Portland
Public Schools is, I think, discussing, thinking through, and community
organizing to start a Vietnamese dual language immersion program in the near
future. The above video shows two Vietnamese communiity members speaking before
the PPS Board. And one turned in 1,840 signatures in support of such an effort.
Vietnamese, after Spanish, is the second most common native
language of PPS students in English as a Second Language programs.
I do wonder if enough English native students will want to
learn Vietnamese to make a 50% native Vietnamese, 50% English native model
workable.
Here is cheering for the start-up to move forward!
3rd Grade Reading Milestone (New Cut Scores, Meets/Exceeds)
Martin Luther King PK-8 School
(King) is in Northeast Portland. In the 2012-13 school
year, it served 322 students, 160 from its own neighborhood and 152 who transferred
in. It is a high poverty school with a large population of students of color.
78.8% receive free and reduced meals. 51.3% are African Americans. 32.1% are
Hispanics. Only 9.3% are white.
As the chart above shows, between 2010-11 and 2011-12 King
improved from 33% to 91% (Meets/Exceeds) on the third grade milestone reading tests. This was big!
All the students, teachers, parents and others who assisted in
making these achievement gains are to be congratulated and praised. This was a
major, significant accomplishment. I hope the high test scores persist in years
to come.
In the video below, King Principal Kim Patterson indicates that
those gains were due to a $2 million “school improvement grant”
that paid (over several years) for (1) twelve extra days of school in July, (2) curriculum changes
with teacher training and planning time, and (3) an art enrichment program.
I would guess that these are not all the components that
contributed to the increased reading test scores. But others were not mentioned.
There are three big issues being debated in education that these
King test results shed light on.
(1)Do high stakes tests push teachers and schools to
narrow the curriculum and teach to the tests to get good results? The King
results indicate “no.” King appears, with the SIG funds, to have broadened the
curriculum and credits its broadened, more enriched and more engaging curriculum
as central to increased test scores. King both resisted pressures to narrow the
curriculum and still got good test results.
(2)Do poverty and high populations of students of color
make high rates of student achievements impossible? Is it possible for schools
to be held accountable for student achievement when so many factors outside of
schools hold many students back? The King results clearly show that schools can
overcome the negative factors of poverty and race to produce academic
achievement, and, therefore, can be held accountable. But it will take money.
(3)What is the best “bang-for-the-buck” strategy for
reinvestment in education? As Board member Trudy Sargent says, King makes a
good case for looking at extending the school year (or segmenting it
differently) as a high priority investment. So the major funding debate as we
reinvest in education will be among increasing teacher compensation (wages and
benefits) versus more teachers (smaller class sizes, broader curriculum)
versus extending the school year.
With enough money, and it is not that much, King shows that all students can learn to read by third grade! It is possible, now!
This is a second run at organizing Portland Public Schools transfer lottery data for kindergarteners for the school year 2012-13. My first effort had two major flaws: (1) I assumed all applications were unduplicated, 1st choices, and they are not; and (2) I essentially aggregated four separate data categories into one and called it "turned away." The following data correct those mistakes (and a few other data entry ones as well). It may still have further errors.
There were 4,277 kindergarteners in PPS in 2012-13. All the percentages shown are of those 4,277.
So, of PPS's 4,277 kindergarterners, 706, or 16.5%, were accepted into a transfer option. I know of two additions to the immersion percentages above. The Richmond Japanese immersion programs accepts 52 pre-K students and carries them over into kindergarten for an addtional 1.2%. And Rigler also has a Spanish immersion programs, which does not use the transfer lottery because, apparently, it takes all its students from the neighborhood. Rigler in 2012-13 has 246 immersion students in six grades, so about 41 students per grade, for an addtional 1% of total kindergarteners. Together, the Richmond and Rigler additions push the immersion total to 439, or 10.3%, and push the combined total to 803, or 18.8%.
In the data that follow, my heading "Applicants" is short for the raw data heading "Total Applicant Choices Meeting Criteria." And applicants could make up to three choices: 1st, 2nd and 3rd. This means there is no way, that I could figure out, to determine how many unduplicated, first choices there were. This has two consequences: (1) we do not know what percentage of PPS parents applied for a school other than their neighborhood school. PPS probably has this detailed data but has not released it. The best we can says is that more than the 18.8% applied and less than 45.7% , which is total applications (1st, 2nd, & 3rd) minus the categories "N/A- Approved to Another Choice," labeled as "Another" in the chart below.
And, (2) without data on unduplicated choices, as well as any sibling preferences, it is difficult for prospective future year applicants to assess their probability of getting into any specific program.
Here are charts for the three categories. My "Denied" equal "Denied - No Space" on the PPS data tables. Likewise my "Another" equals "N/A - Approved to Another Choice," and my "Unnec" equals "Unnecessary."
From the Stockholm
International Peace Research Institute (here):
At the start of 2013 eight states—the United States, Russia,
the United Kingdom, France, China,
India, Pakistan and Israel—possessed approximately 4400
operational nuclear weapons. Nearly 2000 of these are kept in a state of high
operational alert. If all nuclear warheads are counted, these states together
possess a total of approximately 17 265 nuclear weapons (see table), as
compared with 19 000 at the beginning of 2012.
The decrease is due mainly to Russia
and the USA
further reducing their inventories of strategic nuclear weapons under the terms
of the Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic
Offensive Arms (New START) as well as retiring ageing and obsolescent weapons.
At the same time, all five legally recognized nuclear weapon states—China, France,
Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States—are
either deploying new nuclear weapon delivery systems or have announced
programmes to do so, and appear determined to retain their nuclear arsenals
indefinitely. Of the five, only China
seems to be expanding its nuclear arsenal. India
and Pakistan
are both expanding their nuclear weapon stockpiles and missile delivery
capabilities......
This post contains data mistakes and misunderstandings. I have reposted another try. See here.
I have organized data for kindergarterners from the Portland Public Schools Winter-Spring 2012 lottery for the 2012-13 school year. Raw data is here. Data does not included charter schools in PPS. First, the totals by the three general categories of schools.
Note that over half the parents, 53.1%, applied for their student to attend something other than their neighborhood school. Further note that less than one-third, 30.8%, of those applying for transfers were accepted.
Also note, relating to immersion programs, that the Richmond Japanes immersion program also admits 52 pre-kindergarten students who are carried over to kindergarten their following year. They are not included in these totals and would add an addtional 1.2% to both applicants and accepted categories.
Also note, the lottery for 2013-14 is over, parents and students know the results, but the tabulations have not yet been released.
Update 6/7/13: A few numbers have changed from the original post. The original post counted Buchman as both a neighborhood and a focus option school. It may well be both, but should be counted only once. Here it is counted as a focus option school. The numbers and percentages for neighborhood schools dropped.
Further Update 6/7/13: I have received feedback that my category "turned away" is not entirely
accurate. That is right. It is not a term used by PPS. I use it as the
difference between applications and acceptances. PPS has four
categories "Waitlisted," "Denied-No Space," "N/A- Approved to Another
Choice," and "Unnecessary." And not all individual student cases fit
neatly in to any category. For a more nuanced view of my "turned away"
category go the the data source (again, here)."
Blue Oregon posted the above
video as part of its blog post “Luring the next generation of techies to Portland” (here). And
Blue Oregon is right in saying:
And it's all because the talent wants to live here. We've
got the great outdoors, a vibrant urban lifestyle, and a much lower cost of
living (and less traffic!) than all of our West Coast counterparts - especially
the Bay Area.
So why, I ask, did Liam Casey not locate his Lime Lab in Portland? Who is Casey?
And what is Lime Lab? From the Tech Crunch article “Mr. China Goes to San Francisco” by John
Biggs (here):
A block from the Mariposa on-ramp and in the eye-line of 90,000 cars
whizzing by on 280 sits an old warehouse that was home to the San Francisco Bay
Guardian, a local alt weekly, and Digg. Most of the building is gutted, and
inside they are working on the “greatest enabler of hardware on the planet,”
according to PCH International head Liam Casey. It will be the new home of
Lime Lab, a hush-hush design consultancy that Casey bought in 2012 for an
undisclosed amount and, most important, the U.S. gateway to Asian PCH’s
manufacturing might that allows hardware startups to access stem-to-stern
services in design, coding, manufacturing, packaging and shipping.
Casey, dubbed “Mr. China”
in a James Fallows article that outlined the rising importance of Shenzhen as a
manufacturing giant, is one of the biggest machers in Asia.
A teetotaling Irishman, the inexhaustible Casey ostensibly lives in a hotel in
downtown Shenzhen but is nearly always in the air. He and his cross-cultural
team make nearly all the accessories you can imagine for multiple vendors. You
couldn’t point a finger in a Best Buy without hitting a product PCH builds.
He envisions his new building as a gateway to China and a way to help clients –
and the public – understand the vagaries of mass manufacturing. The space will
contain a public foyer and cafe where visitors can learn about materials,
design and manufacturing. C-Level training will go on in a large anteroom on
the first floor with a huge video screen suspended on epoxy-sealed walls....
Portland has world class techies and designers. The Bay area
does have more. What we mostly lack is international vision and global
ambitions. Portland
is quite provincial. It is why we cannot seem to find the political will to
expand our foreign language immersion programs to meet parental demand.
Some techies just want to be more international. Portland is not, yet, the place for them.
Deaf students also undertand the importance of China. From the 100 K Strong website (here):
Jessica Beinecke’s latest US-China Chat explores how students at
Washington, DC’s Gallaudet University are taking mandarin study, and the
mission of 100K Strong, to another level by learning sign language in
Chinese. Jessica talks with students studying “CSL,” and learns about
the added challenges deaf students must overcome to master the Mandarin
language.
Today for a few hours in the morning I attended the 4th
International Conference on Oregon-China Investment, Education, Culture and
Tourism at Portlland
State University.
The conference had previous met for one day, 5/31, in Ashland
and was now meeting today in Portland
with a full day of speakers and an evening banquet. Many Chinese hjigher
education official were in attendance today and the program was billed as the “First
Oregon-China University Presidents Forum 2013.”
Of interest was the ten minute talk by PSU Graduate School
of Education Dean Randy Hitz. He announced a PSU proposal to increase the
numbers of licensed teachers in Oregon
with Chinese language endorsements. PSU is developing a one full year graduate graduate
program which on completion meets all the requirements for an Oregon teacher license and for a Masters
degree. Recruitment begins this summer, with
applications due in February. The first
program will begin Summer, 2014, and will be completed Summer, 2015. Thirty
students will be admitted, 15 heading for elementrary teaching and 15 for high
school teaching. Hitz did say there would be recruiting in China and online
application would be possible. Presumably, all the applicants need to be
already fluent in Mandarin.
This is good news. It begins to grow the pipeline of
Mandarin teachers Oregon
will need.
