking about, because we weren’t taught it.” Her colleague, science teacher Jessica Herrera, said she was only offered one class in special education — called “Special Education 101” — when she went through a traditional teacher preparation program in New Jersey.

“A lot of my training was for that ‘middle of the road’ kind of kid,” Herrera said. “I was prepared for the regular ed student.” In her 13 years as a teacher, Herrera has taught some inclusion classes; she said she picked up strategies from working with “good special education teachers.” When she earned her master’s degree from Montclair State, she was finally taught how to teach a “range of learners,” she said.

Fair and her co-teacher Rodriguez say there are certain things they wish were included in all teacher education programs, like an explanation of the different kinds of disabilities, and ways to address the various struggles students may encounter. They also say teacher preparation should include more classroom management and “subtle ways” to keep students focused and on task.

Rodriguez says it’s also important for teacher candidates to be exposed to different classrooms, including inclusion classrooms, to ensure  teacher preparation is not “so out of context.”

Mimi Corcoran, president of the National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD), said teacher preparation should better address topics in special education. “We do a disservice to the teachers we’re sending [to schools] in the way we’re training, and we’re doing a disservice to kids,” Corcoran said. “We’ve got to step up to the plate and think differently and act differently, and that’s hard because everybody gets comfortable and systems are hard to change.”

Promising programs

Some teacher preparation programs are trying to better prepare graduates to teach students with disabilities, especially in inclusion classrooms. At Syracuse University in upstate New York, George Theoharis, a professor and the chair of Teaching and Leadership, said the school’s elementary special education program has been one of the leaders nationwide in training educators for inclusive education.

Every teacher who graduates from Syracuse’s Early Childhood or Elementary Education program is dual-certified in special education and spends time in inclusion classrooms. Theoharis says it’s an approach that more preparation programs should take. “All of our programs need to be inclusive,” Theoharis said, referring to teacher preparation. “Regardless of what job teachers get, people need to be prepared to work with all children and see all children as their responsibility,” Theoharis said.

Related: What happens when teachers spend more time in the classroom — before teaching?

At Montclair State University in New Jersey, students can receive a dual certification in special education and a subject-level or grade-level range. The school also offers a unique concentration in “inclusive iSTeM,” which specifically prepares science, technology, engineering and math teachers for inclusion classrooms. Students in the program receive a Master of Arts in Teaching, a certification in math or science, and are endorsed by the state as a teacher of students with disabilities.

Jennifer Goeke, a Montclair State professor and the program coordinator, said the dual certification program prepares teachers to be hired as either a general education or special education teacher. “They know how to perform both roles easily and effectively,” Goeke said.

On a recent afternoon, Goeke was holding class in the Bloomfield Middle School media center. She asked her 17 students to first discuss issues they were having in their “fieldwork classrooms,” where they are currently observing and working with general and special education teachers. She listened to a few descriptions of struggles and then reminded her students that part of their job is to be an example for other teachers.

“I’m not trying to minimize or trivialize what you might be learning in your content area,” Goeke said. “It’s very important that you have a strong grounding in the methodology and the philosophy of your discipline … and know how to teach your content.” But, Goeke added, “You have to remember that most people do not have any diverse learners in mind. Their training did not teach them to take those students into account.”

Goeke’s students nodded and a few scribbled down notes.

In Montclair’s program, students work with two mentor teachers for a year in an inclusion classroom and in small-group settings and receive extensive training in how to work with students with disabilities, as well as how to effectively teach content, like math and science, or grade levels, like early education or elementary education.

Bloomfield Middle School, where Fair, Rodriguez, and Herrera teach, chose to partner with the iSTeM program in 2012. Bloomfield has hired two graduates of the iSTeM program and offered teaching positions to several more, who eventually chose jobs in other districts. Bloomfield Principal Vayda-Manzo says the graduates of the program are “like unicorns in the field,” as it’s rare to find teachers who are dual-certified in general and special education.

Current teachers at Bloomfield have also benefited from iSTeM, Vayda-Manzo said. The program provides professional development for inclusion teachers at the school who agree to be mentor teachers for iSTeM students, and those teachers also observe each other and work with professors from Montclair State. Vayda-Manzo said the school makes sure co-teachers have the same planning periods so they have time to plan lessons together each day.

Teacher Herrera, who mentors iSTeM teachers, said the professional development provided through the program has improved her ability to teach students with disabilities. “I feel like I got a lot of additional strategies through that,” Herrera said.

On-the-job training is essential to ensure teachers have the skills needed to teach all students in their classroom, especially those teachers who may have attended teacher preparation years ago or missed out on training about disabilities, according to Mimi Corcoran of NCLD. “We have to be fair for the educator,” Corcoran said. For “many that are already in field, the concepts of special education and how to include kids has shifted, and [teachers] need the supports.”

Vayda-Manzo said it has been an easy choice to continue the program.

“I saw the impact that it made in our inclusion classes,” Vayda-Manzo said. “We saw tremendous gains.”

This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Read more about teacher preparation.

The post Is Teacher Preparation Failing Students with Disabilities? appeared first on Washington Monthly.

The goal of the Campaign is to help communities rally around their resources and boost learning opportunities, according to Ashley Sheils, director of the Mississippi Campaign for Grade Level Reading. There’s room for more Mississippi cities to join, especially those that are already invested in improving educational opportunity for students. The focus is on low-income students, and the barriers they face to learning how to read proficiently by third grade. While the Campaign helps communities roll out programs and initiatives, the solutions themselves are up to individual communities. “We don’t want to be about a program coming in,” she said. “We want to strengthen what’s already there.”

Third-grade reading proficiency has been a major focus in Mississippi since the legislature passed the Literacy-Based Promotion Act in 2013. That act established a “reading gate,” which keeps students from progressing to fourth grade unless they prove reading proficiency on a third-grade reading assessment. In the 2015-16 school year, 92 percent of third graders passed the exam after one retest.

The Campaign for Grade Level Reading, a national partnership between states, businesses, and nonprofits, is supporting communities in 41 states. The way it works can vary. In Georgia, for example, a national foundation helped local researchers and organizations train nurses to teach parents about the importance of speaking to babies. In Gulfport, the community partnered with the Bezos Family Foundation, which sponsored the initiative, to provide a smartphone app for parents to help them learn about the same topic.

[Cross-posted at The Hechinger Report]

The post National Nonprofit to Recruit Mississippi Communities for Reading Program appeared first on Washington Monthly.

Students at Lovett Elementary, the Clinton, Miss. school district’s sixth-grade-only school, work on laptops during class. The district has provided iPads or laptops to all students for several years. Photo: Jackie Mader

CLINTON, Miss. — When Zach Osborn was growing up in this central Mississippi town, he had no idea that the diverse classrooms he sat in each day were an anomaly. Instead of attending neighborhood schools with students of the same race and economic status, as most children do in Mississippi, Osborn went to school with an even mix of black and white classmates, some from the town’s wealthy subdivisions and others from Clinton’s poorer areas.

That’s because all the kids in this diverse suburb just northwest of Jackson attend the same school for kindergarten and first grade, then move on to the second- and third-grade school and continue together on through high school.

“Eventually, as I made friends from other places, I realized Clinton does things a little different,” Osborn said.

Clinton has been doing things differently since the early 1970s. Organizing its schools by grade level instead of neighborhood has resulted in a district with some of the most racially and economically diverse schools in Mississippi. They’re also extremely successful. Even as poverty rates have grown in the district of about 5,000 students, Clinton has consistently remained an academic powerhouse in a state where many schools are still separate and unequal.

Osborn, who graduated from Clinton in 2005 and returned five years ago to teach history at the high school, said the benefits of Clinton’s plan stuck out to him even as a kid. “There are no rivalries within the district and no real concept of socioeconomic status,” Osborn said. “There is no poor school or wealthy school … we are all together from the very beginning.”

More than 60 years after the court case Brown v. Board of Education mandated the end of segregated schooling, Mississippi’s children still largely attend schools identifiable by race. And for Mississippi’s black children, nearly half of whom live in poverty, that usually means being stuck in schools that are subpar.

In 2012-13, black students accounted for more than 90 percent of enrollment at over a quarter of the schools in Mississippi, according to federal and state school district data compiled by Jake McGraw, public policy coordinator at the Mississippi-based William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation and editor of the blog Rethink Mississippi. (The overwhelming majority of these schools, which education experts have defined as “intensely segregated,” received the lowest three ratings on the state’s A-F rating scale, based on factors like student test scores and graduation rates.)

Meanwhile, their white counterparts tend to attended more affluent public schools or private schools, many of which were created to avoid integration orders and are still referred to as “segregation academies.”

Related: Private academies keep students separate and unequal 40 years later

Experts agree that bringing children from diverse backgrounds together has numerous benefits. Researchers have found that students in diverse schools can become less prejudiced and more empathetic, and may work harder. A 2011 study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that school desegregation increased education attainment and adult earnings, and decreased the likelihood of incarceration for black students, mainly because of access to more resources.

An emerging body of research has found that middle-class students benefit from racial and economic diversity in schools, said Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, a New York City-based think tank. “More learning goes on when there’s a richer variety of perspectives in classroom discussions,” Kahlenberg said. “Thinking longer term … employers are looking for employees who can flourish in diverse environments and know how to get along with people of all different backgrounds as our nation becomes more racially and ethnically diverse.”

The research has sparked recent interest as some districts and charter schools experiment with new strategies to integrate schools without resorting to practices like the forced busing that spurred protests among both white and black parents in earlier decades. President Obama’s 2017 budget cites the benefits of integration and proposes a $120 million initiative that would provide competitive grants to school districts that are “exploring ways to foster socioeconomic diversity.”

Despite the benefits, however, the number of school districts actively trying to increase integration is still very low. Amy Stuart Wells, a professor at Teachers College, Columbia University (The Hechinger Report is an independent publication based at Teachers College), said that diversity can be a hard sell for parents, who often judge whether a school is “good” or not based on what they’ve heard from their neighbors and on the relative affluence of the students who attend.

“You should look at those all-white schools in Mississippi and ask ‘Is that a good school?’ ” said Wells. “It has good test scores, but what are those kids learning? How are they understanding the world, and how is it going to help them when they leave their little white enclave in Mississippi?”

Lessons from Clinton — which wasn’t always a shining example of diversity and racial tolerance — could offer a way forward for other suburbs and towns, and even large districts like New York City and Washington, D.C., where superintendents have acknowledged the benefits of creating and maintaining diverse schools.

A Rough Start

Joy Tyner, principal of Northside Elementary, visits a second-grade classroom. Photo: Jackie Mader

In the summer of 1970, when Virgil Belue arrived at the new Clinton Separate School District to be its first superintendent, there were only four weeks left until the start of the school year. He had no central office, no budget, and no bank account. The district’s first school board meeting on August 3, 1970, had 19 agenda items, including determining the district’s sick leave policy and finding furniture for the elementary school.

The new district’s name was telling: It had split that year from the larger — and mostly black — Hinds County School District in the wake of a lawsuit that had forced the larger district to desegregate. At the time, the Supreme Court was in the process of deciding a series of cases that opened the door to forced busing as communities resisted integration.

Belue said Clinton residents wanted more control over local schools, and the borders of the new district were created along an attendance zone outlined in Hinds County’s federally approved desegregation plan.

Related: An Arkansas school district deliberately chose integrated high schools

But Clinton Separate School District mostly served a majority-white section of town. In the wake of Clinton’s secession, the proportion of students in the Hinds County district that were white declined from 45 percent to 32 percent. The percentage of black students rose from 55 percent to 68 percent.

Aware of the threat of lawsuits, and inspired by the one-room schoolhouse he attended as a child growing up in rural Mississippi, Belue decided to abandon traditional neighborhood schools and create a community school system, in which all children in each grade in the district would attend the same school and move through the district’s schools together.

Over the next two years, Belue quietly met with local community groups and talked to leaders individually to sell his idea. By the end of his second year as superintendent, the school board had approved his plan, and the district began to distribute various grade levels through the district’s four schools.

When Clinton launched in 1970, 85 percent of its students were white and only 15 percent were black, a fact that likely smoothed Belue’s path. In larger school districts with higher percentages of black students, such as Little Rock and Charlotte, integration efforts faced massive, often violent, resistance.

Still, tensions occasionally erupted between white and black students. For the first few years, white students refused to elect black students to the homecoming court and to leadership positions, for example. So Belue started a new policy during the 1972-73 school year: students would have to elect one white student and one black student at large to student government, as well as to the homecoming court.

One night after this policy was announced, Belue’s house was egged. A sign made out of butcher paper was left in his yard. In big letters, students had printed, “Dr. Belue, one white at large, one black at large, we egg thee at large.”

“I never mentioned it,” Belue said with a laugh. “I never called the police and never complained to anybody about it. I just went right on.”

Belue’s plan wasn’t enough to insulate the district from the legal fights roiling the rest of the country. In 1977, the federal government sued Clinton to force it to rejoin the Hinds County district, arguing that its secession had impeded broader integration efforts.

As part of a consent decree, instead of rejoining Hinds, Clinton absorbed a mostly African-American neighborhood, which increased its black student population dramatically. The school buildings in the newly added neighborhood became the district’s sixth-grade and ninth-grade schools. (Clinton, like 59 other districts in Mississippi, is still under a federal desegregation order.)

Sumner Hill Junior High, now the district’s ninth-grade school, used to be a majority-black school before the district incorporated it into its zone. Photo: Jackie Mader

Clinton didn’t experience the catastrophic white and middle-class flight that sent other newly integrated districts spiraling downward academically, however. Instead, it thrived as its percentage of black students increased incrementally over the years, from 15 percent in 1970 to 54 percent today (white students now make up 38 percent of district enrollment). About half of the district’s students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch due to household income. And still, regardless of race, income or neighborhood, all students in the same grade attend the same school each year.

Related: Can schools integrate when neighborhoods do?

Belue said Clinton’s unique plan avoided alienating parents with forced busing and kept middle-class resources invested in schools across the district.

“You avoid having schools with wealthy parents supplementing support for one school on one side of town, and none of that going on on the other side of town,” Belue said.

Sharing resources

On a fall morning at Northside Elementary, students in a diverse third-grade classroom were sitting in small groups, each group working on a different assignment. At one table, a mix of black and white students were talking quietly and glancing at one another’s work as they filled out a chart to compare and contrast characters from two different stories. At another table, students were silently reading a passage on individual iPads. At another, students were engrossed in a short text about an octopus and its ability to camouflage.

Principal Joy Tyner walked into the room and glanced over one student’s shoulder to see what he was working on.

The student looked up at Tyner. “Do you know my name?” he asked with a small smile.

“Landon,” Tyner said, without missing a beat. She looked at the second student in the group, and then the third. “Claudia. Hudson.” The three students smiled and returned to their work.

Virgil Belue, the district’s first superintendent, said dividing students by grade level instead of neighborhood has led to a more equitable distribution of resources. Photo: Virgil Belue

“I love the fact that I can walk down the hall and look into any class and it looks like Mississippi,” Tyner said.

Even as its demographics have changed, Clinton has repeatedly outperformed other districts in the state. Last year, about 85 percent of its 12th-graders graduated high school, nearly four percentage points higher than the national average, and nearly 10 percentage points higher than the state average. During the 2012-13 school year, the most recent year available for which state test score data is broken down by race, nearly 94 percent of black students in Clinton passed the state algebra exam, compared to the state average of less than 79 percent of black students. In subjects like biology and English, where Clinton’s black students lagged their white peers, they still passed at rates far higher than the state average for black students.

This academic success is evident in younger grades too. On the state’s recent third-grade reading exams, 98 percent of Clinton’s third-graders passed on the first try — statewide, the first-time pass rate was 85 percent.

Parents and teachers say that the success is due to many factors, but is especially aided by the fact that all students receive the same quality of teachers, supplies and instruction. In Clinton, where about 15 percent of children under age 18 live in poverty, all students attend schools rated among the best in the state, with pristine buildings and an abundance of supplies.

“By all of our kids being together, they’re all held to the same standards,” said Beth Raney, president of the Parent Teacher Organization at Sumner Hill Junior High. “Every child in Clinton has the same opportunity, and it’s important to teach our children that as well: that everyone should stand on the same foot, everyone should have equal opportunity.”

In 2013, the district started to provide a laptop or iPad to each student in grades K-12; students and teachers say that doing so has boosted college readiness and digital skills. “The emotional benefit of having everyone on the same playing field is a big deal for these kids,” said Tyner.

Related: In Mississippi schools, access to technology lacking, uneven

With the majority of parents in the town invested in the public schools, there is also an endless stream of parent volunteers, especially at the elementary schools. At some schools, the parent teacher organizations raise as much as $30,000 per year, all the more striking because — since students only stay at each school for a year or two — the money is raised knowing that it will mostly benefit future students, not current ones.

Tim Martin, assistant superintendent of Clinton, said that’s one of the “beautiful parts” of the model: every family has skin in the game. “They’re really paying it forward for somebody else’s kids,” Martin said. “Your kid’s fixing to be gone the next year but you’re still raising money to help that school because other kids are coming.”

Students don’t seem to mind switching schools so often, in part because the faces of their peers stay the same. “It’s better to learn when you’re in an uncomfortable environment,” said Zada Perry, a ninth-grader at Sumner Hill Junior High. “Moving around helps me because I get to see different things. If you’re in the same place, you always do the same thing.”

There are also benefits for teachers, say district officials. Especially at the district’s two schools that enroll only one grade instead of two, teachers are better able to tailor lessons, school services and programs to serve students who are navigating the tricky times of adolescence, Martin said. And teachers are supported by administrators who are experts on instruction for those specific grades. “With the curriculum being as complex as it is, there’s no excuse for me not to know the curriculum with two grades,” Principal Tyner said. “I’m an expert on second- and third-grade curriculum because I’ve had an opportunity to do that. When I talk to administrators who are dealing with kindergarten through sixth grade … how can you truly be an instructional leader?”

Jake McGraw of the William Winter Institute said that Clinton’s success has been helped by certain factors that aren’t present in most Mississippi towns. The median household income in Clinton is $60,161, compared to the state average of just under $40,000. The town is in close proximity to the capital of Jackson, and there are more jobs than in rural parts of the state. The town is also home to Mississippi College, which provides jobs and supports the local economy.

McGraw said towns like Clinton that have embraced public education, and a few others throughout the state, tend to have similar pasts. “You can usually trace it back to strong civic leadership,” McGraw said. “The towns that have the strongest support for public schools are often the ones that had strong white civic leaders who stood behind the public schools when many whites in the state were fleeing them … and that has a ripple effect into the present.”

No silver bullet

Desegregation may have benefits, but it doesn’t solve every problem. Even supporters acknowledge that although diverse schools help provide equal opportunities, they don’t necessarily ensure equal outcomes for all students.

In Clinton, an achievement gap persists between white and black students in many subject areas and grade levels, although this gap has been shrinking in recent years. In 2009, 52 percent of black seventh-graders scored “proficient” on the state English language arts exam, compared to 85 percent of white students. By 2013, that gap had narrowed significantly, with 84 percent of black students “proficient,” compared to 95 percent of white students. In some subjects, however, such as fifth- and eighth-grade science, gaps have remained stubborn, although they are far smaller than the statewide gaps.

Tim Martin said the district has not specifically targeted black students when it comes to closing these gaps. Rather, each school has at least one intervention teacher, who focuses on working with any student who struggles.

Related: Mississippi town still fighting desegregation

Richard Kahlenberg said that districts trying to integrate schools need to realize they’ll have to do more to actually close gaps. “It’s not enough simply to bring children of different backgrounds together,” Kahlenberg said. “The teachers need to be trained to capitalize on diversity, be sensitive to the needs of students from all different backgrounds, and efforts need to be made to try to ensure that school classrooms don’t become segregated within integrated school buildings.”

For a district of a few thousand students, Clinton’s got “a very effective integration plan,” said Teachers College’s Stuart Wells. But administrators in Clinton agree that organizing schools by grade instead of neighborhood might be harder in larger districts. Indeed, as Clinton itself grows, Martin said the district is preparing to make new arrangements to accommodate more students.

Teacher Zach Osborn said Clinton’s success is a chance to prove that integration can lead to positive outcomes for all students.

“We have such an opportunity to say this works,” Osborn said. “Diversity works.”

[Cross-posted at The Hechinger Report]

The post How One Mississippi District Made Integration Work appeared first on Washington Monthly.

Children at a child care center in Mississippi. Photo: Kim Palmer

Fifteen percent of Mississippi children didn’t pass the state’s reading test by third grade, and a new report examines one reason why that may be: Many of the state’s early grade teachers don’t know enough about teaching kids how to read.

Mississippi’s teacher preparation programs are failing to adequately prepare teachers in reading instruction according to a new report by the nonprofit Barksdale Reading Institute (BRI). The group reviewed 15 traditional teacher preparation programs at 23 different sites in Mississippi and found that the content taught in classes and the hours spent on instruction vary greatly among programs, but that new teachers often learn strategies to teach literacy that aren’t research-based.

While overall, the amount of time teacher preparation programs spend on the five components of early literacy (phonological/phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension) has increased since 2003, the number of instructional hours and the amount of time programs require aspiring teachers to spend in classrooms varies greatly. For one early literacy course that is offered by all programs, the hours spent in class ranged from 14 to 40 among the prep programs, and the hours of fieldwork required ranged from zero to 20.

The inconsistency in literacy instruction for Mississippi’s teachers means educators vary greatly in their ability to effectively teach reading. Some new teachers may enter the classroom with little to no experience in certain literacy skills depending on which institution they attended. For example, eleven teacher prep programs do not teach letter formation, and four programs spend less than an hour teaching candidates about vocabulary.

Related: ‘Heartbroken’ Mississippi educators wonder what’s next after school funding failure at polls

Mississippi has long lagged the rest of the country on national reading exams. In 2015, only 31 percent of the state’s fourth-grade students scored proficient or advanced on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, compared to the national average of 35 percent. Only 21 percent of the state’s eighth-grade students were proficient or advanced.

In 2013, Gov. Phil Bryant signed the Literacy-based Promotion Act, which holds back most students who are reading behind grade level at the end of third-grade. Last year, nearly 15 percent of third graders failed to pass the third-grade exam on the first try. After two retests, 92 percent of students had passed the exam. Individual school districts were then left to decide which students would receive an exemption and move on to fourth grade.

The authors of the report spoke to aspiring educators in Mississippi’s teacher prep programs and found “very limited and conflicting knowledge” about how to teach early literacy skills. Some teacher prep students said their assignments failed to prepare them to teach reading, and for example, instead of being graded on the content of their work or given meaningful assignments, they were graded on the organization of their notebooks and were given tasks like reading 100 children’s books. Overall, research-based practices for teaching reading were found to be missing throughout teacher preparation programs in the state.

Related: In Mississippi, best teachers don’t go where they’re needed most

“Generally, there is awareness among [teacher] candidates of the importance of applying scientific research to the teaching of reading,” wrote the authors of the report. “But they have little knowledge about the research or how to apply the research to instruction.”

Faculty members reported that certain literacy courses were “overwhelming” and were often taught at the wrong time during the program, which led to candidates forgetting the material by the time they graduated.

The authors of the report recommended several policy changes to boost literacy instruction in the state, including adding standards to the state’s accreditation of teacher preparation programs that require research-based methods in early literacy classes. The report also recommended the creation of K-3 “laboratory classrooms” throughout the state where teachers can observe quality literacy instruction, as well as a requirement that aspiring teachers show they are able to teach literacy before they can graduate from a program.

[Cross-posted at The Hechinger Report]

The post One Reason So Many Kids in Mississippi Fail Reading Tests? appeared first on Washington Monthly.

During the 1987-88 school year, a typical teacher in a public school had 15 years of experience. By the 2007-08 school year, a typical teacher was in his or her first year of teaching, according to a study by the University of Pennsylvania. As new teachers have become more common, states have been sluggish to expand or invest in new-teacher support programs, according to the New Teacher Center report.

Since 2012, the number of states that require schools to provide support for new teachers has increased slightly, from 27 to 29. Only 15 of those states require that teachers be supported during their first and second years, and only nine states require support for new teachers beyond the first two years. Twelve states mandate a minimum amount of contact time between a mentor and a new teacher, whether it’s per week, semester or year. Yet only 16 states have dedicated funding for this teacher support, and that number is shrinking.

The Hechinger Report spoke to Liam Goldrick, policy director at the New Teacher Center, to learn more about what this new-teacher support looks like, how policies vary by state and how states can improve.

Related: Obama budget pushes for better training for teachers

Question: The report shows that there are more new teachers in classrooms now than in previous years, yet few states have ramped up support for these teachers. Why is that?

Answer: I think there are probably a number of different explanations for it. I think there has to be a recognition and understanding that beginning educators have some very unique needs. They have a steeper learning curve. Even if they receive strong initial preparation, they’re in a stage of the profession where they’re applying a lot of those lessons. There’s a need for states to recognize that and look upon [new-teacher] induction as a really necessary stage for continuous growth and learning.

In states’ defense, there was growth over time, historically, prior to us chronicling this [beginning in 2012]. There was growth in a number of laws and policies during the 1990s that seems to have coincided with a pretty strong growth in the percent of beginning teachers who reported receiving some type of support. But there’s been a plateau of states active in this space. Obviously there’s been a tremendous amount of policy around [teacher] evaluations at the state level, and we haven’t seen nearly as much activity in this beginning educator support arena.

Q: About half of the 29 states that require support for new teachers require it in the first and second year. Why is this important to note?

A: A lot of it goes back to the research evidence. The experience of the [New Teacher Center] is that new teachers in the field are really continuing to struggle into their second and third years, in terms of really getting their sea legs and establishing a clear professional path. You look at the research conducted on the efficacy of induction [programs], and the impact of induction on things like classroom teaching, teacher retention and student learning, and you struggle to find clear and lasting impact from single-year approaches. It appears to take a multiyear course of support.

Related: California faces a dire teacher shortage. Should other states worry too?

Q: Which components of new-teacher support programs matter most in terms of helping new teachers improve?

A: The research on induction is that the package of support is really important. What it really does is it roots the induction program as being about improving and honing classroom instruction. At one level, teacher mentoring or induction is sort of a psychosocial support. It is about knowing someone is there to help. It helps deal with the psychological needs that beginning teachers [have] in the early years and months. But a good [induction] program goes beyond that. It provides a trusted peer, a trusted mentor to address those concerns and problems, but it also really aims to improve the instructional practices of beginning teachers. … It’s not just about having a buddy mentor down the hall that you can call on when needed, but also other supports, things like participation in a beginning-teacher network or being in the presence of supportive principals and administrators. In terms of the types of support that are really necessary, the program length and the frequency of contact that beginning teachers have with mentors and coaches is very critical.

Q: Have you found that states vary in the types of new-teacher support they provide?

A: Classroom observations and feedback are two elements that are certainly most commonly mentioned or required in state policy. Participation in an educator peer network, that tends to be less frequent.

Research shows that if you provide these tool and structures and supports, you can generate real change in the classroom instruction that beginning teachers offer.

Q: Are there any other factors that play into a strong system of support for new teachers?

A: For us, it’s not just about strengthening the knowledge and skills and abilities of individual educators. It’s also about strengthening the conditions and context in which beginning educators are placed, in which they work. Are they in a supportive context with collaboration and strong school leadership? [If so,], they can become more successful in the job. If they’re put in a poor working environment, they’re less likely to stay at that school, less likely to stay in the profession and less likely to get the results we want for their students. It’s rare to find that [working-environment focus] in policy; no one requires that. A small handful of states mention a reduced teaching load or extracurricular duties. … It’s not something that rises to the surface in many states, but it’s definitely one of the stronger program components that can be part of the overall design of induction.

Related: The Every Student Succeeds Act includes some new ideas on how to train better teachers

Q: The report lists a number of policy recommendations to improve support for new teachers. Where should states start?

A: One approach as a starting point for states is to provide seed money to develop some exemplary local [teacher-support] programs through competitive grant programs. Oregon is a good example of that and they provide a pretty robust amount of resources for districts. But you get a bit of a tale of two cities, where you get really high-quality multiyear programs that blossom in some districts, but in others, there’s a whole lot of nothing going on. So that’s one of the challenges. But really by developing local exemplars, [states] can light the way for other districts to see that it is possible. Also, there is a really critical role for a state to evaluate and provide oversight. … For states that have gone so far as to create [program] requirements, it behooves them to follow those up with real oversight [and check] to see what impact the work is having on things like teacher turnover and student learning.

Overall, our main message is that policy makes a difference, but we don’t position policy as the end all be all. It’s clear from research that in states that have some requirements in place [for new-teacher support], the beginning teachers in those states do exhibit a higher rate of [getting] mentoring assistance and services, which are more likely to result in positive impact. For us, it’s important to think about a really expansive definition of policy. It’s not just laws and regulations; it has to go further than that. We find it’s very beneficial to not create a one-size-fits-all approach to this work.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

[Cross-posted at The Hechinger Report]

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