Texas: The Changes we need in our schools

[Harold Schiffman]

The Changes we need in our schools

  Check out this piece. It deals with a very successful Texas
superintendent who builds on children's strengths. I've heard good
things about him over the years. We need more leaders like him.

-Angela

Hector Montenegro

Green buildings, awesome movie theaters, and high-speed semiconductors
won't be worth much if we fail to educate our kids, more and more of
whom can't speak English when they enter the school system. Good thing
this California native, who was picked by the League of United Latin
American Citizens as its 2005 Educator of the Year, has risen to the
challenge. After stints at schools in Austin, Dallas, and San Marcos,
Montenegro took charge of the Ysleta Independent School District, the
least affluent of El Paso's three ISDs, in 2003. Ninety-one percent of
Ysleta's 46,036 students are Hispanic, and its schools faced chronic
problems with test scores and dropout rates. Montenegro was able to
effect a remarkable turnaround—between 2005 and 2006, the number of
campuses in the district recognized by the Texas Education Agency for
their scores on the TAKS test rose from 9 to 23. In November the
Arlington Independent School District, a larger, more ethnically
diverse ISD (35 percent white, 33 percent Hispanic, 24 percent black),
named Montenegro as its superintendent. His first day on the job is
February 1. Someone get this man an apple.

How were you able to get the results you did at Ysleta?

We took a more systemic approach to addressing academic issues, with a
special focus on strengthening bilingual, dual language, and ESL
programs. We standardized our curriculum and set up protocols for
quality control on instructional standards. We created a new
professional-development department, which didn't exist before, and
introduced the principles of Professional Learning Communities, which
require higher levels of collaboration between faculty, staff, and
administrators. In our experience in YISD, dual language has been very
successful because it is very inclusive. But it's also very
controversial.

Where does the controversy come from?

The school of thought that says we have to transition children into
English as soon as possible. The research in Ysleta shows that the
students enrolled in dual-language programs that include monolingual
English students excel far beyond those students in ESL and bilingual
programs. It does have a maintenance component, in which their
dominant language is reinforced, but it also has a transition
component, meaning that once you strengthen the native language, then
it's easier to transition to English. We found that to be the case,
and also, we have blond-haired, blue-eyed youngsters that are very
fluent in Spanish before they even get out of the eighth grade.
That's impressive.

Yes. The program builds on the strengths of all children. It's not a
deficit model; it's an enrichment model that not only teaches survival
English but also academic language and socialization skills. It
eliminates the stigma of social segregation that other programs
create. We have a long, long waiting list of parents whose children
only speak English that want to enroll.

Your home state of California is another that has a booming Hispanic
population, overburdened school districts, and chronic money problems.
How have the two states handled these educational challenges
differently?
The systems are quite different. They have income tax, we have
property tax. They're very anti-bilingual, where we're very
bilingual-friendly. I will say that the demographics are similar.
Educators have to be sensitive to that and prepare these children for
a future that will include them in one way or another. There is among
educators that I know in California and Texas a sense of urgency, and
if there's anything that's going to stand out in my interview here
it's that we need to have a sense of urgency in preparing this
generation of children to become responsible leaders in a very diverse
and inclusive future. Our future is dependent on the success of all
children regardless of background or primary language.

posted by Course taught by Angela Valenzuela

http://texasedequity.blogspot.com/2008/02/changes-we-need-in-our-schools.html

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