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Sunday, May 23, 2010

Program Battles Poverty With Extra Days of School

By Martin Salazar
Copyright © 2010 Albuquerque Journal Of the Journal
          Mary Salazar holds up the colorful, oversized book and asks her kindergartners at Alamosa Elementary what "Splash in the Ocean" is about.
        "It's about crabs," Adam said.
        "Whales," added Donavan.
        "What does the author do?" Salazar asks.
        "Writes the words," the class responds.
        There's no question in Salazar's mind that her students are this far along in the curriculum on this spring day because of the extra 25 days most spent in the classroom before school started, courtesy of the state's K-3 Plus program.
        The program adds 25 days to the school year for kindergarten through third grade in selected high-poverty schools. It strives to show that the extra instructional time narrows the achievement gap between disadvantaged students and their more affluent peers. Ninety-two elementary schools in the state took part in the voluntary program this year.
        But is the program working?
        Three years into the pilot and roughly $21 million later, nobody knows.
        Teachers say anecdotally that they have seen it make a difference.
        But a research institute hired to evaluate the program says it sees no clear difference between K-3 Plus students and other students. It also says the data is incomplete, something the state is working on rectifying.
        Starting from behind
        Poverty is one of the key factors in explaining New Mexico's persistent achievement gap. Experts say poor kids tend to be behind from the moment they enter school because: they aren't read to as often as affluent kids; they often have poor nutrition, which hurts their ability to learn; and they are less likely to go to pre-school because their parents can't afford it.
        While hard data on the K-3 Plus program is difficult to come by, anecdotal evidence abounds.
        Principals like the program, saying the extra days allow teachers to slow down when students have trouble grasping something. Teachers like it, explaining that participating students perform better academically than those who skip the extra days.
        Parents like it, saying their children remember more of what they learned during the regular school year compared with years when they didn't start school early.
        As the third year of the pilot comes to an end, officials at the Public Education Department believe the glitches have been worked out. For the first time, they say, data will be available on how participating students now in the third grade fare on the annual standards based assessment compared with those who didn't go to school for the extra 25 days.
        "It takes time to get the program implemented," said Ann Zuni, a state education program manager who began working on K-3 Plus in January. "There will be some glitches, and you work them out. I know this is a six-year pilot, and there are things that will come up and we will correct them. ... We'll try to minimize the glitches."
        Despite the missing student test data, Brenda Kosahl, another state program manager now overseeing the pilot, said the millions spent on the first three years of the program were not wasted.
        "Those children definitely benefited," Kosahl said. "That's 75 extra school days that they've had. It will be interesting to see what the effect is on those third-grade children."
        A head start
        More than 90 percent of the students at Alamosa Elementary, where Salazar teaches, are Hispanic. The vast majority of them qualify for free or reduced lunch, a measure of poverty.
        Few of the students in Salazar's class had the benefit of pre-school. Eight of her 20 students this year walked into her class speaking mainly Spanish.
        Statistically speaking, each of these factors makes it less likely that students will perform well in the classroom.
        The K-3 Plus program tries to counteract those disadvantages.
        "There's a lot of educational research that our 180-day school year is not adequate for all students," Kosahl said. "It's my understanding that (the program) came out of the idea that students could use a longer school year, particularly if they need to catch up."
        Salazar said 16 of the 20 students in her kindergarten class participated, starting school the first week of July. She said the early start helped them learn important social skills, like sharing and sitting still at their desks while doing assignments. By the time the regular school year began in August, students had the routine down and a head start on the curriculum.
        Salazar said her English language learners who were not speaking much English in July are now indistinguishable from her other students.
        She said that, if not for the program, kids would likely have spent those days with a baby sitter in front of a television.
        "That extra five weeks, they do the same curriculum," said Erica Hidalgo, Alamosa Elementary principal. "But it allows (teachers) to slow down when the kids need to slow down. And it also allows them a little bit of extra time to do some of the extension activities, some of the more hands-on activities."
        Gains disappear
        Because programs like this aren't cheap, policymakers have been pushing for hard data that show they are having an impact.
        Head Start, the longstanding federal program that strives to boost disadvantaged children's academic achievement, underwent a review of its own.
        The federal study, released in January, confirmed that Head Start makes a difference while students are in the program. But most of the gains disappear by the end of first grade, raising questions about whether the billions poured into Head Start have been well spent.
        In New Mexico, the statute establishing the K-3 Plus program requires the Education Department to track the program's impact.
        Utah State University's Early Intervention Research Institute was contracted to perform a two-year evaluation of the program. Its report, prepared last fall, homed in on a series of record keeping flaws in the pilot that are making it difficult to determine whether the achievement gap is narrowing.
        The report cites missing student identifier numbers during the first year and a patchwork of test results submitted by districts during the second year.
        Among the conclusions drawn is that comparisons based on the limited data available show no clear difference between the K-3 Plus and non-K-3 Plus students. But the conclusion is less than definitive.
        Among other concerns raised by Utah evaluators:
        • Per-student spending varied widely among districts, from a low of $989 in Dulce to a high of $7,292 in Jemez Mountain. The state says one reason for the disparity may be that districts like Jemez Mountain must bus students long distances, which costs more.
        • The legislation setting up K-3 Plus requires the DIBELS test be used to track student literacy progress, and, ultimately, to help determine whether the program is working. But DIBELS isn't designed for that purpose. Instead, it is meant to assess an individual child's skill development in beginning reading and for low-stakes educational decisions.
        "We have to be accountable for effectiveness of programs, and that was unacceptable," state Education Secretary Veronica Garcia said of the data miscues. "I was unhappy with that, but I do believe that the program is making a difference."
       

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