ECISD on high alert after state intervention

ECISD has been in crisis mode since October when the Texas Education Agency officials notified the district it was in stage 4 intervention due to serious deficiencies with the Bilingual/ESL programs.

As a result, the TEA will conduct an on-site visit on Feb. 6-10, according to a Dec. 14 letter sent by the TEA to district officials.

ECISD Superintendent Hector Mendez said the district did not reach stage 4 intervention status overnight and it will take some time to get on an improvement track.

Board Tom Pace said the state has made the rules and requirements a moving target, which has been one reason ECISD landed in stage 4 intervention.

“They (TEA) are going to come in and give us assistance because we don’t want to be in stage 4,” Pace said. “But when they constantly keep changing the rules of the game it is hard to know what to do.”

The letter states ECISD is in stage 3 intervention in the No Child Left Behind or homeless population. It’s also at stage 1 for the special education program and residential facility monitoring program. Plus, Permian High School, Hood Junior High and Goliad Elementary were rated first-year academically unacceptable in the state accountability-rating system.

ECISD has been assigned a stage of intervention for the Bilingual/ESL program for the past eight years including four years in which the district was assigned stage 4 intervention status, the letter states.

Plan of action

When a district or program is at stage 4 intervention, TEA requires the district to submit a Performance Based Monitoring Analysis System PBMAS, which was sent to TEA Dec. 23.

The greatest areas of concern are bilingual/ESL TAKS passing rates in math, reading, science; the No Child Left Behind and homeless population graduation rate; special education passing rates in math, reading and science; and special ed for ages 3 through 5 years.

In stage 4 intervention the TEA requires the district to monitor the program and send reports. If need be, an on-site monitor could be assigned to oversee the programs in the intervention, according to TEA spokesperson DeEtta Culberson. The TEA also can conduct investigation of the program that is in stage 4 and require the district to have a public meeting. 

“Given our requirements under the law when we go do a performance review, we require the district and the campuses look at focused data analysis to determine what areas could be causing poor performances,” Culberson said. “We can do an on-site investigation targeted toward the area of deficiency.”

On-site visit

For the past month, district officials have been preparing teachers and administrators for a week-long on site visit Feb. 6-10 by the TEA to review of ECISD’s Performance-Based Monitoring Analysis System results. The team will also assess student performance and program data.

The last on-site visit occurred in 2008-09 school year.

A letter dated Dec. 14, from Karen Batchelor, of the Program Monitoring and Interventions division of TEA, says “On-site monitoring is designed to examine the origins of continuing low performance and program effectiveness concerns and identify systemic concerns that may be impacting performance.”

Jackie Reist from the Division of Program Monitoring and Interventions will head up the on-site review next month.

“We conduct interviews and focus group discussions with district staff and stakeholders,” Reist said. “We will review records and conduct additional field work regarding the development and implementation of their improvements and corrective action plan concerning the program areas for which we are visiting.”

The team will also talk to campus principals and program leaders and directors and will examine the improvement plans to see how the district is implementing the plans.

Reist said she will submit her report about a month after the visit and then the district officials will know whether the new programs are working.

Mendez said he hopes the corrective action team will see some improvements thanks to new programs and practices that have been implemented over the past two years.

“Since 2007 we have made changes that we have communicated to the TEA,” Mendez said. “We are working the plan and we are beginning to see good results.”

New practices

H.T. Sanchez, chief of staff for ECISD, said for the past two years the district has taken a “system-wide approach to restructure the Bilingual/ESL program.”

That includes rewriting curriculum for the bilingual/ESL program from kindergarten through sixth grade. ECISD has partnered with UTPB in rewriting some of the curriculum and programs.

 “We pulled in (professors) Dr. Susan Lara and Dr. Yolanda Ramirez from UTPB,” Sanchez said.

Lara, professor of education and vice president of student services, has worked with ECISD to redesign the bilingual program.

“They are dealing with a situation that is not new,” Lara explained. “The district is taking a multi-faceted approach to improve the program.”

This includes revamping the reading programs at the junior high and high school levels and making a full on push to hire bilingual math and science teachers.

The new approach also includes lengthening the time students are in the bilingual program. In recent years, Bilingual/ESL students who entered the program in kindergarten or first grade, exited out in third grade. Now students who enter in pre-K or primary grades exit out in sixth grade.

Sanchez said the district is also working with Dallas ISD on Bilingual/ESL and reading programs.

Newcomer program

The Newcomer Program has between 40 and 46 students who are at Ector Junior High. With this program, graduate students from UTPB engineering, education, science and math classes give students assistance in small tutoring groups.

“We’ve been working at this about a month now,” Sanchez said.

Cathleen Tutt, teaches secondary Algebra at Ector has two or three tutors from UTPB who assist her students every week in one of the math classes she teaches daily.

“It eases the pressure on me,” Tutt said. “I know they are getting what they need, and I can help my other students. The district is being proactive here, and it is not just because of the TEA rating.”

Aida Garcia, a junior in child and family studies at UTPB, volunteers as a tutor.

“I passed through this situation when I started school (in Odessa) and I wanted to help,” Garcia said.

Humberto Gonzalez, a ninth grader in Tutt’s class said through translation that tutoring was helping him understand.

“And my grades have improved,” he said.

A Newcomer program has been implemented at Permian as well, but not at OHS. And another problem arose: the students in the program at OHS do not want to leave the school.

“So this summer we will be providing a secondary teacher to be ESL certified,’ who said????

The district has also provided ESL lead teachers at Permian and OHS.

Lara said the district needs to assign bilingual/ESL students to teachers who have taken ESL coursework, so that they can provide the assistance the students need.

“Without the coursework I don’t think they (teachers) are grounded enough to know how to help the students,” Lara said.

Getting to stage 4

A multitude of factors have placed the district in stage 4 intervention district officials say, including a growing immigrant population, no reading program and the need for professional development for ESL teachers. Changes in district personnel, funding problems and changing state mandates for Bilingual/ESL students have also contributed to the problem.

Of the roughly 28,000 students in ECISD, 3,800 are identified as Bilingual/ESL, Sanchez said. The Hispanic population comprises 68 percent of the total student population in the district.

Mendez cited a lack of leadership at the top of the Bilingual/ESL department and also funding and personnel issues as contributors to the problem.

“The processes that were in place were not working,” Mendez said.

Plus 30 years ago, the district was not required to offer Bilingual/ESL education to students.

“It is a system trying to respond from no bilingual to bilingual,” Mendez said.

Sanchez said cultural issues have also factored in to the issue. And sometimes students were identified as ESL students and some were not.

 “It was a lack of understanding the complexity of the situation,” Sanchez said. “Maybe you were identified (as ESL) or maybe you weren’t.”  

When students enroll, they are required to take the Texas English Language Proficiency Assessment System or TELPAS test to determine their level of English language proficiency.

Elementary students are typically placed in the Bilingual/ESL program if the language spoken at home is not English. However, parents do have the right to refuse the service under state law.

Plus, there are secondary students coming from Mexico who have not been in school.

“We have had challenges from students who tend to be recent immigrants from Latin America where in most cases free public education ends in the fifth grade,” Sanchez explained. “So there are tremendous gaps.”

These students have only a year to take the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills test.

Moving forward

Sanchez is hopeful that the corrective actions will take hold, as well as the reading program and more professional ESL development for teachers. He also says more parental involvement will improve the problems.

“We want to meet with parent groups and get their feedback,” Sanchez said.

In coming weeks and months, district administrators will travel to other districts to take a look at their programs, such as in Mesquite and Dallas ISD.

“We do reach out to other districts that have been successful,” he said.

The district will also work closely with Region 18 Service Center.

“This is a team effort where everybody is working together,” Sanchez said.

Pace said the board would be supportive of the district’s efforts.

“We are very conscientious,” Pace added. “We want to improve education in Ector County and we are going to do everything we can to improve in all areas and become an exemplary district.”

@OAciti