Global Strategies

Mandarin teacher preparation in Oregon

I have been concerned that Oregon’s higher education institutions are not producing the Mandarin dual-language immersion teachers needed now or in the future. So “thank you” to Representative Huffman for asking the above question in the House Higher Education and Workforce Development Committee hearing on “Educator Preparation.”  However, we still do not know if the numbers produced are sufficient. Nor do we know if the Chinese nationals trained at George Fox Univeristy have the appropriate immigration status to be able to stay and teach in Orgon.

Here is some background as to why Representative Huffman’s question was important.

1. The lack of dual language immersion teachers is holding back development of needed immersion program. For example, last year, in the Portland Public Schools Spring 2012 tranfer lotteries to get into the dual language immersion kindergartens programs for 2012-13, 892 parents/students applied for 432 openings. Given that a few programs had more openings than applicants, 495 students were turned away. Given 4,277 kindergarteners in Portland Public Schools, the 892 immersion program applicants equal 20.9% of the 4,277 kindergarteners. The 432 who got into immersion programs represent 10.1% of the 4,277 kindergarteners. 11.6% were turned away (in part because of a lack of immersion teachers). Plus there is at least another 12% of English-as-a-Second-Language kindergarteners, mostly Spanish speaking, who would have benefited from being in a dual-language immersion program but did not apply. Thus at least a one-third, 33%, of PPS kindergarteners wanted or needed dual-language immersion programs. PPS was able to serve only 10%, turning the rest away, in part because of a lack of dual-language immersion teachers.

For more detail, see here. 

2. Utah is adding 15-20 dual-language immersion program per year. Like Oregon, Utah is pursuing educational reform. Two-thirds of Utah’s efforts are similar to Oregon’s. Like Oregon’s 40-40-20 goals, Utah has a goal of getting 66% of its citizens with some form of post-secondary education by 2020. And like Oregon, Utah wants more STEM educated workers. But Utah has a third component that Oregon lacks and should add. Utah, wanting to develop a multilingual workforce, has added 100 dual-language immersion programs (25 Mandarin) over the past five years and plans to add 15-20 more per year going forward. Utah views having a multilingual workforce as a competitive advantage in economic development.

For Oregon to add 25 K-5 Mandarin immersion programs would require at least an additional 150 Mandarin immersion teachers. Can the teacher preparation institutions in Oregon produce them?

For those unfamiliar with Utah’s expansion of dual-language immersion program, Utah has produced an 11 minute youtube overview. Here it is again:

SACET's inadequate workplan

The Superintendent’s Advisory Committee on Enrollment and Transfers (SACET) met yesterday evening at Portland Public Schools headquarters. The agenda included a brief discussion with Superintendent Carole Smith, a longer consideration of a SACET workplan, and the election of co-chairs.

In her remarks, Smith recognized that there are ongoing tensions between neighborhood schools and focus option schools, including dual language immersion schools. She also call called for “dynamic” solutions. She was not calling, as I heard her, for strengthening the PPS status quo but but for an educational system that could change and adapt as needed.

The proposed workplan for the SACET falls far short of what is needed. It is more geared to tweaking the status quo than to making or adapting to needed, important changes. The plan needs to be more explicit and organized in considering a set of critical issues. There are at least the following four districtwide issues that need consideration and resolution in order to reset boundaries: (1) How many dual language immersion programs should PPS have? In which languages? Located where? Currently PPS offers only 10% of its students the opportunity to learn a second language early in their education. 20% apply, so 10% are turned away. Plus there are an additional 13-20% of students who speak English as a second language who would benefit from immersion programs. So PPS needs to grow its immersion programs. (2) How many non-immersion focus-option schools should PPS have? Of what types? Located where? Many of the existing focus option schools get far more applicants than they can serve. Should some be expanded or duplicated? (3) For students in grades 6-8, should the existing mix of K-8  and middle schools remain the same? Or should PPS move to consistency across the district, either all K-8’s or all middle schools? And (4) what changes are needed in the current system of neighborhood schools to make them more racially equitable. There are currently large numerical differences in the racial composition of English-only neighborhood schools across PPS. I asked in a previous post “whether the SACET in redoing transfer rules and school enrollment boundaries will addresses the racial imbalances in PPS schools?” (here).

In my side discussions, there was sentiment that these issues were either outside the charge given to the SACET or were too politically controversial (such that any proposed change would not survive). No member of the SACET asked Superintendent Smith how she wanted the SACET to approach any of these issues.

If not the SACET, how will these issues be addressed so the SACET can proceed? To reset boundaries without considering these issues in depth would be to more firmly fix in place an outdated, inequitable, and second rate education system.

OUS has no good defense of additional fees for online courses

The Oregon House Higher Education and Workforce Development Committee held an information hearing today on “distance education,” now more generally called “online education.”

Melody Rose, Interim Chancellor of the Oregon University System, said “Today 8.7% of the total credits awarded by OUS institutions are taken as online learning credits. This number is up from 5% just seven years ago. So the growth curve is quite brisk.”

Larry Large, President of the Oregon Alliance of Independent Colleges and Universities, presented data (here) showing that eleven of the nineteen institutions in the Oregon Alliance provided online courses which served 4,479 registrants, or 15% of the Alliance’s total enrollment of 32,359.

The hearing covered many of the general high points of online learning development in Oregon. The video above focuses on the issue of costs. Do online courses at the OUS institutions cost more, the less, or about the same a traditional courses? To the institutions, there are cost savings in the need for less classrooms and support staff and additional costs for the the internet and electronic infrastructure. But the answer seems to be that OUS does not know. They have not done the cost accounting.

In spite of no cost accounting, some of the OUS institutions charge students extra for online courses. This is not because they think the courses actually cost more per student (they do not know),  but because they can charge more and they need a way to pay for the needed electronic infrastructure, other than shifting funds from something else.

So some of the OUS institution may not be giving the appropriate cost signals to students in the choice between traditional classroom and online learning options. And online education fees may be subsidizing traditional classroom instruction. As Chancellor Rose points out, the growth in online classes has happened despite their higher fees. But would the growth have been (or be in the future) greater if there were no additional fees. Probably yes. That is the way economics works.

And, unlike what Chancellor asserted, the development of online education is not just about student outcomes. Costs count, too.

On higher ed: "An Avalanche Is Coming"

The New Yorker has one of its long essays about online higher education. It is by Nathan Heller and is titled “Laptop U.” It covers many of the latests, interesting developments in online education and at one point (here, page 6) mentions the paper “An Avalanche Is Coming:”

“I feel as if we’re very much in the experimental stage,” Kathleen McCartney, a developmental psychologist and the dean of Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, told me one afternoon in her offices on the edge of the old Radcliffe Yard. This summer, she’ll leave Harvard to become the president of Smith. In May, 2012, when edX was announced, Alan Garber, the provost, asked her to serve on its board. “It really is a value-added question,” she said. “What is the value added that a college or a university, and professional schools within the university, can offer?” Later, she got up to look for a paper that had impressed her. “This guy is a really good thinker,” she said, handing me a printout of a report by Michael Barber, an adviser to the publishing and education conglomerate Pearson, with two co-authors. The paper, titled “An Avalanche Is Coming,” was released this past March by the Institute for Public Policy Research, a British think tank. The avalanche in question, according to the report, is the upheaval that digital culture will bring to universities. Its authors write, “The one certainty for anyone in the path of an avalanche is that standing still is not an option.” For instance, it says, Brezhnev’s Soviet Union was in the path of an avalanche and didn’t prepare—look what happened. Also, Lehman Brothers. The foreword was by the economist and former Harvard president Larry Summers.

Written in a portentous tone and drawing heavily from the literature of tech-business strategy, “An Avalanche Is Coming” cites Richard Florida and Clayton Christensen to propose that schools take advantage of an “unbundling” in their educational responsibilities in order to remain competitive—a popular idea among MOOC supporters. “Some of the leading entrepreneurs of our times, including Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs, dropped out of college to move to Silicon Valley,” the report says. “Driven by the purpose of city prosperity, technology hubs could be the universities of the future.” The idea is increasingly popular among a certain sector of the higher-education community. (The Minerva Project, an online-based liberal-arts university being developed with a twenty-five-million-dollar seed investment from Benchmark Capital, will have its students travel among as many as seven campuses globally, doing online-based work at each; Larry Summers chairs its board.) McCartney said, “I think it’s a good paper. I got it three times yesterday.”

So, more of “An Avalanche Is Coming:”

Wheeler at the World Affairs Council luncheon

State Treasurer Ted Wheeler spoke to a World Affairs Council of Oregon yesterday (5/17/13).

First, Wheeler recognized the importance of foreign markets to Oregon’s future in saying that two-third of future global economic growth would take place around the Pacific Rim. He noted that Oregon has a strong traded sector economy based on a number of robust business clusters.

Second, Wheeler discussed three relevant initiatives of his Treasury: (1) improving the access of Oregon businesses to capital, (2) improving the coordination of infrastructure development, and (3) his Oregon Opportunity Initiative to make higher education more affordable for Oregonians (basically, to borrow money at the current historically low rate, to invest those funds to gain higher rates of return, and to use the profits to create an endowment for scholarships).

I did ask a question, citing Utah’s development of one hundred dual language immersion programs and wondering about the lack of concern about international economic issues in Salem. He did not in answering call for Oregon to likewise expand its immersion programs. He did say his children (or one child?) were in immersion programs and would be trilingual by eighth grade and there were lots of teachers who recognized the value of such programs.

I like Ted Wheeler. He is one of the best leaders Oregon currently has. But, if he feels he cannnot vigorously advocate for more dual-language immersion programs in front of a friendly World Affaris of Oregon gathering, then Oregon’s economic future is cloudy indeed..

Restore Woodstock Mandarin immersion kindergarten to 60 students

What a kerfuffle!

PPS should reconsider the reduction in numbers for the kindergarten program at the Woodstock Mandarin immersion program. I am sure there is a waitlist. PPS can just restore the numbers from the waitlist.

I know no more current information about the Woodstock immersion reduction in kindergarten numbers than what is presented in the video above. PPS needs to put out a written explanation with all the relevant data. It appears that because there was a growth in demand for the English-only kindergarten component of Woodstock Elementary School to 37 students (when?) that the Mandarin immersion component needed to reduce its kindergarten numbers from 60 in three classes of 20 each to 52 in two classes of 26 each.  

I think, but do not know for sure, that PPS has additional grant funds to help support the Mandarin kindergarten. And, presumably, there were not enough English-only side funds to reduce the kindergarten class size below 37.

I do know from the PPS publication “School Profiles & Enrollment Data 2012-13” that Woodstock had a total of 90 kindergarteners in 2012. And I know from the PPS 2012-13 elementary school lottery results (here) that PPS accepted 60 kindergartener into the Mandarin immersion program. 30 were from the neighborhood and 30 were transfers from outside the neighborhood. 8 neighborhhoods students were turned away from the immersion program and probably attended the English-only side. An additional 45 transfer applicants were turned away.

Note: with 90 students in kindergarten, Woodland then had 30 neighborhood students in immersion, 30 English-only neighbiorhood students and 30 transfers from out of the neighborhood into the immersion program. If the 8 students who applied for immersion and were turn down ended up attending the English-only component, then of 60 neighborhood students, 38 wanted in the immersion component and 22 in the English-only component. A significant majority of the neighborhood kindergarten students/parents preferred the immersion program.

Apparently the decision to reduce immersion numbers was taken by the elementary school principal. However, the reduction will impact over time not only the elementary school but the Mandarin immersion components at Hosford Middle School and Cleveland High School, making both of them less viable.

PPS has not released to the public its lottery result numbers for 2013-14  yet. One wonders how many neighborhood applicants were turned away from the immersion program.

My thoughts:

(1)   This is a step in the wrong direction. PPS continues to put off addresssing a whole range of immersion related issues. Until they do, they should restore these 8 student slots to the Mandarin immersion kindergarten at Woodstock.

(2)   I wondering from where and for what year the English-only 37 neighborhood kindergarteners comes. It is too high for 2012-13 and too early for 2013-14.

(3)   PPS had other simple, immediate choices. It could have reduced the English-only side kindergarten numbers by sending some of the students to a nearby English-only neighborhood school either by lottery or boundary shift. In my “Proposal to expand immersion programs and to create neighborhood immersion programs,” for example, Woodstock would be able to control the numbers in its English-only kindergarten and by lottery turn the excess away. See here.

(4)   Woodstock should become a Mandarin immersion neighborhood school giving priority admission to neighborhood students into the immersion program, taking as many neighborhood students as apply into the immersion program, and turning excess English-only students away. Woodstock’s priority should be growing a neighborhood Mandarin program and English-only students should be phased out over time, going to other nearby English-only schools. That should be the community’s expectations.

Preparing Oregon's next generation of teachers

As we move forward in time, Oregon has two major issues in how it replaces current teachers either due to their retirements or through changing educational program needs. Oregon needs many more teachers of color (so that more teachers look like their students). This need is recognized by both the Oregon Education Investment Board and Portland Public Schools and is in HB 3233, which also recognizes the need for Spanish speaking teachers of color to teach in Spanish dual-language immersion programs. Oregon also needs many more dual-language immersion teachers in languages such as Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, and French. The OEIB has yet to acknowledge a need for more Mandarin, Japanese, French and other dual-language immersion teachers. There is no bill before the current legislative session about training more Mandarin, Japanese or French immersion teachers.

HB 3233, which would fund various programs to strengthen teaching in Oregon, proposes spending $7 million (of the Governor’s proposed $54 million in HB 3233) in the 2013-15 biennium on teacher preparation. It is not enough and it is not proposed to be spent correctly. More dual-language immersion teaching training programs need funding.

Here are some of the powerpoint slides and testimony on this components of  HB 3233 from the Ways and Means Subcommittee hearing on 5/13/13:

 

Representative Frederick’s comment that many of the unemployed minority teachers were let off under last-hired, first-fired layoffs due to budget cuts leads to Senator Girod’s question (largely unanswered) whether labor contracts create difficulties in hiring and keeping more minority teachers. They do, but I hope labor contracts make distinctions between English-only teachers and teachers who can teach in dual-language immersion programs so the dual-language immersion programs can continue. Certainly, the expansion of Spanish dual language immersion brings with it more minority teachers and maintaining the Spanish immersion programs would help maintain the numbers of minority teachers.

 

Stop paying our public university presidents so much!

Stop paying our public university presidents so much! From the Oregonian article “OSU President Ed Ray, PSU’s Wim Wievel both make more than half a million dollars, study says” by Betsy Hammond, on OSU President Ed Ray’s compensation (here):

Ray actually was paid $590,000 that year, ranking him about No. 52 among the 212 presidents whose pay and benefits the higher education news outlet collected. Taxpayers covered $246,000 of his $426,000 salary plus $38,000 to a state retirement system, while the OSU Foundation paid the rest of his salary plus $114,000 on his behalf into a supplemental retirement account.

And on PSU President Wim Wiewel’s compensation:

He actually collected $513,000 in pay and benefits, including his $355,000 base salary and about $44,000 paid into a public employee retirement system on his behalf. His true ranking would be closer to 70th.

There are three big problems with how Oregon pays its major public university presidents. First, we pay them way too much. We could get as good or better leadership for much less. Second, paying more than half their compensation from associated foundations rather than public university funds, dilutes public accountability and skews their job incentives. Third, the current presidents, unfortunately, are not providing the kind of educational leadership Oregon needs. They are not internationalizing the curriculum fast enough (much stronger foreign language and study aboad programs PK-16) nor pushing sufficiently the cost effectiveness of technology and online learning.

We should pay them less, pay them entirely from public funds, and get presidents who act more aggressively on their understanding of the important dynamics of the 21^st century.

Canby converts elementary school to all Spanish immersion

The Canby School District is converting a mixed immersion and English-only school to all immersion. From the Oregonian article "Immersion or segregation: Trost Elementary becomes a language-immersion-only school” by Heather Stevens (here):

Canby's Trost Elementary will become a Spanish-English immersion magnet school next year, a change that will save the school district $400,000 but oust 100 English-only students.

The realignment reflects a changing community, but some parents criticize the move as favoring Latino and bilingual students at the expense of the school's remaining and generally white native English speakers.

A decade ago, Trost was a neighborhood English-only school. But as numbers of Latino students grew, the school added special classes of students, half who speak English at home and half who speak Spanish at home. Students whose parents chose to place them in the immersion program started in kindergarten speaking Spanish most of the day. The goal is to teach the Spanish-speakers English, as is required by law, and to make the English students bilingual.

Now, the language-immersion classes make up 400 of the 500 students at Trost. Because the English-only classes are so small, they cost more per student. Trost's English-only classes average 18 students, compared with a district average of 27.

That's not fair, said Superintendent John Steach. "I essentially have a small school within a school. I cannot afford to run a school of 100 students," Steach said.

By cutting the English-only program, the district will eliminate 2 1/2 teacher jobs and fill out classrooms elsewhere in the district.

Meanwhile, the dual language-immersion program is growing. The first through sixth grades have two immersion classes. But there has been a wait list each year, and this year the district added a third kindergarten immersion class. …

Dual language immersion programs need to grow and in the process replace English-only schools in many neighborhoods. This specific conversion seems rapid and too disruptive to the English-only students. The article leaves out important information about the conversion. Will the neighborhood English-native students be given priority for the English-native slots in the immersion program (my preference and keeping it a neighborhood school)? And why did not the district phase out the English-only classes one at a time each year as they add a third immersion class per grade?

Video: Washington DC high school students study in China

More background on the 100 Thousand Strong priogram: