Posted on 08/25/2006 5:05:20 AM PDT by MeneMeneTekelUpharsin
Evacuees in area schools being held back at high rates
One in four Houston Independent School District students displaced by Hurricane Katrina failed to make enough academic progress to be promoted to the next grade this school year — a far higher rate than their classmates and an indicator of the massive challenges still facing area schools. About 700 of the 2,900 Katrina students returning to HISD this year were held back, including 41 percent of high school sophomores and 52 percent of juniors. That 24 percent retention rate was among the highest in the area, according to retention rates released by some local school systems. "These kids have worked hard, but many of them were not prepared for the rigorous Texas standards," HISD spokesman Terry Abbott said.
Though HISD officials said they couldn't provide a retention rate for non-displaced students this year, state records show that 5 percent of elementary and middle schoolers were retained in HISD in 2004-05, compared with 18.6 percent of displaced elementary and middle school students this year. Surrounding districts also reported high retention rates, including 23 percent in Tomball, 17 percent in Aldine and 13 percent in Katy. John E. Sawyer, superintendent of the Harris County Department of Education, which assists 26 area districts, said he hopes Houston schools can figure out how to make sure students who are held back don't become dropouts down the road, a common problem associated with retention.
"Everyone's concerned about kids being retained," he said. "It's clearly difficult for children. It's certainly difficult financially (for the school district). Over the span of time, you increase the cost of education of a child and, the truth is, in public schools we don't have a lot of success graduating these students who are over-aged." Others say that Katrina evacuees' unique situation may actually help guard against some of the social stigma that usually accompanies retention. These students, for example, haven't attended the same schools with the same classmates for five or 10 years, they said. "Because they weren't connected as much, it may not have that long-term devastating impact that having to repeat sometimes has," said Janice Beal, a Houston psychotherapist who has worked with hundreds of evacuees.
Some lagged years behind
Area educators, who earned national accolades for welcoming more than 20,000 displaced students to their campuses last year, quickly discovered that compassion alone wouldn't be enough to tackle the challenge. The storm's young victims arrived in Houston grief-stricken, quick to anger and sometimes at odds with their Houston classmates. They didn't have homes, let alone school records, uniforms or supplies. Some lagged years behind academically, a problem that was compounded when students missed countless days getting settled in Houston or making trips with their parents to salvage items from their devastated New Orleans homes. Last spring's Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills pointed to clear discrepancies between students from Texas and Louisiana. For example, only 24 percent of displaced 11th-graders passed the state's exit-level exam, compared with 64 percent of other 11th-graders.
"There were huge gaps," said Tyrone Davis, interim principal of Paul Revere Middle School in Houston, which enrolled roughly 400 evacuees last year. "The gaps had everything to do with the quality of work down to just getting the work." School leaders had to explain to their new students that Texas has higher expectations and stricter rules, Davis said. "Once they understood the rules, it was smooth sailing," Davis said. To help all of its students, Revere, which re-enrolled nearly 200 Katrina students this year, doubled the length of English class to 90 minutes this year. Struggling sixth-graders have also been put in 90-minute math classes.
Still struggling to adjust
Across Houston, an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 Katrina evacuees — about 50 percent to 60 percent of the students who were here last year — re-enrolled this fall. Many of the families are still struggling to adjust, one of the many obstacles that schools must overcome this year. For starters, many of the students who fled the storm are still combating post-traumatic stress disorder, which can surface in the form of angry outbursts, depression, anxiety or mood swings. Children may even complain of stomachaches, nightmares or sleeplessness, experts said. Even though schools are under tremendous pressure to make sure Katrina students pass the TAKS this spring, experts say they must not ignore these tremendous emotional needs. "Emotional distress can get in the way of a child's academic performance. The two go hand in hand," said Renata Nero, chairwoman of behavioral sciences at Houston Baptist University. "A child that is grieving may not be available cognitively to deal with a math assignment. It's very important that we don't compartmentalize emotional and academic needs." Korbin Johnson, principal of the New Orleans West College Preparatory Academy, a charter school campus that opened for Katrina evacuees last year, said high standards, strict discipline, ample psychological support and extended school hours have helped his 150 evacuees make tremendous gains. "We realize a lot of our job is catching kids up," said Johnson, who predicts that the students will be able to make two years worth of academic growth this school year.
Youngsters said that nightmares and memories of Katrina make it tough to concentrate on school. "I thought I was going to get over it fast, but I didn't," said Victor Flores, 11, a fifth-grader at New Orleans West. "I am always thinking about New Orleans." At New Orleans West, only a handful of children were held back, mainly those with attendance problems, Johnson said. Officials with other school districts, such as Alief, also said they tried to avoid retaining children. "There are ample opportunities to catch these kids up," said Karla Kessler, manager of federal programs and grants for the Alief school district. Alief, which enrolled one of the highest percentages of Katrina students last year, added a special remediation program this year so that high school freshmen and sophomores from New Orleans can quickly make up credits they might be lacking. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Hiring teachers, counselors
Area districts are pouring millions of federal dollars into hiring extra teachers, hall monitors, social workers and counselors. They're creating tutoring and mentoring programs. Educators have vowed to work early mornings, late afternoons and weekends to make sure these children get up to speed in time to meet Texas accountability standards. "One of the things we know is that these children came to us about a year ago, but it's going to take several years of intense intervention to make sure these students are ready to earn a Texas diploma," said Scott Van Beck, superintendent of HISD's west region. Houston teachers were stunned last year to find first-graders who didn't know the alphabet and fifth-graders who were unsure how to make nouns and verbs agree. "I don't think we realized the degree of deficiencies when these students came in," HISD Trustee Larry Marshall said. HISD leaders said they plan to closely monitor the 3,050 Katrina students who enrolled this year to make sure they don't fall behind. Texas schools could provide Katrina victims unprecedented opportunity by helping them erase any academic shortcomings, said Mike Feinberg, co-founder of the Knowledge is Power Program, a national system of charter schools that includes the New Orleans West campus in Houston. Next year, Feinberg said, "they'll be able to enter on grade level for the first time in their lives, which will set them up for success. We truly will turn lemons into lemonade."
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Untaught by their parents.
I bet none of them were Asian.
What's sad is that this is coming from Houston public schools, which certainly don't have the highest academic standards.
"...Houston teachers were stunned last year to find first-graders who didn't know the alphabet..."
Failure by the parents and the New Orleans school system. Has nothing to do with the storm.
Oh wait, let me be the first.
It's Bush's fault.
/s
As funny as it is...sooner or later someone in the community will point the finger at him for it.
They are not "falling" behind. They were behind to begin with (in Houston), and they are being held back so that they advance based on merit, not age. The headline appears to be a disservice to the article.
I'm guesing that's some sort of achievement tests required to move from one grade to the next.
I wonder how long it will be in place...
When were they ever ahead?
Oh, please, this is hardly even news. Lousyana schools have routinely ranked at the bottom of the list for decades and Nawlins public schools are among the worst of the worst. When I transferred to Nawlins in the middle of my junior year in high school, I knew in the first week that I was going backward in my education - NOT maintaining or improving on the previous higher standards in the Dallas schools I had been attending for the previous 4 - 5 years. Upon telling my parents that if that was the best we could do, I might just as well drop out and look for something else to do, they scrambled to get me into a private school in the city - one that offered a superior education to that of Nawlins' public schools.
The status of the Katrina students may be alarming to Texas teachers, but not to those of us that have ever attended Lousyana public schools. Third-world countries provide a better level of education than Lousyana does.
Children should know the alphabet long before they ever see the inside of a classroom. As others have noted here, nothing is said about the responsibility of parents to guide their children's education.
I be knowin' my English. What they is talkin' about?
"I'm guesing that's some sort of achievement tests required to move from one grade to the next.
I wonder how long it will be in place..."
It's been in place about 20 years now, and there is no plan to drop it. Any child doing grade-level work should be able to pass the Texas assessments. That only 24 percent of the LA students could pass is just incredible.
I wonder what in the world LA was doing with all the federal education funds all these years. Obviously, the Dept. of Education is doing nothing to monitor the use of those billions of tax dollars. One of Ronald Reagan's mistakes was not shutting down that useless bureaucracy.
Dosen't surprise one bit. Dysfunctional public schools turn out dysfunctional students. New Orleans does not have a monopoly on it and it has nothing to do with displacement caused by a hurricane. We have a nation wide system run by an abundance of corrupt school administrators more interested in fat government funded programs that do nothing to help kids learn. Another generation of vipers in the making for America. Sad.
Louisiana basically is a third world country and the government their doesn't seem all that interested in changing that. They have been lagging behind the rest of the country since the days of Huey Long, it's like our own little Cuba.
"Tobrouex, how much is 80 - 48?"
"I dunno"
"Tobrouex, if you buy two rocks of crack for $24 and you give the man 4 $20 bills.."
"I better get $32 back or somebody gets cut".
Well, maybe not now, but if a huge amount of these kids flunk it, and a huge amount of them are black, then Jesse the Jackass will soon be there moaning about how it's racist, and anti-immigrant to boot (they immigrated from Louisiana), and so they shouldn't be subjected to the mean old Texas tests which were instituted by George Bush as yet another way to keep his boot on the black man, and I can't think of a way to get Halliburton in here, but he might.
Know whatta mean, Vern?
The way a school teacher friend of my sisters put it is "We've always had wannabe gangsters in League City, but these kids are the real deal.". He told her of being told to 'F' off by an NOLA evacuee student... he was so stunned he couldn't even respond.
Try forced busing. Thanks to out of state NAACP carpetbaggers who filed lawsuits using the government provided free legal assistance to the poor, school districts across the state are forced to comply with forced busing. Trips from the suburbs to the inner city take about 2 hours. (White) students never know from year to year what school they will attend. If they do manage to make a friend in the 98% black school they are bussed to this year, next year they will probably be bussed to a completely different school. Blacks can choose either their local school or a suburban school of their choice. YES, IT IS STILL IN EFFECT.
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