Despite the best efforts of thousands of dedicated people, California's secondary schools are failing to adequately educate the majority of the state's English learners (ELs). This policy paper for the University of California Linguistic Minority Research Institute (UC LMRI) presents a vision for high schools that will promote greater success for these students. This vision is based on Norm Gold's three decades of experience in the field with teachers and administrators responsible for educating English learners and immigrant students. The paper presents five myths that stand in the way of the educational changes needed for secondary English learners to thrive in California's high schools, and some suggestions on what schools can do to address them. See the overview: The High Schools English Learners Need, a Policy Brief (UC LMRI Newsletter, V.15, No.3) (PDF, 4 pgs.)

Norm Gold, Consultant

That building is current a cause of tremendous tension between El Puente and NYC. Luis Garden Acosta, the founder, president and CEO of El Puente has posted a letter that describes the crisis in detail; here's the start:

Last Friday (10/06/06) El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice, our celebrated public high school, was ordered out of El Puente immediately. After 13 years of El Puente Academy history in our own El Puente building, the New York City Department of Education (DOE) decreed that no student was allowed to return to it. DOE refused to allow for even one school day in which we could cushion the heartbreak, focus the rage and otherwise attempt a transition respectful of the dignity and values of our community.

This story is in progress, and signs are pointing to a resolution that may respect and sustain El Puente's work. The quick synosis: according to Acosta, the DOE deferred critical maintenance until the building were unusable; at that point, it immediately and disruptively relocated El Puente Academy. Organizers at El Puente went into action, circulating a petion in English and Spanish listing a number of demands. These petitions have thus far collected over 3,000 signatures (does that include yours?).

And, it seems, there's good news to report on El Puente's MySpace blog. The city responded with a 10/31/2006 meeting, an agreement to relocate to the site that the El Puente Academy community prefers and movement toward a permanent site per long-standing El Puente requests. The blog also reports that the Hispanic Federation donated $20,000 to fireproof a boiler in the original facility.

This story is over 13 years in the making, and while it seems that El Puente will continue to thrive with the Board of Education's support, the situation isn't yet resolved. Even if you're not in New York City, this matters to you; El Puente is in the group of small schools that demonstrate that done right, small schools can make a tremendous difference to the lives of young people and their communities. If New York City continues to make a commitment to the sustained success of El Puente, that sends a message to cities and districts everywhere about the value of personalized, equitable, and challenging small schools (a message that, considering the Julia Richman circumstance, NYC itself may need to listen to more attentively).

That possibility is turning into an ugly likelihood per JREC's Save JREC campaign and "City's bad lesson on a revitalized school," by Juan Gonzalez in the New York Daily News.

The JREC community, educators and families from the six schools housed at JREC and many in the neighborhood upset by the Hunter takeover are letting NYC know how deeply wrong this ouster would be. Yesterday, JREC students led a march to deliver a letter of protest to Hunter College's president. They're contacting city officials, their state and U.S. congressional representatives, everyone they can, to let it be known that, in the words of the Daily News' Gonzalez, "You don't break things you've already fixed."

Now we, the CES network, need to let NYC know that JREC must be saved from a hostile takeover and relocation. The work that went into transforming JREC from a symbol of urban educational blight to the polestar of the small schools movement can't be replicated. And it's impossible to ignore the fact that the success of the JREC schools is central to NYC's current small schools strategies. That success depends on neighborhood connections, on the functionality of its current space, on the generosity of funders who have helped make the current facility work, and much more that's inseparable from the location.

If you're passionate about small, personalized, equitable, intellectually challenging schools but don't know the JREC story, go to to the Save JREC website or just Google "Julia Richman" + "small schools" (I'm a helper and did it already, saved you the bother. Here it is. Click down the list and be inspired by this amazing place.)

So speak out, even if you're not from New York. If you can understand why JREC has made a difference in the transformative work in which you're engaged in now, take a moment to tell that story. Click here for a list of state and local officials and their contact info. And do JREC a favor and send them a copy of your correspondence (SAVEJREC@jrec.org). And post your protest here too, in the comments below. We can't know what difference this will make, but we also can't miss the chance to do what we can to alter the course of this destructive proposal.

Many teachers are required to post their classroom objectives daily. In this fresh culture of "accountability," we are required to publicly defend what we are teaching and why it's important. This amuses me because I imagine other professions having to do this.

Today patients will receive an immunization in order to fight disease.

Today riders will travel in my cab in order to reach a chosen destination.

Today in class, my curriculum-based objectives could have shared valuable chalkboard real estate with the following:

Today students will practice lockdown procedures in order to avoid violent intruders in our school.

Today students will work in teams in order to see that outstanding work can be produced with cooperation and dedication.

Today students will enjoy a book for reasons other than taking a test in March.

Today students will enjoy an impromptu lesson about spiders in order to debunk the myth that they are brain-eating creatures running under Zach's desk.

You certainly won't find these objectives tested in the spring; however, my students' development was unmistakably enriched by these moments. Lesson plans are tentative and fickle, as the teaching profession is an unpredictable roller-coaster ride filled with steep climbs, unexpected loops and breathtaking drops.

One thing is for certain, though: I cherish every minute of the ride.

Today, somehow, teachers have to be able to see the paths that each of their students take even if they are forced to promote the fiction that each individual kid is marching lockstep to capture the next hill in the achievement battle. I don't teach every day any more, and I am ever-grateful to all of you who do and manage to keep your focus on each individual kid even as you're compelled to treat them like a monolithic faceless mass. Thank you for seeing them for who they are, for creating breathing spaces for them to follow their interests, and for valuing the journey rather than fixating on the destination.

Even at Essential schools - even those with autonomy and some fragile protection - it's a challenge. We know it is, even as we work to make it possible for all groups of learners to make connections, face challenges, have insights, and form relationships that will remain safely outside the grasp of formal assessment.

Like all numbers related to democratic participation in the United States, the overall numbers have a way to go. This year, 24% of young eligible voters cast their ballots, up from 20% in 2002.

An excerpt from "Young Voter Mobilization Tactics" describes key strategies for getting young people from all backgrounds to the polls and is worth considering here in a context in which educators are thinking about schools' roles in increasing civic participation:

Getting Out the Youth Vote: What Works

Personalized and interactive contact counts. The most effective way of getting a new voter is the in-person door knock by a peer; the least effective is an automated phone call. Canvassing costs $11 to $14 per new vote, followed closely by phone banks at $10 to $25 per new vote. Robocalls mobilize so few voters that they cost $275 per new vote. (These costs are figured per vote that would not be cast without the mobilizing effort.)

Begin with the basics. Telling a new voter where to vote, when to vote and how to use the voting machines increases turnout.

The medium is more important than the message. Partisan and nonpartisan, negative and positive messages seem to work about the same. The important factor is the degree to which the contact is personalized.

In ethnic and immigrant communities, start young. Young voters in these communities are easier to reach, are more likely to speak English (cutting down translation costs), and are the most effective messengers within their communities.

Initial mobilization produces repeat voters. If an individual has been motivated to get to the polls once, they are more likely to return. So, getting young people to vote early could be key to raising a new generation of voters.

Leaving young voters off contact lists is a costly mistake. Some campaigns still bypass young voters, but research shows they respond cost-effectively when contacted.

We agree wholeheartedly that as in all efforts to educate and connect, personalization is essential (and enough with the robodialers already!). These strategies emphasize that our public schools are the place to increase awareness about and a sense of urgency and empowerment around participating in our democracy. It's always dicey to ask questions on a blog - no one likes that echoing silence in the comments area! But I want to know: what have you done at your school to talk about the election, to prepare young people to vote, to educate them about their voting rights, to help them spread the message in their community? If you have a minute to spare, tell us. And thank you to all educators who are working to create a generation that can think and act on their beliefs.

-Michael Currier, public school teacher

But until then, here's this staffer's perspective. Provocative and informative conversations happened on parallel tracks - 1. teaching and learning and 2. the politics of this work.

First, the teaching and learning: Fall Forum has always been about teaching and learning, about Essential schools connecting with each other about how to get the best out of the relationships, structures, design, and potential of schools. This year was no different, with hundreds of workshops covering elementary, middle and high school, addressing all areas of the curriculum, community connections, assessment, leadership, professional development, school culture and the other practices, attitudes, skills, and conditions that educators, communities, and students need to create and sustain personalized, intellectually challenging and equitable Essential schools.

Second, the political aspects of the conversation: with ESEA (aka NCLB) renewal approaching, there's definite interest within the CES network to use our collective power to advocate for changes. Some of this push for collective action happened in small-group workshops such as "Overhauling the No Child Left Behind Act" led by FairTest's Monty Neill. Some of it happened in larger settings, such as featured session led by Ted and Nancy Sizer, Linda Darling-Hammond, George Wood and Deborah Meier of the Forum for Education and Democracy.

And a new feature at Fall Forum this year created ways to fuse the pedagogical and the political. On Friday afternoon, Fall Forum participants chose a Critical Friends Conversation (a list of topics is here - scroll down to the 3:45 time slot (and please note: that URL requires CES registration and login)). This innovation allowed us to focus deeply on a range of questions inspired by and/or designed to gain deeper understanding of what's often referred to as the "Tenth Common Principle" which describes the centrality of democracy and equity in our work. (See this Horace article for a description of the evolution of this Common Principle, proposed and developed ten years ago at a past Chicago Fall Forum). Future Essential Blog entries will get into the complications, challenges, opportunties and questions raised in some of these CFCs.

There's so much more to talk about, and we'll get to it in the form of additional Fall Forum reports and, in a more sustained way, through the ways in which Fall Forum inevitably influences our practice and outlook throughout the year.

And, finally and of course, it's Election Day. Wherever you are, if you're in the United States, don't forget to vote! And in the few hours we have left before results start trickling in, here's a vision of the future from storyteller Mark Binder. It's not likely to be the election result we'll get, but it's an inspiring vision to keep in mind as you head to the polls. Here's wishing the best for all of us.

First, Mike Klonsky blogs in Small Talk on Fall Forum's Thursday night opening session. After an early morning CES First-Timers Gathering and a CES 101 session - new faces! new voices! - I squeezed into a politically charged crowd to listen in on Klonsky's workshop, "The Small Schools Movement Meets the Ownership Society." (That URL, a link to the workshop description, requires CES registration and login. If you're reading this blog and haven't joined CES interactive, you should. Finish reading and go sign up.)

Klonsky brought the ownership society ideas he's been blogging about to the CES crowd, inquiring into how other small school educators are experiencing the political climate for their work. It's undeniably chilly out there, and the air is thin. The conversation wasn't a consensus - many pushed back, arguing that the political action will turn the tide and the picture for intellectually vibrant, personalized and equitable small schools isn't as bleak as Klonsky seemed to be suggesting. Was this a start of a transformational/revolutionary conversation? The Essential Blog will stay tuned.

That's how I spent my morning, and as I did, a multitude of other educators, family members, thinkers and researchers and policy makers and - to our great benefit - students were teaching and learning with each other at hundreds of other workshops. Impossible to capture, but I want you to have some sense of how much was happening. I'm now off to soak in it at Fall Forum's second full day; I'll scrape together more time later to report on an even more politically charged afternoon and the evening premiere of the second CES EssentialVisions DVD, and, if I can get my words to rise to the occasion, all that I'm going to learn and do and experience today.

Tonight's opening session featured a welcome from Hosanna Mahaley Johnson, Chief Officer, Office of New Schools and Chief of Staff at Chicago Public Schools.

Ted Sizer followed, welcomed by a standing ovation. His talk on the Common Principles included a provocation to think about schools' consistent organizational structures that undermine learning, structures such as sorting groups of students by age, a practice that Ted described as "a curse." And Ted gave us a wonderful tongue-twister of a description of Fall Forum: "a great swap shop of ideas."

CES Executive Director Lewis Cohen followed with a push to think about our work not as reform but transformation. Reform would imply restoring schools as they are now to some previous or at least potential state of better function, but, as Lewis pointed out, schools as they are now do just what they're designed to do (sort and process students and move them on through). Transformation into something else entirely better describes the work of CES's schools.

Keynote speaker Margaret Wheatley came next and suggested that we weren't talking about transformation but, really, a revolution. Her talk focused on relationships as the essential element for change. Wheatley's themes intertwined in ways that escape easy summary - a great thing in a keynote speech - and throughout, her thoughts on relationships, networks, and connection deeply emphasized and reinforced the work that we're here to do to transform/revolutionize education. Change starts, Wheatley observed, in small and personal ways. "Some friends and I started talking" is how it starts, and for CES, it's how it started and is continuing. "A conversation among friends" is how Ted describes CES, and Fall Forum is where our conversations really take off.

So, more tomorrow on what we're talking about and how it's changing - revolutionizing - education.

We'll be blogging onsite; if you're attending and want to help out in the effort to tell the world what we're learning about how to create and sustain personalized, intellectually challenging and equitable schools and the systems and policies that support them, drop me a line at jdavidson@essentialschools.org or comment below. I'm eager to get many voices and perspectives in on the action.

Stay tuned for reports on school visits, preconference sessions, speakers, workshops, and more. We know that because so many of us have to keep teaching, learning, participating in your families and communities, and otherwise maintaining the home fires, there are lots of you who would love to be with us but can't. And we know that professional development and other funds are always scarce, and that prohibits others from being with us. Whatever the reason, we'll miss you. And whatever the reason, we hope we're able to give you a taste of what we're learning and talking about and, of course, that we'll see you in Denver in 2007!

And, of course, happy halloween! Save me a mini-box of Junior Mints; they're my favorite.

For 32 years, the International Reading Association (IRA) and the Children's Book Council have teamed up to present Children's Choices, a list of newly published books read and recommended by 10,000 young people in three age groups: 5-7, 8-10, and 11-13. The Reading Teacher, an eight-times-yearly publication of IRA, published this years' list, with a description of the process:

More than 460 books were evaluated by children for Children's Choices for 2006. The books to be tested were selected by publishers from the books they published in 2005 and were sent to five review teams located in different regions of the United States. Each team consisted of a children's literature specialist plus one or more classroom teachers who in turn worked with other classroom teachers, school librarians, and more than 2,000 children. Throughout the school year the books were in classrooms, being read to or by children.

Children's votes were tabulated in March, and the top 97 titles for 2006 were announced at the annual International Reading Association Convention in May. The review teams provided an annotation for each title on the list.

This project is a big satisfying meal for the book-hungry, which is delightful, but even more delightful is that the recommendation process is designed to emphasize student input.

Which leads to a thought about how students in the CES network might be able to network. Wouldn't it be great to find a way to use internet and other technologies to create a CES recommendation center, a place where students can recommend useful books, resources, and perhaps even people who are expert on a variety of topics to each other? Our students are asked to fuse their personal interests with their schools' curricula in unique ways. Though certainly no two projects are alike, they might be in the best position to help each other. If a student in SeaTac, Washington seeks resources on the career paths of research biologists, it may well be that another student in Boston has just the person to talk to or web site to peruse for her to get what she's seeking for her research toward her Exhibition or other project.

If this idea appeals to you, please, make a comment and tell us what you think. If you want it, we'll work on making it happen.

We're identified as the Coalition for Essential Schools - for the record, that for should be an of. But no matter - we're glad for the coverage, and excited to see the school get off the ground! We hope to see the Bayview-Hunters Point community at the town hall meetings we're hosting next week, and the Essential Blog will keep the larger CES community posted on this and our other evolving school-creation work.

And just as we were adding a link to Educational Justice, a blog written by San Francisco School Board member Eric Mar and friends, we were delighted to say that they had already linked to us, commenting on the Bayview Essential School of Music, Art and Social Justice.

And while we're on that subject, CES is looking for design team members - read on:

Wanted: experienced teachers and a school leader, starting now!

We need dedicated, creative and hardworking educators interested in working on our team to continue with the planning and design of a small school in Bayview Hunters Point, San Francisco that will open in September 2007.

Our mission is to engage, educate and empower Bayview youth to transform their lives while positively contributing to the betterment of their community.

Our students will become independent thinkers, problem solvers and self-directed learners. Our school community
models the values of dedication, care, creativity and interdependence that will help to shape our students into successful learners and community leaders. Bayview Essential School students will graduate as artists, scholars and leaders.

Qualifications:
- Appropriate credentials
- Experience with urban youth, youth of color, and traditionally underserved youth
- Experience in small schools and/or CES schools a plus

Send your resume and a cover letter to Mara Benitez, mbenitez@essentialschools.org

For more information:
- design team member
- school leader

Stipends available

People of color encouraged to apply

Take the time to read the whole speech (and if you want background on Nebraska' performance-based assessment system from the Essential Blog perspective, read DoE (Re)Approves Nebraska's STARS Test.

If you're reading this with five minutes to spare in your day and need a quick hit of the understanding that Christensen is bringing to Nebraska's teachers and students - and, by extension of his public comments, to all of us working to create assessment systems that enhance learning and teachers' professional capacity - here's a bit:

I have found that in schools where classroom-based assessment is led by teachers in collaboration with their administrators, that cultures develop where personal and professional renewal lives and thrives. I have found in schools with classroom-based assessment to be places where passion is back and it is welcomed. I have found that classroom-based assessment creates places where the passion is back and in these schools it is okay to be passionate about our work; our profession, our kids--all of our kids. And, I have found classroom-based assessment to create places where the professional spirits of educators can thrive and places where their hearts embrace each child and every child. Aren’t these the kinds of places where all of us would like to live and do our work?

We think that these kinds of places are also likely to thrive as Essential schools, and I hope that some Nebraska educators will join us in Chicago at the 2006 Fall Forum next week. We'll have a lot to learn from each other!