Amy Goodman to Speak at NU

Award-winning journalist Amy Goodman, host of the daily grassroots, radio/TV news hour "Democracy Now!" will speak at Northwestern University's Leverone Hall, 2001 Sheridan Road (at Foster Street) at 7 p.m. on Sept. 20.

This is one stop on her national speaking tour to mark the 10th anniversary of Democracy Now and to launch her second book with journalist David Goodman, "Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders, and the People Who Fight Back." A short question/answer session and book signing will follow the talk.

The event is sponsored by the North Shore Coalition for Peace & Justice (formerly NSAWC), Chicago Media Action and Northwestern University History and Sociology Departments. 

New Communications Manager at D65

 Patricia Markham was recently appointed the Communications Manager for Evanston/Skokie School District 65.  Ms. Markham is an 18-year veteran of District 65, most recently as the Executive Assistant to the Superintendent. 

During her tenure with the District she also served as the school board secretary, which she will contineu. 

Her educational background includes paralegal training and she is presently enrolled in the business management program at National-Louis University.
Ms. Markham says, "I am excited about this new opportunity to continue my career at District 65.  I believe that my experience with various departments during my tenure here will be invaluable in my new position." 

Witherspoon  Reception

The District 202 School Board invites the community to a reception for the new Evanston Township High School superintendent, Dr. Eric Witherspoon, from 4:30 to 7 p.m. tomorrow at in the Planetarium Courtyard (the Terrace in case of rain) at ETHS, 1600 Dodge Ave.

Buoyed by Six Years of Enrichment, First Project EXCITE Class Enters ETHS

By Victoria Scott

When 14-year-old Tyanna Williams walked through the doors of Evanston Township High School last Wednesday, she had an advantage over many of her fellow freshman:  Tyanna knows where she is going. 
The high school is familiar territory for Tyanna.  As a member of a select group of minority students admitted to Project EXCITE, she has been coming to ETHS for enrichment classes for six years.

Tyanna's class is the first to finish the EXCITE program and enter ETHS.  And just as the founders of the program envisioned, Tyanna and many of her peers from the program accepted the challenge: They enrolled in honors classes at the high school. 

Beyond influencing her choice of an ambitious freshman curriculum, EXCITE has given Tyanna glimpses of a university campus and ideas about post-secondary education.  "I want to be a pediatrician," she says.

Project EXCITE Coordinator George Peternel points out that, although the ETHS student body is 44 percent black and 7 percent Hispanic, minority students are under-represented in honors and advanced placement classes.

The scarcity of minorities in their high-level science and mathematics classes had long worried ETHS teachers John Benson, Ron Sellke and Mark Vondracek.  They shared their concerns with Paula Olszewski-Kubelius, director of the Center for Talent Development (CTD) at Northwestern University, a program for academically talented pre-K through ninth-grade students. 

Ms. Olszewski-Kubelius's response took the form of Project EXCITE, which CTD launched in January 2001.  A collaboration of Northwestern and Evanston/Skokie School Districts 65 and 202, Project EXCITE is underwritten primarily by the University, with some funding from Districts 65 and 202 and corporate donors.  Participants pay no fees or tuition.

EXCITE is modeled on CTD's extracurricular program for gifted students, the centerpiece of the center's academic research and 30 years of experience with talented children.  EXCITE added two new components:  under-represented students and a sequential program through which they proceed together.

Beginning with Tyanna's class, all minority students going into third grade at King Lab, Kingsley, Lincoln, Lincolnwood and Rhodes Magnet schools have been invited to apply to EXCITE.  Applicants (usually 50 to 70) take reading and mathematics tests, including a nonverbal ability test that is not culturally biased.  Based on test scores and teacher recommendations, 20 to 25 of the third-graders are chosen for the program. 

"These kids need stimulation," says Project EXCITE Coordinator George Peternel, "or they can lapse."  Teachers for EXCITE make sure that does not happen.

EXCITE (a verb, not an acronym) demonstrates that learning can be fun.  Elementary school children extract DNA from strawberries, do Lego math and visit the ETHS nature center, says Mr. Peternel.  Activities like measuring their heart rates and calculating horsepower, dissecting pigs and mixing two clear chemicals to make a bright yellow one motivate kids like her to come back, Tayana says.

By program's end, says Mr. Peternel, EXCITE students have had more than 400 hours of math and science enrichment in what amounts to ten 40-hour work weeks.  Despite the fact that EXCITE meant attending classes after school, on Saturdays or during summer vacation, Tyanna's mom, Lori Scott, remembers only two times in the six years that her daughter missed EXCITE - once for illness and once for braces.  "She'd tell me, ‘You have to get me there,'" says Ms. Scott.

The EXCITE curriculum gives participants "a sense of fit with smart minority kids, with smart kids from the area and with smart kids from the world," says Mr. Peternel.  "Countervailing pressures get muted," he continues, referring to the anti-academic bias of some minority teens.  "We have created new peers."

As third-graders, participants take after-school math and science classes at ETHS with their EXCITE peers.  During fourth grade they attend Saturday classes at Northwestern as a group.  As fifth-, seventh- and eighth-graders they enroll in CTD Saturday classes on the Northwestern campus with other gifted students from the greater metropolitan area. 

And after sixth and eighth grades EXCITE students mix with kids from all over the world at a Northwestern summer program.  Along the way, says Mr. Peternel, EXCITE offers parental support. 

The program held its first concluding banquet Sunday, Aug. 27, at Maggiano's.  Of the 23 students who entered with Tyanna, says Mr. Peternel, 17 finished.  Most of the dropouts resulted from a move, he says.  Among the graduates, he says, more than half will be taking honors biology.  Their math classes range from honors algebra II to honors geometry.  "I'm so proud of these kids," says Mr. Peternel.

His exit interviews with kids and parents reveal their "incredibly strong positive feelings for the program," he says.  Convinced that, even without university support, EXCITE can be replicated where grade schools can share the facilities of high schools or community colleges, he is spreading the word.

"The No Child Left Behind Act ... is about accountability and punishment," says the EXCITE coordinator.  "Let's give all kids opportunities and watch what happens," he says, adding, "This is very cool stuff."

"Every Child Ready for Kindergarten"

By Mary Helt Gavin

"Every Child Ready for Kindergarten"

Obtaining the backpack, the pencils, the erasers and the lunchbox are only the final preparations for a child's first day of kindergarten. The best preparation has been five years in the making. Research shows that early childhood education is not just for three-year-olds any more. In fact, studies show that the first three years of life are critical in the development of a child's brain, so for children to be ready for kindergarten, parents should be engaging their children from day one.

"... The difference between good and poor students is self-confidence."

"Success in school goes back to one's experiences as a baby," said Jerry Stermer, executive director of Voices for Illinois Children. "This is what we're learning from the experts. Scientists can count the number of synapses [nerve connectors] that grow in babies when they've been picked up. ... The difference between good and poor students is self-confidence," he added.

In "The Early Catastrophe," published in the spring 2003 edition of "American Educator," researchers Betty Hart and Todd Risley wrote, "Neurologically, infancy is a critical period because cortical development is influenced by the amount of central nervous system activity stimulated by experience. Behaviorally, infancy is a unique time of helplessness, when nearly all of children's experience is mediated by adults in one-to-one interactions permeated by affect."

The researchers described the results of their intense two-and-one-half-year study of 42 families in Kansas City, Kan. Thirteen of the families were "upper socioeconomic status (SES)"; 10 were middle SES; 13 were lower SES; and six were "on welfare."

The Kansas City study believes it shows "a first approximation to the absolute magnitude of children's early experience."

There were African-Americans in each SES. The hour-long monthly observations began when the children were 7-9 months old, the researchers said.

"The 30-Million-Word Gap"
In their study of these 42 children in Kansas City, Ms. Hart and Mr. Risley reported that all the children reflected the vocabulary range, language and interaction styles of their families. But they found that children in the poorer families heard fewer words. "Simply in words heard, the average child on welfare was having half as much experience per hour (616 words per hour) as the average working-class child (1,251 words per hour) and less that one-third that of the average child in a professional family (2,153 words per hour)," according to the report.

Ms. Hart and Mr. Risley also said they saw gaps in vocabulary and in amount of talking (utterances) between children in the upper and lower SESes: At age three, the children on welfare had an average vocabulary of 525 words; children of working-class families, 749 words, and children of professional families, 1,116.

Not only did the children in the poorer families hear fewer utterances - and those from smaller vocabularies - they also heard comparatively more discouraging words, the researchers found.

"The average child in a welfare family ... was accumulating five affirmatives [words of encouragement] and 11 prohibitions per hour," as compared with 12 affirmatives and seven prohibitions per hour for a child in a working-class family and 32 affirmatives and five prohibitions per hour for a child in a professional family, according to the study.

These gaps in vocabulary, utterances and encouragement appeared to predict the children's performance in third grade. Twenty-nine of the same families agreed to participate in a study of the same children's performance in third grade.

Gaps in vocabulary, utterances and encouragement by age 3 appear to predict children's performance in third grade.

That study showed that the performance on standardized tests at the third-grade level correlated with the strengths of vocabulary and utterances seen when the children were 3. "Our data provide us ... a first approximation to the absolute magnitude of children's early experience," wrote Ms. Hart and Ms. Risley. They titled that section of their report "The 30 Million Word Gap By Age Three."

"Every Child Ready for Kindergarten"
The Evanston Community Foundation (ECF) has decided to focus intense funding on educating children from birth to three years of age. Implementing the first part of their vision, "Every child ready for kindergarten, every youth ready for work," ECF will use a $200,000 grant - an anonymous donation for this purpose, says ECF executive Director Sara Schastok - to fund a home-visiting program. In a memo presented to ECF board and others earlier this summer, Ms. Schastok wrote, "As a first step toward an Evanston in which our diversity is of benefit to all and harnessed to the success of all who call this [community] home, every Evanston child should be ready for kindergarten and every school ready for every child."

Encouragement at an early age
Successful home-visit programs help parents engage with their children and thus help the children develop, said Mr. Stermer.  "We know from studies that a well-designed home-visit program has important outcomes of the kind Evanston Community Foundation is interested in," he added.

 "Babies communicate in many ways - with their voice, eyes and body. If I pick up a crying baby, I respond to her, and the baby's conclusion is, ‘I count,'" said Mr. Stermer.

"Home visits can help strengthen the relationship between parent and child," said Mr., Stermer. In addition, successful home-visit programs have helped families avoid problems such as child abuse and neglect and have helped parents connect with other support programs, he said. 

To be successful, home visits must be voluntary, Mr. Stermer said - that is, the family must agree to the visits, which can be monthly or more frequent over a period of a year or more. "Home visits are helpful for the most fragile of new families," he said. A "fragile" family is typically one in which there is a new baby and a teen mother who is single and has not yet graduated from high school, he added.

Communication from a supportive listener can help. Mr. Stermer related an example of how misconceptions in parenting, sometimes passed down through generations of a family, can be dispelled by a supportive listening. "There was a study a few years ago about the misconception that picking up a crying baby will spoil the child. The study found that 60 percent of American grandparents believed that, and 40 percent of new parents believed it," he said.

Home Visits in Evanston

Some child-care centers and agencies already perform home visits, although not all of them are on the intense scale envisioned by ECF and described by Mr. Stermer.

Baby Toddler Nursery, operated by the Infant Welfare Society of Evanston, does conduct home visits. "The visits vary from weekly to monthly," said Malik Turley of Baby Toddler. "Our target child is between birth and 3 years of age."

Family Focus, the Evanston Health Department and the family program at District 65 also have some form of home visits, said Helen Roberts-Evans, executive director of the Child Care Center of Evanston.

The Child Care Center of Evanston does not do home visits for their children aged 0-3, she said. She said there are mandated yearly and twice-yearly visits to families in the state pre-kindergarten program and in early Head Start, "but [with the ECF grant] we're looking at ways of collaborating, enhancing and expanding the home-visit program. ... We're looking to see how our home-day-care parents can be included in such a program." 

Martha Arntson, executive director of the Childcare Network of Evanston said, "I really applaud ECF for understanding the critical role of education in children from birth to 3 years old."

Mr. Stermer, an Evanston resident, believes a home-visit program can benefit the community.
"We want the children of our community to do well in school," he said. "Doing well in school is closely associated with being ready for school, and being ready for school is tied to quality early childhood education."

ECF to Announce Grant for Home Visits

It is not just possible to connect the dots among early childhood education, workforce development and land use, say Sara Schastok and Eleanor Revelle of the Evanston Community Foundation (EFF); for the health of the community it is imperative to do so. 

For much of the past 18 months, ECF's Community Works Advisory Committee (CWAC) has been connecting those dots, with two major goals in mind: strengthening the Evanston community by funding efforts in those three areas and refocusing some of its grant money into these key areas, they said. Thier first initiative is to pour intensive funding into the earliest of early childhood education: from birth to three years of age.

A challenge grant from the Grand Victoria Foundation led ECF to look at these three areas and their interconnections, to see how funds directed toward those areas could strengthen the community as a whole, said ECF Executive Director Ms. Schastok and Board member Ms. Revelle in an interview with the RoundTable.

After winnowing written responses from more than a year of Community Works meetings, the Community Works Advisory Committee (CWAC) of Evanston Community Foundation (ECF) came up with an immediate vision: to address the decades-long achievement gap by focusing on children 0-3 years old, said Sara Schastok and Eleanor Revelle of EC.

Evanston Community Foundation has received an anonymous grant of $200,000 to fund home visits to encourage parent engagement in families of very young children, using the resources of Evanston's strong network of child care agencies and providers, said Ms. Schastok.
ECF will present the results of the first phase of its Community Works initiative, including the immediate plan to fund early childhood education through home visits, at a community meeting on Sept. 27.

The Value of Home Visits: Studies Analyzes Results of Home-Visit Programs
A recent study conducted by researchers with the Rand Corp., Early Childhood Interventions: Proven Results, Future Promise, analyzed current research on the effectiveness of early childhood interventions. The study concluded that parent education programs have a small to moderate positive effect on cognitive outcomes of children at about the time of school entry and a small to moderate positive effect in reading and math in grades 3, 5, and 8.

The report states the "gains from early childhood intervention programs are certainly meaningful but often are not so large that they fully compensate for the disadvantages faced by the at-risk population served by the intervention." The study also concludes that the early benefits in terms of cognition or school achievement may eventually fade, and become insignificant over time.

The report concluded that the early childhood interventions may have more substantial gains and longer lasting effects in other areas such as special education placement, high school graduation rates and job placement. In one of the studies analyzed, 25 percent of the children who participated in a combination of childhood intervention programs were placed in special education classes, compared with 48 percent of children in the control group.

In home visiting programs, researchers have found stronger effects when services are delivered by trained nurses, as opposed to paraprofessional visitors. Well designed early childhood interventions have been found to generate a return to society ranging from $1.80 to $17.07 for each dollar spent on the program. 

Illinois OMA: A Tough Act to Follow?

By Mary Helt Gavin

The Illinois Open Meetings Act (Act) mandates that citizens be allowed to observe the debate of public business. It does not give them the right to speak at public meetings. This and other information came from Terry Mutchler, public access specialist for Attorney General Lisa Madigan at a District 65 School Board meeting at which Ms. Mutchler gave an overview of the rights and duties of elected officials under the Open Meetings Act.

"Of course, most public bodies do allow citizen comment. It's a courtesy of good government to let citizens speak," said Ms. Mutchler.

The Board accepted the Attorney General's offer for an educational meeting on the Act after the NAACP filed a complaint about Board e-mail communication before the March 20 meeting, at which the Board voted on the African-Centered Curriculum. The Attorney General found that the Board violated the "spirit" but not the Act itself and offered the refresher course on the Act.

A new law, effective Jan. 1, 2007, covers the use of e-mails, video-conferencing and other technological means of communication to determine whether or not a "meeting" takes place.

Under the Act a meeting has three components: a) a majority of a quorum of the public body, b) gathered, c) to discuss public business. 

Ms. Mutchler said that e-mails among a majority of a quorum of the Board would constitute a "meeting." under the Act.

She emphasized repeatedly that no public body may exclude the public from observing the discussion of public business. While both criminal and civil penalties apply to violations, she said the Attorney General's office believes that most bodies wish to comply with the act and most mistakes - whether or not they rise to the level of violations - are not malicious. For this reason the Attorney General created the public access specialist, to ensure that public bodies comply with the act.

The purpose of the Act is to allow the public to observe debate on matters of public business, Ms. Mutchler said. Closed sessions fall under narrowly specified exceptions. "If the public is excluded," she said, "there had better be a good reason for it." Among the acceptable reasons are litigation, personnel and the purchase or sale of real estate.

The public and the press must receive adequate notice of closed-session meetings, and each closed session must be preceded by an open session held in a place convenient to the public at which the motion to recess into closed session must be made - citing the section of the act that allows the closed session - and voted upon.

"When the closed session is over, the public must be invited back in," Ms. Mutchler said.

"Our Board meetings last a minimum of five hours - a minimum," Board member Mary Rita Luecke said. "As a Board we do not exclude the public."

In response to a question from Board member Jerome Summers and from audience member Joan Hickman, Ms. Mutchler said she did not wish to revisit the incident that triggered the Attorney General's offer of the training workshop.

"This Board was clearly not malicious," Ms. Mutchler said, and added, "The Open Meetings Act and the Freedom of Information Act come down to a philosophy: If you're pro-open government, you will use them as tools of good government."

Evaluation of Superintendent Delayed

As the District 65 School Board's education session on the Illinois Open Meetings Act (OMA) was coming to a close on Aug. 28, a debate arose among Board members about the process of evaluating the superintendent.

Board member Marianne Kountoures said she had been unable to complete the "managment quality" section of the evaluation of the Superintendent, Dr. Hardy Murphy, because she thought it was too subjective.

She said she had repeatedly stated her objections to that section of the evaluation but had been ignored. She further said she believed the process by which the Board came to use that evaluation "tool" violated the Illinois Open Meetings Act.

Traditionally, Board President Mary Erickson said, the Board held closed sessions to determine the method of evaluation of the superintendent and to evaluate his performance.

Terry Mutchler, public access specialist in the Attorney General's office, who conducted the education session, said, "If you're putting that evaluation together, that should be a public discussion. Why shouldn't the public know what you think a successful superintendent is or should be?" On the other hand, she acknowledged that the evaluation tool is "wedded" to the evaluation process, which can be conducted in closed session.

This year, in closed sessions the Board may have agreed on a two-part evaluation: one part dealing with Board goals and one dealing with management goals.

Ms. Kountoures said that Mary Rita Luecke, who was Board president at the time, presented the Board with an evaluation form created three years before by Ms. Erickson and Bob Eder, who was on the Board at the time. She said the Board and the Superintendent had not agreed on the use of that form.

Yet Julie Chernoff and others said they believed the Boatd had reached a consensus but had not voted on it. Voting in a closed session is prohibited under the Open Meeting Act.  management quality seciton

Dr. Murphy said he had agreed to the use of the form but only because he did not wish to prolong the disucssion about it.

The management qualities on the evaluation form are educational leadership, relations with the Board of Education, community relations, business and financial operation and staff management, said Board member Jonathan Baum.

Ms. Erickson said the Board had the option of performing one piece of the evaluation that night and the second another time. Noting the lateness of the hour and the likelihood that a second session would repeat a lot of the material covered in a first session, the Board decided to defer the entire evaluation.

Ms. Erickson asked, "Is there any other public servant that is held to this level of scrutiny?"

Ms. Mutchler replied, "Possibly a city manager. ...All of us are public employees. Somebody else pays our salary. We should fall under an intense amount of scrutiny."

The Board did not set a date for the evaluation of the superintendent.

202 Budget Hearing Slated

By Jennie Berkson

The District 202 School Board will hold a public hearing at its meeting on Monday, Sept. 11, to consider the 2006-7 budget which was tentatively approved at the Board's meeting last July 10.

The budget that was tentatively approved at that meeting was not balanced.  William Stafford, District 202 Chief Financial Officer told the Roundtable that final budget proposal information would not be available until sometime late in the week of September 4.

The total deficit was projected at $767,098, with revenues projected at $64,214,827 and expenses projected at $64,981,925. Expenditures in two major funds - the Education Fund and the Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund (IMRF) - will exceed revenues by $305,768 (Ed. Fund) and $461,330 (IMRF fund)

 According to the report  presented at the time by Mr. Stafford, the budget deficit for the upcoming year was anticipated. In fact, it is actually slightly less than the approved budget deficit for the present year, which was $776,339.

Revenue from residential and corporate property taxes will increase next year, said Mr. Stafford, as will state aid and interest income. However, state and federal grants will be funded at the present levels.

The increased expenses come from salaries because of union contract progressions and retirement costs. Mr. Stafford commented that departments have "done a solid job of trying to contain as much of the non-personnel budget expenditures as possible."
Further additional expenses are being incurred because of the increased cost of energy, which affects the district most in natural gas and electricity costs.

2007 Golden Apple Award Nominations

Nominations are open through December 1 for the 2007 Golden Apple Awards for Excellence in Teaching.

To be eligible for a Golden Apple, a nominee must be a full-time classroom teacher currently teaching in grades 9 through 12 at an Illinois public or non-public school located in Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake or Will counties. Nominees also must be committed to continue teaching for at least two years after receiving the award.

Award finalists will be announced in January; the 10 winners will be named in March.  Nomination forms can be downloaded from the Golden Apple Web site - www.goldenapple.org - and are available by calling 312/407-0433 ext. 108, or writing to Golden Apple Foundation, 8 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 700, Chicago, IL 60603. Call 312-407-0433 ext. 121.