As we were setting up this trip we tried to make at least two districts for each city I was visiting. We also tried to vary the visits with types-high and low income, rural and urban, etc. When we got to Houston it was easy to pick the largest district, but not as easy to find a smaller one. It was the last minute before we found a district just outside the Houston area, Aldine ISD http://www.aldine.k12.tx.us/, but let me tell you this was one of the most fun visits I’ve had on this trip. In this distirct I got some very believable direction for the common concerning subgroup that I keep mentioning-special education students.

First, Dr. Nadine Kujawa, the Superintendent of Aldine ISD had been in the district for 41 years. She grew up in the area, went to school in the district, was given a scholarship when she graduated from high school, and came back to repay her debt. She said the district had been good to her, and from what I could see, she’s definitely done a wonderful job of thanking her district.

We talked about NCLB and she admitted high school was an issue for them. When I asked about special ed, she agreed the subgroup had created issues, but they had at least two programs that were improving their scores and the skills of kids.

One was the implementation of an Early Childhood program. Working with 4-year-olds in an academic program that also included the major components of Head Start-nutrition, health, social services, and parental involvement, the district’s percentage of students in special education went down from 12% of their student population to 9%. According to Dr. Kujawa preschoolers learning vocabulary and school behavior has provided the foundation the children needed instead of the specialized services. There has long been concern about misdiagnosis of learning disabilities as well as special education being the only place for children who just didn't fit elsewhere. Providing preschoolers a better foundation seems to be helping those who are not truly handicapped.

In addition the district is no longer serving learning handicapped children in a pull-out type program. Special ed students are being served in the regular classroom with help from both the regular classroom teacher as well as the special education staff. They are expected to perform at their best skill level on the tasks given to all children. From the first year of the program, teachers and parents began to see improvement in the student’s learning and test scores. She admitted there was resistance to the changes in the program, but the district is staying with it and seeing things happen.

This is a school district I want to keep in touch with. They are doing some very interesting and innovative things in the areas of preschool and special ed. I've always liked doing business side of education-budget and governance, but I love quality programs and seeing things happen for kids. This is district to watch for me.

My first visit yesterday was to Houston Independent School District and Superintendent Dr. Abe Saavedra http://www.houstonisd.org/. His secretary Teresa was delightful and extremely helpful. Even before I met with the superintendent I learned the district had 210,000 students and was the largest district in Texas. That’s huge in anyone’s book. Dr. Saavedra told me that Houston Independent was the eight largest district in the nation. Teresa told me it was growing.

Okay so how have they dealt with No Child Left Behind? Data driven instruction and accountability, major parts of NCLB, have been going on in this district for 20 years so the concepts aren’t new. As large as the district is and with the number of both English learners and students with Free and Reduced lunch they have done remarkably well. It has become more difficult since the testing program changed from a basic skills testing to a more involved and comprehensive syste, but they've managed to continue to do well.

One very innovative program being implemented in HISD will be interesting to watch. They’re using some of the funds available for teacher raises to provide incentive pay. Under the program a school can earn up to $1000 per teacher if their school is in quartile one (the top quarter of the test scores in the state) or up to $500 in the second quartile in the assessment program. Individual teachers additionally can earn up to an additional $2000 for first quartile scores from state and federal testing. They plan to increase these stipends over the next five years to upwards of $10,000 per teacher. That’s a hefty bonus in anyone book and it will be interesting to see what happens.

The two common themes of problems with NCLB implementation surfaced in this district as well as in others I’ve visited-special education and high school. I’ve mentioned special ed before, but not high school. High schools have consistently had problems nationwide in meeting the requirements of increased accountability and meeting target scores. Although education is working hard to identify the difficulties in the high schools, it hasn’t been simple. Dr. Saavedra and I agreed it was easier in the lower grades. Typically high schools are more subject oriented and have been more resistant to change.

The visit was a good one and I invited Dr. Saavedra to visit the next time he was headed to Redding from Sacramento to see members of his family. I hope he takes me up on my offer. I’d like to return his Texas hospitality.

My second visit yesterday was with the San Antonio Independent School District. Originally the appointment was with the Superintendent Dr. Ruben Olivarez http://www.saisd.net/. I was delighted when I arrived to find he was in the middle of a cabinet meeting and asked me to join them. I had the oppotunity to meet with a number of people coordinating the district's services-curriculum and instruction, facilities, finance, public relations, board relations, and of course the superintendent.

They have had an uphill battle to meet NCLB (No Child Left Behind) standards. With only 3% of their population being Caucasian, they have had to deal with many issues of language barriers. Dr. Olivarez indicated that when they started out, they were at the very bottom of the test scores in their area. It has taken a great deal of work, but they are now near the top.

English Lanugage learners (EL's) are also a subgroup on the test results I was talking about yesterday. Students who come into school speaking another language, and in this case most of the students speak Spanish, are a challenge. They are certainly capable of learning the acadmeics being taught, but just think about trying to learn calculus in Chinese. I find it daunting thinking about learning calculus. My area was always English/Language Arts, but learning it by listening to it being taught in Chinese would be almost impossible. Yet that's what we ask our EL kids to do. Then we test them on what they've mastered.

Schools have had to make a lot of changes and have become very creative in order to help kids learn the content areas being taught in schools. The group did tell me they tested in Spanish which I'm sure helps to some extent.

This group also mentioned the Special Education students as a major group of concern. Their test scores have consistently showed special ed students doing fairly well in third grade, falling behind in fourth, much father behind in seventh, and way behind by eleventh, a pattern seen throughout the country.

SAISD is also trying out a new idea I'm quite interested in. Texas law allows schools to operated preschools and parents can opt to send their 3 and 4 year olds to school. In 1999 SAISD had 300 preschoolers. Now it has over 4,000 and they are moving their middle schools to preschools through middle school. After having looked at the data coming from Oklahoma who has been running preschools for a long time, I think this may have some real impact on what they're trying to do for children.

Every distirct is unique. SAISD was different than North East yet both in the same city. Both are different from my area in Northern California, but we're dealing with some of the same issues. What I enjoy about educators is they're willing to share their successes and ideas they have that will make learning better for children.

Thank you San Antonio for your hospitality. Now on to Houston.

North East Independent School District in San Antonio was my first stop this morning http://www.neisd.net/. I visited Dr. Richard Middleton in his sixth floor office. He explained that the bottom floors of his office building had been rented by the Air Force. Their rent had helped pay for the building. I understood his machinations having done something similar to put our office into a new office building. It isn’t easy finding funds for schools these days, and Texas doesn’t seem to be a great deal different from California in that regard.

I had several questions for him, and he was gracious with his time. One of my major questions was about No Child Left Behind. How was it working in Texas? His answer, with some expertise having been in this district for 16 years and well versed in Texas education practices, was it was all about analyzing student performance. The tough part as most of us are finding in education is not looking at a whole school and determining whether the text results went up or down from the year before, but looking at each group, or in the jargon subgroup, and determining if the subgroup went up. Subgroups are by ethnic breakdown, social economics, and special education.

What that means is each school has a target score to reach on its test scores each year. Within the school, the Caucasian, Hispanic, Asian, and other ethnic groups must reach a target as well. Low income and special education students also have target scores. In North East ISD the district is using data to drive instruction and have developed their own tools for improving instruction.

The district has been doing very well in reaching their targets until this year when 10 of their 60 schools didn’t make it. The problem? The special education subgroup. The schools are actually improving, but the special education students tested did not meet the targeted scores.

Students placed in special ed are usually there because of a handicapping condition that requires accommodations and modifications to learn. For example a blind child may need Braille or a learning handicapped child may need more time to read or do math problems. In the past we’ve been able to test students at the grade level where the child is working. If a special needs child is in the fifth grade but reading at the second grade they could have been tested on a second grade test. Now we can’t. We test at grade level. Fifth grade tests for students reading at second grade are guaranteed to mean low test scores. This is a problem from California to New Hampshire. There are no easy solutions right now.

Dr. Middleton talked about using data, research and differentiated learning strategies to help all of his subgroups. I appreciated his time and his energy. It’s obvious he’s working to make a difference in North East ISD.

Tomorrow morning I’ll tell you about my second visit in San Antonio.

I think I’ve mentioned I like to visit schools. This week I have the opportunity to visit a number of them. I’m in Texas and Oklahoma this week. Texas because I have a son who just graduated from his basic training in the Air Force and Oklahoma because I have another son stationed in Oklahoma City. So I have two weekends of family and in between I’m visiting two very interesting states where they done some interesting pioneering in education.

Texas is know for having pioneered what is now No Child Left Behind, the huge Title I program most of us in public education and charter schools work with daily. I want to know how they do it here. How is it successful? How have they overcome some of the hurdles we’ve dealt with in standards-based teaching, assessments, reaching set targets, and yet still maintaining a child’s joy of learning and a teacher’s joy of teaching? Big questions I know, but I’d like to see what they’re doing here to address them, and you can join me.

I’m visiting in Oklahoma because of their preschool programs. A lot of states are looking at preschool for four years olds as an educationally funded program. Oklahoma’s been doing that for years. I want to know what they’re doing, how it works, what works well and what doesn’t. You can join me there too.

At each stop, when I can figure out how to use the Internet in my hotel which may be the biggest challenge I face on this trip, I’ll give you an update. I’ll have pictures eventually but for now, you’ll just need to trust me that I’m learning all I can about schools, education, teaching and learning on a trip like this and to share what I learn with you.

So sit back and enjoy the ride. I’ll do the work, but if you have questions you’d like to ask, let me know. I’ll try to find out while I’m here.

The first Thanksgiving dinner was a real celebration. It lasted three days and everyone, Pilgrims and Indians, were glad to have survived a rough winter and delighted to have the major harvest they did.

Surprisingly the Wampanoag Indians, led by their leader Massasoit, helped the new settlers to raise the crops and learn how to deal with the new land. A simple treaty was signed to make clear how they would treat each other and 90 of Massasoit's people came to the first celebration.

By the way, turkey was not on the menu, but Massasoit's folks wanted plenty to eat so they brought five deer to the feast.

I mentioned that history is really more of a series of stories than anything. Today I want to provide you with some good websites that help with the story of Thanksgiving. This first one covers a good deal of it so take a look: http://www.hazelwood.k12.mo.us/%7Ecdavis01/webquests/kpw/#THE%20STORY

Do your kids know about the Pilgrims coming over on the Mayflower? It's sometimes hard for kids to viualize the type of ship you're discribing when you talk about the Mayflower. Especially if you don't live near much water and your kids idea of a boat is the one in the bathtub. We're talking about a big sailing ship here with lots of people on it. Try this website and see if it helps: http://www.mayflowerhistory.com/

A bit of a discussion about the Mayflower, those who came over and why might be in order.

If there is still interest you might also talk about the dress of the Pilgrims. It's quite unique and not something Brittany Spears would wear. Try another website for some fun Pilgrim clip art: http://www.kidsdomain.com/holiday/thanks/clipart.html

This week feels like one to talk about history. Now before you completely shut down from boredom, it's Thanksgiving, and Thanksgiving is filled with great food, family, football, and festivities. Thanksgiving is about tradition and the things we've built up around our traditions and the stories passed down from family to family, from generation to generation. It's nothing more than the stories we share. Actually the stories we share are our history. So it may not be as boring as you thought.

I like the story about the woman cooking the roast. She'd go to the store, buy a wonderful roast, come home, put it on the kitchen counter, cut a piece off one end and a piece off the other end of the roast, put it in the pan and put it in the oven.

One day her daughter asked why she cut off both ends. The mom didn't know. "My mother did it," she said. The next day she called her mom and asked why she cut both ends off the meat.

"Well, your grandmother fixed it that way," said her mother. Her mother, curious now, called her mother and aksed, "Mom why did you cut off both ends of the roast when you cooked it?"

"I never had a pan large enough to fix a roast in, so I always had to cut the ends off the meat to make it fit."

History is nothing more than stories about traditions. The stories made some sense at the time we needed to do what we did. Today those stories don't make a lot of sense sometimes or are sometimes just reduced to names and dates. The names and dates are the boring parts. The stories are what make things fun.

Since it's Thanksgiving, this week we can talk about the stories around some of our earliest celebrations in the land we now live in. Your kids don't know the stories unless you share them. I'll give you some background this week in case you don't remember way back then. Just be sure to share your own stories and grandma's as well. You may be surprised to find out why you do things the way you do.

You just got through the fruits and veggies aisle, but you're not through with measuring. Just think of all the ounces, pounds, or gallons of meat, milk, and cheese left to go.

Did I meantion there were lots of things for children to learn in the grocery store? I think I mentioned that about three or four days ago.

Now that your child is carrying around a pound of potatoes and an ounce of nuts, he has a pretty good idea of what dry weight feels like. So what about liquid weight?

How many ounces are there in a cup of liquid? The answer is eight just in case you're like me and need to look it up in a cookbook every once in a while. "Oh, I knew that." Uh-huh.

A soda is usually in a 12 ounce can, but there can be much larger sizes. How many ounces in one of those big bottles of soda? How much different do they feel in weight? How much more does it look like is in the bottle as opposed to what's in the can?

There are two cups in a pint and two pints in a quart. There are four quarts in a gallon. How much milk does it take to fill your family up? I have four children so we went throught two gallons of milk before dinner. How many quarts, pints, cups, and ounces are two gallons?

You can easily see how much more there is to getting through the grocery store than you ever imagined, but just think. You learned all of this stuff. You may not be able to pull it out of your head every second of the day, but you know how it works and you know where to go get the details when you need them. Your child doesn't know any of those things yet. She has no exposure to them until you take her to the store and show her how they work. Her teachers at school may take her on a field trip or two, but they won't have the time and energy you have for showing her simple things in a grocery store. Take the opportunity and enjoy. How many ounces of milk do you think are in that ice cream cone?

Just when you figured there wasn't much else for your child to learn at the grocery store. There is. This time we can go for weights and measures. How much is a pound? What's an ounce?

The fruit and vegetable aisle is full of fun things to learn besides the difference between a pumpkin and a rutabaga. We'll get to science later. This aisle is just full of things to measure, estimate, and calculate.

How heavy is a pound? The scale is right there. Pick an item and weigh it. Sixteen ounces is a pound, so how many potatoes does it take to make a pound? How many apples? Let your child lift the bag of potatoes and the bag of apples in order to feel the weight. Even if there are a different number of items in the bag, they should feel about the same.

You know he's going to want to know how heavy an ounce is and why it takes 16 ounces to make a pound. Measure nuts or dried beans to see what an ounce is. Let him feel the ounce as opposed to the pound. He'll ask why we measure things by ounces and pounds so we'll need to go home and look it up in the encyclopedia or on the Internet, but that's for later.

Now that he's gotten a feel for the weight of the items, let him estimate how many tomatoes it will take to make a pound. How many carrots? How many almonds? How many pumpkins? What do you mean one pumpkin weighs more than a pound? Well how many pounds do you think it weighs?

You can spend the day in the fruits and vegetables aisle, so come prepared. You can plan to only do a little learning in one day because you're in a hurry, but remember, they catch on very fast and will have plenty of questions.

Okay you're in the store with your grocery list and your children. They've gone through the ads with you and you all know what you need. You have the money in hand. So what else can you do with math in the grocery store?

Bring along a calculator. It's not always convenient to have a paper and pencil to add numbers, so a calculator becomes an easy, convenient way to keep track of what you're buying. Let a child use the calculator to tally the cost of your purchases. If he adds everything in as you go along, the amount he sees at the check-out stand, minus tax of course, should be pretty close to his calculations. How close was he? If there is a difference, what could have caused it?

Another fun calculator use is to figure out which "bargins" are real bargins. Have your child figure out if the 2 for $9.95 is better than one at the regular price. Have her check to see if the giant size store brand at $4.95 for 24 ounces is better than the brand name smaller bottle on sale at $2.05 for 10 ounces.

It might be easy for you to see the differences and to calculate your bill in your head, but for your children it's a whole new experience. They don't know these things yet. Let them discover new concepts for themselves. You just guide them along and let them see how it works. Math then becomes more than the problems they do in school. It becomes a tool for figuring out if they have enough money to get a candy bar at the end of the trip, a real incentive for those of us who like chocolate.

A trip to the grocery store can be much more than the usual "pick up what's on the list" trip. There are all kinds of fun learning activities for kids of all ages that can be done at your local food shop.

Do you make a grocery list? I do. Without one I can't remember if I needed salt or not so I get a box just to be on the safe side. I get home to find I have four boxes of salt and no pepper. A list helps. So make a list and let your child use the newspaper ads to find out how much it will cost to buy those things.

For young children, just make a list of one meal and let them find the ads while you show them how to add the numbers. For older children, give them the whole shopping list. Let them find the items and add up the cost. You'll know just what amount you need to take to the store to cover your list items. I'd take a bit more if I were you. You might just need an extra box of salt.

Another fun variation for the older ones is to give them a budget and see if they can find everything on the list while still staying within the budget. It's a real trick to exchange the large size bags of chips for a smaller one and to find a coupon to off set the cost of the mustard so they'll have a little money left for ice cream.

This can become a real fun puzzle and especially fun is they get to keep what the save to spend on themselves. Just imagine the concept of saving as it relates to a 16-year-old. It's great to start when they're young.

So many of the activities parents or group leaders do with kids are actually skills teachers are working on teaching in school. When you can match the two events, the learning gets reinforced that much better. What it takes is a little bit of communication from teachers on what skills are being learned, and a little planning on the part of the parents to help reinforce the skill.

Here's an example. If my child is learning to add a game of Yahtzee could be a fun way to help reinforce the skill. If you haven't played Yahtzee http://www.hasbro.com/pl/page.viewproduct/product_id.9618/dn/games/default.cfm , it's a game with 5 dice. You roll the dice trying to make certain matches. You have to add the dice up to get the score. Is that die or dice? Two die, one dice.

There's lots of addition in this one. It's a great game for a little later math too. When they get to multiplication, bring out the game again and see how much faster they'll get their scores. Everyone has a good time, and you've just spent an hour or so doing addition practice with no pain!

Looks like this week I need to talk about math activities. Did you know kids are doing algebra in first grade?

Here are a couple of reading ideas for preschoolers. Oh yes, these days reading starts well before kids come to first grade to learn the alphabet. Many children know the alphabet and recognize a few words before they come to kindergarten.

How do they do that? Try a few of these fun activities and see how quickly they catch on:

Name Game: Put your child's name on things he owns. Small signs saying Tim's coat, Tim's room, Tim's wagon, help him to see his name, Tim, everywhere. The more he sees it the more he'll recognize it.

Pretend Reading: As you sit with your child and a book, let her pretend to read it to you. She may use the picutres as clues or just make up any story that comes to her. It doesn't matter, she's "reading." You want her to enjoy it so be excited about her story.

Sticky Letter: Using small yellow postit notes, you can write letters on them and put them around the room. Make a game of letting your child find the "t". Where's the "m"? It's also fun to put a sticky letter on an item that starts with the letter. For example put a t on the television and an m on the milk. It won't be long before they catch on to the sounds and start looking for the match.

Have fun. For more activites go to Parent Playbooks on http://www.edsuccess.com

Week before last when I was in Santa Rosa, I visited Roseland School District, http://www.roselandsd.org/ It's a small K-12 school district of a preschool, two elementary schools, and two charter schools. I told Gail Ahlas, the Superintendent, I was there for several reasons not the least of which was to "steal" any good idea I could bring back to my area. She gave me one I want to share with you.

She told me about her "Second Cup of Coffee." It seems several years ago when she was a principal she wanted to know more about what parents needed and wanted at her school, so she invited them to come in once a week for a second cup of coffee. For an hour once a week, parents were invited to join her for a chat and another cup of coffee. They could talk and share and she'd tell them what was going on at school. They got to know her and she got to know them. Sometimes she'd ask someone else from her staff, a third grade teacher or a reading specialist or someone with a special program, to come in a talk about what they were doing, but there was always time just to talk.

According to Gail, many times folks wanted to stretch the time for more than the hour. Obviously everyone liked being able to talk about kids and school.

We've been focusing on reading this week and last, and I know reading was a major topic in these groups. How to read, how often to read, what to read? As several of the people in the Santa Rosa area told me, many of the families don't speak English so reading is a problem. Parents can read in Spanish, but they haven't been able to help their children read in English since they didn't yet have the skills themselves. Through listening to the parents over second cups of coffee several schools have set up programs to help the parents learn to speak and read English so they can help their children do the same.

Hm, education isn't always as simple as it looks. Sometimes we are teaching all levels of learning, but what fun it is to what a child unlock the mystery of reading. It's equally as much fun to watch an adult unlock the mystery of a different language.

Thanks for your idea Gail. I've shared it with several groups in the last few weeks.

I've been out of town for several days at a conference. You'd think with all the school administrators at the conference at least a few of us could figure out the directions for the wireless connection in the room. I unfortunately was not one of the ones who could, so I've been without access to major computer use for a few days. I didn't know you could go into withdrawal that quickly. You can. Well, I can.

The conference included about 1300 school administrators trying to learn what they could about the newest and best in school operations. Of course there was a lot of discussion about the initiatives we'll be voting on this Tuesday. Don't forget to vote, by the way. I won't try to persuade you. That's for the political bloggers to do, but ask me if you want my opinion.

We also dealt with what's coming up in the future for education, what other countries are doing, why what some of what we're doing is working and some isn't. I had the honor to do one of the workshops. It was on one of my favorite topics-getting parents involved in helping with activities at home.

I had the participants tell me what was working at their school in getting parents involved in their school. Then we tried out a few fun activities for having parents do things at home.

One of our keynote speakers asked a question of his audience. What's the most important subject a child needs. When we weren't strong enough in our answer he asked again, until the whole audience was yelling: READING. Then he went on to explain about the necessity for reading directions for the VCR, the cell phone, and your bank card. I think I'm taking a few liberties with his speech, but the point he was making, and the one we recognize, is that reading is key.

So with all that said, I'm going to continue talking about reading this week. I want to give you some actvities you can try at home. As I do let me know if you have ones you like at home that work for you and your family.

Thanks

As you might notice, I like to visit schools. You can often tell a great deal about a school just by the feel of it as you walk in. There was one school I visited in Washington DC. it was surrounded by a chain link fence. The only entrance was a large metal door with a red doorbell to ring. Then you were scrutinized from a peephole in the middle of the door before it ever opened. The first thing I saw were the metal detectors. I had a real feel for the school before I ever met anyone.

Today the feel was much different. Today I visited Plaza School just outside Orland. Plaza is a small, rural k-8 school of about 130 students. The feel of this school was like a large family. Everyone knows everyone. The place is warm, friendly and open. I was met by an 8th grader selling tickets for the pancake breakfast on Saturday and I knew that half the county would be there for it. Hm, if I'd have timed my visit better I bet I could have gotten a nice, warm cookie right out of the oven or even been fed lunch, just like I was one of the family.

Since reading is our topic this week, I, of course, was looking for reading actvities. I found them everywhere. There were books, textbooks, word strips with new words to learn, bulletin board filled with stories that would soon go home to be read to parents, and children, even before school, reading to each other or playing reading games on the computer.

As I've mentioned, reading is one of the most important parts of learning. You might look at learning to read at school like learning to play the piano with a piano teacher. You go for a lesson and then go home to practice until the next lesson. The more you practice playing the piano, the better you'll get. Reading is the same way. The more you practice, the better reader you are.

So what's on your bookshelf to read tonight? What book will you read with your child? Make it a good one, and enjoy.

Thanks Plaza for a great tour and successful readers.