Category — Diversity

Calvin Henry
541 745 5570 

This Wednesday’s Willamette Week included a blurb about proposed changes to PPS English as a Second Language (ESL) program. 

The district wants to cut 23 bilingual educational assistants (EAs) and replace them with 12 ESL teachers.    That would be a mistake. 

The bilingual EAs are often the only ones in the schools able to speak the language of the students and their families.  The district can’t even find 12 bilingual ESL teachers. 

No Child Left Behind requires the bilingual educational assistants to have a minimum of 2 years of college or the equivalent.  When NCLB first passed, the PPS Human Resources department asked all bilingual EAs to submit their transcripts to HR for review.  Many of the bilingual educational assistants were college graduates in their home countries and some were teachers prior to moving to the United States. 

Bilingual EAs submitted their foreign transcripts to HR but they just sat in a box for over a year.  The assistant director of HR refused to use Title I funds to cover the cost of translation and evaluation of the transcripts even though that was an allowable use of Title I funds.  She claimed it wouldn’t be fair to other employees.  Never mind that she didn’t have a problem with administrators hiring their kids for “Limited Term” positions. 

It would have been to HRs advantage to have the transcripts evaluated because the bilingual EAs would have been a natural pool of candidates for a career ladder program.  They were already working in the schools, college educated, committed and BILINGUAL.   

PPS HR administrators have long argued that they can’t find bilingual ESL teachers.  While working in the PPS HR department, I researched the effectiveness of the Bilingual Teacher Pathway program.  The career ladder program is a partnership between PPS and Portland State University.  The PSU website says:

The Bilingual Teacher Pathway (BTP) is a teacher preparation program designed to fill critical shortages of bilingual education/ESL teachers in the Portland metropolitan area. This is accomplished by recruiting and supporting bilingual/bicultural educational assistants so they can become licensed teachers.

My research found that 1/3 of the program participants became teachers, 1/3 left PPS and 1/3 remained in bilingual educational assistant positions with the district.  That meant that the district was investing their resources into a program with a 33% success rate.   

The program has the potential to be effective but like most activities involving equal opportunities district administrators create barriers to equity. 

Those barriers contribute to the rapidly increasing gap between Oregon’s teaching staff and student diversity.  Oregon Department of Education’s State Report Card shows a 30% minority student population compared to a 5% minority teacher population.  What’s worse is that the minority teacher population has remained virtually unchanged since 1998.

The ESL program clearly has problems but it’s not because of having too many bilingual EAs.  They should not have to take the fall for the incompetence of district administrators.

The superintendent and board need to put their money where there mouth is and invest it in the kids.  No more bull shit about how they’ve cut Central Office staff.  It’s actually doubled in the last 10 years.  Keep the bilingual EAs, cut twelve of those Central Office administrators (I could provide a list) and hire the 12 bilingual ESL teachers!

I’m looking for someone from PPS to write a guest post on the proposed changes to the PPS ESL program.  The guest author may post anonymously if preferred.  I will not disclose your confidential information.  Please contact me at carrie.adams@comcast if you’re interested in writing a post.

One More Thing…

I just got to thinking, that I went on in great length regarding the joke of an education my nephew received in Portland Public Schools special education, without telling you what he’s doing now. After the hearing we pulled him out of Marshall due to the same old same old. We gave ‘em one more chance at Lincoln High while we were waiting for them to pay up on the remedy, but within a week we knew that too was a bust.

After he was finished at Sylvan Learning Center Joseph got a job where the idea was for him to develop work appropriate behavior in order to become competitively employed. He’s been there for the last 4+ years as one of their best employees. The problem is that he’s still not doing what he loves most… working with numbers. Last Spring we decided to do something about that.

We put together what is called a “Person Centered Plan”, where the people involved in a person’s life gather with a facilitator to discuss someone’s hopes, dreams, and strengths. When we were finished, we had a solid plan on steps to assist Joseph with getting into the numbers racquet (couldn’t resist). He now is moving in the right direction.

First we got him a calculator/adding machine. He’s learned to make a monthly budget and has done really well with this. We purchased a laptop with a printer and software having to do with accounting type stuff. He’s enrolled at Clackamas Community College, where he’s taking some basic computer classes this fall. By all accounts he’s doing great. This winter he’ll be taking a class on Excel and may get an internship doing some data entry or basic accounting. He tells (yes, he can say most of what he’s thinking these days) anyone who asks him that he wants to eventually work in a bank. For Joseph; he’ll go as far as he wants to go.

Joseph was never unteachable. He was never physically aggressive. He was never any more difficult to educate than any other kid. He was failed by the education system in Portland.

REALLY THE END

 I just read that Diana Fernandez has filed a civil rights complaint against PPS.  What’s one more?  PPS administrators would rather spend hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting complaints than correcting their practices.  Didn’t anyone tell Diana that she couldn’t have been discriminated against because staff has had Courageous Conversations trainings?       

I spent four years working in the PPS Human Resources department witnessing the discrimination.  There’s NO commitment to diversity….Just strong resistance!  Show PPS HR administrators a strong candidate of color and they’ll find an excuse not to hire them. 

So I was happy to hear that the district had hired someone to address the diversity issue. 

Superintendent names workforce diversity director 9/22/08

In announcing the hire of Kurt Jun, Superintendent Carole Smith said: “All of our employees must be able to build strong relationships with our students and families, no matter who they are or where they come from. Kurt is skilled and experienced in helping large, public organizations become more diverse and culturally competent, and I look forward to working with him to achieve those goals here at Portland Public Schools.”

Jun comes to PPS from Salem Hospital and Regional Health Services, where he directed its diversity program. In that role, he worked closely with the hospital’s human resources department to promote the hiring and retention of a more diverse workforce. He also built strong ties to the local community and served as a member of the Salem Human Rights Commission.

Previously, Jun managed diversity, affirmative action and civil rights compliance programs for the Oregon Department of Transportation. In these positions, he monitored agency compliance with federal civil rights provisions and worked with state, local and community partners to promote affirmative action and environmental justice on major transportation-related projects. 

Superintendent Smith gave Kurt a glowing introduction.  It sounds like he had the skills and experience required to make a difference.  Kurt lasted a little over a year.  Someone give him an award.  That must have been a year of hell. 

Kurt left in February.  Has the district posted the workforce diversity position?  No.     

If PPS administration really wants to have a courageous conversation, they should be honest and say they like things the way they are and they don’t want to hire people of color or improve education for all kids.

PPS recent interest in equity and closing the achievement gap has taken me on a walk down memory lane. 

I may not have given PPS credit where credit is due.  They have invested a lot of time and resources into hiding pitiful student performance and the achievement gap over the last several decades.  

My dates may be a little off because I’m not certain when some of their tricks began but I have documentation confirming the dates listed below:

1986-1998 Clear and Intact – PPS only included the scores of students who were “Clear and Intact” when reporting student achievement results.  Clear and Intact students were students who were tested and in the same school for two consecutive years.  The achievement levels of poor students who were more mobile were often left out of the results.

1998 PPS/ODE Change  – PPS and ODE changed cutoff scores to align the Portland Achievement Levels Tests to Oregon Department of Education (ODE) tests.

June 1999 Ed-Flex Waiver –  Oregon Department of Education (ODE) approved PPS request for an Ed-Flex waiver which allowed PPS to use their own definition for Adequate Yearly Progress.  The district claimed that their definition was more rigorous than ODEs but it was actually the lowest standard in the state.  PPS definition only required schools to have 60% of the students at just one grade level to have met benchmark in math or reading in a three year period.  Portland Public Schools increased the percentage of schools reported to be making Adequate Yearly Progress from 55% to 90% by making the change.

1999 to current  Levels Tests – While most people believe that there are standardized tests in Oregon, there are actually multiple levels of the state tests.  The levels tests were developed in Portland and adopted by the Oregon Department of Education.  PPS has been using multiple levels tests since at least 1999.  ODE Level Tests: Questions and Answers (December 1999) states “There are three levels of the test-Levels A, B, and C.  Level A is the lowest level of difficulty.  Level C is the highest.”

Minority students have been disproportionately given easier tests than white students.  District staff have argued that students would achieve the same score regardless of levels but according to PPS Spring 2001 Individual Student Report, “when a test is too easy for a student, students get high RIT scores.”

Spring 2001 Individual Student Report – The Individual Student Report included an “Important Note – If your child had a third grade reading RIT score of 225 or above in 2000, he or she may have a fourth grade score that is the same as, or even lower than, the third grade score.  The Oregon Department of Education recently announced that the third grade reading test used in 2000 may have been too easy for the highest achieving children in the state.  As a result, scores for this group of students may have been artificially inflated last year.” 

2001 School Report Cards – ODE counted “conditionally meets” scores as “meets” when reporting on the percentage of students meeting state benchmarks on the district and school report cards.

 September 2007 PPS/ODE Change - A panel of teachers, professors, principals, business leaders and others reviewed Oregon’s reading, writing and math tests to determine whether they were hard enough but not too hard for students in each grade.  They decided that the math and reading tests were too easy in grades kindergarten through seven, math test too difficult in grade eight and both reading and math tests too difficult at the high school level.  They raised or lowered the scores needed to meet benchmarks to reflect the review.

2007/08 to current OAKS Computerized Levels Tests - Oregon tests students in reading, math, and science using OAKS.  The OAKS online assessment is an adaptive assessment, which means that the items presented to the student vary in difficulty based on the student’s performance on the previous item.  Therefore, the state creates a grade-level item pool rather than a single pre-made test for each grade level. The computer selects questions based on the answer a student gives to a test item, which in turn determines the difficulty of the next item that the computer will select.  All students may take the tests three times per year retaining their highest score.  The OAKS assessment is just a computerized version of the levels test.

2008/09 School Report Cards – Jefferson High School’s Report Card included the test results for the Jefferson Young Women’s Academy.  Jefferson is the only high school to include middle school results on the report card.  They don’t tell you they’ve done that.  You have to compare it to ODE’s 10th grade assessment results.  The inclusion of the middle school scores significantly increased the percentage of Jefferson students meeting benchmarks in reading and math. 

The Jefferson Report Card listed 58.3% of the students meeting reading benchmarks but just 39.8% were 10th graders.  In math, Jefferson reported 41.5% meeting but just 17.9% were 10th grade students.

2007/08 Margin of Error - PPS has an unusual definition of “margin of error” for Adequate Yearly Progress purposes.  Normally people use margin of error to measure the precision of sample data.  In PPS case, there aren’t any samples because the numbers reported are the actual population totals.  Instead of adding or subtracting the margin of error, PPS only ADDS it to the percentage of students meeting benchmarks.  This is done districtwide.  At Jefferson, 8.5% of the limited English students met English/Language Arts benchmarks but PPS added a margin of error of 23.55% making it appear as if 32.06% of the students met benchmarks.

On March 8, 2010, State Schools Superintendent Susan Castillo named fifteen Oregon public schools that made significant progress in closing the achievement gap. 

Selected schools made it through a data screen that identified schools where student subpopulations (minority groups, students with limited English, special education students, etc.) made significant progress compared to the comparison groups (white students, English speaking students, non-special education, etc.). Student cohorts were analyzed using data from 2004-05 through 2008-09. A team reviewed the data and examined both school to state comparisons and within school comparisons. Statewide report card and AYP data was also analyzed. Schools demonstrating the strongest subpopulation growth (and hence the most progress in closing the achievement gap) were invited to submit an application for further review. A Blue Ribbon Panel composed of educators, business leaders, Youth Advisory Team student members and community members reviewed the data and the applications and made recommendations to Superintendent Castillo.

How could the Blue Ribbon Panel have reviewed 2004/05 to 2008/09 data and identified improvement when parents are cautioned against comparing results from those years?  The panel members would have to have been math geniuses to wade through the mess that PPS created but my guess is that the Blue Ribbon Panel wasn’t provided with this background information.

AYP – Another Year Passes in Oregon.

The high school redesign process is a mess but I have to wonder if that’s intentional.  Closing the achievement gap isn’t that complicated.  The district has had many opportunities to work towards closing the gap but failed to do so.     

Here’s a list of some of the opportunities that the district has missed for better serving low-income and minority students:

• failure to follow through on recommendations from mediation between PPS and the Education Crisis Team
• failure to use almost $3 million in 2008/09 Title I funds intended to be spent on improving the educational program for poor kids
• failure to use at least $500,000 annually in school level Title I funds for the last decade
• a failed district audit  of legally required Supplemental Services for struggling students
• over two decades of failure to comply with civil rights laws for English Language Learners
• decades of unchanging disparities in student discipline, special education, and talented and gifted rates

It’s widely believed that Zeke Smith is running the district now.  What does Zeke know about closing the achievement gap?

Zeke was the Portland Schools Foundation’s Director of Community Engagement in 2007 when they identified Astor, Clark, Faubion, Vestal and Woodmere as  Excellence in Education Award winners for being high poverty schools that were closing the achievement gap.  At that time the Portland Schools Foundation reported:

There is remarkable consistency in the research on the essential elements of schools that are closing the achievement gap – it doesn’t happen by chance.  Six key factors need to be in place for schools to make significant gains:

• high expectations
• leadership
• quality teaching
• ongoing professional development
• community engagement
• accountability

What?  Where does it mention equity in access?  Is that  the 7th key factor? 

It seems to me that the absence of the 6 key factors in this week’s high school resolution was the reason that board members Williams and Gonzalez opposed the resolution. 

Show me a resolution that includes a detailed plan for ensuring those 6 key factors are in place and I might be able to get behind it.

The Portland Public School board is scheduled to vote March 8th on a program that would allow military recruitment, under the guise of science education, of PPS kids in grades K-5.  The program (STARBASE) has been in Portland schools since 1993.  PPS receives just over $300,000 per year for providing access to the kids. 

STARBASE and the district’s claim that there’s a need for this particular program or that it’s an effective way to teach science is weak at best. 

In 2001, PPS was awarded a $4,964,861 five year National Science Foundation (NSF) grant  with these goals:

1. to enable all of the district’s diverse student enrollment to meet rigorous K-12 standards in science and mathematics and prepare for postsecondary education and future careers;
2. to increase the district’s capacity to develop, support, and sustain teacher and principal leadership;
3. to engage families and the community in supporting improved student performance in science and mathematics and improved access to high quality, inquiry-based educational opportunities; and
4. to establish ongoing collaborative partnerships with higher education, business/industry, policy makers, and other key stakeholders in support for exemplary, research-based teaching and learning in science, mathematics, and technology within the context of a large and diverse urban district. 

In a 2004 PPS grant report, PPS makes the following claims about the NSF program:

• In science, NSF schools made a gain of 6% in 5th grade, 6% gain in 8th, and 9% gain in 10th grade, compared to district growth of 4%, 4%, and 9%.
• Minority students improved in science in the NSF schools faster than whites.  The percentage of 5th grade African American students who met standards increased from 36% to 47%, compared to whites that increased from 79% to 81%.
• Hispanic students have traditionally not performed well in math and science.  This year, many of them improved particularly in science.  In NSF schools, the number of Hispanic students who met standards increased from 37% in 5th grade to 46%, from 25% to 34% in 8th, and from 20% to 27% in 10th.

 Inverness Research Associates conducted annual evaluations of the NSF grant.  The October 2006 final report states:

In our view, the Portland USP can readily claim success with developing greater teacher leadership capacity for math and science education improvement in their district. Their theory of action – of how to achieve increased capacity – was sound. First they focused on creating change “from the bottom up,” instead of from the top down. The USP also sought to make lasting changes to teachers’ beliefs, recognizing that ultimately the individual is the unit of change. Changes that reside within the individual teacher, that is – their ways of thinking and teaching and learning vis-à-vis math and science education – are, therefore, lasting legacies.  Schools come and go, and staffs and principals and reform foci also shift frequently in large urban districts. Given that reality, seeking to create changes from the bottom up, and individual-to-individual, are strategies that promise a greater likelihood of sustainability. Also when robust vision, commitment and skills reside locally at the school level, the work of improvement in math and science is more likely to continue in spite of district change. Finally it is important to point out that teacher leadership capacity does not disappear. It is a renewable resource, a districtwide (though often invisible) asset that can be harnessed and directed for worthy purposes.  The development of indigenous teacher leadership is, therefore a wise, ecological model for improvement.

Inverness Research Associates’ final report indicates that the program was a big success.  The conclusion is too lengthy for a blog but these are the highlights. 

Given the relatively small scale of the USP investment, roughly $20 per student per year, it has reaped enormous benefits, leaving behind a host of tangible and intangible assets in the district.  To name the most significant of these assets are: a well-honed, highly respected and very experienced leadership team for math and science; a district-wide group of teachers and teacher leaders committed to math and science improvement; a cadre of classroom teachers with vastly improved skills and knowledge in math and science teaching, as well as skills and knowledge about how to work together to provide and continuously improve high quality programs for students; systems and structures organized to deliver and maintain curricular materials; a strategically designed, well-crafted professional development program; a clearly articulated and commonly held vision for high quality math and science education which lends coherence to efforts for improvement at multiple levels of the system; and finally, the accumulated good will and success of the USP effort which enables people to continue to work hard and with optimism toward their shared goals even in difficult circumstances.

So given PPS own data and reports and an evaluation conducted by an outside organization, the NSF program was effectively closing the achievement gap in math and science and PPS could have easily sustained the effort for $20 per year per student. 

Why is PPS now offering up the very same groups of kids supported by the NSF grant to the military for a mere $300,000 in a weak, non-sustainable so-called science program?  Have they dismantled the infrastructure that was so effective for poor and minority children? 

It just makes my point in the previous post that PPS is unwilling to close the gap.  The bottom line is that PPS poor kids are the district’s contribution to the war efforts.

Diversity and Development

Under Construction Since 1964

Please check back in a few decades.

The ignorance and arrogance of PPS administrators never ceases to amaze me.  I spent four long years working in PPS Human Resources department complaining about discriminatory employment practices.  In 2005, I  took my concerns to Vickie Phillips (superintendent at the time) but they were ignored.  Clearly, conditions haven’t improved.   

The Bilingual Teacher Pathway program (BTP) is a teacher preparation program designed to fill critical shortages of bilingual education/ESL teachers in the Portland Metropolitan Area.  This is accomplished by recruiting and supporting bilingual/bicultural educational assistants so they can become licensed teachers.  Typically, the BTP graduates are minorities. 

The Portland Teachers Program (PTP) was created for the purpose of recruiting and preparing culturally competent teachers, with a special focus on historically under-represented groups in the teaching profession.  In short, the teachers in the PTP are all racial/ethnic minorities.  

Today –  2010,  PPS includes a discriminatory question on the teaching  application:

Are you or will you be a graduate from Bilingual Teacher Pathway Program?       Yes                No

Are you or will you be a graduate from Portland Teacher Program?       Yes                No

When an applicant  answers  “yes”,  to the BTP question, it is almost certain that the applicant is a minority. 

When an applicant answers “yes” to the PTP question, the applicant is a racial/ethnic minority. 

PPS administrators might want to brush up on civil rights laws.  According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission:

Pre-Employment Inquiries

Requesting pre-employment information that discloses or tends to disclose an applicant’s race strongly suggests that race will be used unlawfully as a basis for hiring. Therefore, if members of minority groups are excluded from employment, the request for such pre-employment information would likely constitute evidence of discrimination.

It’s no wonder that the district spends a fortune on outside attorneys.  I’ll bet they’re all white too.

The district claims that the reason behind the elimination of student transfers at the high school level is to create equity.   The problem they say is that transfers deplete resources in poor schools because funding follows students when they transfer out.

It’s been over three years since Multnomah County audited the PPS Student Transfer Policy.  The auditor found that the policy failed to meet the board objectives of an open, transparent student transfer system promoting diversity, equity and increased student achievement.  The full audit can be found here.  This is the Multnomah County summary:

In FY02-03, the Portland Public Schools Board of Education (Board) adopted a new policy designed to create a more open and transparent student transfer system and promote equity, diversity and student achievement. The new transfer policy was adopted in response to dissatisfaction with the previous informal system. The purpose of this audit was to evaluate whether the student transfer system met Board objectives. 

The new policy was implemented during a period of declining enrollments and budget shortfalls. In response the Board made difficult decisions to close, consolidate, or reconfigure some schools. Throughout this changing environment Portland Public Schools Board and management (the District) tried to maintain a school choice system with strong neighborhood schools, provide an array of educational options, and invest significantly in its lowest performing high schools.

 While efforts have been made in each year to improve practices, we found that the District’s computerized lottery used to process transfer requests was overly complicated and complex. The student transfer system had management weaknesses and problems with coordination, and it lacked Board oversight. As a result, the lottery and transfer system did not meet the Board’s objectives for openness and transparency. The Board did not sufficiently consider or weigh the effects of the transfer system against competing goals. The transfer system may weaken neighborhood schools and undermine investments in the lowest performing schools.

Since its implementation in the FY03-04 school year, the lottery has become increasingly complex. This made it difficult for the District to communicate clearly and accurately to the 11% of families (approximately 5,000) who apply each year to transfer from their neighborhood school. Up-to-date information on transfer openings at schools was not available to parents. Space availability for incoming students was not decided until after parents applied to transfer. The process became increasingly competitive because the District reduced the number of openings causing fewer students to receive their first choice for transfer.

The student transfer system did not meet the Board’s diversity and equity goals. The system was not able to mitigate the moderate ethnic and socio-economic segregation in Portland’s neighborhoods. In addition, we found that the District’s schools were less diverse in terms of lowincome and minority representation than would be the case if all students attended their neighborhood schools. We concluded that the transfer system has not increased diversity in schools, but actually reduced it. 

The District made calculation errors in the weighting intended to promote diversity in both the FY04-05 and FY05-06 lotteries. As a result, lower income students who should have received a higher priority were at a disadvantage.

The District did not review the impacts of transfers on student and school performance. Doing so may have altered or improved policies and decision-making. We found that higher achieving students were more likely to apply to transfer under the Federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) out of the lowest performing schools compared to their peers who were also eligible to transfer but chose to stay in their neighborhood schools. These students were also more likely to have been White, come from a family with a higher income, and have lower rates of absence compared to those who did not choose to transfer. This evidence of a “skimming” effect is consistent with research elsewhere.

Students who transferred out of low performing schools under NCLB were more likely to see declines in achievement in the following year compared to peers who stayed in their neighborhood schools – in both reading and math. The students who stayed at their neighborhood schools were less likely to regress. Our analysis was constrained by the limitations of available District data, but the findings warrant ongoing monitoring and more thorough analysis.

The student transfer process was administered by the Enrollment and Transfer Center and involved staff from many branches of the District’s administration. The process lacked strong management, coordination, and oversight. There was limited reporting on student transfers to the public, District managers or to the Board. Further, the District has yet to take advantage of an opportunity to strengthen and support its school choice and transfer system with a $6.48 million, five-year grant that it received in 2002.

In light of our overall audit finding that PPS’ transfer system did not effectively meet Board objectives and because of the current uncertainty about funding and the future configuration of schools, we recommend that the transfer process be limited for the short-term or put on hold until the recommended changes are implemented. We recommend the Board adopt a policy that clarifies the purpose of its school choice system.

 We also recommend that the Board recognize the significance of having an effective student transfer system by increasing its oversight. Once the District defines an administrative structure that is accountable and the steps that must be taken by management.

The current high school redesign is supposed to address the audit findings but the equity, diversity and achievement problems are far greater than the student transfer policy. 

Where is management oversight and accountability in the high school redesign process, or in the district overall?  How about transparency?  PPS administrators say that no decisions have been made but who believes that?

The elimination of student transfers is a step in the right direction but only if  the high school redesign ensures equity in the entire K-12 system.  The school board should not be voting on pieces of the system redesign when the plan has not been FULLY developed. 

If the high school redesign team were capable of creating the plan it would have been done by now.  They don’t even have a rough draft.  Just “Big Ideas”.