 So actually it is really my pleasure to put this portion of the day in Al Coffman's hands. He will talk to us about how this panel will run. I want you to think about what they will have to say because it will become a part of our table discussions as well. So thank you all for hanging in and being so focused and being so ready to keep moving forward. Let me turn things over to Al Coffman as we talk about this panel of discussions. Thank you very much. It's always wonderful to work with IDRA and let me tell Dr. Castellanos you're very lucky. I've seen Bradley cut off Henry Cisneros when he when he went past his time and Henry was absolutely amazed. I think I don't think even President Clinton would shut off Henry Cisneros like that. So it's a wonderful group here. My name is Al Coffman and I've been given the great honor of introducing this this panel. We have Miss Martha Lonzo who's a ELL transition teacher Miss Lonzo here and everybody we can go ahead clap. We have Veronica Alvarez who's a bilingual at the Department of Harlandale. We have Dr. Rogelio Sainz from UTSA Dr. Alvararo Saavedra who's the superintendent of South San and Dr. Julian Vasquez-Heilig from now from California but from Texas for many years. PhD who's now at California State with expert on bilingual at least. So I thought I wanted to open the discussion first of all with a very quick summary of what Dr. what Oscar has found for us. First of all schools that spend more money do better for ELL students. That's subtle that's true and that's what he found. And secondly all schools are doing badly. Very few are meeting even the Texas very low standards for what ELL students should learn. So those are our two major factors and that is what he found and I think to some extent we want to talk about the fine points of his study among the five of us. I've had a little background with this issue in 1974 I met Dr. Jose Cardenas who was really rebounding from the great loss we had at the U.S. Supreme Court in the Rodriguez case and we were walking to lunch and I said well why are you doing this bilingual ed? Why this instead of other things? Well we lost it we lost the Rodriguez case but we're going to win it bit by bit. We're going to do bilingual ed and then we're going to migrant education then we're going to early childhood education then we're going to do women's rights and we're going to take it step by step and he said I think it'll probably take a few years to do each one. Well it's 40 years later we're still working on the first one but many of us are behind what Jose Cardenas wanted to do. Under Jose's tutelage and our rather kicks in the rear Maldiff went back and filed the USV Texas bilingual education case in 1975 that case was developed and Jose and IDRA helped get all the information together for that case including the interrogatories. That was tried by Norma Cantu, Peter Roos and Roger Rice. Dr. Jose Cardenas was the major expert witness in that case. That case by Judge Justice adopted basically the Cardenas plan for bilingual education in the state of Texas which required complete content instruction K through 12 complete access to bilingual education from pre-K through the 12th grade. That's what Judge Justice said when it got to the Texas legislators you might guess they weakened it a bit they almost completely eviscerated it. Senator Carlos Trujuan one of our great champions of the time and my hats off to Jose Rodriguez I think for carrying on this mantle. Senator Trujuan filed the bill pushed it through Dr. Albert Cortez was one of the people who was advocating for it and that bill finally became what is now Senate Bill 477 the basic structure of bilingual education in Texas. Then that became an important part of the state plan which of course was influenced by the federal government. I got to work at the Office for Civil Rights and the state plan became the guts of what they would require every school district in the state of Texas to do under the ESAA. Now wonder who really wrote the bill Senate Bill 477. I'm sure that Senator Carlos Trujuan went out and went into his study and sat down and wrote it with other senators and they discussed what is best for Texas. Well that's one view those of you have ever spent any time around the Texas legislature so no that's not how it happens. So what happened was at the dinner table of Dr. Gloria Zamora of IDRA Dr. Zamora and Roger Rice and Albert Cortez and I think Mary Esther Bernal or Joe Bernal might have been there sat around the table and wrote basically what is Senate Bill 477. So that's how you've got what you've got now. Now I have had the chance to look at some of these factors for the years and a bilingual education has improved believe it or not from what it was in the late 70s but there's still major problems in it and we have David Hinojosa here from Maldef who's been the legal champion of this issue now the last 10 years and has fought like you know what to try to get Texas into the 21st century maybe even the 20th century to have a good bilingual education program. It's been indefatigable and that I greatly appreciate it. So now I want to go ahead with speakers and I'm going to ask them to stay to 10 minutes and I'm going to have the Bradley of the past 10 minutes he's going to cut you off like you were like you were Henry Cisneros. Okay so let me go ahead start with Ms. Alonzo please. You want to stay come up here. Hello my name is Martha Alonzo I'm currently the ELL transition coach at Stevens High School with Northside ISD and I have a prior experience teaching ESL students. I was the ESL teacher at Rhodes Middle School from San Antonio ISD. I'm also currently working on my PhD at the University of the Incarnate Word and I'm working on my dissertation so a lot of this presentation shed light with statistics as to my current research. I'm able to tie in what I've learned from the literature as well as real-world experience in working with ELL students. When I worked at Rhodes our population looked very similar to the statistics. We had a large long-term ELL population and a smaller newcomer population and it mirrors the same thing at Stevens High School. So with the funding I know that most of the schools are trying to provide that support and we're able to see that in the in the classrooms. Do you feel that you have the funding you need in your school? So currently at Stevens our principal he's been able to use some of our title money title one money to be able to provide support for our students and the support that we're providing for our students is tutors in the classroom. So we send our tutors into the core content areas to be able to support our ELL students in the classrooms. So that's one of the ways that we're using some of our funding to provide support for our ELL students and I know that something new that not all the campuses are doing so it's the principal's support for the program is very important in order for us to receive that support and we are the district as a whole they created a new job position and it's which is the one I'm in it's the ELL transition coach and basically we work with the teachers to be able to train them and be able to work with these types of students because a lot of the times the teachers do not have that ELL endorsement or that ESL endorsement to be able to adequately provide the instruction that the students need so being able to being able to have that position and train teachers to be able to provide that support will ultimately help them overall. We just asked you one more question. What do you think you would need to provide even a better education for your ELL students especially the very recent arrivals? Well our recent arrivals do receive a lot of support already. They do have some sheltered classes and they have tutors that are more permanent than the tutors that we currently added with our Title I money so those are a little bit temporary depending on the funding is how long we're actually able to keep them so definitely having more funding to be able to provide that support of that that tutor support in the classrooms makes makes a lot of difference. The tutors work with these kids in small group and that's a lot of the times what they need is that small group support to where they feel comfortable enough to ask questions and to clarify any misunderstandings that they have. Good morning my name is Veronica Alvarez. I'm the bilingual ESL coordinator at Harland OISD and I thank you for allowing me to speak today. Several things kind of came up with the presentation and everything that was said. In terms of local funding we do need more support as I have gone and visited campuses and districts we have for example one campus in particular that we went to go visit and when we went and visited they had three ESL teachers. Our campus that has probably the same number of ELLs if not even more has one ESL teacher so clearly we can see how students are supported and in terms of funding but because that district is a bigger district they receive more funding and so equitable services in terms of interventions resources has come up as one of the biggest things for us. Seeing equitable resources for our students we do not see a lot of products in terms of Spanish products equitable Spanish good quality Spanish content vocabulary Spanish that we need for our students. There needs to be also some type of push for those types of equitable services. I'm very fortunate that our district we have our leadership that does support us a lot but also at the same time we could see that without the funding and the resources we're not going to have that equal opportunities for our students. In terms of I can see right now that we have the 0.1 and I know that the push is now 0.5 why not one why not one point I mean if we can see our special at five times more support why are we not seeing that support for our ELLs in our district in particular we are over 2,500 ELLs at our district and how can we support them more our elementary yes is our bigger terms of students our secondary we have about 900 students however there we do have a lot of recent arrivals and so how can we support them in terms of the support that they need curriculum is also a big piece for us as well in terms of finding and and having the teachers work teachers are kind of stretched thin right now in terms of the of everything that they're doing now with our new testing of star we can see teachers are stressed to the minimum with that so when we want to create things even district that's very difficult because we're trying to pull them after school or trying to pull them in to do that but we also don't want to take them away from the students so how do we create this quality work and you know being able to pull our teachers either after school or in the summer months so again equitable for in terms of that I do want to acknowledge because without my staff and who's in the room if y'all can stand up really quickly my staff I know y'all they're like I can't believe but I want to acknowledge them three of them and missing two others work primarily in the secondary setting we do now have starting a branch out into our elementary setting but they can tell you first just being there at the campuses what the students go through I could share so many stories with you of the fights that we fight for our students one person in particular that I'm looking at right now who was told that the student had to go to an alternative center because she was the only student that was taking tax and now they wanted her to go and turn in the center so we fight the battle every day for our students we fight the battle for our parents as well our parents want to be and they want support and we are there for support for them and so in terms of what we can do to also help empower our parents in terms of funding is also very important as well without our parents and our parents understanding their rights and what they can do and we are those supporters at our district thank you and thank you for the work that you do Ms. Alvarez I have one or two just quick questions do you you have the materials for your ELL students secondary level in content areas in Spanish or all the courses available to other students we are working on several pieces one we are fortunate this year we have our dual language program who's now moved into sixth grade and so at that campus in particular all the materials are there why because we were able to kind of get prepared for that at our other campus especially our high schools we do not and so and a part of that is adoptions are old things are coming up new we know how we recently are going to what get the social studies and then the lotte teachers of other languages theirs has been for a long time and so in terms of the support they need as well but in terms of for recent arrivals we don't have everything Dr. Sanz I saw Dr. Sanz at a forum on immigration before that I saw anyone on health so he's really very active in the community now thank you good morning we're asked to address the important issues for policy makers that comes out of of this research what it means for our own particular research and that of others in our fields as well as what are the next questions that we need to to consider I will speak of the work of Dr. Jimenez Castellanos as a sociologist demographer and public policy specialist I've conducted demographic analysis examining examining the demography of Latino children as well as the state of Latino children in the country and one of the some of the patterns that come out is the importance of Latinos for the future of the United States increasingly the the workforce in in the United States will be increasingly Latinos and we have our kids today growing up and joining the labor force and it is also it addresses also the policy implications that come about if we do not address the the educational needs of Latino children the cost that we pay for not educating our youth and in order to be productive citizens in in the coming labor force that is increasingly technological and global thus in this research there is an important dimension that comes from the intersection between demography and education yet my research and also that of demographer colleagues tends to examine Latino children as a whole while it recognizes the diversity of Latino children with respect for example to native nativity status where children were born a poverty socioeconomic status and so forth as well as language there has not been much attention specifically to English language learners which has Dr. Jimenez Castellanos research clearly demonstrates that this group represents one of the fastest growing segments of the K through 12 population statistics such as quote one in nine of us students are learning are learning English as a second language and that this statistic is one in six in texas amply demonstrate the significance of this population demographers then will need to consider directly English language learners in order to more fully comprehend the social economic demographic and educational realities of Latino children the research that is being highlighted here today also represents a clarion call for policy makers in texas about the major need to address the gaping inequities that continue in the field of education that continue to characterize the funding of education in the state and the need to invest in the education of of uh english language learners and more broadly in latino children indeed among latino children the group that i consider the engine of the us population as well as the texas population english language learners in particular are embedded are living in extremely poor neighborhoods poor schools and poor communities that make it very challenging and costly to overcome these barriers in order to put them closer to to uh to the uh equalizing the playing field academically as dr. Jimenez castellanos notes unfortunately he says quote uh ell's tend to experience high rates of poverty higher mobility rates attend segregated underfunded and unsafe schools compared to their non ell counterparts close quote dr. Jimenez castellanos research shows that english language learners do best in schools that are high achieving and that are all also well funded the bill to educate these children is not cheap unfortunately the mentality of many policy makers is that quote we can't throw money at the problem as jonathan coastal author of many books including savage inequalities asserts quote middle and upper class parents don't have problems throwing money at the at the education of their children the reality is that it is cheaper to invest in the education of english language learners and more broadly latino children today than it is than it will be to pay in the near future for the fallout of the failure to do so dr. Jimenez castellanos research also supports uh work of the san antonio hispanic chamber of commerce white paper that is that recently was released titled the impact of education on economic development in texas which idra as well as u tsa collaborated on that paper and the white paper calls attention in particular to the importance of addressing the educational needs of english language learners and latino children finally i want to address the implications of the research from the perspective of race and inclusion the issue of race is increasingly masked diluted and made invisible after all many argue that we are beyond race uh that race has no uh no longer matters and that in the field of education and inequality that has nothing to do with race we are living in a time when it is taboo to mention race despite the five ton pink elephant in the middle of the living room many policy makers and members of the general public continue to see english language uh learners as well as latino children as not our children but their children and see them as a liability instead of an asset comments such as we can't throw money at the problem uh for those children are couched in time-worn stereotypes and images of english latino learners as well as latino children as people who are incapable of learning and succeeding there needs to be a transformation involving policy makers shifting the view of these children as their children and to embrace these kids as our children there needs to be a view supported by resources and high expectations that every english language learner every latino child every african-american child is capable of excelling academically in the end given demographic trends it is obvious that in the future uh that the future of uh english language learners and more broadly latino children is tied to the fortunes of the country as well as uh as the the fortunes of texas we're rather the the fortunes of texas and and the country are very much tied to what happens with latino kids and if we fail to uh educate kids today that is going to have a massive uh impact on on the economy for example and uh and the fortunes of the the country and and the state uh and a senator rodriguez pointed out that there needs to be these partnerships that emerge between the business community for example uh educational leaders policy makers parents and activists uh and in the end then what we have is in terms of looking at the demographic future you really have a country that is going to be increasingly latino and today's latino kids being the workforce for example the citizens the engaged citizenry of the country and in the coming in the coming decades and we're going to see just like the baby boomers impact at each institution as they grew from from babies for example impacting the diaper industry all the way now as baby boomers are retiring and impacting the health industry so too with latino children you see the impact that they're going to have on the educational system in terms of colleges such as our lady of the lake uh university utsa and others uh are increasingly going to be drawing from children uh youth that are increasingly latinos in terms of the economy the workforce entrepreneurs and so forth will increasingly be drawing from uh people who are latinos the healthcare industry even in religion we see the demographic shifts that have taken place and we see some religions for example or some catholic churches for example in the northeast losing uh congregants because of the aging of the white population and we see also the uh the transfer the uh the movement of many latinos catholics for example to other religions particularly protestant and um and evangelicals as you see the the recruitment of this growing population and you also see it on the on the political scene so uh in some then in terms of looking at the future of latinos whether we have a brighter future or or uh one that is that continues to be characterized by poverty and equality and so forth uh it depends very heavily on decisions that are being made in austin in washington dc in terms of coming up with solutions to uh to better educate latino children as well as uh english language uh uh learners thank you next we have uh doctor saia bedra uh he and i used to uh we never lobby but we were both uh in austin to inform legislators and yeah we were never effective at it anyway uh we had representatives of the el paso houston dallas uh san antonio the valley district for all their china information since then doctor saia bedra has been the superintendent i think christy uh and then in austin uh and now he's thought he would retire but instead he's the superintendent of south san which for the first time gives him a chance to really serve thank you el and good morning ladies and gentlemen let me thank idra for inviting me to participate in this program uh uh as elves dated me uh i go back a lot a long time uh uh albert cork best as well we walk the the halls of the capital back in the 80s and into the early 90s and uh so i've been around a long time i was at midwinter for some of you school folks i was at midwinter a few weeks ago last week i guess it was and every every few minutes somebody would stop me and someone from my staff said you know a lot of people know you well when you when you're as old as i am and you're been around so long a lot of people know you so that's what's what's that's what's happened to me um let me talk a little bit about my experiences with el l students and bilingual students and serving them in uh in pretty different districts now uh my time at my time in corpus christy i spent 28 years in corpus christy started my teaching career in corpus christy and became superintendent 20 years later and served seven or eight more four years after that before moving on to houston but corpus christy is a is a community with the school district having about 68 percent of the population of the school district being Hispanic but we only had about six percent of our population for for identified el l bilingual and that really always troubled me because i always felt that that was an extremely low percentage when your population is 68 percent and but then i start looking at my special ed percentages and at that time i have no idea what it is today but at that time the special ed uh uh students or percentage of students identified with something like 14 to 16 percent when the state average was at that time even today about nine to 10 percent as special ed so that told me that instead of identifying them into the el l um uh bilingual program they were being pushed off into the special ed program all right so in my seven years they're a superintendent we worked very hard to try to turn that around and again i have no idea what those percentages are today but those are the type of things that happen uh in in school district uh all over the state frankly all over the country and and i won't say at least at least through my experience in corpus in that particular experience i won't say it was necessarily intentional sometimes it's simply lack of knowledge on the part of of people working working with these children identifying these children um but um anyway that that does happen i move i move on to i move on to houston and in houston i served five years as a superintendent and that population of hispanics in the school district was actually a lower percent it was uh 58 percent of the of the population of in hisd was was hispanic but the the percent of identified by lingual el l students was 28 to 30 percent which is more like it you know that's that's but there's also another difference another difference being in comparing communities and comparing actually san Antonio as well is some communities have a higher percent a higher percent of hispanics in in the community but they're not necessarily mostly first generation hispanics the generation of hispanics that live in the community makes a difference uh in corpus christi certainly we had some first generation hispanics but many of the hispanics in corpus christi were second third fourth and fifth generation hispanics that had been around a long time had assimilated into into the community into the schools and so forth so that makes that makes some difference houston on the other hand is predominantly first generation hispanics for the most part i mean yes they're second and third and so forth but when you start talking about the large numbers it's it's a first generation and the reason is that houston is one of the main intake centers quite frankly that's where that's where immigration lands and and and and it's one of the main ones at least more so than even dallas texas and about about three four three fourth of the immigrants that land in houston move on to other areas of the country but a fourth stays within the community and you you do that for many many many years that's why you start to see houston becoming a predominantly or has become a predominantly hispanic community with predominantly first generation hispanics a much greater need for serving el l and and bilingual bilingual students within that very large district the largest in the state we had about 200 000 kids and about 55 56 000 of them of those students were were el identified ell bilingual students we had numerous programs transitioned of course new language and one of the things that we started during my administration there was we opened up a newcomer's school you know we started to realize that the children there were that were coming in through immigration at one time at one time they were they were coming in with families and they were elementary children but back in the uh when i was there between 04 and and 09 many of these young people were coming by themselves and we continue to see that today older young people by themselves 16 year olds 17 year olds 15 year olds 14 year olds not with families but by themselves we identified that we had many of these young people within the community so we decided that we would try to open up a newcomer's school specifically designed for the for these kids limited funding of course preventives from opening up a big center but we we started with a program that was was to serve 125 young people and we really thought that many of the young people that we were already serving within our 30 high schools in houston would basically come over to that center but when we opened up registration the very first day we opened up registration we had a line of over 300 young people wanting to enroll into this program and none of them were coming from our schools we were still serving the ones that were in our schools these were people young people in our community came to work you know we did a good job I guess of putting the word out publicizing the opening of the newcomer's center and they wanted to get an education as well and uh obviously that first year we had to limit it to 125 that's where where how far our funding would take us but we eventually grew that program to about 200 before I left and I believe it's at about 250 today but there's a great need for that type of program not only in houston but quite frankly in in all large metropolitan areas in in the in the state of of Texas then I move on to south san I thought I thought I wanted to retire in 09 and uh actually I stayed busy I taught at A&M college station for a while uh did a lot of consulting I was asked to uh to serve an interim time as a superintendent at south san as they looked for for a superintendent they asked me to stay and honestly I started to enjoy it and I felt that like as as Al said I was finally serving the people you know this is a different assignment than I've ever had and I've really enjoyed it um at south san a school district of about 10 000 96 percent of our students are Hispanic so that's that's about as Hispanic as you can get and we're certain we're in our identified group is about 15 low I think yes you got to consider the first generation second third fourth generation issues that I talked about but I still think we're under identifying our population I don't believe we're we are where we need to be uh south san is a district with many challenges this happens to be just one of many many challenges uh matter of fact we were flipping bilingual directors as fast as we were flipping superintendents but now but now we have a great our left opposite here with with me uh she's our bilingual director and and she's gonna she's gonna stay around as long as I'm staying around so uh anyway so we we hope to make make the a difference there uh to uh to better identify the young people identification because of problem Bradley tell give me give me the the the sign when I've got two minutes okay I'm I am at two minutes can I borrow some of the other time folks didn't take okay all right so um so the issue of under identifying many times occurs for two reasons uh it's not necessarily the the institution although that plays a role sometimes many times parents don't want their children identified as bilingual children I counter that not only in south san I encountered in houston uh a lot you know there there's a lot of pride that their children will not be labeled bilingual students you know although in houston we had we had research as big as the district is our research department actually had had data that showed that if your children came into the bilingual program ELL program early on second third grade their likelihood of succeeding at the high school level was much greater than those students that should have been that should have gone into the program but did not and we had we were able to make those comparisons and and we worked hard to try to get the parents to understand that this was best for their children we would exit them as soon as they were ready to be exited but they needed to receive the services the other the other caveat and I think I'm facing some of this at south san are principles many times do not want to identify them as bilingual for ELL and it has to do with the idea of balancing your classes specifically at the elementary you know uh how many how many bilingual ELL students do you have in order to serve uh to put to put a classroom together and uh no one likes the split classes and so there's issues there as well I mean those are some of the challenges that that that we face but um let me talk real quickly about the money part because I know that's the the purpose of of of this uh a program today but one of the things that I want to say concerning money this is in your in your program here and when you start to look at these two big circles here at the bottom it really talks about the difference it's comparing the amount of money that's spending classrooms in the 100 100 richest classrooms versus the 100 lowest it's $27,000 now it until you start making put it into a perspective it doesn't really mean much but $27,000 is 50 percent of the teacher salary meaning the the 100 wealthiest districts could increase their teaching staff 50 percent over the lowest and and and provide better services I mean it's a real significant difference when you start look looking at it from from that perspective and the last thing I'll say is is that I think we're facing some real challenges even more so today than we ever have mainly primarily because of the conservative attitude and and leanings that we have in state capital today the the the issue of of the issue of immigration and and and the conservative opinion in reference to immigration it's going to continue to to push back on on this work that we're trying to do to to obtain additional funding for bilingual DL students you know but it doesn't mean we give up we just need to be able to recognize that those challenges are there and we need to be able to strategize as to what's the the best way to be successful to obtain additional funding for for these programs thank you very much I have one quick question for for Dr. Saavedra Dr. Saavedra if the weight for bilingual education were 0.5 instead of 0.1 thus school would get much higher amounts of funding for each one do you think that would encourage principals to identify the students and encourage the districts it's a load yeah no no no absolutely of course that would make a difference but you know as we talked about the weights whether it's whether the increase ought to be to 0.25 or 0.50 you know really what we ought to be looking at is looking at the educational needs for the diversity of ELL students that we have you know as the researchers stated there's different types of ELL students they have different needs the special ed lobby did a great job back in the 60s to be able to to set up their funding based on need and that's why you see special ed weights from I don't know 0.20 to 4.0 whatever it may be that's the kind of weight system that I think that we need for bilingual students as well. Dr. Julian Baskas-Heilig so it's totally unfair to go after all of these esteemed folks how do you bring it home so first I want to say thank you to each of you for dedicating your lives to students thank you to the educators in this room thank you to stakeholders in this room there's so many other endeavors that you could be doing but you're here because you care about kids thank you for that. Second I want to say hello to Dr. Oscar I had a chance to look through the summary before I came one interesting thing about us is we're working on a special issue around education finance and we're trying to gather some of the vast minds around the country to engage with this issue in a non-traditional way folks who haven't traditionally done school finance work in academia and put some new thoughts around this issue so I look forward to working with him on that in the future. Second if you're a tweeter please tweet at me during my one hour of comments wait 10 10 minutes right when you get your PhD they say you can speak no less than one hour but I only have 10 minutes today. Then also let me just say one of the things that really stuck out to me in the in the findings was that 60 percent of schools did not have a cell size large enough for reporting of data which aligns with a conversation that we had at Brown at 60. Last year when we had a Brown v. Board at 60 anniversary the media was engaged with this idea of segregation and at that time we had released a study that we called triple segregation. What do we mean by triple segregation is that not only do we see segregation by race segregation by class but also segregation of ELLs I work for Houston ISD I don't know if I ever told you that Dr. Page we also haven't come in that with Michigan Wolverines yes and so I work for Rod Page and research and accountability back in the late 1990s and we saw that in particular high schools you have concentrations of students in particular elementary schools you have concentrations of students that are ELLs that's just the way that neighborhoods work in the state there's lots of segregation and ELLs we don't think about it that much but ELLs are highly segregated across the state and that's what you see in this test score data is that 60 percent of these schools are not reporting cells large enough that's because ELLs are triple segregated and you can see that if you just type into Google type in triple segregation and then my last names I didn't have much say in my name last week at all the time I have two last names so if you type in my two last names the study will come up in case you're interested in that and we look at triple segregation across the state of Texas second of course money matters of course it does if you walk into a supermarket and you want to walk out with a pizza you need at least legally you need to have some money right so and one of the things that Dr. Sines mentioned he mentioned Dr. Kozo's work which is that well money only doesn't matter when we're talking about poor kids when we're talking about Westlake money matters we're talking about Northwestern San Antonio money matters but when we're talking about the poor kids in central cities all of a sudden money doesn't matter and as Dr. Cervejo mentioned the money adds up Dr. Oscar talked about how there's this $1,000 gap between high performing ELL schools and low performing ELL schools and he talks about the $27,000 so that's tens of thousands of dollars even though $800 or $100 per pupil does not seem like a lot of money on the classroom level you're talking tens of thousands of dollars when you're talking about an entire school you're now talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars when you're talking about a district you're now talking millions of dollars and money buys things folks money buys certified teachers it buys experienced teachers one of the things that we notice when I worked on research and accountability is that we'd have a lot of teachers come into Houston they would cut their teeth in some of our toughest schools and then they'd go off the sugar land then they go off to Katie right they would cut their teeth on our kids our black and brown kids and then they move on because there was more opportunity better pay the schools were nicer etc in other places money does buy things you know I spent eight years at the University of Texas one of you know eight wonderful years except for you know conversations that we had about Michigan football and Texas football everything else I enjoyed um and one of the things you know I was able to do when I was here is attend a lot of think tanks Texas public policy foundation you know conversations those always stressed me and I had to have Amy's ice cream every time I went to a TPPF event afterwards and um and so what's interesting is that there are some folks in the state that are very proud that we're in the bottom five states and spending for people they're very proud about that and the Florida people and the Texas people they compete with each other talking about how little they spend on education for people have you ever been to these events where they are real happy about this they're real happy that they're under spending on education for four kids in the state they're proud of it the problem is that Texas works backwards instead of going forward what I mean by that is is Texas comes up with a number that they want to spend in education and then everything works backwards from that instead of thinking empirically what is it going to take to provide an adequate high quality education for kids what does that cost and then work forward right these statistical models that we use so what economists will do is they'll take a big bucket and throw everything in that bucket and then they'll say oh nothing matters because I put every single variable in the book in this statistical model and nothing matters for you know achievement right one of the things that I also did with Oscar for the his journal the American Mexican American you know that journal was we looked at what factors in primarily Latino schools predicted achievement basic progression models coefficients what coefficients allow you to do is you spend this much more money how much more test score do you get not so statistical models work what we found was is that the schools that had the biggest bang for their buck in terms of spending was class size reduction which makes sense to you educators if you have 35 knuckleheads versus 20 knuckleheads it's a lot more manageable situation right but then there's those people out there say well class size doesn't matter either but there are a set of empirically based strategies we have decades of research on these issues I I went to the NAACP conference this summer and one of the NAACP officials said he talked to one of the folks from Singapore and he said what accounts for your dramatic rise uh over the last 30 or 40 years in Singaporean education so well there's a variety of things but you know Americans they do a lot of research we looked at that research and we implemented it here in Singapore so the thing is is that there we know there are empirically based solutions that we know make a difference money does matter what are some of those things here in San Antonio you have a promised neighborhood right am I incorrect in saying that and that what that does is you have community liaisons that allow schools and different organizations across the city to communicate about services that students in poverty need that cost money certified experienced teachers that cost money michigan just recruited a new coach that cost the university of michigan five million dollars because when you want talent whether it be teacher talent or principal talent that's going to cost you money but all of a sudden those mark folks that talk about markets when we start to start talking about attracting high quality teachers and high quality principles market principles go out the window if you want high quality teachers high quality principles or you want to recruit them away from other places you have to provide the resources to do so guidance counselors when I was in the valley doing a study um on something we called confianza the trust that ELL students parents have in schools to do the right thing for their kids we found one school that had two counselors that focused specifically on ELLs but we know what's really going on with counselors in this state you might have five or six counselors for several thousand students in some high schools right but this school specifically set aside two counselors to do essentially seminars for ELL parents for each year because there's information that ELL parents have to know how many of your parents could read a report card I'm gonna raise your hand how many of your parents could read a your report card okay one of the things is that in Latin America the grading scale is different than we have here and so a lot of ELL parents can't read report cards but schools often assume that they can but this is the sort of information that these guidance counselors would provide to freshman parents of ELLs to sophomore parents of ELL money buys that resource uh there's curriculum and technology there's a newcomer school I'm on a elote board with a project out of west ed looking at the newcomer school in Fort Worth and Dr. Cerveja mentioned this and this is a school for students who are recently arrived and when I went to the school there was a set of dictionaries in the middle of the table in 12 languages I was blown away an incredible school incredible teachers incredible leaders but Fort Worth has is spending millions of dollars on this newcomer school right so there is a set of and and there's a there's a history of research at newcomer school Palin Lee recently wrote a study at newcomer schools so all the things that I've talked about are empirically based these are things that that we have to make commitments in terms of resources to but we know that you'll get bang for your buck so thank you for your time I'm so glad that I was able to schlep it here from California I just recently finished my second tour of duty in in Texas and I and I hope one quick thing is that my my grandmother was born in Luling Texas right here in Bear County so uh basically I'm I'm home but I try not to come back to Texas too often because all my exes live in Texas well we we actually have some good time for some good questions uh Dr. Voskazalik I think needs to go back to Austin he has been testified this afternoon so you might first ask questions of him and then any of the other panelists so any questions out there good sharp questions they covered everything we understand please go ahead for the it would seem that one of the major factors for ELL secondary students who are struggling with English and also trying to pass their content courses in advance are competent qualified committed Spanish speaking content teachers are our universities producing these graduates or are we focused on elementary that we don't understand that these young people with the struggles of having often leading to their hometown school was it was just so good Mr. Kaufman I'm going to ask um if those who choose to speak use the microphone for recording purposes as well as ongoing purposes I in this room speaking to the perspective of a former higher ed administrator it would seem like an important factor for secondary students who are ELL and trying to learn their English but also progress in a high school diploma is the availability of competent dedicated Spanish speaking that is bilingual faculty in content areas and I just wonder if our universities are producing these graduates or if the focus on elementary which is clearly very important also we don't have the people to help our high school kids my husband may he rest in peace was a high school teacher and he spoke about his frustration when he would have three or four absolute non-English speaking students in his class and there was no way he could ignore 29 other students he was trying to teach and yet those students either would take the test or they would fail can I like to answer right now at this time what is required for secondary is teachers to be ESL certified in the middle school setting and then in high school setting it's sheltered instruction now it depends on what you're looking in terms of sheltered instruction many districts are doing PSIA which is a sheltered instruction observation protocol and depending on where you go if you go through Pearson or through the regional service center it's a couple of days of training so if the only time you're going to have bilingual certified content certified teachers is if you're doing a dual language program so like for example in our case we have it at sixth grade and so our teachers are content bilingual certified in Spanish as well as in their content area but other than that unless they're in most programs it's ESL at secondary level so you're only going to see the ESL certified teacher in a pullout or content base in middle school and then secondary it's right now it's just required to do shelter instruction so I so I think one of the biggest problems is that we are often thinking about what it is that's going on in teacher ed programs and right now the Obama administration is really focused on this but the real issue is that in Texas 60% of all new teachers are alternative certified teachers which means that in Texas you can have as little as 30 hours before you enter the classroom and one of the things we found in that triple segregation study is guess who gets those most in Harlandale I think is a is one of those exceptional districts in this state and I don't know if he's still the current superintendent but he was a CSP or that I taught at at UT so there are some exceptions to this but 60% of all new teachers of the alt certs and ELLs are more likely and and not to pick on certain folks but I know that okay I won't I won't pick on them today but there's an organization that has three letters in their their name and it's an abbreviation and they'll give their teachers that are going to go teach ELLs half a day of training to teach ELLs they get five weeks of summer training and in that five weeks of summer training they get a half a day to teach ELLs and so that's one of the real issues is that you know the institutions are higher educational under assault but what we really need to be thinking about is these alt certs a place like Houston is drawing from between a hundred and 120 different alt cert programs and they're very heterogeneous in terms of their quality right so I think you know there is I think there's it is an important conversation that we need to and there's a second piece of this we need to ensure that when we graduate teachers from Cal State or UT Austin you teach etc that when they get to the schools that they also want to stay now there's a debate over whether that attrition out of schools is somewhere between 30 and 50 percent because we actually train enough teachers in higher education to fill our schools but the problem is that when they get there the situations that the teachers encounter they think to themselves I don't think I'm going to stay and so we have to think about how do we change the conditions in which the teachers are working their work not just pay conditions but the types of buildings I mean you can you know how this is you the kids know you talk to these ELL kids one kid told me that they send us to Borough schools the kids know that there's an unequal system a provision of education they know that they're getting the short end of the stick it's very clear to them yes Dr. Scott we have a question from someone who's streaming live in the Rio Grande Valley this is from Mike Seyfert here in the RGV hugely grateful to IDRA's work on this issue and so many more wish we could be there thanks for this gift and Mike posts this question for the panel we'd love to hear some models of success from other parts of the nation who is doing this the right way I don't know who's doing it the right way but I think a lot of us one of the things I wanted to tack on to the other question was partnerships are very important because working with universities to get the qualified certified teachers and I know in partnerships with just even the lake and other universities that I've been working with we let them know what we want in terms of certified teachers and those types of things but the other thing I think that's important as well is the plan that's in place and for our students so if they're going into a secondary setting there has to be a transition plan for students in terms of if they're going to this campus what classrooms are they going to be going into who is certified with that sheltered instruction as well as ESL certified it shouldn't just be we'll put them here because check this is what is minimal what we have to do there really needs to be a plan in place what that looks what that looks like and teachers need to be planning too they need to look at their data look at the students that are coming in if they're getting recent arrivals who are those exemplary teachers that are willing to use those effective needs for the students their cognitive the linguistic needs that are wanting to support because I'll be quite honest we can put students in a classroom and they're not going to flourish if the teachers not willing to support them and so we know as administrators as principals that are here you know who are those teachers that are exemplary teachers you have to place them with the teachers who are going to support them a lot of times teachers just want to put them with the student who's going to translate for them especially at the secondary setting that is not that is one mode of support there's so many other strategies that are out there but then also how do we then bring in the teachers that that we can build the teachers so we have new teachers what type of support are they going to need so that they're working with the students and know how to support them at our district we've started kind of a module series so we're kind of doing it in chunks we've learned that doing a day is not enough so we're kind of doing like 45 minutes during plcs we do after school maybe an hour where we're kind of giving segments of different pieces that are important because we they shut down after so much time but also implementing those strategies that are important that we want to see them in the classroom and then as administrators working with them to see okay what are some things that you can add to your walkthrough forms because it has to be a joint effort it can't just be a one-sided bilingual yourself department is doing it all it has to be a joint effort with leadership at the campus i would also check out the newcomer school in fort worth it's a school that i visited a couple of times i've also blogged about it on cloaking inequity i think the post is called this school is lovely so check out that the fort worth newcomer school related to the question about teacher certification and getting those best prepared teachers i think julianne is is absolutely right in terms of sort of some fundamental issues that we need to address before we start sort of critiquing too heavily teacher education programs but i think if we look at sort of teacher education we need to there's an underlying issue that i think is important is that we need to go sort of beyond compliance based responses to serving english language learners right so in teacher education why do we not so the answer is no we don't have those right so the reading the spanish speaking high quality spanish speaking teachers that will deliver native instruction that would be helpful in a new cover program or other type of program so why don't we have them is because the state does not require it and it's sort of higher education works a lot like k12 where if it's not tested it's not taught in higher education if it's not mandated then we're not going to allocate resources in terms of faculty and students and programs to do that so i think and right now at least in arizona the arizona department of education which is not the friendliest thing this language learners serve needs to approve what type of teacher program you actually serve and right now we have a segregated four hour block model and so all the training is how to segregate ELLs for four hours and that is the training that they receive based on the mandates of the state so i think sort of us as a community and pushing our institutions to go beyond the compliance based model i think is really important it's a real important issue talking about teacher preparation um ed our best organization here at our lady of the lake and the one also at utsa we have three training programs in san antonio they're really looking at training bilingual teachers at three different universities and this year we're taking it to the national level because that pipeline is being squeezed off and so because we're transitioning children so early to english a lot of children aren't coming to school prepared to use the academic Spanish so when they get to college they're not looking to going into fields in where they speak Spanish so our pipeline of teachers so although the numbers of ELLs are increasing across the state and across the nation we're not training teachers fast enough not that the universities don't want to train them fast enough um we just don't have the numbers coming in to train them fast enough and so that is exactly looking at only the k through six levels and so when we look at the secondary levels and in what is required in the classrooms um listening to what they don't think i was talking about we work real closely with harland el and what they're doing over there they're not required to so we're not teaching in Spanish only our dual language programs are doing that i believe there's only three districts in the city currently right now but even have secondary programs that are dual language and then they're having a very hard time sustaining those programs because they do not have the content area teachers to teach but it's not required and then also looking at state assessment at the bt lpt and looking at the numbers of failure rates um and how difficult those exams are and getting students to pass those exams in order to become qualified by the world teachers a separate question does someone okay go on okay sorry um i'm rebecca baccardo i handle the education initiatives for mayor ivy taylor and i'm also a former gdesl teacher in saist yay and prod graduate saist so my question is about what is our responsibility in terms of the institutions you represent school districts universities etc um our responsibility in terms of also providing esl classes to the parents and getting them into the workforce because of course it's a direct correlation um in terms of the education level the income in the household of how the kids do um academically in classroom i'm going to take a quick answer to that one my wife olga koffman just came in and she used to try to coordinate uh g ed classes you know for spanish speakers and the city has cut off the funding for those so one thing the city could do is to find the funding to help those if those people can then find jobs that would be very helpful on them helping their families so i mean i know it's not your personal issue this happened before uh mayor ivy taylor was even the mayor or even on the city council but it is a long-term issue we do have um two programs and herlinda one is an esl program and then we also have another program that is a spanish program for computer skills and so one thing that we'll be adding to that is now technology in terms of ipads so i've purchased ipads um to do that but again it has to be supplemental so it can only be for our left students you know those types of things but um you have to be very careful you know title one funds and those types of things is apparent um because that is a parent involvement program so it's something i'm looking into making sure i'm not supplanting funds but um we do have an esl and then we have the the computer program and then part of that is another program that teach um that one's in spanish as well that teaches um like financial um support um it looks at different types of it's called math and myestero and so we're working with with that as well and that brings has different components of just um how to build um families and and so the parents and sometimes what's difficult is getting um daycare so i do have one parent who brings her baby with her and so we kind of adjust to those types of things and so um but it's something that's it's growing and it's growing bigger and and the need for um not just elow parents but other parents um have wanted to participate in those types of things but it it you know it's it's a program that needs a lot of support because we don't have that partnership with their parents our parents are not going to feel welcome and we're not going to have a successful program okay um the question i have deals with bilingual and also with special ed because you you mentioned both but um i always saw the need for bilingual lsp the licensed specialist school psychology because in order to qualify or to meet the criteria to qualify for special education you have to qualify in both languages and too many times if a student was not being successful they would test them in English and obviously because they had a language issue they wouldn't pass and so you'd supplement special ed my question is what progress is being made to uh you know in that area where where you can get bilingual lsp so our licensed specialist in school psychology should test for the uh areas where they can identify students as special education students uh but before you answer because i noticed that when they asked about from that person from the Rio Grande Valley about uh could you give us any models of successful programs i noticed there was a everybody was quiet and it reminded me of a comment that dr jose carlin has made when he was superintendent at agewood they asked him well does bilingual education work and he is responsible but when i find one i'll let you know because uh you know who's doing it right and i've never seen anybody really do it right so when we find it we'll change it but in the meantime my question is about special ed lsp because just because you know spanish doesn't make you a bilingual teacher just because you know spanish doesn't make you a bilingual lsp to test uh special uh students for special ed criteria thank you thank you my name is moises orteez and i'm the senior director for special programs in the san antonio independent school district and having have been an esl teacher as well as a middle school and high school principal and now from the district level i think that this is a perfect segue into my question of not only teacher quality but the support that we're getting from the state and the possible and i'm not going to say gerrymandering or the culture that has had to evolve because of the limitations that are put on the funding so for example we're talking about uh just because you know esl or spanish doesn't make you a good esl teacher uh and that's simply the way it's written and maybe that's the policy because when you get to the secondary level we're talking about quality spanish speakers in the classroom or or teachers but really at esl instruction and we're changing the demographic demographics of lls especially in san antonio are changing we're now having to address multiple languages tagalog chinese different forms of dialect iraq and so we can no longer rely on that bilingual model and there's no way we can ever plug a content or language certified teacher in every content area in every language that we get so i feel that that's why the state has now moved over into the psi up model so for example we talk about funding and both ladies up here have already addressed uh title one and then title three and has anyone and i'm now i'm coming to the panel address has texas or has anyone addressed the culture that has had to evolve as a result of the state not really funding because no one has said oh we pay for bilingual support or we pay for the tutors we pay out of local funds out of state funds we're having to rely on federal funds to supplement not supplant so it's it's a very slippery slope that we get into and my question is has anybody on the panel has any of this uh fiscal research uh address that that need that has had to arrive from school districts right moises could you reset the question in like one sentence for me so as school districts as practitioners we are limited to the way we can use our funding and the majority of the funding that comes towards bilingual and neosl programming is as a result of federal funding not state funding so it's created a very nebulous framework that can easily offset by expenditures from another side have you addressed that i think that's a great question for oscar having been around the issue dating back to well when i was a child but professionally since 1981 when i worked with teams that actually developed the framework for how we were going to address el l issues and the state mandate of photo is going to be required not by the feds but by the state of texas at that time there was a lot of information clarity specificity focused on the elementary level program and even though we haven't spent a lot of time on that this morning if we look at texas's elementary level programs there are among some of the better ones in many parts of the country certainly those that are are better funded are obviously producing much better results at the elementary level when you cross over to the secondary level when the design for programs for middle and secondary level el students were crafted back in 1981 there was very little information on what those programs should look like what what should teacher preparation look like what should we do about content area instruction what kinds of resources and what kinds of guidelines for how those resources should be used particularly at the secondary level that level of specificity was not incorporated into that 1981 mandate that with some minor refinements is still the framework that we have in place today so I think the question for the panel and the and the audience this afternoon is what fundamental redesigns do we have to implement on a required state level basis how do we change the secondary level program for middle and high school students that are English learners that produces much better results than we currently have today and obviously that's going to require policy changes in terms of both teacher preparation programs but also what some folks raised about what do we do about teachers that are currently in the field about strengthening their professional development opportunities so that they develop the skills particularly in the content areas that they might not currently have and addressing the point that was made by doing about what do we do to create opportunities and incentives to both recruit excuse me recruit but also retain middle and high school level EL student EL teachers that will do a much more effective job so again what do we need to do differently at the secondary level both from a policy perspective and a funding perspective that will create a better program than we have at that level now so I throw that back to I think your your question about sort of the creativity if you will that districts need to sort of rely upon I think is indicative of the under the overall underfunding of public education right so what you see especially I don't know the stats here in in Texas but in Arizona what we're seeing is a gigantic leap in the number of bonds and overrides that districts are trying to pass why because they don't have enough resources from the state to fund properly fund their programs at Arizona state we we are very proud to say that we're increasing our endowment but what does that really mean that means we're going after private funds where because the legislature is not funding our higher institutions higher education institutions so I think this issue and also related to federal funds in K-12 I think though what I've seen in in the work in in Arizona is that that's why I focused on general funds and not total funds because of this issue so if you actually analyze total funds many times you see wow fun the schools are are fun pretty equally you know they're doing a really nice job but the issue is that those federal funds so meaning the state funding has decreased but federal funding has increased especially during the whole American Recovery Act where there was a surplus of federal funding that went into districts especially for Title 1 and Special Ed so it's sort of masked inequities but now that those funds are sort of running out those inequities are being seen so I think that's part of the issue I think the superintendent brought up a really interesting point about the weight funding and I think what what my research is suggesting as well is that it's a minimum of a 0.5 weight a minimum why because there is diversity and complexity of English language learners so what I'm saying is at the base level you know your standard ELL should get that 0.5 however I think what the conversation we could have and should have is okay how do we go more towards a special ed type of model where we actually differentiate and it gets to Julian's point about let's not work backwards right let's look at what funding is needed and then look at weighting as a secondary level so I think the issue of how do we create a more nuanced funding weight for English language learners I think is one that's very relevant can I pop in real quick here with a comment which is something really really exciting and cool one of the reasons why I went to California is California has something they call now local accountability it's something that the governor put into place because they have extra money is because the economy is doing better what they've done is they've put together what they call local accountability plans are called LCAPs and so there's a stick and a carrot now with accountability in Texas accountability has been all stick for a couple of decades there were some carrots early on in the 90s but now those have gone away and so what happens is in California is that you have to put together a plan specifically for ELLs specifically for at-risk kids and specifically for foster youth and based on those local plans main at the county level if you meet those goals on a set of criteria not just test scores because we're always talking about test scores we're talking about student outcomes we believe that tests are a proxy for what we care about in society but it turns out tests are not a proxy for what we care about which is incarceration which is going to college which is being employed in the workforce tests have nothing to do with any of those things that we really care about and so the district can set up these plans and they get additional funds from the state if they meet their goals for ELLs if they meet their goals for at-risk kids and if they meet their goals for foster kids and if you're interested just go to my website which is cloaking equity click on the community-based accountability link and there's several pieces and then we did a really specific statutory analysis in the journal of urban education that talks about how California now has carrot to go with their stick in a local approach to accountability uh just a couple of thoughts uh in regard to accountability I think it's important that whatever accountability mechanisms we move toward that we don't move away from having data that allow us at a statewide level to know how our kids are doing so for example one of the big problems in knowing how English language learners in Texas are doing at the secondary level is that the state of Texas merges secondary level data with elementary data where we're doing a little bit better as a state and we are unable to know how we're doing with ELL students at the secondary level and from what we know we know we are doing much worse and so whatever we do in accountability our next steps have to include accountability systems that do not hurt children that don't have the kind of high stakes testing that Julian was talking about but at the same time allow us to disaggregate and know how we're doing about groups of kids in the state I think that's one important piece the other is in terms of promising practices despite the fact that Texas has had a lot of experience at this if only because of our demography there are I think some states who are trying very good new approaches to how to educate teachers so Minnesota for example Minnesota of our places in their last round of educational policy requires that every single teacher who is being prepared in the state of Minnesota receive training for English as a second language in the content areas Minnesota can do this and Texas cannot for heaven's sake so I think that there is much that can be done to make sure that kids learn that they have access to high quality teachers and that we have the data to continue to know how groups of kids are doing in our schools all right it's a pleasure to be here my one is a you have a great point in that it's actually been that's been done in districts as well where there's been an issue about like a new population going into a district or states and then not having any certifications or anything at the state level and then all of a sudden they find themselves needing to address issues under title six and EOA and they some of the remedy has been to train all the teachers in the content areas that's just for the district obviously gets a lot more complicated as you get out into the state but my observation kind of question or regarded the evaluation component of the language programs as you all know a policy really requires that the educational program EOL program be evaluated after having been tried for a period of time and in my experience when we've been out there we ask about okay what's your evaluation you haven't been in research and evaluation and usually they direct us to the very back office and then it's just fine and then there's all this data which is kind of goes back to your point also about you do all the research but somebody else uses it and so that's what the observation is that the data is there sometimes the research is there but it doesn't make it quite back to make those modifications that are required basically under title six to make your program work or work better than what your goal I mean you need to be adjusting your goals consistently and constantly in accordance with what is working what isn't working the only way you're going to get it is through that evaluation data and using it and there's a lot of binders out there that we see a lot of times when you get up to and ask the bilingual directors or you ask the superintendent but what's changed what's happened get the shoulder and I was just wondering what are the dynamics of that from the superintendent's viewpoint from your research and development standpoint by language director's sample how does that all come together in real life give me a quick synopsis of the question if you if you don't mind I was playing I was playing with my iPhone I'm sorry I apologize you have a you have a research and evaluation staff right and part of it I suppose would be to to evaluate your ELL programs and so I'm trying to find out what are the dynamics how does that work as far as the assignment being given to the research component please evaluate our program and then following up and saying okay so what's working what's not working let's change this let's change this or that our goal was this initially our goals are these because sometimes that doesn't come across as clearly perhaps as sometimes districts think that it's happening sure that's by the ELL program for the ELL program as a whole yeah I think I think the the comments that KUKA made in reference to the the availability of data being so important um and I actually appreciate your comments I won't get back to what you just said but but appreciate your comments because there's a strong anti-testing movement in the state of Texas right now frankly all over the country and I think we need to be real careful before we jump on that bandwagon because it's going to hurt minority kids poor kids my point of view on on that issue it's it's a middle-class issue it's not an issue for for poor kids or that will be of great value for for poor kids yes testing has gotten high stakes testing gotten online and that needs to be brought back in totally understand that but we should never advocate for stopping the accountability system because that's one of the main things that's turned things around for poor kids in the state of Texas but because of that data that's available due to the accountability system and because of high stakes testing or high stakes accountability you know you always look at when you desegregate data you're looking at your various categories of kids including ELL kids as to what specifically are they not doing so well in and especially in the district like houston has a large research department of you know you start zeroing in in those deficiencies and and through the you know through the through research you try to find out what exactly are they are they not perform where are they not performing well matter of fact the the comment I made earlier about opening up the newcomers high school it was through data that we realized that that that the population that we had at that point with a different older population that needed frankly a new setting a different setting in to educate these kids but it's it's through that research that you're able to to identify that but you need it you but you definitely need that data to be able to do that I want to as a point of order we need to wrap up and move on most of you are going to be at in our table conversations and I would ask you to extend any other comments at that point in time as well as those of you here who may have comments be sure to add them to your table and what you'll be discussing during this period from now through the end of lunch we have three things to do one of which is to get our lunches we need to bring closure to this segment get our lunches which are here and spend about 15 minutes not only refreshing yourselves and and that sort of thing eating your lunches but then to reconfigure yourselves into our conversation so you've heard a lot of research you've heard a lot of practitioners we're hoping that it is giving you an opportunity to really what you're thinking and to and to think about what we need to do to provide equity and excellence for English language learners at the secondary level but now it's this is your time to begin to talk and to bring together some of the best of your thinking at your tables about what you feel from your own points of view from wherever it is that you come to to this issue to this question Ron Edmonds we were talking about Kozo but Ron Edmonds reminded us more than almost 40 years ago that we already know everything we need to know to educate any child whose education is of interest to us you know so the question really is who do we really care about and do or legislators and and other folks other stakeholders care enough about students in this case English language learners at the secondary level students anywhere they may be found caring about them and what's going on with them to make the right decisions to support their excellence in terms of their academic outcomes