Obama Administration Grants State Waivers to No Child Left Behind

Yesterday, President Obama announced that 10 states have received waivers to No Child Left Behind (NCLB,) which will remove the requirement that all students will perform at or above proficient in reading and math by 2014. Currently, the nation stands at 32% proficiency according to the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress. With the situation getting increasingly desperate and budget cuts and teacher turnover at an all-time high, there is little chance the country will improve this statistic in two short years. The Center for Educational Policy reports that this year, nearly half of all schools failed to meet standards required by law.

These waivers come as a welcome reprieve for overburdened and underfunded schools.

States receiving the waiver are Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oklahoma and Tennessee. New Mexico was denied a waiver, but is currently working with administration to improve their proposal. 28 additional states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico have stated their intent to file for this waiver. Only one state has openly announced their intent not to apply: Montana. (See image for more details.)

Waivers were granted to states whose proposals showed a solid plan to prepare their students for college and careers, set new goals for improving proficiency, reduce achievement gaps and focus support on schools that are struggling. These changes to federal policy mean that there will be more room for innovative reform efforts, the arts, and programs that foster critical thinking and a well-rounded education. Education reform is no longer a “one size fits all” policy.

President Obama’s action to create a more flexible education improvement plan came unilaterally and without the approval of Congress, whose own efforts to reform NCLB have been slow due to bipartisan disagreements. In his announcement, Obama said “if we’re serious about helping our children reach their potential, the best ideas aren’t going to come from Washington alone. Our job is to harness those ideas, and to hold states and schools accountable for making them work.”

The waivers will allow states to implement more flexible programming and reduce the pressure to perform well on standardized tests. Other metrics of success can be used in evaluating student performance, and teachers will be able to teach outside of the test once more. Schools will no longer be held accountable for a lack of adequate yearly progress (AYP,) instead finding more meaningful ways to measure growth and progress.

One of the more positive outcomes of NCLB was the mandate that all schools must test students grades 3-8 and track their performance based on certain subgroups, including students with learning disabilities, minority students, and ELL/ESL students. Under the waiver, 9 states will be able to create a “super subgroup,” putting all of these students in one less-achieving group. Many groups are concerned that this may reduce attention to the individual needs of the more specific subgroups.

Whatever the negative side effects of these waivers, there is a definite reason to celebrate. By September, waivered states will no longer be required to undergo the painful and unjust punishments for under-performance NCLB required. Many schools supported by Reader to Reader have reported the negative effects of having to fire half their staff, firing their principals no matter how wonderful they were, or even having to shut down their school. One school in New Mexico, whose students had responded incredibly to our book donations and mentoring programs, had to cut back their participation in our programs because the restrictions placed on them under NCLB left them no room for creative programming. Reader to Reader anticipates an increase in free-reading programs that will improve the nation’s proficiency in reading, and create more life-long learners.

For information about your state’s testing scores, please visit http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/. You can also learn about state and federal scores for individual schools or districts by visiting www.greatschools.com.

(Stay tuned for our next article: 8th grade reading scores and the Mason-Dixon Line.)

Report Finds New Mexico is Worst State for Children

New York, January 18, 2012 -- A strong relationship has been found among state tax
rates, the size of state investments in children and children’s quality-of-life, according to the STATE Child Well-Being Index (CWI). The report, Investing in Public Programs Matters: How State Policies Impact Children’s Lives, was released January 18th by the Foundation for Child Development (FCD), is the first ever to provide a comprehensive measure of children’s quality-of-life on a state-by-state basis.

“Because less than 10 percent of the federal budget is invested in children’s programs, state spending has a large impact on children’s well-being,” says Ruby Takanishi, President of FCD. “With this new measure, we can see proof of the direct impact of state policies: when states invest in children, children do better.”

The STATE CWI draws from a richer data set than previous state-level studies of child
well-being, assessing children’s quality-of-life in each state across 25 indicators clustered into seven domains (Family Economic Well-Being, Health, Safe/Risky Behavior, Educational Attainment, Community Engagement, Social Relationships, and
Emotional/Spiritual Well-Being) and comparing them across states. In addition, this
report includes new findings about the relationships between state policies and selected economic and demographic factors.

The report can be accessed at FCD’s website.

Key findings from the report include:

 Higher State Taxes Are Better for Children. States with higher tax rates were
found to have higher child well-being values.

 Government Programs Matter. Greater investments in government programs
are strongly related to better quality-of-life for children in a state.
Specifically, the amount of per pupil spending on education, the limits of Medicaid child eligibility thresholds and the levels of Temporary Assistance for
Needy Families (TANF) benefits show substantial correlations with child wellbeing.

 The Best and Worst States for Children: The states with the highest child wellbeing index values were New Jersey, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Utah,
Connecticut and Minnesota.

The states with the lowest index values were New Mexico, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas and Nevada.

 Child Well-Being Varies Greatly Among States. Not only did overall child
well-being values range tremendously from state to state, but great variation was
also found in specific indicators such as the child poverty rate (three times higher
in Mississippi than in Vermont, for example) and the rate of children without
health insurance (five times higher in Texas than in Massachusetts).

“Although states are currently revenue-starved, this is exactly the wrong time to reduce taxes,” says Takanishi. “The revenues generated by taxes should be used to invest more in the education and health of our children. Policymakers must recognize that the cost of shortchanging children today is too high a price to pay in the future.”

The report also makes recommendations for what state governments and the federal
government must do to protect investments in the health and education of our children.

William O’Hare, primary author of the report, states, “When we don’t invest in children, we see real consequences. In this time of economic uncertainty, it is critical that we do a better job of helping children become the productive workers and engaged citizens of tomorrow.”

This report was funded by the Foundation for Child Development and the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Founder of Reader to Reader program in Amherst receives literacy honor

By Nick Grabbe
Daily Hampshire Gazette

AMHERST - When David Mazor was 13, he found a used paperback by Boston Celtics center Bill Russell. Reading it opened his eyes to both racial discrimination and how to visualize what you want, he said.

"You never know what book someone will discover that will change their life," he said.

Forty years later, Mazor has changed thousands of lives by collecting books and donating them to poor towns and schools, Native American reservations, areas hit by natural disasters and 13 foreign countries. Mazor, who is marking his Reader to Reader program's 10th anniversary this year, was named one of 10 "literacy champions" by the Massachusetts Literacy Foundation in September.

"My guiding principle is that reading is the key that unlocks the door to success, whether it is academic achievement, better job opportunities or the simple joy that comes from discovering that reading is one of life's most enjoyable activities," he said in accepting the award.

Reader to Reader started in 2001 when Mazur woke up in the middle of the night wondering what the poorest town in the U.S. was. He went to his computer and found it was Durant, Miss., and in the morning called the town librarian and found she'd acquired no new books in four years. So he sent her a box of books that had been discarded around Amherst, and found that he enjoyed the experience.

Since then, Reader to Reader has collected and donated about 4.5 million books. It has branched out into numerous programs, encouraging teenage mothers to write, turning Amherst College students into online mentors for low-income children, and even placing books in the waiting rooms of state offices in Roxbury.

On Wednesday, he sent 300 books to Holyoke to be given to children as part of Friday's Three Kings Day celebration. In September, he sent 25,000 books to the public schools of Chicopee, also destined for schools in Springfield, West Springfield and Holyoke. In mid-December, a U-Haul truck left Amherst with 15,000 books, computers and toys for the Navajo Nation, bringing the total sent there this year to 50,000 books.

"We're isolated here, and these books give our students a wonderful window on the world," said Carla Clauschee, a librarian at a high school there.

The Literacy Champion Awards, started in 2003, are designed to identify, recognize and support people making contributions to the advancement of literacy. The award includes a grant of $3,500, which Mazor is using to launch Discover Books, a program for teenage parents in the Springfield schools.

The nine other literacy champions included an English instructor at a jail in Ludlow, a language arts teacher in Boston, a reading specialist at a charter school in Haverhill and a career counselor in Attleboro.

When Mazor began Reader to Reader, he found books at tag sales, library discard piles and the Amherst transfer station. Now he gets new books from publishers like Random House and Scholastic, from Barnes & Noble and from authors.

Stephanie Meyer, whose "Twilight" books have sold more than 100 million copies, found out about Reader to Reader and donated shirts, posters and books that became prizes at Navajo Pine High School in New Mexico. Singer Carly Simon sent 2,000 copies of a children's book she wrote.

Reader to Reader operates out of the Cadigan Center for Religious life at Amherst College, which has donated the basement space to the program. It also has a warehouse for books in Holyoke.

In July, Mazor hired his first full-time employee, Kathyrn Libby, who started volunteering at Reader to Reader on her second day as a student at Amherst College. She is running the mentoring program, which links children from low-income backgrounds with Amherst College students, who read the same books and discuss them online. This coming semester, 60 student mentors have signed up, and more than 250 low-income children have benefited from the program.

The new Springboard Program helps students in the Five Colleges learn skills necessary to lead their own literacy projects. Yet to be launched is Generation W, which will bring together low-income teen-agers and senior citizens.

Reader to Reader has also donated annually about 100 used computers that have been discarded by Amherst College. In August it sent computers to a school in Ghana, and in November it sent computers to libraries in Vermont and New York that had lost theirs in Tropical Storm Irene.

Mazor is mindful of the transition in books from print on paper to pixels on a screen. He's already thinking about the long-term impact on his supply of books when residents of affluent communities switch to e-readers, and the practicality of sending an encyclopedia to Costa Rica on an e-reader without having to pay massive shipping charges.

But he said the book is a technology that's been perfected over the centuries, and there's still something wonderful about holding a book, opening it and turning the pages.

"I spent a lot of time at the Jones Library wandering around randomly, pulling books off shelves," he said. "Libraries let you discover books you didn't know you'd want to read."

Daily Hampshire Gazette © 2011 All rights reserved

Reader to Reader on TV

Watch Reader to Reader founder and executive director, David Mazor, as he discusses our diverse range of programs on WWLP-TV's "Mass Appeal".

Click this link to see the segment.

Reader to Reader on TV

Click below to see us on TV!

Watch how Reader to Reader is "Making a Difference."

Barnes & Noble Donates More Than 1.1 Million Books to Nonprofit Organizations, Schools, Libraries and Literacy Partners All across the Country

Barnes & Noble, Inc. announced today that it collected and donated more than 1.1 million books for children in need all over the country during its 2009 Holiday Book Drive, thanks to the generous support of customers and its enthusiastic booksellers. In addition, Barnes & Noble donated another 150,000 books to students in the New Orleans School District through Reader to Reader, Inc., a non-profit organization that distributes books to schools and libraries in need, and 50,000 to Toys for Tots, which collects and distributes toys as Christmas gifts to needy children.

Community partners who have already begun distributing the books collected by Barnes & Noble booksellers include schools, libraries, and social service organizations.

Reader To Reader on TV

Channel 40 TV in Springfield, MA, ran a feature on Reader To Reader and our impact on Springfield's schools.

You can watch the news feature here.

Reader to Reader gift is appreciated

(Published in the Amherst Bulletin, Jan. 16, 2009)

To the Bulletin: Once again David Mazor and Reader To Reader has found a way to help our school, Navajo Pine High, with a tremendous donation of 30 Dell computers worth at least $45,000. These computers will help our teachers and students master the technology to succeed in this century.

Our school is constantly struggling to supply the basic operational necessities to give students the best educational skills and materials needed to succeed in our complex world. The donation has made it possible to build and equip a computer and film lab. Every student and staff member will benefit from this generous donation.

I would like to thank Reader to Reader for the tens of thousands of dollars worth of books it has sent our school over an eight-year period and congratulate it on the success of its mentoring program.

Reader To Reader offers hope and concrete materials to help teachers make a difference, assuring that "no child is left behind."

Carla Clauschee
Navajo Pine High School
Navajo, N.M.

The library - a recession sanctuary

The Boston Globe reports in an article titled "The Library—A Recession Sanctuary” that library usage is surging across the country even as budget cuts are forcing closures and staff cuts.

The article notes:

In Kern County, California, where Diane Duquette has been library director for 22 years, library checkouts were up 19 percent in the last quarter. She told the Bakersfield Californian, "We've never had that kind of increase before. Wow. In my time here, we've maybe had a 1 percent or 2 percent increase in good years."

The Boston Public Library is no different. New library cards are up 32.7 percent from July to November of 2008, compared with the same period in 2007. Visits are up 13 percent, from 1.4 million visits to 1.6 million. Checkouts of books, CDs, and DVDs are up 7.2 percent overall over the last fiscal year. More telling is that checkouts have soared between 27 percent and 37 percent at the Egleston Square, Fields Corner, Jamaica Plain, and Orient Heights branches.

The article details the myriad uses that make libraries relevant in this day and age for job seekers, parents with young children, and as a community gathering place.

Christian Science Monitor Features Reader To Reader

Boxes and boxes: Intern Meredith Wilson sorts through books for the Reader to Reader program on the campus of Amherst College, Mass.
photo: ann hermes/the Christian Science Monitor


Finding a welcome home for used books

With volunteer effort, David Mazor's idea has helped readers around the U.S.

By Stacy Teicher Khadaroo Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from the July 25, 2008 edition

Amherst, Mass. - It all started with a stack of books that needed a home.

David Mazor had some leftovers after collecting book donations for his daughter's state college. He Googled "poorest state" and came up with Mississippi. He searched for its poorest town and up popped Durant, a tiny thumbprint near the road connecting Memphis and New Orleans.

The next morning he called the town's high school librarian and asked if they needed any books. "At our school," he recalls her saying, "if someone wants to learn about landing on the moon, we don't have any books that current."

Eight years later, you'd need a shelf about 30 times the length of Durant's main drag to hold the 2,000,000 new and gently used books Mr. Mazor has distributed throughout the United States.

Each delivery is like a rain shower on thirsty land: School library spending per student has declined about 40 percent since 2000, to $11.24, according to the American Library Association.

At first, friends' donations landed in Mazor's garage, where he matched them to librarians' wish lists and shipped them off, charging postage to his credit card.

"It was so exciting to see how much the schools responded to what we were sending," he says, delight flashing across his face. "My wife thought I was kind of crazy because I woke up in the middle of the night and said, 'I know what I'm going to do!' " He shifted away from his work as a film distributor and launched a nonprofit, Reader to Reader, to sustain his matchmaking efforts.

Growing up in a family that loved to read, Mazor couldn't tolerate so many children lacking books. "In affluent communities, people were often just sort of tossing the books away because they didn't know what to do with them," he says. "We could match up that need with that resource."

It's a simple idea, but for librarians like Carla Clauschee, no one had ever proposed it before. When Mazor called her at Navajo Pine High School in Navajo, N.M., telling her he could send books, she replied, "That's great – but I can't pay for them."

Ms. Clauschee agreed to his offer because she was "really desperate," she says. Every librarian can tell horror stories of useless donations showing up at their doorstep, so "when somebody comes along and genuinely wants to help ... you have to think positive. You have to think that the box that's coming is not moth-eaten." Thanks to her trust, a once "prehistoric" collection has been updated over the past seven years with more than 7,000 books, including collections of native American literature.

"We want every single box of books that a school opens to be in absolutely fantastic condition, to be like a Christmas present," Mazor says as he casts his eye around the basement book haven that serves as Reader to Reader headquarters.

The group long ago moved out of Mazor's garage to the storage area of Amherst College's Cadigan Center for Religious Life, a squat brick building on the edge of campus. The college donated the space and some computers, and also coordinates student work-study jobs and internships here.

"It's always funny to note what was current in the 1950s," says Meredith Wilson, an intern who's a junior at Amherst. As she sorts, she says they send the books that aren't fresh enough to prisoners – or to the recycling bin.

A publisher once sent 5,000 math books. Church groups and sororities pass along the fruits of their book drives. One box of children's books came with a handmade doll attached to each. A retired teacher rented a U-Haul to deliver 35 boxes. And occasionally, there's the inexplicable: "Someone sent us hats once – sombreros," Ms. Wilson says.

Volunteers help organize books into genres and grade levels. Simple wooden shelves hold everything from science fiction paperbacks to art history textbooks to books on tape. Some stacks are labeled with fluorescent sticky notes – or half a note, a hint at the group's frugality.

Mazor's "corner office" is a windowless cramped corner. His computer sits on a desk he found on the side of the road. Wire mesh separates him from the furnace, and wooden clothespins attach his calendar and thank you notes to the wire.

With an operating budget of just $200,000, Mazor says, the group sends out about $1 million worth of books a year. By keeping things simple, they can respond to most requests immediately.

Clauschee works with many students who test well below grade level in reading. Several years ago she asked Mazor for "manga," or graphic novels. "A lot of kids won't carry around a book on a second-grade reading level if they're in high school. ... But it's really cool to carry around a graphic novel," she says. She and Mazor realized that having books on the shelves isn't always enough to encourage students to read. So they tried an online mentoring project with a class Clauschee taught last year. Mazor recruited student workers to read books of the Navajo students' choosing and participate in an online discussion. They started off with mostly native American authors, such as the popular Sherman Alexie, but broadened out with "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "The Kite Runner."

At first the Navajo students' posts were short and obligatory, says Wilson, one of the mentors. But Clauschee taught them to think about character development, writing style, and the author's background. The teens started logging on in their free time and making deeper comments.

Communicating one-on-one with their mentors as they read native American literature, they were "fearless," Clauschee says. "Pretty soon, the kids ... were doing their own literary criticism."

At the close of the school year, Mazor asked each student in the Navajo Pine class to give him a list of seven books they'd like to read over the summer. He bought everything on their lists, and already has bought three more for a girl who devoured her seven.

Mazor's colleagues describe him as a man who makes things happen. But he's a humble executive director. "I can remember starting this all by myself, and now we have so many other people involved," he says. "That's really what makes something like this successful – it's a team effort."


The original article can be found at http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0725/p01s09-usgn.html