Education Week - May 15, 2013 - 18

EDUCATION WEEK

MAY 15, 2013

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Sequestration Cuts Hitting Head Start Standards Supporters
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air traffic controllers because of flight delays, there
has not been the same traction to stave off Head
Start funding reductions.
“Our parents, like so many of us, use all their resources just to make do. They’re not hell-raisers as a
rule,” said Joyce Farmer, the director of the KnoxvilleKnox County Head Start program in Tennessee.

Paring Enrollment
But many parents are trying to make the impact
of the cuts known.
Jolie Whatton has two children who have gone
through Head Start. Her daughter Gavyn, 6, is
finishing her kindergarten year and spent a year
in Head Start. Her 2-year-old son Breyan has
been enrolled in Early Head Start since he was 6
months old.
Ms. Whatton, who lives in Tucson, has helped her
center collect 1,200 letters and signatures in support
of Head Start and is trying to get a personal meeting
with U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
She said that without Head Start, she would have
to pay $1,000 or more a month for child care that
doesn’t have the educational component that is embedded in the federal program. Losing 160 slots “is a
huge cut for us. We feel lucky that we didn’t have to
cut immediately,” she said.
Head Start grantees have some flexibility in how
they will absorb the reduced funding in order to
reduce the effect on children currently enrolled,
including ending the school year early or starting
the year later than planned. If at all possible, the
Office of Head Start says that programs should try
not to disrupt children who are currently enrolled.
Still, Head Start participants are feeling the impact of sequestration. Two Head Start programs
in Indiana, for example, recently received publicity for removing 36 children this year through a
random lottery.
Chuck Parr, the president of Riverbend Head
Start and Family Services in Alton, Ill., said his
agency, which serves about 950 children, made immediate cuts when the sequester went into effect.
The agency, which runs centers in Madison County
near St. Louis, ended its program year two weeks

ELL Ruling
Fails to Quell
Ariz. Dispute
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 17

classifying English-learners as
proficient and he credits the fourhour language-instruction bloc as
the main reason for that. (Arizona’s
reclassification rates, however,
caught the attention of federal
civil rights investigators who found
that students were being removed
from ell programs too quickly.
Last year, the state agreed to track
down tens of thousands of such
students and provide them supplemental language instruction.)
But critics of the approach say
it deprives ells—especially those
who may spend years in the language program—access to core curriculum. They also argue, as many
language-acquisition experts do,
that instruction in language and
academic content should be done
simultaneously.
Tim Hogan, the executive director of the Arizona Center for Law
in the Public Interest and the longtime lawyer for the Flores plain-

early, and all 12-month employees are taking four
furlough days.
When the program year resumes, the agency also
plans to close a center that housed a 68-child program. Thirty-four of those slots will go away; the
remaining 34 will be transferred to a Head Start
program a few miles away. The agency is also paring
about 22 children from its Early Head Start rolls. The
savings will total around $425,000, Mr. Parr said, but
the reduction in spaces will mean that it will be even
harder to move off the agency’s waiting list of about
300 children.
“Early childhood doesn’t seem to have the voice
that other industries have,” Mr. Parr said.
The Knoxville-Knox County agency also chose to
end its service year two weeks early, wrapping up
its program last week instead of continuing through
May 24 as planned, Ms. Farmer said.
The agency also plans to accept 70 fewer Head Start
students in September. Ms. Farmer noted that the
program was already turning away applicants; usually about 1,400 to 1,500 families would apply for the
approximately 1,000 slots that the center once had.
Meleena Lamb has a 5-year-old son, Nathaniel,
in one of the Knoxville centers. He started the program as a shy boy with some speech disabilities, but
through the services he has received in Head Start,
Ms. Lamb said she thinks he’ll be able to start kindergarten ready to keep up with his peers.
“He is a totally different child. His vocabulary has
grown by leaps and bounds,” said Ms. Lamb. Her options in the area would be day-care centers “where
they’re going to sit him in front of a TV,” and, at more
than $100 a week, even that would be unaffordable
for her.
“I just hope that the people who should be paying
attention are paying attention,” Ms. Lamb said. “This
is not about a balance sheet. These are children.”
Ms. Farmer, the director of the Knoxville-Knox
County agency, said that she doesn’t anticipate a
change in Head Start funding unless a congressional
election brings in more lawmakers willing to compromise and end the sequester. But if more funding
comes from the federal government, she said the
center is prepared to quickly expand to enroll more
children.
“There really will be better days,” Ms. Farmer said
she tells staff members and parents.

tiffs, said most ells spend between
three and four years in the language program, a “very long time
to be denied access to the regular
curriculum.
“And that’s only going to get
worse,” he added, noting that the
state, in its agreement with federal civil rights officials, must
toughen its assessment criteria for
determining when a student has
reached proficiency and no longer
needs services.

Case History
When the Flores lawsuit was
filed 21 years ago by parents in the
Nogales school district, the case
focused largely on Arizona’s funding levels for English-learners.
It ended up in the U.S. Supreme
Court in 2009, when, in a 5-4 decision, the justices largely sided
with the state and remanded the
case back to a U.S. district court
to consider changes made to programs for English-learners since
the original filing.
Central to that review was the
four-hour instructional model
that the state mandated in 2008,
eight years after Arizona voters
approved an English-only ballot
initiative that restricted the types
of programs educators could use to

teach English-learners.
As the long-running Flores case
moves into its third decade, scholars like Mr. Jiménez-Castellanos
say achievement gaps between
Arizona ells and their Englishspeaking peers are likely to grow
in the common-core era.
“We aren’t producing the results
for English-learners now with the
current Arizona standards, which
are among the lowest, so how can
we possibly expect that to be any
different with the new, more rigorous standards?” he said. Mr. Huppenthal believes the four-hour bloc,
with “polishing” to allow more content to be taught during that period, will ensure that ells succeed
under the new standards.
Just how the long-running controversies over ell education in
Arizona get resolved will depend
more on political and demographic
change driven by the state’s large
and growing Hispanic population,
than on the litigation, said Mr.
Hogan.
One proposed change under
consideration in the Arizona legislature is shifting authority over
English-learner policy back to the
state board of education. Currently,
a task force made up of legislative
and gubernatorial appointees oversees all ell policy.

Ramp Up Advocacy
Of Common Core
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

ated his common-core support in
an appearance in that state with
Secretary Duncan.
“States are standing up for
what’s right, and organizations are
supporting them,” said Chris Minnich, the executive director of the
Council of Chief State School Officers, which led the effort to develop
and promote the standards along
with the National Governors Association. “There are several types of
organizations that are doing that.”

‘Start at Square One’
Critics have made several arguments against the common core.
Some say the standards are being
crammed into classrooms by the
federal government in a power
grab of questionable legality. They
and others say that the common
core is a national curriculum in
disguise, that claims about its rigor
are inflated, or that it sets unrealistic expectations.
Criticisms also have arisen about
the testing load the standards require, the timetable for implementation, and the pace of professional
development for teachers.
Participating states are now implementing the standards, which
cover English/language arts and
math, and tests based on the common core are slated to begin in the
2014-15 academic year.
Perhaps the most prominent
pushback has been in Indiana,
where Gov. Mike Pence, a Republican, is expected to sign a bill that
would require a fiscal and policy
review of the standards.
Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee
are among the other states that,
to varying degrees, have dealt with
growing political opposition to the
common core. Conservative organizations and tea party groups
have pushed bills opposing the
standards at the state level, but
groups skeptical about the role of
standardized tests and the private
sector in education have also made
inroads among progressives.
American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten,
who says she continues to support
the common core in principle, presented a critique on April 30 based
on concerns about how quickly and
effectively the standards are being
implemented. In a speech to the
Association for a Better New York,
she called for a delay in attaching
high stakes to results from tests
based on the common core. Teachers should have more time to understand the standards and adapt
instruction to fit them, she said.
Even as supporters say common core remains on track, they
say they are taking its opponents
seriously.
When the Tennessee education
department started getting basic
but increasingly frequent ques-

tions about the standards—along
the lines of “Is the federal government now telling us what textbooks we have to purchase?”—
supporters saw the need to act,
said state Commissioner of Education Kevin Huffman.
“We realized that we had to
start at square one and be able
to start telling people, ‘OK, this is
the story of Tennessee’s engagement with the common core,’ ” Mr.
Huffman said.
In recent weeks, there have been
renewed efforts in Tennessee from
the State Collaborative to Reform
Education, or score, a nonprofit
group led by former U.S. Sen. Bill
Frist that promotes college and
career readiness, to counter foes
of the common core in the state.
Opponents began holding public
forums last month where representatives from anti-common-core
groups made their case.
On April 30, score announced
that more than 200 groups had
signed on to its Expect More,
Achieve More Coalition. The coalition, begun by score in 2009 and
revived last year to support the
common core, includes state businesses and school districts and
stresses what it says is the importance of the common core.
The coalition has geared up a
social-media campaign to promote
the standards. It also released a
fact sheet and history that says
in part, “Standards do not dic-

STATE BRUSH FIRES
The Common Core State
Standards have sparked
debate and legislative battles in
a number of states, including:
ALABAMA
Multiple legislative attempts have
been made to derail the common
core in this state. Gaining the
most traction was a bill that would
have required the state board of
education to drop the standards.
It was approved by the Senate
education committee, but Senate
President Pro Tem Del Marsh,
a Republican, killed the bill.

INDIANA
Gov. Mike Pence, a Republican,
is expected to sign legislation
initiating a fiscal and policy review
of the common core. Schools
Superintendent Glenda Ritz says
the bill means Indiana’s previous
standards would remain alongside
the common core. The state board
of education has reiterated its
support for the common standards;
Gov. Pence can replace six of the
boards’ 10 members this summer.

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Education Week - May 15, 2013

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