PLANNING AND EVALUATION SERVICE

THE SAME HIGH STANDARDS FOR MIGRANT STUDENTS:

HOLDING TITLE I SCHOOLS ACCOUNTABLE

Volume III: Coordinating the Education of Migrant

Students: Lessons Learned from the Field

FINAL REPORT

2002

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION OFFICE OF THE UNDER SECRETARY

DOC #2002-26

VOLUME III: COORDINATING THE EDUCATION OF MIGRANT

STUDENTS: LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE FIELD

SUBMITTED BY:

Alexander Goniprow

Gary Hargett

Nicholas Fitzgerald

George Washington University

Center for Equity and Excellence in Education

Arlington, Va.

PREPARED FOR:

U.S. Department of Education

Office of the Under Secretary

2002
U.S. Department of Education

Rod Paige

Secretary

Office of the Under Secretary

Eugene W. Hickock

Under Secretary

Planning and Evaluation Service

Alan L. Ginsburg

Director

Elementary Secondary Education Division

Ricky T. Takai

Director

September 2002

This report is in the public domain. Authorization to reproduce it in whole or in part is granted. While permission

to reprint this publication is not necessary, the citation should be: U.S. Department of Education, Office of the

Under Secretary, The Same High Standards for Migrant Students: Holding Title I Schools Accountable, Volume III:

Coordinating the Education of Migrant Students: Lessons Learned from the Field, Washington, D.C., 2002.

To order copies of this report, write:

ED Pubs

Education Publications Center

U.S. Department of Education

P.O. Box 1398

Jessup, MD 20794-1398;

Or via electronic mail, send your request to: edpubs@inet.ed.gov.

You may also call toll-free: 1-877-433-7827 (1-877-4-ED-PUBS). If 877 service is not yet available in your area,

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To order online, point your Internet browser to: www.ed.gov/pubs/edpubs.html.

This report is also available on the Departmentís Web site at:

http://www.ed.gov/offices/OUS/PES/ed_for_disadvantaged.html#migranted

http://www.ed.gov/offices/OESE/OME/pubs.htm

On request, this publication is available in alternative formats, such as Braille, large print, audiotape, or computer

diskette. For more information, please contact the Departmentís Alternate Format Center (202) 205-8113.
iii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Coordinating the Education of Migrant Students: Lessons Learned from the Field is the

product of collaboration among educators concerned with enhancing the educational continuity

and academic progress of migrant children. The ideas and experiences presented on these pages

reflect a significant array of promising practices from dedicated educators working together in

state education agencies, regional education offices, local school districts, special resource

centers, universities, and summer programs. While every person involved in the study helped to

produce the results, I want to first thank the local and state educators we visited who generously

provided us with their time and access to their programs and materials.

I especially want to acknowledge the work of Gary Hargett and Nicholas Fitzgerald who

were senior members of the research team that was responsible for the design, analysis and

report writing of the cases. I greatly appreciated their professionalism and spirit of camaraderie.

I want to thank Barbara Hicks, a research associate at GW, who served as the research teamís

information specialist. Barbara Hicks was particularly helpful in researching and collecting

documents for the literature review. I would also like to thank Bob Levy, director of ESCORT,

who served as an informal advisor to the study and helped provide insight and perspective on

interstate coordination efforts.

A special thank you to Francisco Garcia, James English, and Jeffrey Wilde of the Office

of Migrant Education who worked with us to establish the focus of the study, revise the studyís

data collection and analysis plan, provide input on the selection of cases, and review the report.

I would like to thank our project liaison, Allison Henderson of Westat, for her assistance

with the studyís design, counsel during the studyís implementation, and comments on our work.

I also appreciate the input and guidance of our ED technical representatives, Martha Chavez and

Robin Bouckris, and Beth Franklin in their efforts to make the study run smoothly and in the

critique of our report.

Alexander Goniprow

Project Director
iv

 CONTENTS

 Page

Acknowledgments

Executive Summary.....................................................................................................................i

I. Background ............................................................................................................................. 1

Purpose of the Study ....................................................................................................... 1

Background and Selected Review of the Literature.......................................................... 1

Study Questions and Methodology of the Study .............................................................. 6

Organization of the Report .............................................................................................. 8

II. Study Findings: Cross Case Analysis.................................................................................... 10

Conditions Leading to Discontinuity of Education......................................................... 10

Educational Consequences of Discontinuity .................................................................. 11

Selection of Strategies to Promote Coordination across Sites......................................... 12

Promising Approaches Used to Enhance Continuity of Instruction ................................ 13

Implementation Problems or Obstacles.......................................................................... 20

Cross-cutting Themes.................................................................................................... 21

III. Conclusions and Implications............................................................................................. 28

References

Appendix A: Case Studies
v

EXHIBITS

 Page

Exhibit 2.1 Conditions That Led to Educational Discontinuity for Migrant Students............ 10

Exhibit 2.2 Range of Promising Approaches Used to Enhance the Continuity

of Instruction ..................................................................................................... 13

Exhibit 2.3 Examples of ìAlignment of District Policiesî as a Means

of Enhancing Continuity of Instruction .............................................................. 14

Exhibit 2.4 Examples of ìImproved Student Information Access & Exchangeî

As a Means of Enhancing Continuity of Instruction ........................................... 15

Exhibit 2.5 Examples of ìStaff Resources to Promote Credit Accrualî

as a Means of Enhancing Continuity of Instruction ............................................ 16

Exhibit 2.6 Examples of ìOpportunities for Supplemental Instructionî

as a Means of Enhancing Continuity of Instruction ............................................ 17
i

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Background

A growing body of research has documented the detrimental effect that changing schools

has on studentsí academic performance. Migrant students are among the most mobile of all

students, since they must change schools to accompany their families as they move to pursue

seasonal agricultural employment. One of the roles of Title I, Part C, the Migrant Education

Program (MEP), is to implement strategies to redress studentsí educational disruption. To

contribute to the knowledge base on effective practices for promoting educational quality and

continuity for migrant students, the U.S. Department of Educationís Planning and Evaluation

Service supported this study, conducted by researchers at the George Washington Universityís

Center for Educational Equity and Excellence, in cooperation with Westat, Inc.

The purpose of this study is to illustrate a range of approaches used to promote continuity

of instructional service for migrant students and to identify promising practices tailored to

promote instructional continuity. The study entailed case studies of district migrant education

programs, chosen on the basis of nominations from state directors. Four groups of two or three

districts that share students who move back and forth between them were chosen for study

(referred to as Trading Partners).

The researchers selected four cases for the study:

Case Study One: Weslaco Independent School District, Weslaco, Texas

& Pasco School District, Pasco, Washington

Case Study Two: Eagle Pass Independent School District, Eagle Pass, Texas

& Sidney School District, Sidney, Montana

Case Study Three: Donna Independent School District, Donna, Texas; Van Buren

Intermediate School District, Lawrence, Michigan; & Manatee County Office of Education,

Bradenton, Florida

Case Study Four: Yuma School District #1, Yuma, Arizona

& Alisal School District, Salinas, California

A member of the research team visited each site between June 1998 and December 1998.

The researchers conducted interviews with key staff; observed service delivery and coordination

mechanisms; and inspected relevant documents, which included available achievement data.
ii

This report is a cross-case report on the findings relative to the six research questions and

illustrates several cross -cutting themes. Appendix A contains detailed case studies.

KEY FINDINGS

 The case studies revealed that the Trading Partners shared a set of common themes

that led to the development of successful solutions for migrant students: shared vision

of the role of migrant education, emphasis on program alignment between trading

partners, use of technology, value of personal relationships, and importance of

leadership.

ó Across the case study sites, migrant educators shared a vision about their goals for their

shared students and the role of migrant education. This vision embodied the notion that

migrant students had unique needs and that the MEP should supplement the basic

education program to meet those needs.

ó All of the case study sites were committed to aligning local instruction between programs

that shared migrant students. In particular, they were committed to aligning with the

studentsí home-base schools for curricular content and course requirements.

ó The use of technology provided solutions to the problems of accessing information and

providing instruction to difficult-to-reach students. Technology was used to transfer

information on studentsí academic records between trading partners, provide

individualized instruction, and provide access to another state or districtís assessments

and standards.

ó Personal meetings and relationships furthered solutions for migrant students in all sites.

They helped the districts to understand each otherís needs, policies, and problems in

educating migrant students.

 The case studies displayed a consistent set of conditions that led to educational

discontinuity for migrant students.

ó There was a lack of timely and reliable information about studentsí achievement levels,

immediate enrollment history, and educational needs.

ó Differences in school curriculum requirements and instructional methods between

districts and states sharing migrant students (e.g., block vs. traditional schedules,

language assistance programs, and graduation requirements) led to instructional

discontinuity and credit accrual problems for secondary migrant students.

ó Migrant students experienced conflicts between the need to work and to attend school.

 Migrant education programs focused on four areas to promote the continuity of

education for migrant students: alignment of district policies, improved student
iii

information exchange and access, staff resources to promote credit accrual, and

opportunities for supplemental instruction.

ó Some examples of alignment policies included the following: LEP students were placed

in the same type of English acquisition program as their homebase school; trading

partners compared their individual language assessments scores to place migrant students

in the same types of coursework; and trading partners agreed on common grade

placement policies.

ó The districts implemented information systems including the Texas Migrant Interstate

Project, the New Generation System, the Red Bag Transfer Packet System, and an email

system to improve student information exchange and access. These systems relied on a

combination of information technologies and technical assistance and staff support.

ó To promote secondary credit accrual, particular staff members were charged with

communicating with other districts to determine appropriate courses for credit accrual

purposes, calculating and awarding partial credit, and following up on attendance data,

grades and credit accrual information sent to other districts.

ó Two basic strategies were used in developing supplemental educational opportunities.

The first strategy entails flexible courses of study that assist secondary students to

accelerate course completion or to finish incomplete courses. The newest versions of

these courses use technology (e.g. desktop computer labs, portable laptop computers, and

satellite technology) to deliver instruction. The second strategy provided migrant

students with additional instructional time, either in the summer, in the evening, or during

the school day.

There was limited evidence on the effectiveness of the innovations, but most of them are

fairly new or are still being developed.
1

I. BACKGROUND

Purpose of the Study

The Migrant Education Trading Partners Study was requested by the U.S. Department of

Educationís Planning and Evaluation Services and contracted through Westat and the Center for

Equity and Excellence in Education at The George Washington University. The study examined

the coordination mechanisms used between migrant education programs in different states and

school districts to mitigate and overcome the negative effects of educational disruption caused by

migration in pursuit of seasonal work in agriculture. The studyís design encompassed a set of

case studies of migrant education entities that had promising coordination mechanisms in place

to overcome educational disruption. Such entities were referred to in the study as ìtrading

partners.î

The study had two primary objectives:

1. To illustrate a range of approaches used to promote continuity of instructional

services for migrant students; and

2. To identify promising practices tailored to promote instructional continuity.

The studyís purpose was to share promising practices with the field and to inform it of

innovations that would be useful to both policy and practice.

Background and Selected Review of the Literature

The United States Congress first authorized federal support for migrant students in 1966

through an amendment to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965; that

support was most recently reaffirmed through enactment of Title I, Part C, of the ESEA, as

amended by the Improving America's Schoolís Act (IASA) (PL 103-382). The legislation

defines a migrant child as one:

...who is, or whose parent, spouse, or guardian is, a migratory agricultural worker,

including a migratory dairy worker, or a migratory fisher, and who, in the
2

preceding 36 months, in order to obtain, or accompany such parent, spouse, or

guardian in order to obtain, temporary or seasonal employment in agricultural or

fishing work; has moved from one school district to another; in a State that is

comprised of a single school district, has moved from one administrative area to

another within such district; or resides in a school district of more than 15,000

square miles, and migrates a distance of 20 miles or more to a temporary

residence to engage in a fishing activity (Sec. 1309 (2)).

The law establishes that the purpose of assistance given to migrant students pursuant to

Title I, part C, is to help them, among other things, to:

overcome educational disruption, cultural and language barriers, social isolation,

various health-related problems, and other factors that inhibit the ability of such

children to do well in school, and to prepare such children to make a successful

transition to postsecondary education or employment and ensure that migratory

children benefit from State and local systemic reforms (Sec. 1301(4)(5)).

The law also states clearly that funds allocated to migrant education are supplemental and

should not duplicate services or resources already provided by an educational agency. The

federal governmentís role in migrant education is to administer grants to state education

agencies, which then distribute the funds according to their own policies and procedures and in

ways that best address the needs and service priorities of migrant children.

Migrant studentsí profound and varied needs have been documented in both journalistic

and scholarly literature. Helge (1991) listed difficulties that beset migrant children and their

families, including dropout rates, low parent literacy, poverty, and low academic achievement.

Rumberger and Larson (1998) cited findings that students who have changed schools even once

within two years score significantly lower on achievement tests, and mobility by itself appeared

to account for half of the differences in achievement. Even when controlling for poverty,

Rumberger and Larson found that even one non-promotional school change doubled the

likelihood of not completing high school.

Serrano (1983) listed eight specific migrant student problems: ìlack of credit reciprocity,

lack of fractional credit transfer, lack of course continuity, language barriers, inconsistent grade

placement, inaccessible vocational and special programs, inaccessibility of mandated
3

competency tests, and absence of alternative instructionî (p. 19), with mobility identified as the

key disruption factor, even for ìreturn to the same schools in a routine way.î (p. 9).

Migrant education programs carry out their mandate to remedy a wide variety of student

needs in many ways, ranging from pre-school to summer programs to night school. They also

provide an array of social and health services. However, for these efforts to be effective, they

need to be coordinated with the other regular and supplemental education and health

servicesóboth within school districts and across them.

For this reason, within the U.S. Department of Education, the migrant education program

statute specifically calls for coordination activities. During the 1980s, the Office of Migrant

Education funded numerous coordination projects under Section 143 of the existing ESEA,

Migrant Education Interstate and Intrastate Coordination. These projects had varying degrees of

success (Adelman & Cleland, 1987).

The best-known federally funded coordination effort was the Migrant Student Record

Transfer System (MSRTS). Serrano (1983, p. 11) described MSRTS as the ìfirst massive

interstate cooperative effort to address mobility and continuity.î MSRTS was a computerized

migrant student record system; records clerks at local migrant programs entered student data that

included their test scores, immunizations, and placements in grade for transmittal to the central

data storage site in Little Rock, Arkansas. A migrant studentís new school could request the

information from MSRTS in order to save time assessing the student for initial instructional

placement. The Migrant Student Record Transfer System also included a Credit Accrual and

Exchange Section for high school students to improve credit transfer for graduation.

The success of MSRTS in expediting migrant student information has been argued

among migrant educators. The Interstate Migrant Education Council (IMEC), (1992), for

example, found increases in the identification of migrant students for special education services

from 1980 to 1990 and said that these increases ìmay be attributable, in part, to migrant

educatorsí awareness, the inclusion of the special education code as part of the MSRTS training,

and heightened understanding among special educatorsî (p. 8). However, IMEC also concluded

that ìany analysis of MSRTS data is bound to yield tenuous, fairly inconclusive informationî (p.

11). Due to the mixed results of MSRTS, the contract was terminated in 1995 and it was

discontinued.
4

The federal government reaffirmed its interest in coordination activities among

educational agencies with the enactment of the Improving Americaís Schools Act (IASA). This

law acknowledges that it is important to coordinate student information and records exchange,

but individual states or consortia of states are left to devise their own systems. Currently, few of

these systems have the capacity to transfer or provide appropriate users the student information

they need.

Migrant education can play a role in articulating common services between educational

agencies, but the manner in which that role is played can vary and probably must vary according

to the situation. Most, if not all, supplemental programs have encountered problems in

coordinating their services with those provided by the basic educational program. While the term

ìcoordinationî has been used to describe the role in a broad sense, the word may communicate

different things to different people and encompass several different levels of mutual effort.

Walp and Walmsley (1989) described congruence between programs ìin terms of the

coordination between classroom and remedial instructionî (p. 364) within a school or district.

Allington and Johnston (1986) also discussed the importance of coordination between different

programs that serve the same children in order to achieve curricular congruence; they

emphasized congruence in what is to be taught and the methods of instruction.

Stone (1993) defined coordination as ìthe additional procedures used by people to do an

activity with othersî (p. 6). The procedures include ìhow people find each other, arrange to

carry out an activity together, locate a suitable setting, schedule the activity, and get there on

timeî (p.6). He posits three major categories of coordination procedures. The first, termed

recurrent routines, are customary procedures that carry out well-established routines (e.g., the

monthly staff meeting). The second type of coordination procedures are premised on ìcentrally

directed control of people, activities, and resourcesî (e.g., military maneuvers or assembly line

production). The third type is ìnegotiatedî procedures, whether it be an informal arrangement or

a well-specified contract (e.g., planning family weekends together or discussing how to improve

work conditions).

All three sources of coordination procedures need to be in place to coordinate effectively

interstate educational services. Recurrent routines are valuable because daily decisions about

every act of coordination are disruptive and inefficient. Centrally directed coordination, in turn,

makes it possible to set up complicated new routines and to select, refine, optimize, and preserve

existing routines. The main advantage of negotiated coordination ìis that it provides alternatives
5

when routines conflict or are unsatisfactory, or when top-down, centralized control is not

appropriateî (Stone, 1993, p. 11).

Kadel (1992) offers a complementary framework by distinguishing cooperation from

coordination and collaboration, explaining that cooperation occurs when agencies have an

ìinformal understandingî that they will help each other without ìlosing their autonomiesî;

coordination is seen when a few agencies work on a specific task together but have a limited

relationship; and collaboration infers that resources and authority are shared to a considerable

degree (pp. 6-7).

Melaville and Black (1991) also differentiated between cooperation and collaboration. In

a ìcooperative arrangement at the service delivery level, partners help each other meet their

respective organizational goalsî (p. 14). In contrast, ìcollaborative partnerships establish

common goals. In order to address problems that lie beyond any single agency's exclusive

purview, but which concern them all, partners agree to pool resources, jointly plan, implement,

and evaluate new services and procedures, and delegate individual responsibility for the

outcomes of their joint effortsî (p. 16).

The simple transfer of student information is a cooperative activity rather than a

coordinated effort among school districts and the states. However, exchanging student records

for credit accrual purposes certainly could be viewed as coordination. More intensive efforts that

require resource allocation, such as providing facilities and personnel for another state's

curriculum, might qualify as collaboration. However these terms are defined, reaching

consensus about the precise meanings of cooperation, coordination, and collaboration may not be

as critical as clearly defining the roles of the agencies involved, the extent of their involvement,

and the extent of their resource and time commitments.

Migrant education is cross-jurisdictional by its very definition, between school districts

and between states. Local programs operate within the parameters of higher jurisdictions, from

the district level to the federal government, and need the support of state and federal efforts to

execute successful coordination and collaboration.

Conditions must favor coordination and collaboration for agencies to succeed in

achieving mutual goals. Melaville and Black described the environment for change: ìThe most

supportive climate is one in which the solution to a problem with multiple causes and

consequences...is a top priority of the community, key decision makers, and service providers,
6

and where previously established working relationships exist among potential partnersî (p. 20).

Also required is a ìcommunication and problem-solving process participants use to establish

goals and objectives, agree on roles, make decisions, and resolve conflicts. The process

establishes the working relationships and defines the operational rules necessary to guide the

partnership initiativeî (p. 21). Kadel pointed out that one of the roles to be agreed on has to do

with leadership; the cooperating partners must reach agreement on who will lead.

This study describes how migrant education programs in local education agencies have

found ways to promote the continuity of their agencies' instruction for migrant students. It

shows how their efforts have dealt with or continue to deal with critical issues: leadership, turf,

definition of roles, resources, cooperation, coordination, collaboration, and communication. It

also illustrates how the programs that were the foci of the study functioned in the context of local

and state hierarchies.

Study Questions and Methodology of the Study

The research team identified six research questions to guide the study's primary

objectives:

1. What were the conditions that led to discontinuity of education for migrant students?

2. What were the problems, issues, and concerns at the school site level that resulted

from discontinuity of education?

3. How and why was a particular approach adopted as a strategy to promote continuity

of education?

4. What range of approaches are used in migrant education programs to promote

continuity of education for migrant students, and how are those approaches

implemented?

5. What impact have these innovations demonstrated, and what problems or obstacles

were encountered in implementing these approaches?

6. What cross-cutting themes emerged from the study?

In order to identify sites to comprise the case studies, all State Directors of Migrant

Education received a letter in January, 1998 asking them to nominate sites within their states for

inclusion in the study. They were given the following criteria to guide their nominations:
7

 The site should have coordinated with another site for at least three years in order to

promote continuity of educational services for the migrant students they share.

 The site should have in place identifiable coordinating mechanisms (e.g., shared

curricula, teacher exchange), which promote continuity of services.

 The site should serve significant numbers of migrant students which are shared with

the trading partner.

 The site should have demonstrated success in prompting positive outcomes for

migrant students.

Trading Partners Included in each Case Study

Case Study One: Weslaco

Independent School

District, Weslaco,

Texas

& Pasco School

District, Pasco,

Washington

Case Study Two: Eagle Pass

Independent School

District, Eagle Pass,

Texas

& Sidney School

District, Sidney,

Montana

Case Study Three: Donna Independent

School District,

Donna, Texas

& Van Buren

Intermediate School

District, Lawrence,

Michigan

& Manatee County

Office of Education,

Bradenton, Florida

Case Study Four: Yuma School

District #1, Yuma,

Arizona

& Alisal School

District, Salinas,

California

A researcher visited each site between June 1998 and December 1998. Researchers

visited sites that receive migrant students primarily in the Summer months, the time of highest

migrant student enrollment. Researchers visited sites that primarily send migrant students during

the regular school year. These visits were timed so that the researchers could observe the impact

of the arrival of large numbers of migrant students and also determine the degree to which

educational services were disrupted at the sites of origin. The same researcher who visited the

receiving site also visited the corresponding sending site.
8

During these site visits, the researchers gathered information through a variety of means,

including interviews with key personnel and inspection of relevant documents. They also

observed services as they were delivered to students. Semi-structured interviews formed the

primary source of information. During the course of the site visits, it became apparent that a

large part of the story of migrant education coordination could be found in the context of systems

set in place by state agencies acting alone or in partnerships, rather than in the reciprocal

activities of local education agencies. Therefore, the research team also investigated those

systems that seemed to provide programmatic ìglueî to local efforts. Those systems included the

Texas Education Agencyís Division of Migrant Education (TEA), the Texas Migrant Interstate

Program (TMIP), the Florida Migrant Interstate Program (FMIP), the Texas Regional Education

Service Centers I and XX (for the New Generation System (NGS) and Project SMART

respectively), Project Estrella, the University of Texas Migrant Program, and the Florida PASS

Program.

Researchers interviewed migrant program coordinators, directors of federal programs,

counselors, teachers, migrant home visitors, school principals, technical support personnel,

personnel associated with interstate coordination projects, growers, and migrant students and

their parents. The individuals interviewed were too numerous to list in this study; moreover, they

were assured confidentiality to encourage candor. However, the primary contact persons for

each site and project are listed in the appendix.

Each case was analyzed from the perspective of the educational problems migrant

students faced and the districtsí strategies for resolving those problems. The districtsí solutions,

which form the heart of this study, were analyzed according to the levels of coordination they

required (as defined by Kadel and Melaville and Black), who distinguished among cooperation,

coordination, and collaboration. However, the researchers also found cooperative mechanisms

that receiving districts use which are locally initiated or ìunilateralî adaptations to their own

services to provide a match to the migrant studentsí home district. Since those accommodations

figured prominently in the cases that formed this study, the ìunilateralî level was added to the

coordination continuum for purposes of analysis. The researchers made every effort to

distinguish coordination in its broader sense (referring to the whole continuum) from its

narrower sense (as defined above).
9

Organization of the Report

Chapter Two of this volume consists of the cross-case analysis and findings relative to

the six research questions. It provides a discussion of the cross-cutting themes that relate to

coordination. Chapter Three presents conclusions and implications drawn from the cross-case

analysis. The detailed case studies are presented separately in Chapter One of Volume II of this

report. That chapter presents the four cases and describes the promising practices implemented to

enhance the continuity of education for migrant children. It provides important contextual

information on the circumstances of educational disruptions and the details of the coordination

mechanisms that were adopted. Volume II, Chapter Two describes the special coordination

resources the sites drew upon to support their local solution strategies.
10

II. STUDY FINDINGS: CROSS-CASE ANALYSIS

In this chapter, we discuss the findings of the Trading Partners Study as they relate to

each of the studyís six research questions.

Conditions Leading to Discontinuity of Education for Migrant Children

Exhibit 2.1 Conditions That Led to Educational Discontinuity for Migrant Students

Condition Cases Reporting Condition

Lost instructional time due to early withdrawal, while

families relocated, and due to late re-entry

Weslaco ñ Pasco

Eagle Pass ñ Sidney

Donna ñ Van Buren ñ Manatee

Yuma ñ Alisal

Lack of information to place students properly Weslaco ñ Pasco

Eagle Pass ñ Sidney

Donna ñ Van Buren ñ Manatee

Yuma ñ Alisal

Loss of course credits due to lack of information about

courses taken elsewhere or inappropriate placements

Weslaco ñ Pasco

Eagle Pass ñ Sidney

Donna ñ Van Buren ñ Manatee

Missed opportunities to prepare for and take the TAAS Weslaco ñ Pasco

Eagle Pass ñ Sidney

Donna ñ Van Buren ñ Manatee

Different high school course offerings Weslaco ñ Pasco

Donna ñ Van Buren ñ Manatee

Conflicts between need to work and to attend school Weslaco ñ Pasco

Donna ñ Van Buren ñ Manatee

Dissimilar language assistance programs for LEP migrant

students

Weslaco ñ Pasco

Yuma ñ Alisal

Dissimilar grade placement policies Weslaco ñ Pasco

Different graduation requirements between schools and

states

Weslaco ñ Pasco
11

The cases displayed in Exhibit 2.1 show a consistent set of conditions that led to

educational discontinuity for migrant students:

 Instructional time was lost due to leaving school before the end of the school year,

time in transit, and returning to school after the beginning of the school year;

 There was a lack of timely and reliable information about studentsí achievement

levels, immediate enrollment history, and educational needs (e.g., level of English

proficiency); and

 Differences in school curriculum requirements and instructional methods between

districts and states sharing migrant students (e.g., block vs. traditional schedules,

language assistance programs, and graduation requirements) led to instructional

discontinuity and credit accrual problems for secondary migrant students.

Educational Consequences of Discontinuity

Migrant students faced the same problems at different sites that resulted from

discontinuity in their education due to their migrant status:

 Their academic achievement was lower than that of other students.

 They had problems building on either the native language or the language of

acquisition due to placement in different kinds of language assistance programs.

 They lost credits because they frequently were not placed in appropriate classes,

especially at the high school level.

 They became discouraged because of their lack of high school credit accrual for ontime graduation which, in some cases, led to dropping out.

 They sometimes failed to attend school at all.
12

Selection of Strategies to Promote Coordination across States

Cases examined in the study provide clear examples of efficient and direct responses to

problems. Pasco School District opened a night high school because older migrant students need

to work in the morning; it placed LEP migrant students in sheltered English classes because they

would not continue studying in Spanish when they returned to the family home; its counselors

communicated intensively with counterparts in districts such as Weslaco Independent School

District because that is the surest way to get information needed for appropriate class

placements. Yuma School District #1 and Alisal School District inaugurated e-mail-based

information exchange because timely information was the most critical need; they determined

equivalence of their language proficiency assessments because they needed to understand each

otherís language proficiency scores to make immediate decisions about program placement.

Migrant staff from Van Buren Intermediate School District in Michigan visited schools in Texas

to find out more about their migrant students and also to ascertain to whom they should speak in

order to get that information. Donna Independent School District, Eagle Pass School District,

Weslaco Independent School District, and Alisal School District began extended day, extended

week and extended year programs to make up the time migrant students were not in school.

The strategies that were available to the migrant programs were often those that were

created beyond the local program level as universal responses to common problems. Several of

the programs used the Portable Assisted Study Sequence (PASS), a program that was developed

in interstate collaboration as a solution to the problem of credit accrual. Sidney, Montana

Summer Migrant Education Project; and Eagle Pass, Donna, and Weslaco, I.S.D.s in Texas

adopted technology-based solutions such as Project SMART, Project Estrella and NovaNET,

which resulted from efforts among state directors and regional consortia to collaborate for the

good of their migrant students. Project SMART (Summer Migrants Access Resources through

Technology) is a national distance learning instructional program that is broadcast via satellite

from Texas for eight weeks over the summer. Project ESTRELLA supports interstate

coordination through the use of laptop computers. NovaNET is a nationwide computer-based

curriculum. Several of those districts also utilized the New Generation System (NGS) as a

solution to the problem of timely information (with mixed results), but NGS was made available

to the districts because of collaboration among a consortia of state directors following the

termination of MSRTS. NGS is a comprehensive database of education and health information

on more than 200,000 migrant children that can be accessed by subscribers through the Internet.

Pasco was able to establish its pre-registration system in Texas because growers had set in place

their own early hiring system. The Texas Education Agency (TEA) was able to develop Project
13

SMART because Texasís Education Service Center (ESC) 20 had already developed the

technology through related distance learning applications.

Promising Approaches Used to Enhance Continuity of Instruction

Exhibit 2.2 Range of Promising Approaches Used to Enhance the

Continuity of Instruction

1. Alignment of District Policies

2. Improved Student Information Access and Exchange

3. Staff Resources to Promote Credit Accrual

4. Opportunities for Supplemental Instruction

Four basic approaches were identified to enhance the continuity of instruction: 1)

alignment of district policies, 2) improved student information exchange and access, 3) staff

resources to promote credit accrual, and 4) opportunities for supplemental instruction.

The alignment of district policies and improved information exchange systems were

strategies that were favored to, among other things, surmount the lack of timely and reliable

information about migrant students. Strategically placed migrant education program staff was

key in helping migrant students overcome problems due to ìdifferences in school curriculum and

in difficulties of accruing course credits.î Not surprisingly, the problem of ìlost instructional

timeî was addressed by a wide array of opportunities for migrant students to receive

supplemental instruction.

Alignment of District Policies. To reduce instructional discontinuity for migrant students

who move back and forth between the partners in two cases (Weslaco-Pasco and Yuma-Alisal),

decisions to align the educational policies were made. In the Weslaco and Pasco case, for

example, Pasco adjusted its policy concerning language of instruction and grade placement.

Coordination of this type, once the decisions are made, is very efficient as it becomes a

ìrecurrent routineî (Stone, 1993) that staff automatically implement on behalf of migrant

students.
14

Exhibit 2.3 Examples of ìAlignment of District Policiesî as a Means of Enhancing

Continuity of Instruction

Solutions Site(s) Reporting Solution

Limited English Proficient students placed according to

homebase schoolís practices

Weslaco ñ Pasco

Yuma - Alisal

Agreement on grade placement policies Weslaco ñ Pasco

Determined equivalencies of local language assessment

instruments and information to ensure mutual understanding

Yuma ñ Alisal

Decision not to adopt a year-round school schedule Yuma

Improved Student Information Access & Exchange. This study documented five very different

strategies for exchanging student information. The most frequently mentioned strategy was the

use of the Texas Migrant Interstate Program. Since its inception in 1981, the Texas Migrant

Interstate Program (TMIP) has provided technical assistance to migrant education programs

across the United States. TMIP facilitates interstate coordination of services to maximize the full

use and delivery of available resources to migrant students. TMIPís primary goal ìis to increase

the graduation rate of migrant students by promoting coordination/cooperation of migrant

education programs that provide services to migrant students.î

The staff of TMIP often serve as the strategy of last resort for migrant educators who are

having difficulty getting information about a particular migrant student. In contrast, three

evolving information systems (i.e., NGS, Red Bag, and Teacher-to-Teacher e-mail) were

documented as a means of gaining easier access to student data or exchanging student

information. Finally, the pre-registration process used by Pasco is an uncommon but seemingly

effective method of generating information that facilitates the timely enrollment and proper

placement of migrant students in the districtís schools.
15

Exhibit 2.4 Examples of ìImproved Student Information Access & Exchangeî as a

Means of Enhancing Continuity of Instruction

Solutions Site(s) Reporting Solution

Texas Migrant Interstate Program Weslaco ñ Pasco

Eagle Pass ñ Sidney

Donna ñ Van Buren ñ Manatee

New Generation System Weslaco

Eagle Pass ñ Sidney

Donna

Red Bag (Green Bag) Transfer Packet System where Texas

puts all pertinent documentationtranscripts, withdrawal

slips, test scores and vaccination and medical

informationinto a red bag which the students and families

pick up from the school before leaving Texas.

Weslaco ñ Pasco

Eagle Pass ñ Sidney

E-mail transfer of student information using Student

Identification Cards with e-mail addresses of teachers and a

electronic student record ìtemplate.î

Yuma ñ Alisal

Pre-registration program to facilitate enrollment in receiving

schools

Weslaco ñ Pasco

Staff Resources to Promote Credit Accrual. In each of the three cases where the partners

were concerned with helping secondary migrant students graduate, strategically placed staff

(e.g., guidance counselors, migrant resource teachers, or program specialists) were a common

and crucial resource needed to facilitate credit accrual. Given the nature of the problem (e.g.,

differences in school curriculum requirements, partial credits from multiple schools/programs,

and the high caseloads of most regular guidance personnel), additional staff are needed to attend

to and negotiate coordination between the education received by migrant students and the

requirements of the school, school district, and state from which the student intends to graduate.

Information tools and strategies (such as those discussed above) are important, but without a

person who uses the data appropriately, the primary goal of credit accrual and graduation will not

be achieved.
16

Exhibit 2.5 Examples of ìStaff Resources to Promote Credit Accrualî as a Means of

Enhancing Continuity of Instruction

Solutions Site(s) Reporting Solution

Staff who are charged with communicating with other

districts to determine appropriate courses for credit accrual

purposes

Weslaco ñ Pasco

Eagle Pass ñ Sidney

Donna ñ Van Buren ñ Manatee

Staff who calculate, award and/or accrue partial credit Weslaco ñ Pasco

Eagle Pass ñ Sidney

Donna ñ Van Buren ñ Manatee

Staff who send and follow-up on attendance data, grades,

and credit accrual information sent to other districts

Weslaco ñ Pasco

Eagle Pass ñ Sidney

Donna ñ Van Buren ñ Manatee

TMIP and Annual Credit Accrual Workshop Weslaco ñ Pasco

Eagle Pass ñ Sidney

Donna ñ Van Buren ñ Manatee

Alternative Graduation Plan Pasco

Opportunities for Supplemental Instruction. Two basic strategies emerge from the array

of supplemental educational opportunities that are supported by Migrant Education Programs to

combat the problem of lost instructional time. In the first strategy, flexible courses of study are

developed that assist secondary students as they work to accelerate course completion (before

withdrawing from school) or to finish incomplete courses (while on the road or upon return to

the home base school). The newest versions of these flexible courses of study often use

technology (e.g., desktop computer labs, portable laptop computers, and satellite technology) to

facilitate the delivery and individualization of the courses of instruction. Older formats (e.g.,

correspondence courses and teacher-made study packets) are perhaps less costly and more

widely available. They also may be considerably less effective. A key for these strategies in

moving from ìpromisingî to ìeffectiveî is support for an on-going process to improve

continuously the quality of materials and align them to the appropriate content standards.

In general, the second strategy revolves around developing a set of ìenvironmentsî in

which the instructional services are delivered. Almost all of the school districts supported

summer programs as a place and time in which instructional services could be provided to

migrant students of all grade levels. Originating Texas school districts, for example,

implemented in-school tutorial programs to provide a time and space for secondary-level migrant
17

students to work on their independent courses of study or prepare for the TAAS. Similarly, the

receiving states often supported ìevening programsî for secondary youth to complete

coursework. Project Estrella provides a ìvirtualî classroom to migrant studentsówherever they

may resideóas long as they can access a telephone line.

Many of the supplemental educational opportunities were developed by TEA or by TEA

in partnership with other states. TEA has accepted its leadership role and assumed a large share

of the responsibility to reduce the harmful effects of educational discontinuity on students who

migrate from Texas. It has supported strategies such as TMIP, University of Texas

correspondence courses, PASS, Project SMART, NGS, the Red Bag, NovaNET, and Out-ofState TAAS testingóall to make it easier for a state receiving migrant students to coordinate

with Texas schools. Adapting local policies, programs, and procedures is a responsibility that is

incumbent on the states receiving migrant students, but Texas has made it easier for them if they

choose to coordinate services by adopting and implementing solutions supported by Texas.

Exhibit 2.6 Examples of ìOpportunities for Supplemental Instructionî as a Means of

Enhancing Continuity of Instruction

Solutions Site(s) Reporting Solution

Summer Program (includes Pasco and Yuma that pay tuition

costs for migrant student enrollment in districtís summer

program)

Weslaco ñ Pasco

Eagle Pass ñ Sidney

Donna ñ Van Buren

Yuma

Portable Assisted Study Sequence (PASS) is a nationally

recognized program offering mobile secondary students an

alternative means of earning full or partial course credits

through the completion of self-directed courses.

Weslaco ñ Pasco

Eagle Pass ñ Sidney

Donna ñ Van Buren ñ Manatee

University of Texas (UT) correspondence courses Weslaco ñ Pasco

Eagle Pass ñ Sidney

Donna ñ Van Buren

Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) preparation Weslaco ñ Pasco

Eagle Pass ñ Sidney

Donna ñ Van Buren
18

Exhibit 2.6 (continued)

NovaNET Labs and other Computer-based Instruction

Tutorials

Weslaco ñ Pasco

Eagle Pass ñ Sidney

Donna

Night High School or Evening Classes/Programs for

Secondary Students

Weslaco ñ Pasco

Sidney

Van Buren

Project SMART Weslaco ñ Pasco

Eagle Pass ñ Sidney

Project Estrella Weslaco

Eagle Pass ñ Sidney

In-School Tutorial Programs (to accelerate academic

progress and/or to help students catch up on worked missed,

includes UT credit-by-exam courses, teacher-made study

packets)

Weslaco

Eagle Pass

Donna

Out-of-state TAAS administration Pasco

Sidney

Van Buren

Academic counseling services-ESL services Yuma ñ Alisal

After-school/Saturday tutorials Eagle Pass

Alisal

Weslaco

Inter-session study packets Alisal

Levels of Coordination Observed. The methods through which each of the individual

strategies were implemented also can be considered in terms of the levels of coordination

outlined earlier in this report. Each of the cases presented numerous examples of unilateral

accommodations for migrant students; those accommodations took many forms, some of them

requiring systemic changes at the institutional level. For example, Weslaco, Eagle Pass, and

Donna have implemented special guidance counseling and tutorial programs in recognition of the

fact that many of their students simply are not present for significant portions of the school year.
19

Van Buren ISD offers a summer program, which reflects a unilateral decision on its part to

provide remedial instruction and enrichment to migrant children during the time they are in

residence. Pecan Grove Elementary School in Yuma, Arizona decided not to adopt a year-round

school calendar out of consideration for its migrant students. If a migrant student from Texas is

not likely to pass the TAAS, Pasco tries to find ways to graduate them from Washington. In

implementing each of these solutions, no direct interaction with the trading partner is absolutely

necessary.

Cooperation often means the sharing of information in order to make local decisions

and/or to help another district with their tasks. Weslaco and Pasco, Donna and Van Buren, Eagle

Pass and Sidney, all have staff that calculate partial credit; they also work to accept each other's

credits and grades on the basis of what they know about each other's course content and grading

systems. Often this cooperation was facilitated by TMIP and ESC-1, because they have

organized visitations and face-to-face meetings for staff. Migrant staff from Michigan have

visited schools in Texas and Florida to gather information on migrant students and establish

relationships with other migrant educators. The visits were initiated unilaterally, but they were

made possible through the information resources of TMIP and FMIP, and the cooperation of

local district staff. Efforts in Pasco and Sidney to support the ìred bagî transfer packet system

also characterize cooperative behavior. At a minimum, these practices require more than an

awareness of the migrant studentsí needs: They require cooperation in information-sharing to

learn what kinds of local actions are needed.

Activities that fit Kadelís (1992) definition of ìcoordination,î which is one point along

the broader continuum of activities generally subsumed under coordination, include the joint

efforts of districts (both districts of origin and districts that receive migrant students) working to

help migrant students start and complete PASS programs, University of Texas correspondence

courses, and TAAS preparation activities. Communications between districts to resolve and

award course credits require interactions and negotiations that create coordination. District

agreements to adopt a consistent grade placement policy and place LEP students in language

assistance programs according to the home-base schoolís practices are also examples of

coordination. Melaville and Black (1991) would place these practices at a higher level than

cooperation because in each case the districts made ìsubstantial changes in the basic services

they provide.î

The Yuma-Alisal case provides a clear example of district-level collaboration. Personnel

from both districts have met and shared information in an ongoing way; on the basis of that
20

information, they created a new e-mail system to share information that has implications for both

program placement and classroom instructional practices. In each of the other three cases, there

are examples of state-level collaboration that work to assist the delivery of local educational

services. For example, Project SMART, NGS, the Out-of-State TAAS Administration, and

Project Estrella all require the pooling of resources and sharing of authority among multiple

partners to design, test, and implement these activities.

Implementation Problems or Obstacles

Evaluating the impact of the approaches and innovations remains tentative. The

researchers found limited evidence about the effectiveness of the innovations, but most of these

innovations are still being developed. The research team saw examples of students who were

granted credit based on partial credit calculation or courses completed through distance-learning

strategies. Pasco reported that most of the migrant seniors graduated, but whether this was

attributable to its night school is hard to say.

Attribution of effects in education is difficult because of the number of impinging

variables. Moreover, even if the innovations described in this study have positive outcomes,

when migrant students travel, they are not enrolled exclusively in schools that implement the

innovations. The high school student from Weslaco may enroll in Pascoís night high school but

leave to follow a new crop before the term ends, and enroll in another school district without any

or the same migrant education services. The basic facts of migrant life mean that if coordination

is to succeed, it must involve more than a few exemplary sites. The effects of coordination

should be evident on a large scale and involve many migrant programs.

The problems or obstacles encountered through the implementation of the innovations

chosen for this study were as varied as the innovations themselves. In Yuma and Salinas, the

barriers to implementing the e-mail information exchange were two-fold: time for planning and

implementation, and equipment limitations for migrant programs in California. Since NGS

cannot be directly accessed by all persons who need the information, its effectiveness is limited.

Coordination with the purpose of sharing individual student information is especially difficult

given the lack of a national information system and a national identifier for migrant students.

Technology-based approaches, while promising, present a challenge in terms of their

cost. Texas has found Project SMART to be a good investment with relatively high start-up

costs that drop off once it enters the maintenance phase. On the other hand, a model such as
21

Estrella, which issues a laptop to every child, may not be feasible on a larger scale. Limited

access to telephone lines affects the effectiveness of the laptop computer approach. Computers

and software are costly, especially when factoring in salaries for technical staff to maintain the

systems. This expense may cost more than a local migrant program may be able to spend. If the

basic education program will not dedicate resources for technology, that coordination mechanism

may remain unavailable or limited in application.

Coordination also requires continuing commitment. It comes at high personal costs in

terms of time and energy, especially in models that rely on individual effort and outreach. Even

when coordination is institutionalized, it requires ongoing interagency communication. For

example, states that tailor their curricula to match that of Texas need to remain informed of

changes in content standards or other requirements. Initial adoption is not sufficient to maintain

effectiveness; other states need communication with Texas-based specialists. Institutional efforts

are easier to marshal and maintain when a sizeable number of migrant students demand attention,

and when those students also bring in dollars through the Title I, Part C, Migrant Education

Program state allocation. Efforts are more difficult to implement and sustain when numbers of

migrant students are small.

Cross-cutting Themes

The case studies revealed four different approaches to coordination as it applies to

enhancing educational continuity. This study also isolated a set of cross-cutting themes related

to the solution strategies that addressed the problems facing migrant students. Those themes, as

much as the coordination strategies, reveal how migrant educators perceive and address the

problems inherent in migrant education. Those themes recurred throughout the cases:

 Shared vision of the role of migrant education;

 An emphasis on program alignment;

 Challenge of secondary credit accrual;

 Appropriate use of technology;

 Maximizing the value of personal relationships; and

 Importance of leadership.
22

Shared Vision of the Role of Migrant Education

Across the case study sites, migrant educators shared a vision, not just about their goals

for their shared students, but about the role of migrant education. They viewed the Migrant

Education Program as an educational service that keeps migrant children effectively connected to

the educational reforms being implemented throughout the regular school year. Their vision

supported the federal requirement that migrant education supplement, not supplant, the basic

education program. They saw migrant studentsí needs in terms of what they were missing in

basic education, and they saw the MEP as a resource to get information about those needs to the

right people, such as teachers and counselors. They saw their own roles as facilitators to

leverage changes that fit the needs of migrant students, such as new policies affecting the

language of instruction, provision of supplemental instruction (sometimes through MEP funds),

and counseling that supported studentsí education in their home-base states or districts. In states

receiving migrant students, migrant educators often must provide supplemental interventions

when they are not available locallyóbut with a focus on those services that best support progress

in the homebase school. Although the trading partners selected different innovations, all of their

strategies reveal their commitment to a shared vision.

Emphasis on Program Alignment

Alignment was a consistent theme among all the sites, even if not identified by local

project staff. Each of the cases provided examples of efforts to align local instruction or

instructional methods between the programs that share migrant students. In particular, they were

committed to alignments with the studentsí home-base schools for curricular content and course

requirements at the high school level. Projects that used Project SMART automatically provided

the Texas curriculum for their Texas-based migrant students. Pasco analyzed courses taken in

Texas to ensure local placements were aligned for content and for credit. It adapted PASS when

necessary to ensure its offerings matched the school of originís curriculum. At the elementary

school level, trading partners sought alignment in the language of instruction.

Challenge of Secondary Credit Accrual

Every district that serves both elementary and secondary students reported that secondary

education presents a greater challenge because of the problem of credit accrual. Migrant

students at elementary grades need instructional continuity, but the instructional demands of

elementary-level migrant students can be met through appropriate basic education services and
23

such supplemental services as after-school, Saturday, and summer programs. The crisis comes at

the high school level, and stems partially from the lack of access to information that will guide

timely placement and awarding of credit. The crisis also stems from lost instructional time;

distance learning and individualized programs such as NovaNET and correspondence courses

seem to hold the most promise to overcome this problem.

Appropriate Use of Technology

The appropriate use of technology also emerged as an important theme. Using

technology in certain ways provided solutions to the problems of accessing information and

providing instruction to difficult-to-reach students. Technology also was used in ways that can

be described as both low- and high-tech. At the low-tech end, classroom teachers provided

instruction based on another state's curriculum or gave another state's graduation test; counselors

picked up the telephone and called other counselors to find out what classes a migrant student

was enrolled in and what his grades were; tutors worked one-on-one with migrant students after

school to help them make up course credits; and students studied at home through independent

study courses. Further up the spectrum, migrant data clerks entered current information into the

NGS data base. However, sometimes it took a phone call to TMIP or another district to discover

the facts and/or who to call to access the needed information. At a higher level, migrant students

in Illinois used laptop computers to study interactively through a mainframe computer at the

University of Illinois, and also interacted by modem with their teachers in south Texas.

Technology was an effective way to access information in the Yuma-Alisal e-mail

project, the New Generation System, and in local student databases observed in Van Buren and

Weslaco. It figured prominently as a means for instruction in Montana through Project Estrella,

Project SMART, and NovaNET. Telecommunications and computer technology support both

effective access to information and instructional uses in migrant education.

Information access came up as a problem in every case, and technology consistently

recurred as a solution. Personnel in districts receiving new migrant students had a host of

questions that sometimes parents could answer and sometimes were contained in hand-carried

documents such as the green envelopes and red bags. However, too often the questions, such as

what grade the child belongs in, had no immediate answers. If the answers to many of these

questions cannot be obtained quickly and accurately, the child may lose instructional time

undergoing further assessment. At every site visited, migrant educators needed better access to

information. At every site, respondents said there is a need for a national system of migrant
24

student identification and access to appropriate information. One person commented, ìThe

biggest problem now is the lack of a national data base. Students with multiple moves do not

show up in the records of a state that is not in a shared system. There is no central reporting of

credit accrual.î The same person said that the problem with MSRTS that led to its termination

was not the system itself but its implementation. People simply did not use it properly, and

ìultimately, funding determines what people do. If there is no money for transferring

information, there is no incentive to do it.î NGS has emerged as a technological successor to

MSRTS but still does not provide complete information access even to those projects whose

states have adopted it.

Value of Personal Relationships

Another cross-cutting theme centered on the value of personal relationships. This report

has provided several examples of the value and power of personal relations as they can resolve

many of the problems of migrant education. At nearly every site, the respondents pointed out

that it is important to give migrant educators the opportunity to meet, learn about one another's

situations, explore problems, and then set about to find solutions to the problems. Examples

from this study include: personal meetings and conversations led to additional staff at Weslaco

and Pasco, Donna, and Van Buren; the ability to make appropriate placements, determine grades,

and award credit; they led to Yuma and Alisal devising an innovative e-mail system for

information-sharing purposes; they led to Project SMART, Project Estrella, and NGS.

Respondents lamented the reduced opportunity for such collegial meetings due to lack of

funding. Before the reauthorization in 1994, migrant directors often had opportunities to meet

under auspices of MSRTS or the three Migrant Education Program Coordination Centers.

The Office of Migrant Education has funded a series of interstate projects over the years,

as noted earlier in this report, that were geared to increasing coordination of programs, and there

was a strong communication component. There had to be support for travel for communication

to happen. Now migrant educators at many sites say that it is difficult to get people out of their

own districts and states for the purpose of talking to one another face-to-face. Part of the

solution is a commitment of federal dollars, and part is communication to states that coordination

is important.
25

Importance of Leadership

The solutions to migrant studentsí problems also involved different levels of personal

leadership, from near-heroic efforts at the individual level to profound institutional commitment.

Ultimately, nearly all of the innovations began with personal initiative on the part of someone

who cared, who had an idea, shared the idea with others, and gained support to bring the idea to

fruition. At the personal level, individuals in Michigan took the time and went to the expense of

visiting programs in Texas and Florida. A project director in Arizona picked up the phone,

called a migrant director in California, and said, ìLet's talk,î then, ìLet's meet.î Individual state

directors and associated educators met to devise and implement the concepts of SMART,

Estrella, and NGS. However, the innovations would be meaningless without institutional

commitment. NGS is only effective if local districts dedicate personnel, time and facilities to its

use. NovaNET can be effective in Weslaco because the district recognizes that a large

percentage of its students have to miss part of the school year, and the district accepts

responsibility for helping them keep up and has dedicated staff, facilities, and time.

Many of the individuals interviewed for this study who articulated the importance of

personal connections also talked about the importance of state leadership. They said, ìYou see a

person who is clearly designated as the contact person, who takes care of whole state,

Öconsistently participates in interstate coordination activities and communicates regularly.î

Solutions to problems were devised when leaders brought "people along from all levels" because

then they are committed to becoming part of the solution.

The state directorís role needed to be stable, a fact also cited by several respondents

because there are ìlots of agendas within a state education agency, and even if a state director

wanted to collaborate he/she might not be able to because of those other agendas and pressures

[and] it is difficult to maintain a relationship and establish initiatives that are sustainable when

the job rotates through people, for short periods of time.î Currently, most state directors have

multiple responsibilities for multiple programs, and when state migrant directors do not serve

long tenures, it becomes increasingly more important to reach institutionalized agreements

among states so the coordination does not disappear when the director moves on to another

position.
26

The researchers met many individuals who have exercised effective leadership, at state

and local levels. Several explicit and implicit stories of leadership emerged, and it became clear

that leaders in migrant education innovations demonstrated a consistent set of qualities:

 A personal vision and commitment to interstate migrant children.

 Understanding of the migrant experience or of discrimination in some form.

 A position that allocates a significant amount of time to MEP tasks.

 Positive personal relationships with other State Directors, especially those with whom

students are shared.

 Sufficient tenure to have the freedom to work on interstate issues and have the time to

build relationships.

 Support of superiors for the district or stateís role in migrant education and interstate

coordination.

 Staff persons or team with a clear assigned responsibility for interstate coordination.

 Encourage and model collaboration by involving other stakeholders in the design and

implementation of initiative.

 Willingness to build on work that others have started in the studentsí home-base state.

 Support for staff travel to face-to-face meetings with partners at conferences, on

committees, or in training sessions.

 Direct experience in implementing and sustaining interstate coordination activities

with others.

 Allocation of sufficient funds to address interstate issues.

The degree of authority that local migrant leaders may have depends on what the state

requires. The Office of Migrant Education funds state migrant programs; it does not directly

fund local programs, which must apply to states for their money. The state migrant education

plan may include a strong interstate or intrastate coordination component, but its success depends

on the commitment of local leadership to implement it.

Impact (on the extent and quality of services offered to children and families) at both the

state and local levels is imperative for successful coordination; however, interagency efforts at
27

the state level are irrelevant if local implementation is not addressed. Long-term resources and

staff allocations must be committed to perpetuate collaboration. If agency staffs do not follow

through at the local level, little progress may occur and long-term collaboration may ultimately

fail. Interagency coordination at the state level facilitates interagency work at the local level.

Several of the case study sites were of particular interest because they had implemented

mechanisms developed at the state level. Where state plans do not include strong coordination

components, local leadership can still explore and implement coordination strategies. Some of

the sites in the study had gone beyond the mandates of their state migrant education plans and

taken advantage of the latitude those plans allowed. In the field, coordination occurs through the

combination of a shared vision, a commitment to align work and clear priorities, efforts that

make negotiations and program implementation more efficient, personal relationships that

support cooperative attitudes, and leadership to get the job started and completed. Nudging

coordination to a point where all is working effectively is one matter; sustaining it as an on-going

routine way of doing business presents other difficulties. The migrant educators who have

initiated coordination mechanisms at local levels retire or are reassigned, and the same is true of

leaders beyond the district level. The mechanisms, though, must be modified continually to

respond to new needs, resources, and opportunities. This modification requires ongoing

orientation and involvement of staff and procedures to guide their improvement. Otherwise, the

mechanisms may outlive their purposes or even become part of the problem.
28

III. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

The overarching purpose of this study was to find examples of promising practices in

interstate coordination among migrant education ìtrading partnersî that help overcome the

negative effects of educational disruption caused by the need to migrate for temporary or

seasonal work in agriculture. The study identified numerous practices, and four general

strategies emerged along, with common themes that recurred across the Trading Partner sites.

The general approaches documented in this study are:

 Alignment of district policies;

 Improved student information exchange and access;

 Staff resources to promote credit accrual; and

 Opportunities for supplemental instruction.

The cross-cutting themes discussed in this study illuminated the conditions, resources,

and issues that encourage and make coordination possible. Those themes included:

 Shared vision of the role of migrant education;

 Emphasis on program alignment;

 Challenge of secondary credit accrual;

 Appropriate use of technology;

 Value of personal relationships; and

 Importance of leadership.

Many of the specific coordinating mechanisms can be replicated and/or adapted for use

by other migrant programs. The procedures, strategies, and practices involve various levels of

coordination, and nearly all required local accommodations in the basic education program to

take into account the other educational systems with which migrant students are shared.

The findings of this study, including the crosscutting themes that emerged, lead to several

conclusions about the challenges facing migrant students and migrant education programsí

responses to those challenges. The conclusions and their implications are:
29

 Secondary credit accrual poses the most critical challenge for interstate

coordination.

The entire school career should progress toward high school graduation, but graduation

cannot occur without adequate credit accrual. Strategies to address the problem of credit accrual

demand the greatest efforts in time, money, and allocation of resources. These strategies also

require more communication across programs to resolve differences in course offerings and

graduation requirements.

While elementary migrant students also face disruptions due to lost instructional time,

they encounter less disruption due to dissimilarities in educational programs. However,

differences in language assistance programs for LEP migrant students often require coordination

efforts for migrant students in the elementary grades. Other strategies to overcome lost

instructional time, however, can be devised locally, such as extended day programs, Saturday

school, inter-session study packets, and summer school.

 Strategically placed staff (i.e., guidance counselors, migrant resource teachers, or

program specialists) are a crucial resource needed to facilitate credit accrual.

Given differences in school curriculum requirements and the high caseloads of most

regular guidance personnel, additional staff are needed to attend to and ìnegotiateî coordination

between the education experiences of migrant students and the requirements of the school,

school district, and state from which the student intends to graduate. Information management

systems are important, but without a person to use the data, the primary goal of credit accrual

and graduation will not be achieved.

The Office of Migrant Educationís policies should emphasize use of migrant funds for

activities that leverage local resources on behalf of secondary migrant students, reinforcing the

supplemental role of migrant education.
30

 Flexible courses of study for secondary students are particularly promising

innovations.

The development of flexible courses of study are a promising means of assisting

secondary students either to accelerate course completion (before withdrawing from school) or to

finish incomplete courses (while on the road or upon return to the homebase school). Key

factors in determining the ultimate effectiveness of these strategies are on-going processes to

continuously improve the quality of materials, ease of access to the courses, and the use

technology and training to facilitate their implementation.

Currently, incentives for states or districts to conduct rigorous formative and summative

evaluations of their instructional innovations appear nonexistent. Most program staff report

being consumed by ìjust getting the job doneî and do not have the time or resources to

systematically collect and analyze data that would inform the development of their practices or

measure program outcomes. The Office of Migrant Education should consider options to

encourage greater evaluation efforts by the states.

 The Internet is an emerging means for student information access and

exchangeóbut data management capabilities remain a significant obstacle.

While the promise of student information access and exchange via the Internet was

demonstrated by several sites in this study, problems with data entry, access to hardware, and

allegiance to local information systems continue to be significant obstacles to developing a

functional interstate system.

Moving forward in developing an interstate information access and exchange system will

be difficult. Leadership at both the state and federal level will be needed to forge a national

consensus on how the disparate systems and interests can be connected or replaced. One means

of moving forward would be to target a priority task or goal for which widespread demand of a

solution is high, such as secondary credit accrual, and start there to seek common ground. The

Office of Migrant Education is the logical entity that could support a process through which

states can agree on a method to share information electronically that results in measurably higher

levels of credit accrual.
31

 Interstate coordination takes time and must be nurtured.

Interstate coordination requires patience, hard work, leadership, vision, commitment, and

institutional support. It takes time to engage in activities that require building collaborative

attitudes, personal relationships, attention to detail, and substantial effort. It takes strong and

consistent leadership to support, guide, and nurture coordination mechanisms to maturity and

adapt them to new challenges. Texasís long-term support of TMIP and its Annual Credit

Accrual Workshop is an example of the kind of nurturing that leadership must provide to

introduce best practices, create an ongoing opportunity to orient and get ìbuy-inî from new

participants, update and re-energize veteran staff, and help individuals form the important

personal connections and work groups.

The Office of Migrant Education should promote on-going opportunities for migrant

educators to meet to discuss solutions to the kinds of problems that this study showed migrant

students continue to face. The value and benefit of these meetings will be increased if State

directors also encourage participants to share ìhardî data that examines the strengths,

weaknesses, and effectiveness of the strategies advanced to solve problems related to migrant

education.

 Interstate coordination is not just a process. It requires people who are committed

to solving problems collaboratively.

Interstate coordination occurs when personnel believe in it and view coordination as

essential to their tasks and student goals. Changes to programs and systems do not occur without

staff members who hold the attitude and belief that the outcomes will be better for migrant

students if colleagues, schools, districts, and states work together.

In Texas, state staff believe that they need to work with other states if migrant students

are to be served effectively by the education system. They have acted on this belief by creating

mechanisms that make it easier for any of the 44 states that shares migrant children with Texas to

work with Texas. Similarly, it is the attitude of staff in states that receive migrant

studentsówhether in Montana, Washington, or Michiganóof willingness to adapt and align

their local programs to the needs of students who migrate from Texas. Such action fulfills the

possibility of interstate coordination.
References

Adelman, N.E. & Cleland, C.P. (1987) Descriptive study of the Migrant Education Section 143 Interstate

and Intrastate Coordination Program. Washington, DC: Policy Studies Associates.

Allington, Richard L.; Johnston, Peter. "The Coordination among Regular Classroom Reading Programs

and Targeted Support Programs." in Designs for Compensatory Education: Conference Proceedings and

Papers (Washington, D.C., June 1986).

Helge, Doris. (1991) Problems and strategies regarding reducing America's migrant student dropout rate.

Congressional testimony delivered in response to a request from the National Commission on Migrant

education. Bellingham, WA: National Rural Development Institute.

Kadel, Stephanie. Interagency Collaboration: Improving the Delivery of Services to Children and

Families. Southeastern Regional Vision for Education (SERVE), Tallahassee, FL. July 1992. ED 349511

Melaville, A. I. & Black, M.J. (1991) What it takes: Restructuring interagency partnerships to connect

children and families with comprehensive services. Washington, D.C.: Education and Human Services

Consortium.

Rumberger, R.W. & Larson, K.A. (1998) American Journal of Education, v. 107, no. 1, pp. 1-35.

Serrano, V.Z. (1983) Mobility and continuity: New Ways of lowering dropout rates for migrant students

through credit accrual and exchange. Denver, CO: Education Commission of the States. (ED 261 851)

Stone, P.J. (1987) Strategies for Negotiating Coordination (Unpublished Manuscript).

Walp, T.P. & Walmsley, S.A. (1989) Instructional and philosophical congruence: Neglected aspects of

coordination. The Reading Teacher, 364-368.
APPENDIX A: CASE STUDIES FROM COORDINATING THE

EDUCATION OF MIGRANT STUDENTS: LESSONS LEARNED FROM

THE FIELD

APPENDIX A

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 Page

Introduction .................................................................................................................................. A-1

Case Studies ................................................................................................................................. A-2

Weslaco Independent School District, Weslaco, Texas and

Pasco School District, Pasco, Washington ......................................................................... A-2

Eagle Pass School District , Eagle Pass, Texas and

Sidney, Montana Summer Migrant Education Program .....................................................A-19

Donna Independent School District, Donna, Texas;

Van Buren Intermediate School District, Lawrence, Michigan;

and Manatee County Schools, Bradenton, Florida .............................................................A-41

Yuma School District #1, Yuma, Arizona and

Alisal School District, Salinas, California..........................................................................A-60

Coordinating Mechanisms: ìThe Rest of the Storyî ......................................................................A-72

A-1

INTRODUCTION

The first two case studies described in this appendix focus on migrant students whose

home base lies in Texas. This emphasis on Texas, which permeates the study, is deliberate for

several reasons.

First, Texas originates more migrant students than any other state. Although California

enrolls the largest number of migrant students, most of those students migrate within the same

state, while migrant students from Texas travel to at least 44 other states. Second, Texas is also

noteworthy because it has pioneered coordination strategies for the delivery of educational

programs and services for migrant students across sites. In fact, the researchers discovered that

many of the existing coordination mechanisms used by the trading partners profiled in this study

were initiated in Texas or involved interstate planning between Texas and other states. Third,

migrant students from Texas share a state requirement: They must pass the 10th grade level of

the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS). This requirement is not insignificant, nor

should the TAAS be considered as solely a state test because it has had an impact on school

districts throughout the nation. Many districts outside Texas that receive migrant students from

Texas, including districts included in this study, incorporate preparation for the TAAS to further

instructional continuity.

The third case study involves migrant children who travel to Michigan with both Texas

and Florida as the sending states. The fourth case study focuses on migrant education in two

other states: California and Arizona.

These case studies describe each trading partner, list the specific problems migrant

students faced at each site, describe how these problems provoked innovations, and detail each

siteís unique and shared solutions. Each case concludes with a discussion of the coordination

approaches selected and implemented by the trading partners.

Weslaco Independent School District, Weslaco, Texas
A-2

and

Pasco School District, Pasco, Washington

The experiences of the Weslaco Independent School District (ISD) and its trading

partner, the Pasco School District, illustrate several problems that confront migrant

students when they change schools as well as strategies that combat those problems. In

particular, this case study shows how a district that receives migrant students can

accommodate its own services to fit the basic education programs of the migrant students'

home-base schools. This case also demonstrates how a district that originates migrant

students can modify its procedures to fit the needs of a large percentage of students who

depart to follow seasonal agricultural work for a significant part of the school year. The

Weslaco-Pasco case is representative of many districts throughout Texas and the upstream

states.

The Partners

Weslaco Independent School District (ISD), Weslaco, Texas

Weslaco Independent School District (ISD) lies in the lower Rio Grande Valley near the

Mexican border. It consists of one high school, three middle schools, and seven elementary

schools. In 1997-98, the Weslaco ISD student enrollment numbered 13,271, pre-K through 12.

Of those, 5,769 (43 percent) were identified as migrant. Weslaco ISD has the largest number of

migrant students among districts in Texas, according to the Texas Migrant Interstate Project

(TMIP). Approximately 40 percent of Weslacoís students miss part of their schooling due to

migration. In the 1997-98 school year alone, over 75 percent of migrant students left Weslaco

schools for destinations within central stream states. In that year, Michigan received the largest

number of migrant students from Weslaco (1,342), followed by Minnesota (500), and Ohio

(353). Weslaco ISD sent 724 students to eastern stream states and 481 to western stream states,

including 147 to the state of Washington.

Migrant families usually head north for work in April, a few in March. They begin

returning in September, and some do not return until November. They go to destinations all over

the country--Washington, Florida, Missouri, Michigan, California, and other states. Of the

migrant students, 2,482 were classified LEP, 278 Talented and Gifted (TAG), 3,469 at risk

(economically disadvantaged), and 371 special education. Most of the LEP students are not

Spanish-dominant, although their English is sufficiently limited to warrant special services.
A-3

The majority of migrant students who travel between Weslaco and Pasco consider

Weslaco their home. They are accustomed to migration because most migrant families are

multigenerational migrants, although the great majority now only migrate for the summer

months so the children can stay in school. In part, this change is due to the Weslaco ISDís

efforts to educate families and in part to the students' desire to remain in school. Frequently,

migrant students who are high school juniors will stay with relatives so that they can finish the

school year and then will join the rest of the family to help with their work. The number of

students eligible for migrant education services in Weslaco dropped with the 1994

reauthorization of ESEA because of the decreasing from five years to two years on the length of

time one can maintain MEP eligibility with ìformerî migrant student status.

When in Weslaco, migrant families are employed in agricultural work, working with

carrots, cabbage, onions, cucumbers, and squash. This work includes everything from planting,

tending, and harvesting to processing and packing.

About 80 percent of Weslaco ISD students are classified as low income, and all schools

in the district are Title I schoolwide projects. Migrant-funded instructional assistants give first

priority to migrant students who are most in need. Therefore, the Migrant Education Program

still functions according to the targeted assistance model. Migrant education dollars are not

folded into schoolwide projects but instead are targeted for specific services at the elementary

and secondary levels.

Pasco School District, Pasco, Washington

Pasco, Washington is located in southeast Washington in the tri-cities area, which is

comprised of Pasco, Kennewick, and Richland. Of the three cities, Pasco is the smallest and its

populationís socioeconomic status is the lowest. Area migrant workers are employed by four

corporations in addition to independent farmers; these workers plant, harvest, prune, and process

crops that include asparagus, apples, potatoes, and cherries. Pasco receives migrant students

from school districts throughout Texas, including Weslaco.

Pasco's Migrant Education Program has undergone funding shifts, including transferring

primary responsibility from supplemental, categorical funds such as Migrant Education or State

Transitional Bilingual Education Program funds to basic district funds. Special funds are used to

support supplemental positions, but all language development and academic instruction is
A-4

provided by certified teachers employed through basic district funds. Pasco School District does

not adhere to a concept of "regular" students for whom the district is responsible versus "special

needs" students for whom a special program is responsible.

Problems Facing Migrant Students

Migrant students who leave Weslaco often share unhelpful experiences related to their

schooling:

 Some do not enroll in other schools because of difficulties in the enrollment process;

 Some attend schools that make inappropriate placements regardless of information

provided by Weslaco High School;

 Some attend schools that do not share information with the Weslaco ISD upon the

studentís return to the home district.

Counselors at Weslaco High School agreed that Migrant Education programs are a key

part of the solution to these problems because districts with migrant programs ensure that

migrant students are enrolled in schools. Schools with migrant education programs also are

much more likely to make appropriate placements and exchange information. As one counselor

observed, ìIf there is a migrant program, kids are more likely to go to school. Whether there's a

migrant program is the big difference.î

Weslaco and Pasco experienced particular problems that sparked their efforts to coordinate

their educational services between sites. These included:

 Lost instructional time due to familiesí moves;

 Lost instructional time due to the search for work and housing;

 Reluctance of older youth to enroll in school when time could be spent working in the

fields;

 Dissimilar placement practices between school districts;

 Dissimilar high school course coverage between school districts;

 Credits lost because of a lack of student information.
A-5

Each of these problems is discussed below.

The Loss of Instructional Time. Until the early 1980s, migrant students lost instructional

time not only during travel from Texas, but also upon arrival in Pasco. First, the family needed

to search for work and housing. Then, they tried to access Pascoís schools and find support

services such as child care. When these students returned to Weslaco, they also lost instructional

time because they generally arrived six weeks after the start of the school year.

The Need for Migrant Students to Work. Migrant students over the age of 16 often want

to or need to work. Work schedules conflicted with school hours; if students tried to attempt

work and school, they were often too tired to study with any degree of efficacy. Of course,

failure to attend school leads to academic failure; the fatigue and stress that results from

simultaneously attempting work and school often leads to poor academic performance.

Different Placement Practices and Their Effects on Migrant Students. Different

placement practices used by school districts present another difficulty for migrant students. For

example, the Pasco School District places students at age-appropriate grades and endeavors to

provide instruction that meets the student's needs. Some districts that originate students refuse to

accept Pasco's age-appropriate placement if the student did not complete the grade sequence set

by the district of origin. When districts do not accept Pasco's placements in grade, students may

have to repeat material they have already studied. As a result of this relatively common practice,

they become bored or discouraged. They also become overage for grade, which conveys to them

the message that they literally have not made the grade. A consistent body of research on the

dropout problem has shown that being overage for grade is the single greatest predictor of

dropping out.

Different Course Content and Its Effects on Migrant Students. Other incongruities are

also troublesome. Pasco has a comprehensive K-12 bilingual education program, while many

Texas districts provide English-only programs. Weslaco provides bilingual instruction through

fifth grade, then utilizes an ESL approach. As migrant educators in both districts worked with

migrant students, their efforts to address migrant studentsí LEP status motivated their work to

place students accurately in appropriate language support programs with a match to the practices

of the trading partner.

In general, districts that work with migrant students find that problems are exacerbated at

the secondary level. Across the nation, elementary education is perceived as more or less
A-6

ìgeneric.î Young students build basic skills and knowledge; it is easier to coordinate their

services. However, at the high school level, different states or districts within the same state

have different graduation requirements. Commonly used placement practices dictate more

narrowly defined courses of study, such as college preparation or vocational education. High

school schedules can also cause instructional problems. In Texas, for example, as in other states

across the nation, many high schools use block schedules of four or five 90-minute classes.

Other high schools follow a more traditional schedule of six to seven classes per day that are

shorter in length. Therefore, the counselor must place the migrant student in classes that

correspond to the other school's classes, and fill out the schedule with other classes, perhaps with

electives. These classes may not advance the student toward graduation or provide a meaningful

educational experience. As students advance in school, it becomes more critical for educators to

rely upon detailed, accurate information about the studentís course of instruction at the home

base school.

Eventually, accruing credits toward graduation poses a critical problem for high school

migrant students, due to time lost in moving, different course offerings, different course content,

and different graduation requirements. Texas students confront the Texas Assessment of

Academic Skills (TAAS) and must meet certain criterion scores on its reading, writing, and math

tests in order to graduate. Pasco has to take that into consideration in order to help Texas-based

migrant student graduate from high school.

Migrant educators in both districts reported that figuring out exactly what the migrant

student needs (especially secondary-level students) has become more difficult with the demise of

the Migrant Student Record Transfer System (MSRTS). While transferring student records has

resulted in partnerships as the state level, such records exchange has been difficult to implement

effectively at the district level. Accurate district-level information affects even the most

promising state-level systems. For example, in states with records-exchange systems in place,

local districts must input information to their stateís database. That information then must be

transmitted to another state, where it is retrieved by a local district. Time zones create another

barrier; two-hour time differences between school districts result in a relatively small window of

communication time for telephone calls between educators.

Other problems face migrant students as they try to plan for post-secondary education.

Too often their mobility affects their performance on standardized tests such as the SAT and

ACT. Mobility itself creates gaps in studentsí knowledge and understanding of complex

material. Test preparation suffers.
A-7

Until recently, educators have held relatively low expectations for migrant students,

limiting them to matriculation from high school. But migrant students and the educators who

work with them need to look beyond high school graduation to post-secondary education and/or

training to ready them for productive futures. When migrant students qualify for college

entrance, the cost of out-of-state tuition can be an obstacle they cannot overcome.

Promising Practices

Weslaco and Pasco do not have formal agreements that govern their cooperative and

coordinative practices, but as one interviewee said, ìBoth districts do what they need to do.î

Most of the coordination strategies developed between the trading partners can be attributed to

each districtís sense of commitment to its students. Key personnel in both districts share the

migrant experience, which has informed their attitude toward the migrant students with whom

they work.

Promising Practices in Pasco, Washington

Pasco relied upon the combined efforts of day care providers, farmers, agricultural

companies, and schools to resolve issues related to excessive time lost in the move between

states. Currently, crew leaders recruit migrant workers in Texas for employment in the

southeastern area of Washington. The agricultural companies then bring in the workers to a

central location (La Grulla, Texas) for an orientation. Families receive information on

employment, social services, and available housing at this orientation. To expedite enrollment

in the Pasco schools, Pasco sends a Home Visitor to La Grulla to conduct pre-registration

activities at the orientation. Counselors in Texas schools support this effort by notifying families

about the pre-registration event.

The Pasco schools rely upon information from the pre-registration process and upon

historical data on student enrollment patterns maintained by the district to guide their

preparations for the arrival of migrant students. Staff planning for migrant students and their

educational needs begins in January of each year. The Special Programs Director, the Secondary

Coordinator, and the Elementary Coordinator project what resources will be needed and where

students will be placed. They hire staff for the night school and acquire additional materials. In

the 1997-98 school year, their projections of migrant student enrollment were accurate within
A-8

seven students. Migrant students register for school at a migrant housing site so that migrant

families do not have to seek information on how and where to enroll their children in school.

The night high school runs from April until late May or early June of each year so that

high school students can take core classes after normal school hours. The night high school was

established specifically to accommodate the schedules of migrant students who wish to work.

The night high school schedule allows migrant students a break after work, time to change

clothes and perhaps take a nap, before going to school. This year, 150 students were enrolled in

Pascoís night high school, which also is open to students from other districts if they provide their

own transportation. Until three years ago, the night high school used the Texas state curriculum

to promote curriculum continuity. It tried to follow Weslacoís curriculum because of the large

number of students that originated from the Weslaco ISD. However, the night high school now

follows the Pasco curriculum because, although the night high school was designed for migrant

students, it is not exclusive to them.

After the regular school year ends, the district offers K-12 summer school for low

achieving students, but not specifically to migrant students. The district charges tuition to all

non-migrant students. Migrant education funds, received by the district, pay for the tuition costs

of migrant students who need to attend summer school.

The problem of age-grade placement has been resolved through compromise between the

two school districts. In recent years, Weslaco has been amenable to accepting Pasco's grade

placements and does not return students to lower grades upon their return to Texas. In general,

Weslaco ISD now accepts the grade placements indicated on records from the schools trading

students with it.

Continuity in the language of instruction has been resolved. For example, if a migrant

student qualifies for bilingual services but attends a home-base school that conducts its

instruction only in English, that student will be placed in the sheltered English strand of LEP

services.

Credit accrual for high school students is facilitated through allotment of partial credits.

Pascoís practice is to calculate the percentage of a semester that a student spent at the school in

Texas. Whatever grade the student brings to Pasco is assigned that corresponding percentage of

the final grade. For example, if a student spent 60 percent of a semester in Texas and arrived

with a class grade of 84 in algebra, the 84 would count 60 percent of the final grade. The actual
A-9

final grade is calculated on Pasco's scale, since it is the grade-awarding district at the end of the

semester. Partial credit, which takes considerable time to calculate, continues to be a substantive

issue of negotiation. Unfortunately, at some Texas high schools, no one takes the time to

consolidate partial credits, even though Pasco sends transcripts immediately upon request.

Information access is the key to the delivery of appropriate services, timely placement,

and awarding of credit. Pascoís Special Programs Department maintains an extensive

computerized database which encompasses all students in the district, representing the district's

commitment to providing an efficient, timely source of information about students and

facilitating monitoring of their progress. The Department generates a student profile for every

special programs student. Every teacher is notified of each of his or her student's membership in

special programs so the teacher may seek additional information or assistance as needed. The

computer system can be used to identify students who consistently migrate from Texas and those

who move out and re-enroll frequently. However, Pasco migrant educators report that the

demise of MSRTS has taken away the ability to identify frequency of moves that do not involve

Pasco.

Pasco's personnel work hard to communicate with personnel in other districts. The Texas

Migrant Student Transfer Packet system provides one avenue of communication. The transfer

packets are known as the ìred bag and green envelope system.î Texas puts all pertinent

documentationtranscripts, withdrawal slips, test scores and vaccination and medical

informationinto a red bag which the students and families pick up from the school before

leaving Texas. Experienced migrant families know this routine, and most children from Texas

arrive with their red bag. Pasco uses a green envelopethat was developed quickly after the

demise of MSRTSto send similar kinds of information when students leave. However,

personal contact still forms a large part of the coordination. Staff report that it is key to find

someone sensitive in the trading district with whom to communicate. Responsibility for

follow-up phone calls to verify student information is placed on the schools. The Special

Programs Department also maintains the district database, which identifies migrant students and

their districts of origin. The system has the potential to verify current grade placements, credit

accrual, and graduation.

Although most students arrive with their red bags, withdrawal slips have to be confirmed

and official transcripts obtained. This requires many person-hours by phone and fax. Pasco's

counselors also take advantage of the Texas Migrant Interstate Project (TMIP), which has an 800

tollfree number that counselors can call for assistance in contacting schools, or the school district
A-10

can call for help in locating another school. The Texas Migrant Interstate Project (TMIP) has

information on TAAS scores and contact persons at a student's previous school. About 30

percent of the calls made by Pasco staff are to TMIP; most other calls are made directly to the

originating school. All Pasco school facilitators have the TMIP Directory.

Finally, Pascoís institutionalized support for the Migrant Education Program is illustrated

in the relationship between the Special Programs Department and the rest of the district. While

direct instructional service is funded through basic district resources, technical leadership and

program management are administered by the Special Programs Department. For that reason, the

Special Programs Department has a well-defined role but does not shoulder primary

responsibility for instruction. This structure allows migrant education services to interact

effectively and efficiently with other special services, such as the state-funded Learning

Assistance Program, the federally funded Title I program, the Transitional Bilingual Education

Program, and special education services. This structure achieves the programmatic congruence

described by Walp and Walmsley (1989) and noted in Volume I. The Special Programs

Department also currently conducts the districtwide assessment program, ensuring consistency

and non-duplication in testing practices.

Evidence of the local solutions was seen in samples of the student database identifying

migrant students, grade and course placements, and type of services received, such as bilingual

education. The researchers also saw samples of partial credit calculation. Crew leaders and the

processing plant personnel manager corroborated the recruitment methods and local partnerships

with growers.

In June 1998, 16 of 20 migrant seniors were graduated from night high school. Four

seniors were graduated from Pasco High School because they did not pass the TAAS, and the

other 12 graduated from Texas schools although they had attended some schooling in Pasco,

Washington. Four other seniors were credit-deficient and could not graduate.

Promising Practices in Weslaco, Texas

Weslaco supports migrant students with practices targeted to their departure and their

return. Departing high school students can be given course study guides, and when they return,

gain credit by passing exams. If a migrant student enters school within six weeks of the

semesterís beginning, s/he is placed in regular classes. After that time, or if the student has very

low language or academic skills, s/he is placed in a self-paced study program. This option
A-11

includes modules from the American Preparatory Institute (API). Each module has a pre-test

and a post-test. These study modules are problematic, however, because they require reading

ability many students do not possess. Unit and semester tests for the API modules were devised

locally to ensure the same levels of competency as corresponding regular classes. These

self-paced programs last only for a semester. At the semesterís end, the student is placed in

regular classrooms.

The Weslaco ISD's Migrant Education Program supports extended-day programs,

through Saturday tutorials at elementary schools, regular tutorials at grades 1-6, and some

self-paced packets at grades 7-12. The Saturday tutorials begin in January when all of the

migrants have returned. All migrant students are referred to Saturday tutorial school.

The supplemental education services that Weslaco High School provides for its migrant

students are the NovaNET Lab, the American Preparatory Institute modules, and night school.

These solutions specifically meet the needs of migrant high school students who return to

Weslaco too late in the school year to be placed in a regular class.

NovaNET. In 1997-98, the district began using NovaNET, a nationwide computer-based

curriculum. NovaNET was introduced to Weslaco ISD through the districtís involvement in

Project ESTRELLA. Project ESTRELLA is a five-year interstate initiative funded by the U.S.

Department of Education, Office of Migrant Education. The Project brings laptop computer

technology and telecommunications directly into the hands of migrant students.

NovaNET Learning, Inc., writes curricula which can be modified by districts and

uploaded to the mainframe. Once on the mainframe, these modified curricula are available to

anyone. Districts pay a fee to the company for access to the curricula, as well as a hook-up fee.

While Weslacoís involvement with NovaNET began with migrant students, it now has

expanded to include other special needs students, such as pregnant students or those on medical

release from school as long as costs of the program are shared. The district has a total of 50

ports among the high school, the junior high schools, and the ninth-grade campus. These ports

are used during the regular school day, in extended-day programs, and for adult school (GED).

NovaNET offers students the opportunity to make up core subjects through the use of

distance learning technology as well as enroll in a range of classes from basic through advanced

placement levels. However, in the opinion of Weslaco High School staff, not all courses are
A-12

equally strong. NovaNET has been aligned to the Texas Educational Knowledge and Skills

(TEKS). Currently, counselors and other staff are trying to align curricula to specific Weslaco

High School requirements. Students who enter with class records are more likely to be placed in

a class than in API or NovaNET.

Weslaco High School has a full-time NovaNET teacher, funded by the Migrant

Education Program, who supervises the NovaNET lab during the day. This teacher explained to

researchers that migrant students receive priority for time in the computer lab. In addition, there

are two part-time evening NovaNET teachers. The lab has 20 ports for NovaNET access,

allowing 20 students at a time to access the NovaNET curricula. One port is used for call-in

from laptops.

The district has hired two teachers from each of the four core areas to grade NovaNET

assignments, to ensure that NovaNET work is equivalent in content and quality to what is offered

in regular classrooms. Plans are underway to set up NovaNET science labs to simulate

experiments without the usual hazards of chemical spills, burns, and other injuries.

API (American Preparatory Institute). This program focuses on the teaching of critical

skills containing special instructional multi-media materials. It is designed to help high school

students in grades 10-12 to continue with their respective graduation program plans and

facilitates the opportunities for migrant students to obtain scholarships.

Weslaco staff reported that they now accept grade placements made by the last enrolling

district. Weslaco offers bilingual instruction in grades K-5, but not in grades 6-12. Finally,

while other Texas districts use block scheduling at the high school level, Weslaco does not.

Therefore, the issues raised in Pasco were often generic to Texas but not specific to Weslaco.

Weslaco's Migrant Education Program also relies heavily on the Texas Migrant Interstate

Project (TMIP) and on Region 1, a regional service center under the auspices of the Texas

Education Agency, to assist it with problems related to information access and coordination

activities. Those entities have organized or facilitated some of the visits by counselors from

Pasco and other districts outside Texas. TMIP provides a point of contact to identify previous

districts attended by migrant students if those districts were in Texas or other states that support

the Texas Migrant Student Transfer Packet. The Education Service Center in Region I (ESC-1)

serves as a point of contact for the New Generation System, which provides electronic access to

student records and allows identification of migrant studentsí previous schools.
A-13

Weslaco's 1997-98 Migrant Student Academic Performance evaluation report confirmed

that the district has helped its migrant students to succeed academically, but the same evidence

illustrated how migrant students graduation rates are not increasing. The report showed high

passing rates for migrant students on the reading and math portions of the TAAS. The passing

rates per grade level are presented in Exhibit 1.1.

Exhibit 1.1: TAAS Pass Rates by Grade Level in Weslaco

Grade TAASóReading TAASMath

3 94% 95%

4 96% 98%

5 86% 98%

6 81% 94%

7 71% 78%

8 65% 74%

10 83% 73%

11 40% 57%

12 67% 86%

It should be pointed out that 10th grade represents the TAAS exit level. Students who

took the TAAS in 11th or 12th grade generally had not passed it before. The data shown above

for 11th and 12th grade are based on relatively few students, mostly low-performing students

who did not pass the TAAS in 10th grade.

The TAAS data suggest that Weslacoís migrant students generally made good academic

progress. However, the data that show overage students at each grade level tell a more

complicated story. At every grade reported from second to eighth, no migrant students were

overage for grade. However, at 9th grade, the figure jumped from zero to 49 percent. At high

school, grade level is designated according to the number of credits earned. The TAAS data

shown above, coupled with the number of students who were overage for grade, probably reflect

the difficulties migrant students have as they try to accrue credits for graduation.

Weslaco's efforts on behalf of its migrant students have demonstrated success. In

November 1998, the Texas Education Agency recognized five of Weslaco's seven elementary

schools at the state's migrant conference for migrant studentsí exemplary passing rates on the
A-14

TAAS. In 1998, no one was denied graduation on the basis of not passing the TAAS. This may

speak to the positive effects of TAAS preparation offered by districts outside of Texas.

Discussion

Migrant students moving between Weslaco, Texas and Pasco, Washington faced a

number of problems associated with their moves across district and state boundaries:

1. Students lost valuable learning time while families moved, found work, and

located housing and child care.

2. Students lost instructional time during the time families work in areas that do not

have Migrant Education Programs.

3. Students experienced conflicts between their need to work and to attend school.

4. Students experienced dissimilar grade placement policies.

5. Limited English Proficient migrant students suffered from dissimilar language

assistance programs.

6. Migrant studentsí academic progress was impeded by different high school course

offerings.

7. Migrant students lost course credit toward graduation because they did not attend

school or were placed inappropriately in courses in other districts.

8. Migrant students lost course credit due to a lack of information about courses

taken elsewhere.

9. Migrant students lost high school credits because they left school.

10. Migrant students missed opportunities to prepare for and take the TAAS.

11. Different districts serving migrant students had different graduation requirements.

Pasco and Weslaco have made many local changes in curriculum, instruction, and data

processing to accommodate the special needs of their shared migrant student population. While

most of the solutions were devised at the local level, the school districts draw assistance from

interstate mechanisms such as the Texas Migrant Interstate Program, which facilitates personal

communication; Project ESTRELLA, which introduced Weslaco to NovaNET; and the New
A-15

Generation System, which provides electronic access to student records and allows identification

of migrant studentsí previous schools.

The two districts worked hard to coordinate the educational services they extended to

migrant students. Their coordination efforts and strategies are summarized below:

1. The two districts coordinated their efforts with growers and Texas schools for

pre-registration; alternative registration sites were provided in Pasco.

2. Pascoís grade placements were determined in cooperation with Texas schools.

3. Limited English Proficient (LEP) migrant students were placed in sheltered

English or bilingual programs according to Texas schools' practices.

4. Course placements were made based on their similarity to Texas courses or

individualized Portable Assisted Study Sequence (PASS) packets.

5. The opportunity to attend night high school was provided to migrant students

during the peak agricultural season.

6. Partial credits were calculated and credits awarded so that migrant students could

progress in a timely fashion toward high school graduation.

7. PASS packets helped graduate students with Washington state diplomas.

8. In collaboration with the Texas Migrant Interstate Program (TMIP), preparation

for the TAAS as well as opportunities to take the TASS were provided to migrant

students in Pasco.

9. Student records were exchanged through the ìred and green bagî transfer packet

system.

10. Instructional time was flexible and included extended-day programs as well as

Saturday programs after migrants have returned to their home-base district,

tutorials, and evening classes at the high school.

11. Individualized courses were designed for migrant students to meet local content

standards; these were provided through API packets and NovaNET labs and

materials.

12. Staff communicated intensively with their peers in other districts so that migrant

students could be awarded credits through partial credit calculation or matching

course content.
A-16

These efforts and strategies involved various degrees of coordination at differing levels.

Several illustrate local, unilateral accommodations, such as the creation of a night high school.

However, it was necessary for staff in both districts to cooperate, coordinate procedures, and

collaborate with other agencies to develop any strategies for migrant students. For example,

pre-registration procedures evolved out of coordinative efforts with growers, and are carried out

with the cooperation of school districts such as Weslaco ISD. The bilingual and sheltered

English language assistance programs were developed to meet local needs, but placing migrant

students in the appropriate language assistance program requires cooperation in sharing

information or the coordination or provision of information such as through the ìred bag and

green envelopeî system. Accurate placement in grade also requires shared information and an

agreement to honor another district's placement policies. Partial credit calculation, correct course

placements, and the provision of individualized programs all require intensive communication

between the trading partners and mutual understanding of course content and grading practices.

Preparation for the TAAS as well as its administration also requires collaboration with the TMIP

in order to keep the service up-to-date and ensure that the local results are duly credited. Much

of this understanding has come about through coordination efforts above the district level,

notably the credit accrual workshops and educator visits sponsored by TMIP and ESC Region I.

The extended-day programs and individualized courses are local accommodations

tailored to migrant students' unique needs. These accommodations ensure curricular congruence

for migrant students so local and state standards from the home district are met. Coordination

with other entities becomes critical at the high school level to allow students to graduate. The

most demanding effort is the cooperation with counselors in other schools to obtain information

about courses taken in order to award credit and calculate partial credit. Both districts also take

advantage of the systems that were put in place, notably the Texas Interstate Migrant Program, in

order to locate other schools or to meet with other educators to share information about their

respective programs in order to facilitate the awarding of credit.

As noted in Volume I, Allington and Johnston (1986) discussed the importance of

coordination between different programs that serve the same children in order to achieve

curricular congruence, especially congruence between what is to be taught and the methods of

instruction. The practices described above go far toward achieving congruence for the migrant

students even as they travel between districts across state lines. In addition, the Weslco and

Pasco case illustrates the cooperative conditions needed to successfully transition migrant

students between school systems.
A-17

Effective communication built via personal relationships also seems critical for program

effectiveness. For example, even with a record transfer system in place (i.e., in the form of red

bags and green envelopes), individuals must spend a great deal of time verifying transcripts and

withdrawal slip information, primarily via telephone and fax. Communication and cooperation

have been facilitated by personal contact. In early 1998, the Washington state migrant director

took a group of superintendents to Texas as part of an initiative on the part of the Educational

Service Center 1 in the Rio Grande Valley to familiarize them with Texas-based programs and

make them aware of migrant issues. In 1998, the Pasco superintendent made the same visit.

Texas superintendents made a similar trip to Washington a few years ago. During the 1997-98

school year, a Pasco High School counselor visited south Texas to establish personal contact

with her counterparts there; she has found the trip made other counselors more willing to share

information with her.

During the site visit for this study, Weslaco High School counselors produced a letter

from Pasco High School to which had been appended complete and current transcripts. These

transcripts had already been filed, but a sample of three students' transcripts showed that classes

begun in Weslaco had been completed in Pasco. That was possible because the personnel in

both districts cooperate with each other. One counselor at Weslaco asked, ìIf Pasco and

Weslaco can work together, why not other districts?î
A-18

Eagle Pass Independent School District , Eagle Pass, Texas

and

Sidney, Montana Summer Migrant Education Program

The Eagle Pass-Sidney case study illustrates how a sending site and a receiving site were

able to take advantage of instructional programs and information systems that were set in place

by state-level initiatives. In this case, the two sites primarily use technology-facilitated

instructional programs to enhance educational continuity for their shared students. Additional

efforts to coordinate educational services via improved access to student records are facilitated

by the joint use of the Internet-based New Generation System.

The Partners

Eagle Pass Independent School District, Eagle Pass, Texas

Eagle Pass is situated in the upper Rio Grande Valley of Texas, on the United

StatesMexico border. For over 20 years, migrant families from Eagle Pass have been traveling

annually to eastern Montana to work in the sugar beet fields. These families generally withdraw

their children from the Eagle Pass Independent School District (ISD) in the Spring before school

is out for the year and do not return until after school has reopened in the Fall.

The sugar beet work in Montana generally lasts for two months (e.g., June and July),

after which the migrant families move on in search of other agricultural work. Some might

travel to Minnesota for cannery work in the food processing industry and then on to Maine for

the blueberry harvest later in the summer, followed by a cross-country trek to Washington to dig

potatoes in the fall. After returning to Eagle Pass in November, some families may move

eastward to Florida for a brief period of work in the citrus fields during December and January.

The frequent migration pattern seen at Eagle Pass is typical of the migration patterns seen at

many school districts in Texas that lose large numbers of their students during the start and close

of the school year, as well as intermittently during the school year.

Migrant families staying in Eagle Pass over the summer or through the winter have

limited employment opportunities. Local jobs for those with limited skillssuch as migratory

farm workersappear to be available in the food service industry (e.g., at McDonalds, Burger

King, or Pizza Hut). Additionally, local ranchers on both sides of the border hire day laborers

for work connected with the cattle industry (e.g., harvesting hay).
A-19

The Eagle Pass ISD enrolls about 8,000 students, most of Hispanic origin.

Approximately one in five Eagle Pass students is a migrant. The secondary-level student

population is served by two high schools: Eagle Pass High School (for 9th and 10th graders) and

the C.C. Winn Campus (for 11th and 12th graders). Two junior high schools and 11 elementary

schools serve the K-8 population. Specialty programs are housed in the Language Development

Center, the Early Childhood Center, the Literacy Academy, and the Frank Chisum Regional

Technical Center.

Eagle Pass ISDís curriculum is aligned with the state curriculum, the Texas Essential

Knowledge and Skills (TEKS). Eagle Pass also aligns its instruction with the Texas Assessment

of Academic Skills (TAAS). Both the TEKS and the TAAS have been adopted and approved by

the Texas Board of Education and the Texas Education Agency (TEA) for use by school districts

throughout Texas.

Sidney Summer Migrant Education Project, Sidney, Montana

The Sidney Summer Migrant Education Project serves eligible families who live

temporarily in the Richland County area of eastern Montana, primarily along a 40-mile stretch of

the Yellowstone River from Fairview (on the North Dakota border) to Savage. Sidney is the

mercantile center for Richland County. Agriculture is the dominant economy in eastern

Montana; Richland County is first in the State for production of sugar beets and oats. Holly

Sugar is one of the main employers in the region. Migrant families come to Richland County in

the summer to work as farm laborers thinning and weeding sugar beets or to work in the sugar

refinery at Holly Sugar.

At the time of the site visit in mid-June 1998, the Sidney Migrant Summer Project had

qualified 58 families and approximately 120 children; 107 (89 percent) of the children were from

Texas. Of these 107 children, 67 were of school age (grades 1-12) and enrolled in the Sidney

Migrant Summer Project. Twenty-five of the 67 school-age Texas children were enrolled in the

secondary program (grades 9-12). The middle school program (grades 6-8) accounted for 25 of

the Texas-based children; the elementary program (grades 1-5) accounted for the remaining 17

students. The 34 preschoolers were enrolled. Six of the eligible children were not enrolled in

school at Sidney. Sixty-five students (age 21 and younger) were actually on-site at the Sidney

Migrant Summer Project on June 18, 1998. State records indicated that 44 percent of the Texasbased students were from Eagle Pass. 
A-20

Problems Facing Migrant Students

In this case study, the main problem experienced by Texas-based migrant students is

credit accrual at the secondary level. Typically, migrant students withdraw from school before

the end of the academic year in order to travel out-of-state with their families in search of

agricultural employment. Over time, this pattern has a cumulative effect. Migrant students fall

behind in their schoolwork. They experience problems with school attendance, problems with

school grades, problems with course completion, problems with school re-enrollment, and course

failure problems which in turn affect their ability to accrue credits, be promoted in grade, and

graduate from high school. These problems are compounded at the middle school and high

school levels where course enrollment and grade promotion are contingent on mastery of

particular course sequences of study.

The first problem faced by migrant high school students is the need to complete their

coursework and obtain credit for it towards graduation. This problem can be resolved either

before the student withdraws from school or after the student leaves school. The second problem

these students encounter is continuing their education while on the road. In order to continue

their education, they need to be enrolled in some form of secondary school program that will

allow them to earn high school course credits in ways that comply with their needs. Their

choices include not enrolling in a relevant secondary education program, enrolling in a relevant

program before leaving their Texas school, or trying to find an appropriate program to enroll in

once relocated to another state.

If the migrant student enrolls in a secondary school program to complete his or her

courseworkeither before leaving Texas or upon arrival in another Statethe next problem

h/she faces is appropriate course placement. Furthermore, in order for Texas-based secondary

migrant students to receive course credit for academic work done outside of Texas, the homebase school district in Texas must agree to accept their coursework. Otherwise, courses taken

out-of- state will not transfer back to Texas and count toward requirements necessary for a Texas

high school diploma.

Lost time in school also means loss of academic preparation needed to take the TAAS

with any degree of success. The TAAS must be passed to obtain a Texas high school diploma.

Most students take the TAAS as sophomores but have additional opportunities to take the test

before graduation.
A-21

Finally, most interstate migrant families generally return to Texas in the Fall after school

has re-opened. In many cases, families donít return until around Thanksgiving or later. This late

re-entry into school is problematic, particularly in schools that use block scheduling. In these

situations, the migrant student may be required to wait until the next marking period, the

beginning of the next curriculum block, or the next semester to re-enroll in school. Additional

school time is lost, as are opportunities to earn secondary course credits needed for graduation.

Promising Practices

The Montana Office of Public Instruction (MOPI), the Texas Education Agency (TEA),

and the Texas Migrant Interstate Project (TMIP) have a history of formal collaboration that has

resulted in a joint technology-based approach to instructional continuity and records exchange in

migrant education. A 1993 Cooperative Agreement between the Montana Office of Public

Instruction and the Texas Education Agency stated that Montana and Texas would ìwork in a

cooperative effort to promote and facilitate instructional practices and policies which meet the

needs of migrant children.î These agencies listed specific goals:

1. To encourage communication among educators in both states to facilitate the

transfer of high school credits for migrant students that would lead

ultimately to their graduation;

2 . To support and facilitate the completion and acceptance for credit of

coursework started in one state and completed in the other state;

3. To support and accept the exchange of high school credits and partial credits

between school districts in our states;

4. To accept the supplementary coursework provided in each state (including

but not limited to the University of Texas Skill Building Courses; and PASS)

and facilitate its completion;

5. To provide support for the completion of state or local competency testing

requirements for high school students.
A-22

This agreement has led to an annual spring training conference in Billings, Montana,

sponsored by TEA/TMIP/MOPI and geared to Montana and Texas migrant educators. It focuses

on the cooperative implementation of distance learning instructional technology (i.e., Project

SMART) and the parallel use of computer-assisted technologies for instruction (i.e., NovaNET

computer labs and laptop computers) and records exchange (i.e., the New Generation System

[NGS]). Other issues related to interstate coordination in migrant education are also discussed

and updated at this annual conference (e.g., migrant student identification, the Red Bags, credit

accrual, TAAS preparation, and out-of-state administration of the TAAS). Representatives from

both states also attend a credit accrual resolution conference hosted every Fall in the Rio Grande

Valley by the Texas Migrant Interstate Program.

As a precursor to implementing these technological solution strategies, the MOPI-TEATMIP collaboration resulted in an alignment of Montana's migrant education instruction with the

Texas state curriculum (TEKS). Montanaís migrant education assessment policy also was

aligned with Texasís provisions for administering the TAAS out-of-state. Provisions were made

for preparing Texas-based migrant students for the TAAS so that they were prepared for its

content and also equipped with adequate test-taking skills. This, in turn, led to the use of TEKSaligned instruction and assessment practices by the Montana Office of Migrant Education for its

summer school projects.

The SMART Project curriculum was implemented first in Montana in the summer of

1991, followed by the implementation of the NovaNET curriculum, first through the use of

computer labs in the summer of 1993 and then with the introduction of laptop computers in the

summer of 1998. These developments in instructional technology required additional

collaborative relationships: not only between TEA/TMIP/MOPI but also with curriculum and

software developers at NovaNET Inc., Apple Computer Inc., Montana MET-Net, Texas Tenet,

the Region XX Education Service Center in San Antonio (ESC-20), and the Southwest Regional

Educational Laboratory.

At the local level, the Sidney Migrant Project and the Eagle Pass ISD (as well as La Joya,

Weslaco, and Pharr ISDs) have had a long history of collaboration in which Montana has

adopted instructional innovations first tried out in Texas. This initially occurred with the

development of distance learning technology through Project SMART in Texas in the late 1980s

and its pilot testing for interstate applications in Montana in 1991. Then came the spread of the

NovaNET lab concept at the school district level. The initial diffusion of NovaNET in Texas

took place in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The adoption of temporary NovaNET labs for
A-23

migrant education in Summer projects took place in Montana during 1995 after state education

officials observed the labs in operation in Texas districts such as Eagle Pass.

The spread of computer-assisted instructional technology in Texas eventually extended to

the use of laptop computers with interstate migrant students. Eagle Pass ISD was an early

developer of laptop applications for its migrant population. In 1996, MOPI adopted the laptop

concept by funding a pilot project involving 10 migrant students traveling between Texas and

Montana. Subsequently, the laptop project was strengthened by collaboration between the

Illinois Migrant Council, MOPI, and TEA, which resulted in the acquisition of federal

technology funding that currently supports Project ESTRELLA. This collaboration increased the

number of interstate partnering sites that share Texas-based migrant students who promote

educational continuity through the use of laptop computer technology. Consequently, the Sidney

Summer Migrant Education Migrant Project now uses laptop computers as an additional distance

learning option in collaboration with the Eagle Pass ISD.

A description of how each partner implements these strategies follows.

Promising Practices in Eagle Pass ISD

When an Eagle Pass counselor discovers that a migrant student will leave school in the

Spring before the end of the school year, or has returned to Eagle Pass in the Fall after school has

opened and wants to re-enroll, he/she will try to get the student involved in one or more of the

following interventions:

 Computer-assisted instruction through a NovaNET lab or assignment of a laptop

computer;

 Enrollment in a TAAS-Prep course available through one of several

options;

 Participation in the credit-by-exam option offered through the University

of Texas Migrant Program;

 Enrollment in Project SMART.

Each of these major interventions is described below, including their alternative delivery

systems.
A-24

NovaNET. A description of NovaNET was provided in the first case study. Eagle Pass

has been implementing NovaNET since the 1993-94 school year. NovaNET labs in the Eagle

Pass ISD are housed at both of the high schools and are used as an alternative instructional

methodology for secondary students who have failed in the regular classroom. Two teachers

(English and math) and a lab manager supervise each NovaNET lab. A school counselor makes

recommendations for NovaNET enrollment for the migrant students in either the Spring or Fall

of the school year. In the Spring, these assignments include Summer assignments for migrant

students given laptop computers who then have the capability of accessing the NovaNET lab in

Eagle Pass from remote out-of-state locations using their computerís modem connected to a

telephone.

NovaNET software modules cover the full spectrum of the Texas secondary school

curriculum, from math and English to science and social studies, including TAAS-Prep, PSATPrep and SAT-Prep, GED-Prep, and ESL. English courses tend to be the main focus for the

migrant students and NovaNET is considered strong in terms of its English grammar lessons.

NovaNET is a good alternative for students who need individualized attentionófrom the

individualized approach provided by computer-assisted instruction and from individual and small

group work with the NovaNET teacher. It allows students to work at their own pace and follow

their own time schedule. However, it does not provide much opportunity for extended reading or

writing composition. For these latter areas, school personnel tend to augment NovaNET with

curriculum material from other sources.

Most students using NovaNET are trying to make up assignments to get credit in their

classes. Course credits are based on the number of lessons that are completed satisfactorily in the

assigned NovaNET modules. The NovaNET teacher verifies the work, assigns a grade, and

posts the grade or grade change with the registrarís office in the ISD.

The NovaNET labs in Eagle Pass address a number of different kinds of student

situations bearing on credit accrual needs. These are reviewed below and can generally be

considered variations of an ìextended dayî approach.

Eighth-Period Instruction with High School Seniors. The upper-division high school

(C.C. Winn Campus) uses NovaNET with high school seniors who have failed a required

English or math course and who are taking more than one English or math course. NovaNET

provides these seniors an opportunity to complete the course they need for graduation when they

do not have the opportunity to take the needed course a second time because they cannot fit the
A-25

course into their schedule or because the needed course is not being offered before the end of the

school year. NovaNET is offered for these students during the eighth class period of the school

day. This allows these seniors to pick up the English or math credit they need during the school

year and graduate on time with their class. Thus, they avoid the need to enroll in summer school

or re-enroll in high school after their senior year to complete a single course needed for

graduation.

The 8th period option is also used as an alternative for migrant students who cannot

attend the Saturday and After-School ìadd-onî Programs in the Fall because of weekend or after

school employment. They also are an alternative for migrant students returning to Eagle Pass

late in the Fall who have been denied course or school enrollment because of block scheduling

conflicts. The NovaNET labs provide these migrant students with opportunities to resume their

education when they cannot enroll in a class they need to complete for graduation.

Accelerated Instruction for High School Sophomores and Juniors. NovaNET provides

sophomores and juniors an opportunity for accelerated instruction. Participants in this program

include those migrant students who want to complete their coursework in the Spring before

withdrawing from school to travel with their family for employment out-of-state. It also provides

a solution for those migrant students who do not want to make up the course in summer school.

Such students must demonstrate a degree of self-motivation and independence to be successful

with NovaNET.

Graduation Enhancement. Migrant students who enroll a few weeks late in the Fall or

who are getting failing grades in the first 6-week marking period are referred by school

counselors to this after-school NovaNET lab. This extended-day class is provided as an

opportunity for these migrants to make up the work they missed the first six weeks of school or

to remediate failing performance.

Graduation Enhancement (GE) classes meet Monday through Thursday for one hour after

school. The classroom teacher sends lesson material to the ìadd-onî class that s/he expects to be

covered; this material either was missed the first six weeks or is content on which the studentís

performance is poor. The GE teacher then provides instruction in those materials. The GE

classes tend to be project- or task-oriented. Students must demonstrate mastery of specific

assignments and skills (e.g., completing a research paper, completing a curriculum unit,

completing a book report, or completing some test like the TAAS).
A-26

Migrant students who know they will miss the last six weeks of school can participate in

an after-school program to complete the work they would otherwise miss. This is a Winter

version of the Graduation Enhancement Program.

Summer School Now. Migrant students who missed the majority of the first six weeks of

school must attend the Summer School Now Program which meets for five Saturdays in a row

from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. They must attend all five make-up sessions in order to receive credit for

the class they missed.

Remote Access to NovaNET. Eagle Pass has been operating its own laptop computer

project for approximately three to four years under the supervision of the high school counselors

and NovaNET lab teachers. The laptop project essentially extends student access to NovaNET

through the use of telecommunications technology (i.e., use of a portable computer with a

modem and access to a telephone).

Interstate migrant students can access NovaNET with a laptop computer when they are

traveling out-of-state with their families in the summer. As many as 50 migrant students

participate each summer in this locally funded project (through Title 1 Migrant Education

Program funds). Migrant students are assigned laptops based on a number of factors, including

instructional need, student maturity and dependability, and the anticipated distance of the

familyís summer location relative to the familyís access to summer school project sites in an

upstream state. Migrant students whose families are too remote from a summer school site will

be given preference for a laptop. The alternative for many migrant students is to travel by bus

from a migrant camp to a night school to participate in a summer instructional program of some

sort (e.g., a SMART broadcast). Under such circumstances, the migrant students can show up

late for class and be too tired to concentrate on their studies. Remoteness of location is a primary

consideration for assigning a laptop to a student plus demonstrated motivation for making up

credits or enrichment interests.

An Eagle Pass counselor determines summer course assignments for laptop applications.

For example, the counselor might determine that the student needs to complete English IA over

the summer. A form identifying the assignment then is given to the student by the counselor to

take to the NovaNET teacher who then might assign 25 percent of the coursework as a writing

assignment and 75 percent to be completed on specific NovaNET English modules. Next, a

laptop computer is issued to the student by one of the NovaNET labs in Eagle Pass so the student

can work on those lessons through the NovaNET instructional modules. A NovaNET access
A-27

program is loaded onto the studentís laptop computer by the Eagle Pass NovaNET lab so the

migrant student can log onto NovaNET from a remote site using a toll-free 800 phone number

and the modem installed on the computer.

The NovaNET lab manager makes sure the student knows how to use the laptop properly

and is able to trouble-shoot if something should go wrong with it. Each student issued a laptop is

required to sign a contract that stipulates how the laptop will be used. This contract also ensures

that the student will return the laptop in the Fall; the ISD has yet to lose a laptop. The contract is

also an agreement with the teacher about the studentís work over the Summer.

Migrant students are issued two toll-free numbers to access technical assistance support

for their laptop: the NovaNET lab in Eagle Pass and the Texas Migrant Interstate Program

(TMIP) in Pharr for back-up assistance. Technical support calls can include phone assistance,

arranging a home visit from a technician, or mailing the student a program diagnostic card to

insert into the computer. The toll-free number to the Eagle Pass NovaNET lab also enables the

student to log into the NovaNET database to begin working on his or her assignments. If the

student dials in at a prescribed time, s/he can interact instructionally with their NovaNET teacher

using email. E-mail is also used for follow-up interactions between the student and teacher

regarding the studentís performance on the assignment.

The problem most often encountered by the laptop users is finding a phone line they can

use to call into the NovaNET lab in Eagle Pass. The ISD tried to circumvent this problem by

asking Southwest Bell to donate cell phones to the district for the students to use with their

laptops. This proposal did not work because ìrolling chargesî would be incurred from

connecting calls across multiple commercial telephone carriers that operate the telephone

systems between the upstream sites and Eagle Pass. Currently, the ISD loads the NovaNET

course modules on disk. Students then use their laptops to work on their assignments without

needing access to a telephone. The student mails the diskette back to Eagle Pass when s/he

wants final feedback from the teacher.

Project ESTRELLA. A federal technology grant to the Illinois Migrant Council, in

collaboration with TEA and MOPI, provides Eagle Pass with an additional 10 laptop computers.

ESTRELLA also provides ìCyber Counselorsî in addition to funding laptop computers for

remote access to NovaNET. The cyber counselors are college students who function as role

models. These students e-mail the migrant students issued laptop computers as a type of cyber
A-28

ìpen pal.î The cyber counselors monitor the migrant studentís schoolwork, give encouragement,

and provide tutorial guidance.

TAAS-Prep. The Eagle Pass curriculum is aligned with the Texas state curriculum (the

TEKS) and the statewide assessment (the TAAS). The remediation of academic skills in Eagle

Pass thus tends to be synonymous with preparing students to take and pass the TAAS. The latter

is generally referred to as ìTAAS-Prep.î

There are a variety of ways TAAS prep is provided in Eagle Pass. At its most basic,

TAAS pretests identify student strengths and weaknesses; these pretests are followed by

remedial teaching focused on skill improvement. Students also learn test-taking skills by taking

TAAS practice tests through NovaNET. Migrant students also can take a TAAS-tutorial and a

TAAS-After-School course. Finally, there is the Power-TAAS course, which is an intensive

three-day TAAS-Prep class, offered to juniors and seniors to help them prepare for taking the

TAAS. Student transcripts identify the kinds of TAAS-Prep taken (e.g., TAAS Prep Math or

Reading; TAAS tutorial; TAAS-After-School).

University of Texas Migrant Program: Credit by Exam Model. The Texas Education

Agency and the Texas Board of Education have approved all University of Texas Migrant

Program courses for secondary school credit. These courses include the high school English

courses that the University of Texas (UT) has developed. In Eagle Pass, the UT program used

most is the Credit-by-Exam option. This is an independent home-study approach in which

migrant students use a textbook and study guide developed by UT that is monitored weekly by a

home visitor. The students work at their own pace and take a proficiency exam once they have

completed the course material and their work has been reviewed satisfactorily by the local

instructor. When the student is ready to take the exam, Eagle Pass ISD orders the appropriate

test from UT. The exam is administered by the Eagle Pass ISD and graded at UTóAustin. The

student must pass the test to demonstrate that s/he has mastered the subject matter and receives

high school credit for the course.

The credit-by-exam approach is used mostly with in-school migrant students who stay in

Eagle Pass over the summer. Although the UT English courses are more difficult than other

alternatives for obtaining secondary English credits, they are the fastest way for migrant students

to obtain such course credits.
A-29

Credit-by-exam can also be used by migrant students re-entering the ISD who want to

acquire credit for subjects in which the student previously received instruction but either has

failed or not completed. Additionally, credit-by-exam can be used to accelerate students who

want credit for a course without waiting to take the course when offered as part of the ISDís

regular schedule. This is an anticipatory option that migrant students can choose in completing

courses before withdrawing from the ISD.

Project SMART: Home-Based Model. Project SMART (Summer Migrants Access

Resources through Technology) is a national distance learning instructional program that is

broadcast from the Region XX Education Services Center (ESC-20) in San Antonio, Texas, via

satellite for eight weeks over the summer (June and July). It is designed for Texas migrant

students, both those who remain in Texas in the Summer as well as those are who are

temporarily residing in other participating states around the country. For those moving out of

state for the Summer, enrollment in Project SMART is the responsibility of the receiving site

(e.g., the Sidney Summer Migrant Education Project). For those staying in Eagle Pass over the

summer, a home instruction version of SMART is available.

The home-based model is used in Eagle Pass in the Summer for all migrant students that

stay behind and do not travel out of state. The Summer instructional broadcasts for each age

group are taped by the ISD and then taken to the home on videocassette by a home visitor where

they are shown. The home visitors will leave a tape on one visit and pick it up on the next,

leaving a new tape at that time. Tapes from the previous year along with the TAAS-Prep tapes

can also be taken into the home and shown if appropriate. In this way, SMART provides Eagle

Pass with a summer school curriculum for the in-state migrant population.

Information Access. In addition to these instructional programs, school counselors need

access to student records to ensure that migrant studentsí schoolworkówhether from Texas or

outside of Texasócan be counted toward Texas state graduation requirements. The registrarís

office in Eagle Pass documents student course credits in an official school transcript. Other

important information about the studentís school history (e.g., school attendance record, date of

withdrawal from Eagle Pass ISD, final course grades, course completion status and the grade at

the time of course withdrawal) is also recorded on the transcript. When students withdraw from

school, this information is put on a withdrawal form.

Migrant families sometimes use the ìred bagî to carry school documents such as

transcripts and withdrawal forms with them when they travel out of state. These documents are
A-30

also available to receiver school systems on request. A number of methods are available for

obtaining these documents: by telephone, mail, and fax; and through the Internet using the New

Generation System (NGS). In Eagle Pass, four NGS records clerks enter, maintain, and update

the NGS student data. The data are used mostly by counselors and teachers to record or check

on secondary credit accrual data. Since the system does not provide standard reports with

aggregated data, administrators do not often use it.

The Sidney Project claimed that many of the NGS records from Eagle Pass were missing

secondary credit accrual data. This is quite plausible since the NGS data were processed by

ESC-20 during most of June. It takes about a month from the end of the school year (end of

May) for course grades to be processed through the ESC-20 in San Antonio and become

available on NGS to upstream states. The earliest that Montana could have gotten complete

NGS data for course planning purposes would have been the end of June, too late to guide course

planning. The only other way for upstream states to obtain course completion and course grade

information is not reliable: if the family brings a withdrawal form with them when they enroll

for the Summer, which means the Summer project would have to contact Eagle Pass.

Promising Practices in the Sidney Summer Migrant Education Project, Sidney, Montana

In its coordinative efforts with Texas, Montana essentially adopted a parallel system of

the technology-based instructional programs and then implemented them locally in its Summer

project sites. Therefore, the instructional approach used in Sidney mirrors the instructional

approach of Eagle Pass.

In Sidney, migrant education uses a technology-based to promote interstate coordination

and continuity of instruction. Both the SMART and NovaNET curricula used in Sidney are

based on the Texas state curriculum and offer credit-bearing courses approved by the Texas

Education Agency and accepted by Texas schools. Telecommunications technology is used in

the SMART project component to promote continuity of instruction with the Texas curriculum

through lessons broadcast by satellite from the Region XX Education Services Center (ECS-20)

in San Antonio. Sidneyís use of laptop computers and a temporary Summer computer lab allows

Texas-based migrant students in Sidney to access the NovaNET curriculum back in Texas.

Project SMART: Site-Based Model. The Sidney Summer Migrant Project implemented

Project SMARTís site-based model in which students could participate interactively in a

classroom setting with the SMART television teacher or view the instruction later on videotape.
A-31

The instructional focus of the SMART broadcasts varied according to the students' grade level:

integrated math, science, and language for the elementary school students; science for the middle

school students; and economics for the high school students. Five instructional strands were

offered to students at Sidney:

 Preschool: Language Development in Spanish & English

 Early Elementary: Integrated Math, Science, & Language

 Upper Elementary: Integrated Math, Science, & Language

 Middle School: Science

 High School: Economics, TAAS Math Preparation

Each interactive SMART class utilized a local teacheróthe ìSMART Partnerîóto

prepare the students for the instructional broadcast, to facilitate interactions by telephone with

the SMART television teacher back at ESC-20, and to conduct follow-up instruction and

assessment.

Only the high school courses are offered for credit. Each Summer, one subject is

taught; in Summer 1998 this subject was Economics.

NovaNET. The NovaNET lab at Sidney provides computer-assisted instruction in a broad

range of credit-bearing courses at the middle school and high school levels. As at Eagle Pass,

the NovaNET lab consists of about 16 desktop personal computers, running off a server, that

access the TEKS-based NovaNET curriculum in Eagle Pass through fiber-optic telephone lines

via each computerís modem. The courses offered in Sidney are the same ones offered in Eagle

Pass and in other Texas school districts that implement NovaNET labs.

Each NovaNET course consists of a series of interactive modules. Students move at their

own pace and are provided feedback by the computer on each lesson attempted. The computer

also records the lessons attempted, time spent on the lessons, dates, and assessment outcomes for

the lessons. A lesson must be passed in order to move to the next lesson in a module's sequence

of instruction. The two high school instructors supervise the NovaNET lab each night,

monitoring the students to keep them on task if necessary and to provide assistance to students

who need it. High school students attend the NovaNET lab in the evening after their work in the
A-32

fields. Testing preparation and administration for the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills

(TAAS) is also provided through the computerized NovaNET curriculum.

Laptop Computers: Project ESTRELLA. Laptop computers in Sidney are provided by

the federal technology grant administered by the Illinois Migrant Council. If students can access

a telephone line, they can use the laptops just about anywhere. This enables them to connect

with the Internet, communicate with their teachers in Texas over the Summer, and communicate

with their college cyber counselors in San Antonio.

University of Texas Correspondence Courses. As stated earlier, NovaNET is good for

basic skill applications but less well adapted to the development of advanced skills. When

students need credit-bearing courses like English literature, the Sidney project arranges an

independent study correspondence course through the University of Texas Migrant Program

(UT). The University of Texas Migrant Program provides the course material and books; the

Sidney teachers supervise and grade the student's UT work while they remain in Montana.

When the student leaves Montana, s/he mails the work to UT and the UT staff grades the

studentís work and provides feedback. Sidney uses the UT Correspondence Course rather than

PASS (the Portable Assisted Study Sequence) because Texas schools readily accept the UT

courses for credit. Texas schools will accept PASS courses, but additional staff work is required

to ensure the PASS courses are appropriate for the student.

Information Access. As at other sites profiled in these case studies, a number of

approaches were used to communicate information so that instructional planning for migrant

students can be eased. Student information can be accessed through the New Generation System

(NGS), a comprehensive database of education and health information on more than 200,000

migrant children that can be accessed by subscribers through the Internet. Information is also

carried by migrant families in the student record transfer packets (commonly referred to as the

ìred bagsî) issued by Texas migrant programs. Four of the 24 secondary-level Texas-based

students (or 17 percent) provided school records and report cards from Texas when they arrived

in Sidney during the school year that this study was conducted.

When information is not obtainable through NGS or a record transfer packet, school staff

may resort to telephone and fax. A Sidney staff member, (e.g., one of the secondary teachers or

the program director), will call the child's homebase school in Texas to ask that they update the

student's NGS record or fax the desired information to Sidney if that would be faster (about half

of the secondary students needed their NGS information updated when they arrived in Sidney).
A-33

The Sidney secondary school staff also calls Texas home-base school principals and guidance

counselors to review student needs and summer school course options so that the courses the

students take in Montana are approved for credit by their Texas school.

Promising Practices: A Migrant Parentís Perspective

Ernesto Sr. and his family often travel to find seasonal employment in agriculture.

Through his participation in parent involvement events and opportunities, he is also very familiar

with the Migrant Education Program. In interviews with researchers that were conducted in both

Sidney and Eagle Pass, Ernesto Sr. provided insight into both the challenges facing migrant

families and the way the migrant program serves his school-age children. The material that

follows is a synthesis of these interviews.

Ernesto Sr. arrived in Montana from Eagle Pass the first week in June 1998 to work the

sugar beet fields. He remained in Montana for approximately six weeks and then returned to

Texas for a month to pick grapes in the vineyards around Austin. He then packed up his family

again and traveled to Minnesota to work for several weeks in the vegetable canneries after which

the family traveled to Maine for the blueberry harvest in August. In the Fall, Ernesto Sr. traveled

with his eldest son Ernesto Jr. all the way across the country to Washington to dig potatoes,

which they did until November. Ernesto Sr. and his son returned to Eagle Pass a week before

Thanksgiving. Ernesto Sr. will resume his migrant cycle in June 1999.

Ernesto Sr. has eight children, seven of whom he brought with him to Montana in June

1998. The Eagle Pass ISD issued a laptop computer to his family for use by several of his high

school children over the summer. His son (Ernesto Jr.) had failed algebra and English IV as a

senior in the 1997-98 school year and was issued a laptop specifically so he could work on

making up the 1.5 course credits he needed in these subject matter areas. Two of Ernesto Sr.'s

daughters were also allowed to use the laptop computer, but for acceleration and enrichment

purposes. Maria (a sophomore next year) was provided coursework in world history and Ana

was assigned work in English IV. Ana would have been a senior in the academic year that

followed this study; she is trying to earn senior-level English credit with the aid of the laptop

computer. In addition, the Sidney Project issued Ernesto Sr.ís family a second laptop computer

that his younger children could use at home over the summer (e.g., the children aged 5 and 9).

Ernesto Sr. has had experience with the "red bags" which he said were initiated in 1993

following the federal decision to terminate the MSRTS. Initially, the bags were a temporary
A-34

measure instituted by Texas to transfer student records with upstream states receiving its migrant

students. Ernesto Sr. characterized the red bags as a way to help migrant families take

responsibility for records transfer with schools. Migrant parents are encouraged to use the bags

to carry their children's school records to their next destination during interstate migrations

where they are supposed to turn the records over to the receiving schools.

Ernesto Sr. knows that the NGS has since superseded the red bags. Although Ernesto

thought that MSRTS was effective in spite of its flaws, he thought the NGS might be an

improvement over the MSRTS because of the speed with which relevant information can be

obtained.

When asked to discuss the kinds of educational problems that migratory farm worker

families encounter, Ernesto Sr. mentioned that many families do not re-enroll their children in

school once they arrive in a new state. He also mentioned that their children do not retain

knowledge and skills when they are out of school for a while; they lose their motivation to

re-enroll, particularly if credit accrual problems are on the increase. These credit accrual

problems, Ernesto Sr. observed, often lead migrant students to drop out of school. He thought

the laptops could help his children catch up on coursework they had missed while migrating and

to stay current in their credits.

Asked how the laptops had helped his children, Ernesto Sr. used his son as an example.

Ernesto Jr. had been denied high school graduation because of credit deficiencies (1.5 credits): a

half credit in algebra and a full credit in English IV. Eagle Pass ISD issued him a laptop for the

summer of 1998 and assigned him lessons in both of these deficiency areas, including relevant

NovaNET lesson modules. He did the lessons (at least some of them) on the laptop and

downloaded his work to his summer school teacher in Eagle Pass who graded the work from

Texas. Ernesto Sr. was hopeful that Ernesto Jr. would graduate from high school at the end of

Summer 1998. The migrant education staff doubted he would complete the 1.5 credits by

August, and it turned out they were right.

A follow-up interview was conducted with Ernesto Sr. in Eagle Pass, Texas, in

November 1998, after he and his son had returned from their summer migrations. Ernesto Jr.

ended up returning to Eagle Pass ISD in 1999 and hopefully will graduate at the end of the 1998-

99 school year. In November 1998 he was still working on his English and math assignments on

the laptop and had not yet graduated. He needed a full year of senior English and a semester of

Algebra II; over the Summer and Fall he had made little progress in completing his studies.
A-35

Ernesto Sr. said that the biggest problem about laptop use had been access to a telephone while

on the road between Montana, Texas, Maine, and Washington State. Ernesto Jr. also had little

time or energy left to use the laptop computer after spending 12-16 hours a day working in the

fields. Since returning to Eagle Pass in November, Ernesto Jr. had been working as a day laborer

in Mexico harvesting hay. He planned to re-enroll at Eagle Pass ISD in the second semester and

finish the 1.5 credits so he could graduate in May. After graduation, Ernesto Jr. planned to enlist

in the Army, according to his father. The son apparently believed the Army would provide him

with some valuable training since he is no longer very interested in continuing as a farm laborer.

Ernesto Jr. also apparently hoped to acquire some college tuition money by joining the Army.

In general, Ernesto Sr. thought the instructional technology used in migrant education

(i.e., the laptop computers, NovaNET, and Project SMART) helped his children stay in school

and learn. Three of his children (Ernesto Jr., Ana, and Maria) shared the same laptop computer

and used separate passwords to access NovaNET courseware over the summer.
A-36

Discussion

The instructional initiatives and technological innovations of the Migrant Education

Programs in Texas and Montana have resulted in a congruent curriculum and extended school

year for Texas-based migrant students who travel back and forth between Montana and Texas

every Summer with their families. These developments have been made possible by the statelevel leadership and interstate collaboration that have been exhibited by Texas, Montana, and

other partnering states such as Illinois over the years. Arguably, the services provided by the

Sidney Summer Migrant Program could not have occurred, much less been maintained, without

the relationships that grew out of these collaborative efforts among educators and the various

partnering agencies.

The Montana Office of Public Instruction (MOPI), the Texas Education Agency (TEA),

and the Texas Migrant Interstate Project (TMIP) have a history of formal collaboration which

has resulted in the technology-based approach to instructional continuity and records exchange in

migrant education. This includes the annual televised Spring training conference held in

Billings, Montana, sponsored by TEA/TMIP/MOPI for MOPI staff on SMART, NovaNET,

NGS, and various issues in migrant education (e.g., student identification, the Red Bag, credit

accrual changes and problems, and TAAS prep and administration). The Fall credit accrual

resolution conference, hosted every year in Texas by TMIP, brings together school

administrators, counselors, and registrars from partnering districts and states to resolve course

credit issues and problems. This personal contact has also made it easier for staff from different

states and school districts to contact each other to resolve issues when they arise.

As a precursor to implementing the various technological solution strategies, the

MOPI-TEA-TMIP collaboration first focused on aligning Montanaís migrant education

instruction with the Texas State curriculum (the TEKS) and assessment (the TAAS). Once the

curriculum and assessment were aligned, instruction was implemented essentially through

NovaNET and SMART. These projects had customized their curricula to the TEKS

specifications approved by the Texas Education Agency. Customizing these curricula to the

needs of Texas-based migrant students required collaborative relationships between

TEA/TMIP/MOPI as well as curriculum and software developers at NovaNET Inc., Apple

Computer Inc., Montana MET-Net, Texas Tenet, ESC-20 in San Antonio, and the Southwest

Regional Educational Laboratory.
A-37

Innovations in distance learning and computer-assisted instruction also required that

districts build upon a pre-existing technological infrastructure. Without software innovations

developed through the University of Illinois that were subsequently custom-fitted to state

curriculum specifications through private sector marketing efforts by NovaNET Inc., the State

Education Agencies in Texas and Montana would not have had a computerized state-approved

curriculum upon which to align their own curricula. Similarly, without the convergence of

instructional television and satellite broadcasting technology through prior work at the ESC-20,

Project SMART would not exist.

The Sidney Migrant Project and the Eagle Pass ISD (as well as La Joya, Weslaco, and

Pharr ISDs) also have a long history of cooperation, made possible by collaboration at the state

level. Specifically, this collaboration between TEA, TMIP, and MOPI has resulted in the use of

the NovaNET lab concept in Montana as well as Project SMART. MOPI's relationship with the

Illinois Migrant Council also led to the development and funding of Project ESTRELLA which

supports an extension of the NovaNET lab through the use of laptop computers.

Eagle Pass's migrant students face problems, particularly at the secondary level, in

accruing credit and receiving enough sustained academic instruction to take and pass the TAAS.

Locally, the Migrant Education Program addresses those problems through a combination of

NovaNET, laptop computers, SMART, the University of Texas Credit-by-Exam option, and

various course make-up options that include the Saturday Graduation Enhancement classes for

migrants who return late to Texas. Counselors and teachers use NGS for obtaining information

on courses taken or completed at other sites; this information guides their instructional planning

in ways that benefit the students.

Like the Sidney Summer Migrant Education Program, Eagle Pass's migrant services

operate in the context of interstate coordination and collaboration, which has made these services

possible. While local initiatives are needed to implement the services, interventions on the scale

of SMART, ESTRELLA, and NGS required collaboration and dedication of resources at higher

institutional levels.

Only Project SMART has been formally collected student participation and outcome

data. According to an evaluation report prepared by META Associates (September 1997), 18

states (including Montana) implemented SMART in 1997. Sidney was the largest participating

SMART site in Montana, with the largest student participation at the preschool and elementary

school levels (which are the levels with the greatest migrant student enrollment). Sidney was
A-38

also the only site in Montana to offer a secondary-level SMART program for in-school youth at

grades 9-12. The META Associates Report indicated that nine secondary students in Sidney

participated in SMART courses in the summer of 1997. Four of these nine students (44 percent)

received a half credit for their participation in the 1997 SMART government course. The other

five secondary students took one of the SMART non-credit-bearing TAAS Prep courses.

META Associates also reported an evaluation of Montanaís pilot implementation of

NovaNET in 1997. Data were collected on migrant student participation in temporary NovaNET

labs in three sites in Montana (Sidney, Billings, and Hardin) as well as on migrant student

participation in NovaNET through the use of laptop computers. Interview data suggested that

one of the main benefits of NovaNETóthrough either the computer lab or the laptop

computersówas its capability to help teachers individualize instruction. Anecdotal data,

however, suggest that one of the main drawbacks to migrant studentsí use of laptop computers as

an instructional aid while on the road is access to a telephone line.

The technological innovations in distance learning and computer-assisted instruction that

have been implemented in Texas and Montana have the potential to promote instructional

continuity for Texas-based migrant students. Eagle Pass and Sidney will need to keep their

hardware and software upgraded so that they can stay current with the technical specifications

required as the technology for distance learning and computer assisted instruction evolves and

improves. This will require funds to replace and update hardware and software.

Major challenges to maintaining the operation at both ends include attracting qualified

technical staff to trouble-shoot and maintain the hardware and software applications. Attracting

qualified staff to the Eagle Pass area, for example, is difficult because of the low salary offered

by the ISD and because of the general limitations of the border area. Telephone line access is

another major obstacle. Maintaining TMIPís technical assistance role with the laptops and

NovaNET computer applications appears crucial to the continued successful implementation of

these interventions.

NGS student data also needs to be updated in a more timely fashion. Currently, upstream

states can receive course completion and course grade information (a) if the family brings a

withdrawal form with them when they enroll for the Summer or (b) if the receiving site contacts

the sending site. The first alternative requires continued use of the red bag system and parent

responsibility for school information when transferring between school systems. The latter
A-39

largely depends on maintaining close working relationships between key records staff of

originating and receiving sites.
A-40

Donna Independent School District, Donna, Texas;

 Van Buren Intermediate School District, Lawrence, Michigan;

and Manatee County Schools, Bradenton, Florida

The Donna-Van Buren-Manatee County case, like the case of Eagle Pass-Sidney,

illustrates how local districts rely on direct communication and interstate mechanisms such as the

Texas Migrant Interstate Program and the Portable Assistance Study Sequence to enhance the

continuity of education for migrant students. This case differs from the others in that it involves

three school districts, although reciprocal arrangements are not in place among all three. Van

Buren ISD has relationships with Donna ISD, Texas, and with Manatee County schools in

Florida. However, the Texas and Florida sites do not have direct working relationships. In

particular, this case provides an illustration of the role personal relationships play in promoting

institutional understanding of shared responsibilities.

The Partners

Donna Independent School District, Donna Texas

Donna Independent School District (ISD) is located in the lower Rio Grande area of

Texas, about 240 miles south of San Antonio and just east of McAllen, Texas. This section of

Texas is known as the Valley and is home to the largest concentration of migrant families in the

nation. While the economic base of the area is diversifying, agriculture remains the primary

industry. Cotton, sugar cane, and vegetables are key crops. Migrant labor is not used for cotton

and sugar cane. Migrant laborers work with vegetables, picking predominantly onions and

cabbage. Other crops that often employ migrant workers in the area include tomatoes, carrots,

bell peppers, and lettuce. Few other employment opportunities exist for migrant workers who

return to Donna. Non-migrant residents often are employed in agricultural-related work

(preparation of fields, driving the tractors), the local school system, or small businesses.

The district provides educational services to three-year-olds through grade 12. The

district supports 10 elementary campuses, two middle schools, and one high school. Based on

the 1997/98 Academic Excellence Indicator System from the Texas Education Agency (TEA),

student enrollment in Donna ISD peaked at 10,500. This enrollment includes 9,698 Hispanic

students, 146 Caucasian, and 656 who are classified as Asian, Pacific Islander, or Native

American. Eight-eight percent of the student population is economically disadvantaged. Fifty

percent (50 percent) of the students are identified as limited English proficient (LEP).
A-41

In general, the community holds high expectations for its students that include high

school graduation followed by matriculation in college. But migrant students were not especially

successful on the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS). Fifty-eight percent passed

Reading, 60 percent passed Mathematics, and 54 percent passed Writing as compared to the state

standard of 90 percent for each subject area. Surprisingly, the average attendance rate for

migrant students is 93 percent, just one percent below the state standard of 94%. The state

standard for a school district graduation rate is 90 percent. In 1996, 71 percent of the migrant

students graduated from Donna High School; in 1997, 87 percent were graduated. In 1997, only

55 percent of the migrant students who took the TAAS exit exam passed (with just 8 percent of

the eligible students absent on the test date). Only 39 percent of the migrant students took a

college admissions test (the state standard is 70 percent).

As of December 15, 1998, 3,822 students were eligible for the Migrant Education

Program in Donna. A total of 1,415 students were served in Donna's Summer migrant program.

A large percentage of migrant students move annually to secure seasonal work in agriculture.

For FY 98, while most of the districts in the valley are losing migrant students (perhaps due to

less intensive identification and recruitment efforts, higher graduation rates, and permanent

re-locations to another state), Donna increased slightly (1.12 percent) via its efforts in agency

coordination.

Migrant workers from Donna usually travel directly to work sites in Michigan, without

stopping for other kinds of work. Many of the families go to the southeastern area of Michigan

for cucumber, cherry, asparagus, and grape harvests. Some migrant families who leave during

the Spring months, send for their children after school is out, and some families return before

school starts again in the Fall. Others may not return until November. Based on data obtained in

Van Buren, 500-825 students from Donnas ISD migrate to southwest Michigan, with 375 of

those children enrolled in Van Buren ISD.

Donna ISD has a history of communicating with staff at the Van Buren ISD to improve

the continuity of instruction that migrant students experience. This cooperation, often supported

by the Texas Migrant Interstate Program (TMIP), has resulted primarily in school transition

services facilitated by migrant specialists, the use of instructional programs specifically for credit

accrual, and the transfer of student information.

Van Buren Intermediate School District, Lawrence Michigan
A-42

Lawrence, Michigan is nestled in lower southwestern Michigan. The town is located off

Interstate 94 in a rural part of the state where farming remains the number one industry. Over

the past 30 years, the area has required the services of a significant migrant labor workforce.

Initially, strawberries were the primary crop that required pickers. Today, strawberries have

been replaced by cucumbers; with potatoes, blueberries, apples, and crop work in vineyards and

nurseries contributing to the on-going need for migrant workers. New agricultural technology

has reduced the volume of work for migrant workers, but migrant labor continues to be needed.

The majority of growers in the area consist of family-owned farms. Currently, the largest grower

in the area is John Faulkner Farms, which recruits 300-400 migrant families per year for his

cucumber harvest; a similar operation exists in Florida.

The Van Buren Intermediate School District (ISD) serves 11 school districts. Its migrant

education project provides both school year and summer-term services. School-year services are

provided to migrant students who enroll in 28 local schools during both the Fall and Spring

months. Most of these migrant students do not complete more than one grading period in the

Michigan public schools. Seven itinerant resource teachers provide services to migrant children

by helping with school transitions, providing in-school advocacy, and offering tutorial assistance.

The summer projectís services include preschool/day care services, a summer school enrichment

program for K-8, and an evening program for older youth. In 1997, 1,420 students were eligible

for the Migrant Education Program; 780 students were enrolled in either school year and/or

Summer-term programs. The Summer program had an average daily attendance of 372 students.

Although the home base of most migrant families continues to be either Texas (43

percent of the identified students) or Florida (30 percent of the identified students), increasing

numbers of migrants are originating from Mexico (33 percent in 1997). With this change, the

percentage of students who are limited English proficient (LEP) is also on the rise.

Van Buren ISD has a substantial history of working with several school districts in the

Rio Grande valley (e.g., Brownsville, Donna, Weslaco, Pharr) and the Texas Migrant Interstate

Project (TMIP) to improve the continuity of instruction that migrant students experience. This

cooperation has resulted in teacher exchanges, participation in each otherís conferences and

pre-service training programs, use of credit accrual programs, the transmittal of student

information, the administration of the TAAS in Michigan, school transition services, and the

transfer of student information. Recent trends in worker recruitment efforts have increased the
A-43

significance of coordinating with school districts in the State of Florida (Manatee, Hillsborough,

& Polk Counties).

Manatee County School District, Manatee County, Florida

Manatee County lies along the Gulf of Mexico between Sarasota and Tampa. The county

was named for the large, easygoing aquatic animal known as the West Indian Manatee. Along

the coast, small villages and resort communities populate the barrier islands and bay shores.

Inland, in the eastern part of the county, lies rural countrysidean area known for its fruit and

vegetable production.

Six major population centers are located in the county (Bradenton, Palmetto, Anna Maria,

Holmes Beach, Bradenton Beach, and Longboat Key). The two largest communities, Bradenton

and Palmetto, are on the mainland. Bradenton, the county seat, is the countyís largest city with a

population of close to 50,000. In the 1940s, food processor Anthony Rossi settled in Bradenton

and founded Fruit Industries, a company known worldwide today as Tropicana North America.

Palmetto is the agricultural center of the county and is noted especially for tomatoes.

The Manatee County School District has 39 schools that include 26 elementary schools,

seven middle schools, five high schools and one vocational technical center. The school district

serves about 34,000 students in pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade.

Manatee Countyís migrant student services include a pre-kindergarten program, an inclass tutoring program for grades K-2, and an after-school tutoring program for students in

grades 9-12. In addition, the countyís Migrant Education Program supports academic

counseling, parental involvement, and outreach and referral services.

Every year, more than 2,000 migrant studentsabout seven percent of the total student

bodycome to Manatee County schools after their families have worked in other parts of the

country in seasonal agriculture. In 1998, more than 1,400 migrant children had registered in

Manatee County schools since classes began in late August. At least 1,000 more were expected

to enroll throughout the early Fall. Most of the incoming migrant families live in the rural farm

camps of Palmetto and Myakka City. The owners of Faulkner Farms of Lawrence, Michigan

have located their Florida-based farm in Myakka City. Many of the migrant families spend the

Fall, Winter, and Spring working at the Faulkner Farms site in Myakka and then move to

Faulkner Farms in Michigan for the summer.
A-44

Van Buren ISD in Michigan is the largest recipient of migrant students from Manatee

County, largely because Faulkner Farms provides labor camp housing for migrant families it

employs in both states. Faulkner Farms itself operates seasonally in both states, growing and

harvesting a variety of fruits and vegetables; thus there is some continuity of employment as

well.

Problems Facing Migrant Students

ìReally, mostly the problems {dealing with educational continuity} are at the

secondary level.î (Migrant Education Program Coordinator, Donna, Texas)

The main problem for home-based Texas and Florida migrant youth who are enrolled in

the secondary grades is accruing credits necessary for graduation. In both Texas and Florida,

students who migrate often do not complete their course of study in either their home-base state

or the receiving state. With each incomplete course, migrant students repeatedly must try to

catch up with their peers in their schoolwork. Over time, the accumulation and effects of

incomplete coursework lead to problems with mastery of subject matter, grades, and satisfactory

course completion, which in turn affect attendance and enrollment in school, credit accrual,

grade promotion, and high school graduation.

Donna ISD and Manatee County reported that the problems for secondary-level migrant

students begin when these students either withdraw early withdrawal from school and/or return

late. With the typical early withdrawal, migrant students miss the last six weeks of school

(mid-April through the end of May). With the start of schools scheduled for mid-August, if the

students return in October or November, they may miss yet another six or more weeks of school.

Recent efforts of high schools to install block scheduling have compounded the problem as

differences in amount of the content covered are substantial when students transfer from a course

with a traditional schedule to a course with a block schedule and vice versa.

The ultimate effect of these events on a studentís education depends on what happens in

both the receiving state (in this case, Michigan) and state of origin. If the student does not enroll

in a school in Michigan and/or supplemental instructional opportunities are not available, course

credit for the prior semester's work in Texas or Florida will not be granted or the student will be

behind in the current year's work. If the student does enroll in a Michigan school or summer

program, this schoolwork may have little utility if the student cannot take the appropriate
A-45

courses; if the course content is different between sites or out-of-sequence; and if partial credit or

full credit for coursework is not issued or accepted by Michigan, Texas, or Florida schools.

In addition, upon return to the school district of origin, if there are no opportunities for

the students to catch up on the incomplete courses, they will probably remain behind in their

schoolwork. The negative impact of these events quickly escalates for secondary-level students

who are already at risk of educational failure from other factors related to poverty and mobility.

Without intervention, the odds of early school dropout or failure to graduate increases.

Although data were not presented to confirm their beliefs, migrant educators in both

Donna and Van Buren do not view the effects of migration on continuity of instruction as being

as problematic for elementary grade-level students as it is for secondary-level students. They

believe that the educational gaps or deficits created by early withdrawal and/or late entry can be

overcome by the remedial services commonly offered at the regular or summer elementary

school.

For example, district officials in Donna believe that the elementary school teacher can

overcome the time and learning lost during the regular school year using remedial services

commonly found within the school. Upon re-enrollment, the elementary teacher is expected to

find out what skills students bring from the receiving state. Based on this assessment, if the

student is behind or missing skills, the teacher turns to a variety of in-school strategies, such as

homework packets or the use of a tutor.

Similarly, migrant staff in Michigan view problems with instructional continuity as

considerably more severe for secondary-level students. The Van Buren staff believed that the

general pre-school, elementary school, and lower middle school curriculum require less precision

in designing appropriate instruction than is needed for the subject matter-specific courses at the

secondary school level.

The major problems experienced by secondary-level migrant students originating from

Donna and Manatee have been: 1) the loss of instructional time, 2) the lack of information to

guide best placement in Van Buren ISD's summer program and regular school year services, and

3) the lack of procedures to ensure that students receive credit for work done at Van Buren when

they arrive at schools in Texas and Florida. Both educators and parents feel a sense of urgency

that these problems be solved.
A-46

Van Burenís staff were very aware that parents (and to some degree, students) wanted to

make sure they received appropriate instruction. These parents also wanted to ensure that upon

their return to schools in Texas or Florida, their children received credit for work they did in

Michigan.

Promising Practices

The primary needs for interstate coordination among Donna, Van Buren, and Manatee

focus on helping secondary students to catch up on instruction missed due to a migrant move, to

identify the appropriate instructional programs and/or courses of study needed, and to ensure

secondary-level credit accrual.

Promising Practices in Van Buren ISD

Efforts to meet the needs of children who migrate to Lawrence, Michigan from Donna,

Texas start with a program of information-sharing. During the Winter months, Van Buren staff

use their own database to produce lists of students with prior summer enrollments in Michigan.

These lists are often hand-carried by the site administrator to interstate events/meetings in Texas.

At these meetings, the site administrator asks the appropriate district official in Texas to check

on student attendance at their schools. If the children are enrolled, Van Buren ISD staff request

information on the studentís grade level placement, test results, and courses of study.

This information is used to help organize Van Burenís Summer program. The Summer

project operates for approximately 40 days (beginning in late June and ending in early August).

The project uses the pleasant, well-maintained Van Buren ISD campus facilities which are set

back from a rural road in Lawrence. The air-conditioned campus includes three buildings that

house the administrative offices, instructional classrooms, related supportive service facilities

(cafeteria, gymnasiums, auditoriums) and a technology/vocational center. The full-day Summer

project provides services to children who range in age from two and one-half years to 21 years.

The Summer projectís services include preschool/day care services, a summer school

enrichment program for K-8, and an evening program for older youth. The K-8 curriculum is not

tightly coordinated with instructional programs in Texas or Florida. Basic instruction in reading,

math, and ESL is provided to enrolled students. Teachers administer an informal assessment to

identify student needs. Each teacher develops thematic units that draw upon available resources.
A-47

The evening school program is eight weeks long, with classes held Monday through

Friday from 6:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. It provides enrichment services (e.g., instruction in life skills,

exposure to computers) to middle school students. Secondary-level youth are offered

opportunities to make up course credits or to work on subjects that they are failing. New arrivals

to the U.S. can develop and improve their English language skills. In general, Van Buren ISD

staff provide assistance to help migrant students complete a Portable Assisted Study Sequence

(PASS) correspondence course or a correspondence course from the University of Texas.

One-half credit is earned in a subject when a secondary-level student successfully completes a

given course. The evening school also provides opportunities for students to take the TAAS.

After the close of the summer program, continued support is provided to individual students who

are completing summer coursework.

For students who remain in Lawrence and re-enroll in school when it opens in

September, migrant/bilingual resource teachers who work throughout the ISD help with school

transitions, provide in-school advocacy, and offer tutorial assistance. These staff help to improve

the academic counseling that secondary-level migrant youth receive that determines which

school-year courses they should take while they reside in Michigan.

Upon withdrawal from Van Buren ISD, the resource teachers are expected to ensure that

an informal transcript (with days enrolled, days present, and some test data) is prepared and if

possible sent back with each student as they return to Texas or Florida. Upon receipt, Texas or

Florida school officials can request a formal transcript that will contain more information if the

student was registered through the first grading period (nine weeks). Essentially, the

migrant/bilingual resource teachers act as a coordinating mechanism in that they negotiate with

both local educators and the sending district on behalf of the migrant students.

The process of exchanging information between districts is critical to ensuring that the

needs of secondary-level migrant students are met, but it is not easily implemented. Previously,

the MSRTS never fully gave Van Buren ISD staff the information they needed to identify the

special services the secondary-level youth needed or the credits they needed to graduate. The

information also was insufficient to convince the sending school that students had completed

particular work. Van Buren ISD staff reported to researchers that they always had to pick up the

phone and make a personal contact.

Occasionally, parents who returned to Van Buren the next summer would complain that

they took the paperwork back to the originating district with no result. Notwithstanding the time
A-48

elapsed, Van Buren ISD staff then would call the building principal or school counselor and try

to resolve the credit accrual issues with the school.

The researchers observed that person-to-person information exchange is not always

successful the first time and often requires extensive follow-up activities before actual

information is received. One staff member stated that ìthe process is not perfectyou must

continue to bug people to send information.î For example, requests for information that were

sent to several schools in Texas did not result in responses until a representative from the school

district attended the previous summerís pre-service training session for Van Buren ISD staff.

The representative then was given another list of Texas students and he did send back all of the

studentsí records.

The Migrant Education Program site administrator at Van Buren ISD is convinced that

personal relationships are a critical ingredient for successful interstate cooperation and

coordination. Consequently, staff time and money have been expended to increase the frequency

of person-to-person interactions between Van Buren ISD staff and district personnel in Texas.

Van Buren staff participate in the annual meetings and conferences held in Texas where they can

meet face-to-face with their Texas counterparts. Officials from key originating districts are

invited to address Van Burenís summer program staff during pre-service and in-service training.

Teachers from the originating schools are hired to work in the Van Buren ISD summer program,

and then act as advocates for their students upon their return to Texas. Clearly, continuous

networking to develop and sustain relationships and follow-up activities are viewed as

prerequisites for effective interstate coordination.

It is also important to note that the staff of the Texas Migrant Interstate Project (TMIP)

area valuable resource in these information-sharing efforts. The Texas Migrant Interstate Project

plays an important intermediary role with cases where 1) direct communication with a school did

not work or 2) it was not possible to contact a district official because the school was officially

closed for the summer. If a personal contact with school building personnel in Texas previously

has not been established, it has become more efficient to call TMIP staff and have them initiate

contact with the building-level personnel. Texas Migrant Interstate Project staff are rated highly

by the Van Buren staff for their follow-up in obtaining student information and/or resolving

credit accrual difficulties.

The year before this study was conducted, the relationship model was extended to Florida

through the personal initiative of one teacher. Using her own funds, the evening program
A-49

coordinator traveled to Florida during her winter vacation to introduce herself to counselors at

key originating schools as well as to PASS program officials. Based on agreements she struck

with Florida educators, Van Burenís evening program coordinator faxed school officials in

Manatee County and Hillsborough County lists of students who had prior enrollments in both the

Van Buren ISD and the two counties in Florida. She asked the local migrant counselors to

evaluate the studentsí transcripts at the home-base school to ascertain what the migrant students

would need at the end of the year to complete their course work and, if possible, to start a PASS

course. Unfortunately, the Hillsborough relationship broke down. In Manatee, however,

information on students who had started PASS courses was delivered to Van Buren ISD when

the Manatee contact person arrived for the Van Buren ISD pre-service. Eight of the 28 students

identified with a history of traveling to Van Buren from Manatee actually worked on a PASS

course based on information shared between the school districts. In this case, staff of the Florida

Migrant Interstate Project (FMIP) also drew praise for their support in helping the districts come

together. After working with the PASS program, Van Buren staff did suggest that the quality of

PASS program materials could be upgraded and they were unsure how tightly the materials were

aligned to Floridaís new academic standards.

No formal evaluation has been conducted of either the process or the outcomes of

interstate coordination activities between Van Buren ISD in conjunction with Texas and Florida.

Nevertheless, the Van Buren site administrator firmly believes that supporting older youth with

secondary credit accrual activities is important to their graduation because ìthose success stories

will trickle down and get the family to be more conscientious about sending all of their kids to

school and expecting them to graduate.î

Promising Practices in Manatee County, Florida

When the evening summer program coordinator from the Van Buren Schools came to

Manatee County over the Christmas vacation to visit the migrant families working at Faulkner

Farms, she sparked a relationship between the two districts' migrant education programs. The

directors of the two programs met subsequently at the 1998 national migrant conference. At this

meeting, they discussed their mutual desire to have a better relationship with Faulkner Farms and

with each other in order to work more effectively with the migrant families as they moved back

and forth between Florida and Michigan. An informal agreement was struck to ensure that

student information from the Manatee County teachers would be shared with the Summer school

teachers in Michigan for the Faulkner Farms children they both served. In June 1998, the

Manatee County Migrant Specialist visited the Van Buren ISD Summer school program shortly
A-50

before it began for the Florida students. She took with her student information forms on the

Faulkner Farms children enrolled in PASS programs and at Myakka City Elementary School in

Manatee County. The PASS form provided Van Buren staff with a description of the courses in

which secondary-level migrant students had enrolled.

The Portable Assisted Study Sequence (PASS) Program was developed in California in

the late 1970s as an approach to secondary school dropout prevention. Florida began

implementing PASS in 1993 after determining that PASS courses met Florida Public Education

curriculum requirements. Florida's PASS Program offers 32 credit-bearing courses in art, health,

language arts, life skills, mathematics, science, and social studies. These semester-length

courses consist of five units of study and students must pass all five unit tests to get credit for the

course. The Portable Assisted Study Sequence is a collection of semi-independent public

education courses for students in grades 9-12. The program allows students to participate in high

school classes and accumulate credits toward graduation through home-study or as they travel

with their family for employment-related reasons. In Florida, the dominant PASS model

involves home-study for intra-state migrant students whose families tend to pull them out of

school during the academic year for agricultural or fishing work with the family. This work

takes place either in the local school district or involves a temporary move to another county in

Florida.

Information summaries on elementary grade students were developed for Van Buren in

1998 by the guidance counselor at Myakka City Elementary and were designed to transmit

student performance information useful for summer school placement and instructional planning

(e.g., grade level, reading level, name of basal text). This new procedure now supersedes the old

procedure in which Van Buren ISD staff asked the FMIP retroactively to provide any known

information about migrant children who had arrived in Michigan from Florida.

The promise of greater effectiveness in working with interstate migrant students

prompted Manatee County to explore building a similar relationship with school districts in

Texas. Co-funded by the Countyís Migrant Education Program and the Florida Interstate

Migrant Program, Manateeís migrant specialist and other staff traveled in February 1997 to the

Rio Grande Valley to observe the migrant programs in Donna, Weslaco, LaJoya, and

Brownsville. Their objective was to develop personal relationships and knowledge of schooling

practices in Texas for the future benefit of migrant students shared between Florida and Texas.

Promising Practices in Donna, Texas
A-51

In Donna, Texas, migrant funds may be used for a range of interventions that meet the

needs of migrant students, fit with the campus improvement plan, and mesh with the mission and

goal of the school district. All 13 campuses are Title 1 ìschoolwideî programs. Donnaís

Migrant Education Program coordinator does not see a problem with the schoolwide approach to

serving migrant children at the elementary schools. Elementary school services are the same for

all children with the exception of some supplemental clothing and medical/health services that

are provided to migrant children. However, starting at the middle school level, Donnaís Migrant

Education Program coordinator believes it is key to maintain a special focus on the intent and

purposes of the Migrant Education Program.

Donna ISDís educational interventions targeted to the needs of migrant students include:

1) Jostens Integrated Learning System, 2) Help One Student Succeed (HOSTS), 3) Michael

Eaton Reading-Writing Program, 4) SRA reading kits, 5) Content Mastery (in-school tutorial), 6)

Sharon Wells diagnostic-prescriptive instruction, 7) Reading Recovery, 8) Migrant Tutorial, 9)

Project SMART, 10) American Preparatory Institute for grades 10-12, 11) Extended Year

(Summer) Program, 12) Credit Retrieval System, 13) Instructional aides in classrooms, 14)

Essential Learning Systems computer reading program, and 15) six parent involvement

initiatives.

Intervention with secondary-level youth begins with the three Migrant Education

Specialists that work in the district. The specialists are certified counselors who make sure that

credits are accrued, grades are consolidated, and migrant students enroll in a catch-up or

accelerated tutorial program when needed.

In the Spring, the specialists make a series of announcements to any students who are

planning to withdraw early. These announcements ask the students to give the school two weeks

notice of their forthcoming withdrawal (informing both the regular classroom teachers and the

migrant education office). Announcements are not only made via the school intercom but

through pre-programmed telephone messages to the migrant studentsí homes. Upon receiving

notice from a student, a withdrawal record with course information is prepared and given to the

students who plan to enroll in an out-of-state school. In addition, once the receiving school

district gets the withdrawal information in hand, Donna ISD counselors answer calls from

receiving school counselors questioning what will be needed for partial credit or course credit for

the Spring semester.
A-52

Approximately one-third of the migrant student population that withdraws early makes

arrangements to ìwork aheadî via a University of Texas correspondence course (or via a

program prepared by the regular classroom teacher) that prepares them to complete their

coursework through the credit-by-exam option. This option enables students to take a test; if the

student passes the test, full credit for a course or courses is granted before they depart. The other

students are informed that they can take a PASS course, apply for a University of Texas

correspondence course, or follow up with the PASS program offered at the receiving site.

Students often use the PASS program, as it is used more frequently in the school districts

the students move to in other states. The PASS program is slightly more difficult for district

officials in Donna to manage because they must copy all of the materials for the participating

students. In comparison, the University of Texas correspondence course program sends all

needed materials to the school at no cost to the school or students.

When students return in the Fall, they are processed through the migrant education office.

Students are asked if they attended a northern school while they were away. If the student did

attend school, s/he is asked for information on grades received or credits accrued to be submitted

to the registrar and his or her respective counselor. Student information from an enrollment in

Michigan is returned by hand, fax, or mail. Students who accumulated sufficient course credits

(or worked ahead) are enrolled and given a new course schedule. Students who did not enroll in

school, did not accumulate all course credits needed, and/or who missed too much of the first

six-week period, are enrolled in the basic program and assigned to the migrant tutorial program.

Most secondary-level migrant students are placed in the migrant tutorial that has been in

operation for ten years. Migrant students attend the migrant tutorial program during independent

study periods and can use the tutorial to catch up in the Fall or to accelerate instruction in the

Spring. The tutorial program is staffed by three full-time teachers and one part-time certified

teacher. Currently, there is growing pressure to add more teachers, given the number of migrant

students who are enrolled in the tutorial program.

The Tutorial Program. The tutorial program in Donna is housed in a portable building

that is connected to the high school via a short walkway. Inside, the portable unit consists of two

rooms, approximately 30 feet by 30 feet each. The passageway between the two rooms is open.

Throughout the two rooms are six clusters of tables, with 40 students filling almost every seat.

Attendance each period ranges from 35 to 50 students. While the rooms are not quiet, and
A-53

perhaps not ideal for studying, there is not a disruptive level of noise. The walls are adorned

with posters, materials, and school rules usually seen in high school classrooms.

It is a very busy place. About one third of the students work quietly and independently.

Another third observe the researchers who are visiting their classrooms. The remainder are

working with the teachers in small groups or in one-to-one conversations. The students

represent four grade levels and can work in four subject areas: English, History, Mathematics,

and Science. The classes are conducted by four teachers (three work on a full-time basis and one

teacher works part-time). The lead teacher, who carries the largest caseload (English I, II, III,

IV, U.S. History, World Geography, Economics, and World History), came out of retirement to

work in the migrant tutorial. She is joined by three colleagues. One handles Algebra I and II,

Geometry, and Project SMART Geometry; another teaches Algebra I; and a third, another retired

teacher, handles Biology I & II, Chemistry I, Physical Science, and Anatomy & Physiology.

The students attend the tutorial for 90 minutes per day, two to three times per week.

Some students will come to the tutorial during their lunch break to accelerate their studies.

Students often work with instructional ìpacketsî (designed by the tutorial teacher or a classroom

teacher) that include photocopied content and worksheets. In some cases, the teachers have

highlighted the "important" sections in textbooks for the students which are a highly valued

resource by the students. In fact, the highlighted textbooks disappear occasionally from the room

for unauthorized use. Other students use the tutorial to work on PASS programs materials or

University of Texas correspondence courses.

If a student is completing work from the prior year and passes the exit test, the tutorial

teachers sends that studentís grades directly to the registrar. If a student is catching up on work

missed during the current year, the grades are sent to the regular classroom teacher, who makes

the final decision about course grades. An important program component is good

communication with the classroom teacher on two issues. First, the regular classroom teachers

need to agree on the instructional priorities. Second, the regular classroom teachers need to be

assured that the instructional packets are of sufficient academic rigor.

In the 1996/97 school year, over 1,400 instructional packets (each equaling six weeks

work) were completed by the students. For students who have fallen severely behind (beyond

one semester), they also receive preparation for the TAAS in reading, writing, and basic math

skills through the INVEST Learning program or JOSTENS program (both are computer-based

instruction programs).
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As note earlier, Donna ISD offers over 15 different schoolwide educational interventions

for students who are at risk of failing. Several of those interventions are of particular importance

to migrant students and are briefly described below.

TAAS Tutoring. The TAAS Migrant tutoring program serves migrant students in grades

10-12 who have not passed the Exit-Level TAAS. Students are scheduled for the respective

subject area that is needed and are served by a certified teacher. This staff member is trained in

test taking strategies, accelerated instruction and cooperative learning. Successful

implementation of this program is based on the mastery level in the subject areas of need and the

percentage of students passing the Exit Level TAAS Test.

Project SMART (Summer Migrants Access Resources Through Technology). Project

SMART is a migrant-funded summer program that is designated for migrant students who do not

migrate during the summer months. This program serves students in grades PreK-12 and

incorporates language acquisition, reading, science, mathematics, and social studies. The

instructional delivery of this program utilizes televised instruction via public broadcasting

stations and cable operators. Project SMART instructional staff assist the regular summer school

teacher with SMART lessons via television monitors. Staff development for project staff is

incorporated with the training provided for regular summer staff program. Effective program

implementation is measured by results from TAAS, Iowa Test of Basic Skills, passing rate from

one grade level to the next, and the graduation rate of migrant students.

Credit Retrieval System. The Credit Retrieval System provides students an intensive

individualized program to make up the essential elements necessary to pass a subject. Students

who have failed a core subject during a six-week reporting period are eligible for this type of

program. Teachers are responsible for filling out a prescription form and an instructional packet

for each student failing a six-week period. The instructional time is contingent on the quantity of

essential elements that need to be mastered. Students will not earn a grade above 74. In the

ìacceleratedî component of this program, students are provided with a self-paced study program

that enables them with an opportunity to test out of a core area class. The students will have the

option of testing without study guidance. The Credit Retrieval System program is considered

successful if each participating student earns credit in the class or classes enrolled.

Discussion
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The main problem for home-based Texas and Florida migrant youth who are enrolled in

the secondary grades is accruing credits necessary for graduation. In both Texas and Florida,

students who migrate often do not complete their course of study in either their home-base state

or the receiving state. Over time, the consequences of incomplete coursework are low mastery

of subject matter, poor grades, and unsatisfactory course completion. These variables are welldocumented as negative influences on attendance and enrollment in school, credit accrual, grade

promotion, and high school graduation.

For that reason, the primary educational objectives for migrant educators in Donna, Van

Buren, and Manatee County are: 1) to provide supplemental educational opportunities for

students to catch up on instruction missed due to a migrant move, 2) to properly select and place

students in the appropriate instructional programs and/or courses of study needed, and 3) to

ensure the on-going accrual of secondary credits needed for graduation.

Migrant educators in each district recognize the value and need for cooperation,

coordination, and collaboration if they are to attain maximal effectiveness in educating migrant

students. Receiving schools like the summer program in Van Buren need information to

properly design, select, and place students in appropriate instructional programs and/or courses

of study so that they can achieve instructional congruence in what is being taught as defined by

Allington and Johnston (1986). The originating schools in Donna and Manatee need Van Buren

to provide, follow up, or support appropriate instruction to keep the students on track with their

studies so they do not fall so far behind that they give up. They also need Van Buren to send

records that can be used to document course credits when the students return home. Finally, the

receiving schools in Michigan need to rely on staff in Donna and Manatee who are motivated

and able to ensure that students enroll in a catch-up or an accelerated tutorial program if needed,

grades are consolidated, and appropriate credits are accrued.

At the heart of these procedures is communication among the staff of each program,

school, and district. The development of personal relationshipsmore than formal systems or

advanced technologyseems to characterize how these procedures are carried out. The migrant

counselors, teachers, and resource specialists in all three districts talk about the importance of

meeting face-to-face with each other to establish working relationships. They see themselves as

a ìhuman networkî that works to solve barriers migrant children face. For the most part,

secondary-level students are the priority for their energies and attention. Although Texas,

Florida, and Michigan use computers to store some student information, the migrant educators

uses fairly basic technologies by current standards (telephone, fax, mail, in-person meetings,
A-56

hand-carried delivery by students/parents) to transfer information. Since neither Michigan and

Florida are part of the New Generation System (NGS) consortium, the prospects for transfer of

information by electronic means appear low at the current time.

The interventions the ìnetworkî leverages to enhance educational continuity include a

mix of home-grown and state-supported innovations. Migrant student-specific instructional

programs (i.e., in-school tutorials in Texas and the summer evening programs in Michigan) are

key delivery systems. Within these programs, a number of instructional interventions are often

available for students to continue their academic progress (e.g., instruction packets, PASS, UT

correspondence courses, Project SMART, TAAS prep, computer-assisted instruction labs,

credit-by-exam). In several cases (i.e., PASS and University of Texas correspondence courses),

the instructional interventions may be completed as independent studies and do not require

attendance in a tutorial or summer program but do require some forms of institutional support

(e.g., grading and awarding of credits).

Keeping the network alive is no small feat. It requires resources to build and maintain

relationships, to improve information transfer, and to develop, update, and evaluate the

instructional interventions. Special resourceslike the Texas Migrant Interstate Programare

also needed to fill in gaps when the local school counselors can not be reached. Finally, strong

leadership is necessary to marshal and allocate resources.

In cases where dedicated professionals do work together, the positive impact of

coordination efforts on the continuity of instruction for individual students can be striking. But

this approach must address a number of significant challenges if the impact on student

achievement is to be as great as desired by educators in Donna, Van Buren, and Manatee County.

Continuous challenges include providing:

 Time and resources for staff to pursue and maintain a ìrelentlessî

approach to meeting the special needs of secondary migrant students;

 Reasonable caseloads for migrant counselors in the regular school year;

 More efficient information-processing and management capabilities that

eliminate delays in transferring and summarizing migrant student

information (including alternative sources of data when originating

schools are closed during the summer months);
A-57

 Resources to design and update the instructional programs (to meet

changing course requirements and state standards and to effectively

accommodate student needs for particular courses that are not available in

the district in which they temporarily enroll);

 Resources to guide continuous improvement of the interstate efforts via

on-going and objective evaluations of both the process and results;

 A means to guarantee students that partial or full credit for the work they

have done will be granted, or else the economic pressures for students to

work versus study will prove difficult to surmount.

It is interesting to note that the suggestions cited in Volume I by Melaville and Black

(1991) as critical to successful collaboration are evident in the Donna-Van Buren-Manatee

County case. As partners, district staff have spent time learning how their counterparts operate

and have built respect for each otherís needs. They engaged in periodic communications to

establish rapport with key players, to conduct joint planning, and to keep all other staff well

informed. Both formal and informal communication structures were used and their efforts were

supported by higher levels of administration. The sites share a common objective: to help

secondary migrant students accrue the credits needed to graduate from their home-base school.

Although tested at times, the credibility of the districts as partners has been sustained by

commitment to their promises. By enacting these processes, the staff in the Donna-Van

Buren-Manatee County case have demonstrated how personal relationships and communication

can play an important role in promoting institutional understanding of shared responsibilities for

delivering appropriately coordinated educational services to migrant children.

In this case study, educators did report that most of the problems with educational

continuity concern secondary-level students. However, they also stated that summer migrant

education programs, especially in receiving states, make an important contribution to the

academic progress of pre-school and elementary-level migrant students as well. In fact, the

summer programs may be more important now than they were at an earlier time.

Currently, as part of their education reforms, many school districts in Texas, Florida, and

elsewhere are funding extended school-year services to help all children learn what they failed to

master during the regular school year. Migrant children lose the opportunity to participate in and

benefit from these local summer programs when they migrate with their families in search of

temporary or seasonal work. If the migrant children move to a place where there is no summer

program, they will not only stay behind, but will fall farther behind their non-migrant peers who
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are enrolled in the Summer programs offered in the home school district. Thus, ensuring access

to Summer program services for pre-school and elementary-level migrant children is a vital role

that the Migrant Education Program now plays.
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Yuma School District #1, Yuma, Arizona

and

Alisal School District, Salinas, California

The Yuma-Alisal case study differs from the previous cases in three ways. First, it does

not involve migrant students sent from Texas; rather, it involves reciprocal exchanges of students

between two districts: Alisal in Salinas, California and Yuma School District #1 in Arizona.

Second, curriculum alignment, not credit accrual, is the primary issue in this case study because

the two districts share only elementary-level students. Third, it offers the most straightforward

example of direct collaboration between two districts with identifiable shared students and the

sharing of resources toward the resolution of mutually identified problems.

The Partners

Yuma School District #1 (SD1), Yuma, Arizona

Yuma sits on the Colorado River and borders California, only a few miles from the

Mexican border. Migrants in the Yuma area work with lettuce, cauliflower, broccoli, onions,

and citrus. Except for citrus, they are the same kinds of crops as in the Salinas area. Migrants

engage in all aspects of agricultural work, from planting to tending crops to harvesting to

processing. The agricultural area centers around the Salton Sea.

Major employers are D'Arrigio, TNA, Dole, Nunes, Norton, Fresh Choice, and New Star.

TNA employs large numbers of migrants in both the Salinas and Yuma areas. Those families are

more likely to know that work is waiting for them, and in what vicinity. They lose a little less

school time in the transition between sites than do other families.

Most migrant families have a base in either Yuma or Salinas and some own their own

homes. About 30 families who travel between Salinas-Yuma also work in Mexico part of the

year. Since parents are trying to get their children to attend the same school for the entire school

year, the children may have a permanent home with relatives, even if the parents do not.

Yuma has one high school district, grades 9-12, and four K-8 districts that feed into it;

Yuma SD1 is one of the four K-8 districts. The Yuma area represents at least half of all migrant

students in the state of Arizona. Approximately 1200-1400 migrant-qualified students are

enrolled in Yuma SD1. Increasingly, the students stay throughout the school year, but even
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within a school year, there is substantial movement of migrant students among schools within the

district. About half actually move during the year, and at least half of those who move go to the

Salinas valley area. Students from Salinas start coming in mid-October through the end of

November. They return to Salinas at Spring break. The majority lose 3-4 days of school.

Parents try to get their children into school right away, in part so they can start working;

however, they need a street address in order to enroll in school.

Yuma SD1 dedicates about a third of its migrant funds to pre-school programming.

Migrant pre-school is conducted on an outreach basis. Twenty-two migrant instructional aides

are based in schools in the morning and conduct outreach in the afternoons. They identify

locations where groups of parents and children gather, whether in homes or common rooms in

apartment complexes. They provide families with packets of crayons, paper, glue and other

items and show them how to work with children on early childhood and school preparation

skills.

At the elementary level, the instructional aides work within regular classrooms. Ten of

the 17 elementary schools are Title I schoolwide programs, six are targeted assistance sites, and

one does not have a Title I program. In any of these settings, migrant assistants are mandated to

give priority service to migrant students.

Each of the four junior high schools has a migrant aide who works with migrant students

under the direction of classroom teachers, mostly in English as a second language (ESL). The

nature of English as a second language services in Yuma SD1 varies from school to school. It

may be explicit ESL instruction or sheltered-content English classes. Only two schools have

bilingual services; one of them has begun a two-way bilingual education program, and in the

other, the use of Spanish is not very structured. The district encourages teachers to obtain the

state ESL endorsement, using a variety of sources. Most schools have one or two ESL-endorsed

teachers per grade level.

For four years, the district also has employed a junior high school advisor for migrant

students who reviews student records to identify students who need help, so that they may

receive additional assistance to prepare them for high school. The district sponsors summer

school, primarily for Title I students. The summer school charges tuition, but the Migrant

Education Program provides tuition assistance for migrant students to participate in the program.
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Yuma has made local accommodations on behalf of educational continuity for migrant

students, as seen in the decision of Pecan Grove Elementary School not to move to a year-round

schedule because they realized migrant students from Alisal would lose considerable

instructional time due to the mismatch in breaks. A year-round calendar would mean school was

not in session when many students arrived.

Alisal School District, Salinas, California

Salinas, California has a 7-12 secondary district, two K-6 districts (including Alisal), and

two K-8 districts. Alisal Union School District encompasses the eastern side of the city of

Salinas in Monterey County, California. A majority of the district's students are limited in

English proficiency, and 40 percent qualify for Migrant Education. The district serves grades

K-6; when students move into secondary school, they also move into a different school district.

Other districts within Salinas that enroll migrant students, including those who move between

Salinas and Yuma, Arizona have been invited to participate in planning between Alisal and

Yuma but have done so only sporadically.

The Salinas area is known for its agriculture. It was the setting of many of John

Steinbeck's works, including The Grapes of Wrath, which described the movement of farm

workers from Oklahoma to California during the years of the Depression. After World War II,

Hispanic workers, primarily from Mexico, began to dominate farm labor. The major crops in

and around Salinas include lettuce, cabbage, artichokes, cauliflower, strawberries, onions,

asparagus, and Brussels sprouts. Migrant workers are involved in every aspect of the crops, from

planting to harvesting to processing and packaging. The agricultural work season begins in early

Spring and lasts into the Fall. Families that migrate to Yuma leave in the largest numbers around

Thanksgiving and begin to return in February to look for work and housing, if necessary.

A Fall 1997 count revealed 331 Alisal students who travel between Salinas and Yuma.

These students do not differ from other local migrant students in terms of their socioeconomic

status, language proficiency, ethnicity, or other significant characteristics. About half are based

in Salinas; the other half are based in Yuma.

Alisal USD offers a variety of instructional services for migrant students, designed to

overcome the educational problems faced by migrant students in general. Migrant Education in

Alisal USD supports after-school tutoring, Saturday school as well as summer and intersession

school.
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The migrant program also assembles Continuous Learning Packets that give students

additional practice in grade-level skills. These packets are provided for intersessions and

Summer breaks for students not attending formal migrant programs during those times. Parents

and students are oriented to their use, and parents sign off to verify the students have done the

work. In addition, as packets are returned, migrant program staff reviews the work to make sure

it is correct, and if so, may issue another packet.

Recently, educators decided to use summer school to promote faster English acquisition.

Therefore, at the time of the site visit, most instruction was in English, using sheltered methods.

Of 16 summer school teachers, four were paid by "core" funds (basic education funds) and 12

from migrant funds. Although all the Title I sites operate as schoolwides, and students are

placed in classes according to their language proficiency, students in summer school and other

supplemental services are served and grouped by funding source. In other words, the teachers

paid from Migrant Education funds served migrant students exclusively. This follows a state

requirement, not a locally instituted policy.

Problems Facing Migrant Students

In the early 1990s, teachers in Yuma would comment that their migrant students ìleft

doing well and came back falling behind,î referring to both their English proficiency levels and

academic achievement. The decline was most apparent in English. Teachers in Salinas were

saying the same thing about students who left for Yuma. In both cases, the perceptions were

based on observations, not on collected language test scores or academic data. These

observations led to dialogue between the districts that in turn uncovered several sources of

educational disruption.

Students who migrate between Alisal School District in Salinas, California and Yuma,

Arizona suffer educational disruption in a number of ways. First, most of the students are

Spanish dominant, and they receive a bilingual program in Salinas but English-only instruction

in Yuma. Second, many families do not obtain important documents such as withdrawal slips

and other academic information before leaving a district which causes delayed entry into their

new school. Therefore, students arrive at each district without important information. Third,

instructional time is lost during transit and while parents look for housing and work. The issue

of secondary school credit accrual is not relevant in this case study because the two districts

share only elementary students.
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The primary difference between Yuma SD1 and Alisal USD lies in its service to LEP

students. Yuma provides no bilingual services, in part because of the lack of bilingual personnel.

Previously, LEP students were placed strictly according to grade level and language assessment

according to the locally adopted measure, the IDEA Proficiency Test (IPT). Limited English

Proficient migrant students are served for the most part in mainstream classes receiving whatever

language assistance the school provides, usually in the form of ESL. Alisal, as previously stated,

provides a comprehensive bilingual program with substantial instruction in Spanish, but with a

separate set of classes taught through sheltered English methods for families who decline

bilingual services. The transition between all-English and bilingual instruction causes major

disruption for students. Little if any academic information was available to help teachers and

inform instruction at the classroom level in both districts.

Teachers in both districts are hampered by the lack of information about newly arrived

migrant students, particularly their English proficiency and current academic levels. Yuma uses

the IDEA Proficiency Test (IPT). Alisal USD uses the Bilingual Syntax Measure (BSM) as its

language proficiency assessment upon entry. Annually after that, language development is

monitored through a locally developed instrument called the ADEPTAlisal Development of

English Proficiency Test.

While most families know that they should ask for withdrawal slips and health records

before leaving a district, one secretary said that fewer than 50 percent of families inform the

school of their imminent departure.

There are several difficulties in facilitating records transfer, whether between Yuma and

Alisal USD or any other sites. The demise of MSRTS has meant a loss of health and academic

records transfer capabilities. The difficulties are compounded by the need to integrate migrant

records with the new state STAR system, a comprehensive database. The migrant portion is

referred to as COE/STAR, including information on the Certificate of Eligibility.

Local districts in California, such as Alisal USD, do not have migrant-purchased

computers; therefore, the computerized database for COE information can be found only at the

county office. District personnel must obtain COE information from that office by telephone or

fax. State rules prohibit purchase of computers with Migrant Education funds by local districts;

they are reserved for the county programs funded directly by the state. For that reason, students

who migrate between Salinas and Yuma are identified through a COE hand count.
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As noted earlier, Yuma has one high school district, 9-12, and four K-8 districts that feed

into it. Salinas has a 7-12 secondary district, two K-6 districts (including Alisal), and two K-8

districts. The mismatch in the grade spans causes further difficulties in communicating about

students in grades 7-8.

Although the problem of lost instructional time was not specifically addressed by the

districts, both agreed that about three or four days are lost during the move and search for work

and housing. Workers travel between Yuma and Salinas with no particular guarantee of

employment or pre-arranged housing. Often they look for work and procure housing before

enrolling the children in school because the children cannot be enrolled without a street address.

Therefore, several days of school time might be lost before a family secures a street address

qualifying a student to register in a specific school.

Promising Practices

The Yuma-Alisal case focuses on mutually identified needs and solutions; therefore,

much of the information gained from Yuma duplicates the information from Alisal. However,

the two districts operate quite differently, and thus the local accommodations to migrant students

are unique.

Promising Practices in Yuma School District #1

When the problems of migrant students were being discussed locally in the early 1990s,

the Director of Federal Projects in Yuma asked the migrant records clerks to identify the schools

in Salinas the students had attended. She then contacted the head of migrant programs in Alisal

School District and requested a meeting in 1991 to discuss mutual concerns about shared migrant

students.

As a result of this meeting, personnel from both districts agreed that these were ìshared

students, not belonging to one or the other.î That attitude led to agreement to minimize

differences in services, most clearly in the type of language assistance programs provided to

students. Subsequent meetings identified the kinds of information that teachers needed in order

to begin serving newly arrived students appropriately as soon as possible. Use of the internet

and e-mail to exchange data seemed a real possibility for both school districts. Though direct

electronic communication between teacher-to-teacher or site-to-site was preferable because of
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the lag inherent in sending information through a central data repository such as California's

regional offices.

The greatest coordination effort of these trading partners was the creation of a migrant

student identification card by Yuma School District bearing such information as each state's

migrant student ID number, the studentís name, parentsí names, date of birth, prior school, and

teacherís e-mail address. With this information, the receiving school can contact the sending

school and/or teacher to determine correct placement for grade and language of instruction. The

information can also be used to place students in other appropriate services if so indicated.

Teachers can contact each other for information for appropriate classroom instruction and

detailed information on a student's academic performance. E-mail also can be used for students

to maintain contact with former teachers and classmates.

An electronic template was devised by Yuma and contains the kinds of information

agreed to by teachers and administrators from both districts. Two teachers from Yuma and

Alisal piloted the use of the student identification card during 1997-98. Teachers in Yuma and

Alisal began exchanging information about students. Schools have some flexibility about who

and when the electronic template is filled out. In some schools the counselors take the lead,

while in other schools teachers do.

The ID card was slated to be issued to parents at a meeting in December, 1998. Not many

parents come to meetings, so letters about this new card were prepared in English and Spanish.

In some cases, home-school liaison workers delivered the ID card in person. In other cases, they

were mailed.

E-mail communication between teachers promises applications in instruction as well as

information exchange. Migrant students from Yuma are assigned journals to work on while

migrating and family projects such as describing new locales and their experiences. These

assignments can be used to obtain better grades in some classes, including classes at the

receiving site. Students who write journals on the computer can send them via the Internet to

teachers in Salinas. Many California schools do not have computers, so the work is sent to

teachers' home e-mail addresses when teachers so agree. ìE-mail journalsî can start electronic

communication with other teachers.

Anticipated outcomes of the electronic information exchange include easier student

transition with appropriate placement; improved information for teachers about newly arriving
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migrant students; and instructional continuity because students will be able to communicate with

the other site. The e-mail transfer will have a direct impact on placement in language assistance

programs. Teachers will know whether LEP Alisal students arriving in Yuma should be placed

in ESL sites or at Pecan Grove, which has inaugurated a two-way bilingual program. And

students will be able to scan their work and send it to readers at the other site. These are tangible

examples of ways to overcome the academic and social disengagement that Rumberger and

Larson (1998) said results in mobile studentsí dropping out.

The e-mail communication has several possibilities. For example, the migrant counselor

at Pecan Grove used the term ìattachment disorderî in describing an emotional state migrant

students suffer when they leave friends and familiar surroundings behind. That term strongly

echoes the ìsocial disengagementî identified by Rumberger and Larson. She sees the potential

of an ìelectronic pen-palî arrangement through the technology.

At 9th grade, e-mail communication between the districts would offer a greater

opportunity of credit continuity. It would help erase ambiguity about content of cognate courses.

The system has also major implications for academic counseling.

Obstacles to Implementation. At intake, staff largely rely on students or their parents to

provide the information that they came from Alisal (or any other given district.) Parents have

gotten better at notifying schools that they are leaving, but it is continues to be a problem.

There are some legal issues that affect the information that can be sent. At the time this

study concluded, a decision still needed to be made about the level at which the actual template

information will be shared: school or teacher. The school level would affect placements, such as

grade level and language program, and the teacher level would be more detailed and encompass

decisions about instruction.

The problem with the e-mail information exchange was related to hardware: Alisal does

not have the same degree of hardware capabilities as Yuma. Every teacher in Yuma is on line;

this is not the case in Alisal.

Promising Practices in Alisal USD

To provide instructional continuity to students, migrant staff at Alisal USD are careful to

enroll students from Yuma SD#1 into the sheltered English strand of LEP instruction as it
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closely reflects Yumaís curriculum. However, newly assigned resource teachers may not be

aware of this practice, and some Yuma students may be misplaced into bilingual classes.

Yuma is moving toward more sheltered English instruction as opposed to mainstream

with some ESL support; this will bring the two districts' methods of serving LEP migrant

students into closer alignment. Meetings between staff of the two districts have determined

equivalencies among the Bilingual Syntax Measure, ADEPT and IDEA Language Proficiency

Test to allow language proficiency information to be mutually understood and communicated.

Obstacles to Coordination. More formal, complete, and timely exchange of migrant

student information is hampered by the lack of direct access to relevant technology. Migrant

student information for Alisal USD is housed at the county office and cannot be accessed

directly by Alisal's migrant staff; it must be requested by telephone or fax. The lack of a

computerized migrant student database in Alisal makes it difficult to retrieve student information

that could be used to assess effectiveness, such as language proficiency and/or academic

achievement scores. This kind of information must be retrieved by looking through student

folders by hand. Essential student information is kept on the main district database, but staff

reported difficulties getting access to the data. Therefore, the migrant program personnel

perceive a need for a separate migrant student database. However, the Alisal USD does not have

the technological requirements, such as computers, nor does it have direct access to the COE

information kept at the county office. Individual teachers do have computers, so the

teacher-to-teacher e-mail exchange is feasible, and was planned for piloting during the 1998-99

school year. The county office has agreed to provide the district one IBM computer; however,

one per building would be needed to allow the e-mail system to relay information or information

requests from the school to the district to the county.

Discussion

The ID card solution was devised in the series of meetings held between the districts

since 1992. As described above, the meetings identified different practices in language

assessment and language support programs. They led to agreement on the kinds of information

teachers needed to facilitate students' entry into the new school and classroom. When the student

identification card is fully implemented it will help avoid duplication of a myriad of services,

such as dental screening and testing. Staff at the receiving school will know what kinds of

support services the student has received, such as extended day tutoring. Knowing levels of

academic performance will also tell the receiving staff how to gear services.
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Interstate coordination between Yuma and Alisal has come about because of the

perseverance of individuals at each end. Both districts have modified local instructional or

scheduling practices to enhance continuity and achieve a degree of congruence. They have

identified needed student information and set in process a means of sharing that information

electronically.

The migrant students shared by Yuma and Alisal face a set of problems

commonly encountered by migrant students everywhere:

 Instructional time lost during the move and search for housing and

employment;

 Lack of information to help inform instruction at the classroom level;

 Dissimilarities between the language assistance programs for LEP migrant

students.

In Yuma, solutions to the first problem of lost instructional time consist primarily of

tutorial assistance by migrant aides in regular classrooms and use of Migrant Education funds to

help migrant students attend summer school. Alisal has devised several local solutions to the

problem of lost instructional time, such as intersession study packets, summer school,

after-school tutorials and Saturday classes.

Solutions to the problems of lack of information and dissimilarities between language

assistance programs required strong coordination between Yuma SD1 and Alisal School District.

Coordination between the districts has been initiated and sustained primarily at the level of the

special programs offices, including Migrant Education. At times it has included other

administrators, specialists, and some teachers. To date, coordination of services for migrant

students has occurred in the form of unilateral modification of local instructional practices.

Specifically, Alisal USD has expanded its English instructional component and placed students

who spend part of the school year in Yuma in its sheltered English strand. Yuma has endeavored

to strengthen its services to LEP students. It does not have the resources to offer bilingual

instruction, but it is moving toward a model similar to Alisal USD's sheltered English program.

The steps taken in Yuma and Alisal to create a common body of shared student

information reflect effort expended toward coordination. Without giving up their local language
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assessment practices, both districts have coordinated their practices to achieve mutual

understanding of student test scores to guide their placement in language assistance programs.

The student ID card and e-mail system may lead to greater mutual understanding of student

needs and thus to more consistent instruction. In this way, these efforts may promote greater

curricular and methodological congruence, thereby lessening educational discontinuity for

migrant students.

The Yuma-Alisal case may offer special lessons to trading partners who share substantial

numbers of identifiable, individual students who regularly travel back and forth between two

districts. It shows how direct communication between two districts can lead to the identification

and resolution of mutual problems with sustained communication, the commitment of some local

resources, and the willingness to change local practices. The fact that these two districts share

only elementary students simplified the situation. The list of needed information did not include

the complexities of graduation requirements and partial credits that posed such challenges in the

other cases. Nevertheless, timely information access and understanding of each other's

instructional practices were critical to lessening the effects of educational discontinuity.

The principal coordination strategy, the e-mail information exchange, holds promise for

applications at the district, school, and classroom level. At the district level, the consistent

information the ID cards and e-mail templates provide may allow better planning because it can

focus on large numbers of students from a single sender. This case showed how identifying

large numbers of shared students resulted in modified curriculum practices in both districts. At

the school level, the information allows more timely, accurate classroom and program

placement. At the teacher level, the information allows within-class placement and instruction

that meets individual needs. As the discussion noted, the system may allow students to build

more stable connections and overcome feelings of isolation by allowing them to remain in

contact with teachers and friends. All of these potential benefits accrued from the identification

of a shared problem and the commitment of time and personal attention toward its resolution.
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COORDINATING MECHANISMS: ìTHE REST OF THE STORYî

The trading partners study found several coordinating mechanisms (which included both

special resources and educational innovations) that had been put in place on the part of state

offices of migrant education or in collaborative consortia among state directors and other

interested persons. These mechanisms repeatedly appeared as important elements for

coordination and continuity of migrant educational services. They provided a type of

metaphorical glue or cement that allowed local projects to align local programs with the

studentsí home bases, particularly in the case of districts that received students from Texas.

Also, they provided the means for districts to gain access to the information needed to make

appropriate placements, calculate partial credits, and ensure that local coursework was posted to

the studentsí records in their schools of origin.

For these reasons, the mechanisms merit description in this report. Indeed, without these

descriptions, the preceding case studies are not complete. They provide further information on

what migrant educators have done to collaborate and, through their collaborative efforts, devise

creative solutions to the problems migrant students face. The mechanisms are presented and

discussed under three categories in which they cluster naturally:

1. Technical Assistance and Support

2. Instructional Technologies

3. Information Technologies

Technical Assistance and Support

Texas Migrant Interstate Project (TMIP)

The Texas Migrant Interstate Project (TMIP) was established in 1980 to address the

needs of both ìinterstateî and ìintrastateî migrant students because the State Director of the

Texas Migrant Education Program recognized that Texas was sending students to 40 different

states (the current number is 44 states), and would need to work actively with the receiving states

to improve the continuity of education for migrant students.
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From its inception, TMIP was intended to increase the graduation rate of migrant students

by promoting coordination/cooperation of migrant education programs that provide services to

migrant students. The Texas Migrant Interstate Program focuses most of its efforts on

secondary-level credit accrual; in particular, it provides follow-up on calls that require

interventions to ensure students are granted credit for work done in several states.

The Texas Migrant Interstate Program is funded by the Texas Education Agency (TEA).

The Pharr-San Juan-Alamo School District serves as the Programís fiscal agent. The Texas

Migrant Interstate Programís office is in Pharr, Texas which is located within Region 1 in the

lower Rio Grande Valley, where initially 75 percent (currently 65 percent) of the migrants in

Texas lived. Up until a few years ago, Pharr had the largest number of migrant students in the

nation and even now enrolls over 5,000. Currently, nearby Weslaco and La Joya enroll larger

numbers of migrants.

The Texas Migrant Interstate Program began its activities with information dissemination

and training about the Migrant Education Program in general and the national Migrant Student

Record Transfer System (MSRTS). In 1982, TMIP introduced the annual Secondary Credit

Accrual Workshop to provide educators with detailed instruction on how to facilitate credit

accrual through a variety of activities involving information exchange, matching course content,

and the calculation of partial credits.

The annual workshop, now in its 17th year, is convened for one full day of presentations

and meetings, followed by several days of fact-finding visits to schools in the Rio Grande.

During the workshop, concurrent sessions provide updated information on Texasís secondary

education requirements, on alternative opportunities for students to gain course credits, and on

new uses of technology in information transfer and instruction. For example, Texas is moving

from the ìessential elementsî to the new ìessential knowledge and skillsî (TEKS). The Texas

Migrant Interstate Programís Director noted that ìif the curriculum changes a little bit in Texas,

then the upstream states must adjust their programs if the students are going to get credit.î

Another very important feature of the annual workshop are the ìverificationî meetings.

In these meetings, out-of-state participants meet face-to-face with local school district staff to

verify credits immediately and address unresolved difficulties in credit accrual for individual

students. These meetings not only help to resolve the credit accrual problems, but perhaps

equally important, provide an opportunity to create and sustain the personal relationships

necessary to solve problems effectively and provide adequate follow-through. In the days
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following the workshop, TMIP also schedules several trips for out-of-state participants to

schools in the valley. During these field trips, out-of-state participants can see and hear firsthand local school faculty discuss their curricula and programs. The participants can also meet

with individual schools or districts as necessary.

Over the last ten years, a core group of participants have come regularly to the workshop

to sustain their connections. But the workshop also supports new personnel who need to make

those connections and find out what they need to do to satisfy the requirements of a Texas

school. This is particularly pertinent for new staff, who could expend their own time and

studentsí time on services that will not accrue course credits.

An example of the value of this workshop occurred in 1998, a counselor from Maine

came to meet with people at a school in Brownsville, Texas because the migrant students (who

were now coming to Maine in the summer) were not enrolling in the Summer program. The

students did not enroll because the Brownsville school would not accept the work they had done

in the previous Summer program for credit. The counselor from Maine met with the counselor at

the Brownsville school and found out what they needed to do in order to have the students get

credit if they participated in the Summer program.

Twenty states participated in the 1998 workshop, and there are 17 states that consistently

attend. Participants include local administrators, counselors, and people responsible for

awarding credit. In the early years, state Directors of Migrant Education Programs came to the

workshop, but TMIP found out that it was critical to bring in the people who actually worked

with the instructional programming and record systems. Some states now send six or seven

people because of the different sites they operate within the state and the opportunity to talk with

the appropriate administrators, principals, and counselors invited from Texas. In addition, TMIP

invites registrars, who with local counselors in each school district to award credits to migrant

students. Last year, 17 of the 20 regions in Texas sent a representative to the workshop and 50

school districts also sent a representative.

When TMIP staff talk with prospective participants about the value of attending the

annual Secondary Credit Accrual Workshop, they emphasize the value of personal relationships:

It is a chance to sit across the table, face-to-face, with the people you are going to

be dealing with throughout the year. It's a little expensive, but once you get to

know each other, it works much, much better. You get to know each other by
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name and you are able to pick up the phone and talk when any issue comes up.

(Director, TMIP)

All three of the professional staff at TMIP (a Director and two program specialists) are

certified counselors in Texas and remain up-to-date on the requirements of every graduation plan

available in Texas. They can provide current, expert advice on the proper courses of action with

respect to credit accrual, grade promotion, and graduation.

The most important service provided by TMIP is the ìfollow-upî by staff whenever an

educator or student calls in for information or help. As one staffer said:

During the course of any day, people contact TMIP for assistance. Each call is

recorded in on a contact log. As counselors, we then call the person and assist

them with their request or problem and document our work on a response log. If

a school district up north wants student information, they call us. We get them

together with the person they need to talk with in the Texas school district. Once

they start to have the conversation, we can step out and let them work it out. It is

always better to let them deal with each other directly than through a third person.

(TMIP Program Specialist)

Locating a studentís record, finding the right person to talk to, or being able to make an

appropriate referral are a large part of the TMIP staffís work. In making appropriate referrals,

TMIP staff rely on the NGS, the Texas Migrant Education Program Directory, the National

Migrant Education Program Summer School Directory, a directory listing all schools in the state

of Texas, a Directory of Services for Migrant and Seasonal Farm Workers, and a listing of all the

universities in Texas and their entrance requirements and scholarship information.

Increasingly NGS is becoming the key tool. States who participate with NGS can get

usually the information they need almost instantly, on their own. However, if a state is not a

NGS member, TMIP queries NGS for them to obtain the required student data. If for some

reason the information is not on NGS, TMIP then calls the schools directly to get the information

requested by the state.

Although NGS has demonstrated how it can link schools to current information, at the

time of this study only 12 of the 44 states that share students with Texas had adopted the NGS.

To help other school and district personnel make direct connections on their own, TMIP
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disseminates the ìprogram directoryî with the names of contact persons, addresses, and

telephone and fax numbers of schools in Texas that are serving migrant children.

In cases where local policies present a barrier to credit accrual, the credit accrual work of

TMIP has been facilitated by the appointment of a Migrant Services Coordinator. The role of the

Migrant Services Coordinator is to advocate for migrant children, coordinate migrant projects at

the district level, and coordinate with other migrant staff and projects (such as TMIP).

Whenever TMIP staff (on behalf of an upstream state or another district) have a problem with a

local school policy, they can call on the Coordinator to help TMIP handle what they need to do

to award credit. The Texas Migrant Interstate Program also supports other services, such as the

Texas Exemplary Recognition Program, the Texas Migrant Student Transfer Packet System, the

out-of-state TAAS Testing Program, and Project SMART for curriculum dissemination.

In its work with the Texas Exemplary Recognition Program, TMIP selects the top ten

students in the state (often they are the valedictorian or salutatorian of their entire class).

Candidates must be migrant students who migrated during their high school years and have been

assisted by the MEP. Each year TMIP receives over 250 applicants. Although just the top 10

are honored at the annual Texas Migrant Education Conference, all 250 are recognized in a book

that is published and distributed to school counselors. The book is used to show other students

that these students (as role models) can succeed; in this way, success for other migrant students

becomes tangible. One student from Progreso migrated to seven states and still was able to be

the salutatorian of her class, indicating that personal effort, supported by coordination initiatives,

can be successful.

The Texas Migrant Student Transfer Packet System or, as it is often more commonly

referred to, the ìTexas Red Bag,î is a relatively new service for TMIP. At first, the ìred bagî

was a temporary means of transferring student records when the MRSTS was eliminated. It was

an actual red bag issued to migrant families to carry school records with them and had TMIPís

toll-free 800 number on it if questions arose. During its early implementation, migrant educators

in Texas soon recognized that the MSRTS might have had an unintended consequence:

decreasing migrant parentsí awareness of and active involvement in the record transfer process.

Texas wanted all migrant parents to be more aware of this need and to take all the records with

them. Therefore, a temporary solution was transformed into a system of educating and assisting

parents to be responsible for requesting and bringing their children's academic records with them

as they traveled.
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The general idea for ìtransfer packetsî is that parents or students will take the pertinent

records with them, take out their records and add new records before they leave each school

attendance area, as they move from state to state. The information contained on a studentís

records is intended to help with enrollment in school immediately upon arrival in the receiving

state, to facilitate proper placement of the student in the right classes, to indicate where the

student left off in his studies and what is needed for completing course credits, and to provide

contact information if follow-up is needed to make credit accrual decisions. Currently the ìred

bagî is no longer used as districts provide parents with their own folders or boxes to hold student

records.

There were two phases in the implementation of the project. In the first phase, all parents

were informed that the MSRTS was no longer in operation and that they would need to use the

transfer packet to exchange student information. This information was communicated through a

video and also through trainer-of-trainer workshops for staff with migrant program

responsibilities at all of the Education Service Centers (ESCs). These ESCs then provided

information to parents in the school districts. In the second phase, TMIP put together a set of

materials on the education system to empower parents to know their rights and what they need to

do. Staff at TMIP did this because many schools do not access the NGS. Parents are provided

the materials (i.e., Migrant Parentís Resource Guide to Understanding the Educational System)

during locally scheduled training sessions. Districts have been asked to train all previously

identified migrant parents over a multi-year period and then provide training for new parents

only (this training is already in place within the valley). Data on how many parents have been

trained has been sent to TMIP and is now being entered in NGS.

At present, the transfer packet has been in use in most of the states that share students

with Texas. Currently, most districts in the valley accept information brought to the school in a

transfer packet. Sometimes if the course name differs from the name of a course in that district,

the school district may need to call the receiving state to confirm the appropriateness of the

grade/credits accrued. Evaluation data is collected only on the number of parents trained.

The out-of-state Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) test is the last new major

project for TMIP. The Texas Assessment of Academic Skills measures the statewide curriculum

in reading and mathematics at grades 3 through 8 and the exit level; in writing in grades 4, 8, and

the exit level; and in science and social studies at grade 8. Satisfactory performance on the

TAAS exit-level tests is prerequisite to a high school diploma. Persons with access to test

materials must maintain and preserve the security and confidential integrity of the test.
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In previous years, the TAAS was administered in March, and then in October. This

timing meant that migrant students often missed both opportunities to take the TAAS. Ensuring

that migrant students had sufficient opportunities to take the TAAS was important because testtaking experience helps students, particularly when they must pass the TAAS later in order to

graduate from high school. Again, under the direction of the State Director of Migrant

Education, TMIP was charged with supporting an out-of-state TAAS testing program to provide

migrant students with additional opportunities to take the TAAS and to remove one more

obstacle to graduation.

When the TAAS first became a part of Texas state policy, the state did not allow anyone

outside the state to administer the test. In the first year (1992), TMIP staff and TAAS

coordinators from local school districts visited different states and administered the test. At the

time this study was conducted, a cooperative agreement has been signed by both Texas and any

receiving state that wishes to administer the TAAS. Training to administer the TAAS is

conducted at the National Migrant Education Conference. The training lasts 90 minutes to 2

hoursnot a barrier for staff interested in acquiring this skill. Participants also receive copies of

the forms, test guidelines, and study guides.

Texas Migrant Interstate Program staff provide approval to administer out-of-state TAAS

tests through an interstate registration process with Summer migrant programs. States receiving

migrant students prepare lists of students who are interested in taking the TAAS; TMIP then

confirms that the students are eligible to take the TAAS (via school district or the Texas

Education Agencyís test processing center). If the student is not already on the database (thus

confirming eligibility to take the test), TMIP calls the school district to check on the studentís

status to take the TAAS for the first time. To be eligible to take the TAAS, students should have

completed their sophomore year in Texas and completed freshman English and Math. The

Texas Migrant Interstate Program then sends the information and registration list to the local site,

which tests on the designated date, returns the test roster to TMIP, and sends the test materials

directly to Iowa City, Iowa to be scored.

In the first year 159 students were tested, and that number went up to 483. Currently that

number is decreasing (238) because staff in Texas are doing a better job, the receiving states are

getting better material to work with, and more students are passing the TAAS the first, second, or

third time.
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The Texas Migrant Interstate Program has a rich history of supporting interstate

coordination initiatives. In the early 1980s, TMIP sent ìinterstatersî to upstream states to spend

the Summer working as counselors with the students who arrived from Texas. The contacts

made across the states proved helpful; these contacts formed a base for future efforts.

The TMIP has also worked too build awareness of the Migrant Education Program

among Superintendents of Schools. This activity is supported annual by the Educational Service

Center I. The Executive Director of Region I believed that unless the superintendent becomes

committed to the success of the Migrant Education Program, the coordination among districts

would not be supported at a level needed for staff to succeed. She has invited the 38

superintendents in the valley to visit at least once one of the states that receive the largest number

of migrant students (i.e., Washington, Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio).

The TMIP staff is the core of its service delivery capabilities. They build relationships

with both Texas school faculty and out-of-state migrant educators or district personnel. TMIP

staff work with district and school personnel on a daily basis to work out the difficulties in

helping migrant children to accrue credits, have grades consolidated, take the TAAS, and involve

and empower parentsall efforts geared to help migrant students graduate from high school.

Summary of Texas Migrant Interstate Program (TMIP) Services. As described above,

the TMIP offers comprehensive services to assist in the coordination of educational services for

migrant students nationwide. Key services include:

 Conducting training about secondary credit accrual and graduation issues

at national conferences, state conferences, and out-of-state conferences.

 Helping build relationships between educators in different districts and

states via its conferences and telephone conference calls.

 Providing general advice to states about what students need to accomplish

to graduate in Texas (especially the new graduation requirements and

Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills).

 Working with school counselors to confirm what courses are needed by

individual Texas students.

 Interpreting out-of-district student information for Texas districts.

 Supporting credit accrual via the ìtransfer packet.î
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 Using NGS as a tool to check on student information.

 Using mail/fax of documents to support credit accrual.

 Overseeing the out-of-state TAAS testing program.

 Disseminating contact materials (i.e., site directories)

 Promoting migrant student graduation through the Exemplary Migrant

Student Project.

 Disseminating Project SMART Materials.

 Disseminating informational videos (e.g., the migrant experience).

 Conducting the parent training on the education system for some of the

Education Service Centers.

Florida Migrant Interstate Project

The Florida Migrant Interstate Project (FMIP) is headquartered in Immokalee, Florida. It

was initiated in 1992 and is funded through the Florida Department of Education as a resource

center that coordinates activities for states and districts that send or receive Florida migrant

students. The FMIP is the information hub for migrant education in Florida and maintains a

paper file system of all migrant kids in the state. The FMIP's objectives are to:

 Increase the number and percent of Florida migrant students identified in Florida

and in receiving states;

 Facilitate curriculum-matching between states;

 Serve as a resource center to the Florida Department of Education on inter-state

coordination issues;

 Empower migrant parents to get them more involved in their children's school

success.

Services provided by FMIP to meet these objectives include:
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 Sharing education and health information with receiving states on Florida

migrant students through the FMIP Newsletter, interstate meetings, and

telephone/fax contacts;

 Conducting follow-up on interstate identification and recruitment issues;

 Providing training and technical assistance at local, state, regional, and

national workshops;

 Assisting receiving states make direct contact with Florida home-base

schools through the Florida Schools Directory and telephone/fax contacts;

 Coordinating curriculum-matching between states;

 Empowering parents to play a more active role in their childrenís

education through information provided on two toll free telephone lines.

The annual Directory of Florida Contacts for Florida Home-based Migrant Students (the

ìDirectoryî) is FMIPís cornerstone resource for both Florida districts and the receiving states.

District staff use school contact information in the Directory to connect with a sending or

receiving district. If necessary, districts can call FMIP on one of its 800 numbers for assistance.

The FMIP will make the appropriate contacts directly and try to resolve the information request.

Calls are evenly divided between requests for individual student information and for information

on educational programs for migrant students. About two-thirds of the calls come from

receiving districts in other states. Along with the Directory, the phone and the fax are the

primary vehicles used by FMIP for sharing information. A print vehicle for disseminating

information, the FMIP Newsletter, goes to all FMIP contacts throughout the nation, primarily to

Michigan, Texas, and Florida.

The bilingual teacher exchange is an example of curriculum-matching and came about

because of a request from Pennsylvania for help in placing bilingual teachers to work with

Spanish-speaking migrant students in that state's Summer programs. The exchange expanded to

include eight states. In summer 1998, FMIP sent 12 bilingual teachers to the eight states,

including three to Pennsylvania. Language assistance now includes Haitian Creole along with

Spanish. The FMIP pays for the teachers' round-trip air transportation, hotel lodging, and car

rental for the four to six weeks of the Summer program. The receiving state pays the teachers'

Summer salary.
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The FMIP has maintained a close connection with ESCORT (originally the Eastern

Stream Center on Resources and Training), which provides material resources to the FMIP

through from headquarters in Oneonta, New York. ESCORT staff provide additional technical

assistance to FMIP through its subcontract with the Comprehensive Center in Tampa operated by

ETS. ESCORT also provides financial help to FMIP by funding its toll free 800 phone number

parent hotlines. ESCORT has an informal relationship with FMIP; there is no formal plan or

budgeted cooperative activity. Staff from both offices communicate weekly, and ESCORT staff

represent Florida migrant education and FMIP at interstate conferences. They do this primarily

by presenting ìFlorida 101î at in-service conferences. This consists of an overview of the

services FMIP offers to migrant students and educators; use of the Florida Schools Directory;

awareness of the Florida State Assessment and its test administration dates; Florida graduation

requirements; and information on migrant advocacy.

Like the Texas Interstate Migrant Project, FMIP sponsors an annual interstate meeting

that is broader in focus than that offered by TMIP. The FMIP maintains a K-12 focus, whereas

Texas targets secondary credit accrual. The FMIP brings in the staff of receiver states operating

Summer programs (principals, guidance counselors, teachers) so that they can meet with their

Florida counterparts and become familiar with the sending districts.

Typically, 200 people attend the meeting, representing 15-17 states. The first day features

a keynote speaker and breakout sessions in which attendees discuss interstate issues and

concerns in migrant education such as block scheduling. The conference also highlights exhibit

booths from the Florida districts where staff from receiving states can visit and become familiar

with the originating districts. On the second and third days of the conference, staff from

receiving states visit those Florida school districts who share migrant students with them. This is

an opportunity to network, plan programs, and develop personal relationships among staff of the

originating and receiving districts.

Instructional Technologies

Project SMART

Project SMART (Summer Migrants Access Resources through Technology) is a national

distance learning instructional program that is broadcast via satellite from ESC-20 in San

Antonio, for eight weeks over the Summer. This broadcast is targeted to Texas migrant students

who live temporarily in other participating states around the country. Project SMART is
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intended to help migrant students earn credits needed for high school graduation. The TMIP

disseminates Project SMART materials; it also conducts workshops and presentations on

SMART. Project SMART can be implemented in various ways, including site-based and

home-based models.

In the ìsite-based model,î exemplified in this study in Sidney, Montana, students

participate interactively in a classroom setting with the SMART television and their local

ìSMART Partnerî teachers who prepare the students for the instructional broadcast, facilitate

interactions by telephone with the SMART television teacher, and conduct follow-up instruction

and assessment. Alternatively, students can view the live instruction later on videotape or view a

previously taped lesson. Only high school courses are offered for credit. One high school course

is taught each Summer on a revolving basis. The videotapes offer students the opportunity to

view the current course at a later time if they cannot attend class, or they can view a previously

broadcast course if that fits their course accrual needs better.

The home-based SMART model is implemented for migrant students who remain over

the summer in Texas. Migrant home visitors function as ìSMART Partnersî in this model.

Expected outcome indicators for SMART include accrual of high school credits, grade

promotion, and high school graduation.

The Educational Service Center-20 is the instructional delivery and support center for the

Project SMART. Project SMART is funded by the Texas Education Agency through the state

legislature using the Pharr-San Juan-Alamo ISD (PSJA) as its fiscal agent. The ESC-20

broadcasts SMART to 42 states, including Texas. More broadly, ESC-20 is a private non-profit

organization with a separate board of directors and a distance learning focus. It operates the Star

Schools consortium, for example, in conjunction with the State Education Agencies from Texas,

Illinois, and North Carolina.

The ECS-20 became involved with distance learning in 1985 by developing the capability

to deliver curricula to small schools in Texas who otherwise could not meet the added credit

demands placed on them from curriculum restructuring in Texas at that time. The ESC-20 had

the requisite distance learning infrastructure in place when first approached by the state migrant

director to develop a distance learning curriculum for migrant education. The ECS-20 then

submitted a proposal that the Texas Education Agency funded as a pilot project with Montana.
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In 1993, a national advisory committee of migrant directors and practitioners

recommended expanding Project SMART beyond the pilot phase. The Public Broadcasting

Service (PBS) then picked up the broadcasts for national showing. With expanded funding,

ESC-20 set about developing the SMART curriculum and its instructional delivery at the San

Antonio site. The Summer broadcasts are designed to encourage secondary-level credit accrual

in Texas and to offer Texas-based students with culturally relevant instruction while they are in

another state over the Summer. Project SMART is also broadcast in Texas over the Summer as a

supplemental home instruction program.

The ESC-20 controls the development and delivery of the SMART broadcasts but is not

responsible for the selection and implementation of specific SMART models. It is important for

local site staff to know how to match appropriate SMART models to the needs of the migrant

students. One of the problems ESC-20 faces is the need to deliver onsite training on demand,

including consultations on the models.

Project SMART began as a pilot project between Montana and Texas, but by 1998 it had

grown to serve approximately 35,000 migrant students in 17 states. The operating cost per site is

about $2,000 for the satellite dish, curriculum, and related materials.

PROJECT ESTRELLA

As described earlier in this volume, Project ESTRELLA supports interstate coordination

through the use of laptop computers. It is one of six technology projects funded by the Office of

Migrant Education and works with the Migrant Education Programs of Montana, Illinois, New

York, and Texas, all of which offer evening programs in the Summer with instructional staff and

components. Participating local sites in Texas are Pharr-San Juan-Alamo (PSJA), Weslaco, La

Jolla, and Eagle Pass. 

Project ESTRELLA provides the core curriculum and support systems to enhance the

services offered through NovaNET. It relies on the participating statesí direct instructional

support through certified teachers. Summer programs make a commitment to find instructional

personnel with appropriate areas of expertise to support the NovaNET courses.

Project ESTRELLA selects high school migrant students based on nominations from

their school sites and the Summer sites in receiving states. Students are selected on the basis of
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demonstrated dependability and likelihood of success, although they are not necessarily the most

academically talented.

Students are allowed to work on only one NovaNET course at a time. This policy is

intended to encourage completion of courses attempted, by removing the possibility of taking on

too much and not completing the work.

ESTRELLA works with counselors at the studentsí high schools to determine which

courses to offer. Priority is given to courses where the students have partial credit, to allow them

to complete those courses. Priority is also given to courses students have failed in previous

attempts, or where credit was not given for any reasons. They try to keep the students on track

for graduation. The project intended to give priority to juniors and seniors, but currently, most

participants are freshmen and sophomores. The project intends to work closely with seniors for

post-secondary enrollment, for example, helping them with application information and writing

the college entrance essay.

The ESTRELLA Interstate Student Coordinator works with school counselors to recruit

student participants, trouble-shoots technical problems, and monitors student participation. The

Coordinator monitors students' time on-line along with their coursework progress using data

collected by the system. The Interstate Student Coordinator also works with counselors to ensure

that credit is posted to transcripts. He continues to work with students even after they have

returned to their home schools in Texas to monitor their progress and see if they still need to

work on the Nova Net curriculum.

Each State uses ESTRELLA differently. New York's program operates through BOCES,

and the state agencies are the partners in Montana and Texas. New York and Montana have

contracts with Illinois. Texas does not have a contract but contributes in-kind support. Contracts

specify that the states have primary responsibility for implementation within their jurisdictions.

The contracts also specify unique partner responsibilities. BOCES oversees the cybermentors

component, and Montana is responsible for professional development. The Texas Education

Agency assists in liaison with the Texas districts.

For the cybermentors component, the Project ESTRELLA contracts with the University

of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, which has a service learning orientation and a special

interest in minority students. Students at the university volunteer time as mentors for

participating high school students. They maintain communication via e-mail and serve as role
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models, letting the high school students know that college is possible for them. They provide

information on college life and the campus experience, such as assistance with application

processes and applications for financial aid. Many migrant studentsí families have no experience

with college, so this personal contact is important for them. Project ESTRELLA supports a

program assistant at the university to disseminate information, recruit mentors, and provide

monthly training for the mentors.

The mentors have 24-hour computer lab access with e-mail provided through the

university's system. Some of the mentors have laptops loaned through another migrant program.

The high school students have e-mail through NovaNET.

Project ESTRELLA also includes a Visual Learning component, through the Polaroid

Education Program. It emphasizes student writing and incorporation of visual images in writing.

Student writing is published in Project ESTRELLAís newsletter; a recent issue featured three

articles about recent floods in Eagle Pass, where some of the students live. The articles included

poetry and photographs.

Project ESTRELLA also focuses on parents and attempts to involve them in their

childrenís education. The Interstate Student Coordinator has taken the lead on this component.

When migrant students express interest in Project ESTRELLA, parents are required to attend an

orientation before their children will be considered for the project. At the orientation, the

projectís benefits are explained to parents, as well as their own responsibilities, such as providing

enough time to their children to be on line.

After students are accepted to participate in the project, training is provided and laptops

are distributed. Parents must sign a contract to notify the project of any problems; they must file

a police report if the laptop is stolen. As part of the training, parents and other family members

learn how to use the laptops. Ease with laptops is encouraged by the project so family members

can model for younger children in the family. However, parentsí main responsibility is to

provide a home environment conducive to learning.

The project currently works with Global School Net on professional development and

intends to submit a plan to the U.S. Office of Migrant Education. This component would bring

people from upstream states for hands-on experience with the laptops and Office 97, to show

them how to integrate the technology with their own teaching. It also will address methods of
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working collaboratively among schools and with students. The training will be followed by

on-line workshops and by presentations at selected state Migrant Education Conferences.

University of Texas (UT) Migrant Student Program

The University of Texas (UT) Migrant Student Program is an independent study option

for students who have fallen behind in their schoolwork because of illness, work, or family

moves; these students need a flexible way to earn high school credits. The UT Program allows

students to study independently using an assigned study guide and text. An accredited UT

teacher grades the completed lessons by mail and sends the student individualized written

feedback on their lesson performance. The UT teacher is also available to the student through a

tollfree 800 number for telephone conferences. The UT Program is funded by the Texas

Education Agency (TEA) and offers 22 semester-length high school print-based courses and two

computer-based courses (using IBMs, MacIntoshes, or laptops) in English language arts,

mathematics, social studies, science, health, home economics, and Spanish. University of Texas

Program courses are approved for credit by the Texas Education Agency and count toward Texas

graduation requirements. Print-based and computer-based courses are also offered by UT in

math and language arts to prepare students for the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills

(TAAS). Six models are available for implementing the UT Migrant Student Program. They

include:

 On-Site Grading

 Correspondence Courses

 Computer Courses

 Credit-by-Exam

 Partial Work

 Teleconferencing

For example, the correspondence model is typically combined with on-site grading by

interstate migrant students. Texas-based migrant students who spent the summer of 1998 in

Sidney, Montana, and needed credit-bearing English literature courses, enrolled in a University

of Texas correspondence course which integrated the study of authentic literature with reading,

writing, and communication skills. The Sidney teachers supervised and graded the studentsí UT

English literature coursework over the summer. When these students traveled to other states for

migrant work with their families in the Fall, the UT teachers took over the instructional

supervision and grading. Outside of Texas in 1997, the UT correspondence model was used by
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145 Texas-based migrant students in 8 states (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Montana, Michigan,

Indiana, North Dakota, Ohio, and New York). Within Texas, the credit-by-exam and partial

work models are most frequently used. In Eagle Pass, Texas, for example, migrant students can

make up incomplete course work using the partial work approach. Alternatively, migrant

students can earn high school course credits by passing a proficiency exam covering the

appropriate essential knowledge and skills.

Portable Assisted Study Sequence (PASS).

The Portable Assisted Study Sequence (PASS) Program was developed in California in

the late 1970s as an approach to secondary school dropout prevention. It has since been

nationally recognized as an exemplary program by the U.S. Department of Education and

adopted by over 30 states.

Florida began implementing PASS in 1993 after determining that PASS courses met

Florida Public Education curriculum requirements. Floridaís PASS Program offers 32 creditbearing courses in art, health, language arts, life skills, mathematics, science, and social studies.

These semester-length courses consist of five units of study; students must pass all five unit tests

to get credit for the course. The PASS is a collection of semi-independent public education

courses for students in grades 9-12. The program allows students to participate in high school

classes and accumulate credits toward graduation through home-study or as they travel with their

family for employment-related reasons.

In Florida, the dominant PASS model involves home-study for intra-state migrant

students whose families tend to pull them out of school during the academic year for agricultural

or fishing work with the family. This work takes place either in the local school district or

involves a temporary move to another county in Florida. Floridaís interstate migrant population

is much smaller than its intra-state population. The PASS Program serves the needs of such

students because it is a self-contained, portable curriculum. Migrant students can take PASS

course materials with them, either as independent study at home or as a correspondence course

on the road. A PASS Facilitating Teacherin either the home school district or in the receiver

school districtwill meet with the migrant student on a weekly basis to monitor progress and to

assess the student at appropriate intervals with a unit test. The Facilitating Teacher then sends

the unit tests to the Florida PASS office to be scored. Once a course has been successfully

completed, a Grade Report is sent by fax from the Florida PASS office to the national PASS

office in California requesting credit for the course. Based on an interstate agreement between
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Florida and California, PASS credits are awarded by Roosevelt High School in California and

accepted by the studentís home-base school in Florida. After receiving the transcript from

California PASS, Florida PASS makes a copy for its files and the original to the appropriate

district contact person to record.

Florida and Michigan began coordinating their PASS Programs in 1998 through a

partnership between the Manatee County, Florida, and the Van Buren County, Michigan, public

schools. The Florida PASS Program attempted to enroll Florida home-based migrant students in

PASS prior to their departure for Michigan so the students could continue their Florida

coursework while working with their families out-of-state. This partnership succeeded with

several Manatee County students who continued to use Florida PASS materials while in Van

Buren County over the summer of 1998.

Information Technologies

New Generation System

The New Generation System (NGS) was designed by a consortium of state migrant

education programs in response to the unavailability of migrant student data following the

discontinuation of MSRTS. Staff members from the consortium states are trained as trainers at

the national conference to provide consortium states with in-state NGS coordination and

expertise. The New Generation System is centralized and contains 400,000 records. All the data

are resident in the server located in Austin, Texas. The system was designed as a central system

(versus distributed system) to facilitate efficiency in system maintenance. All of the data are

encrypted (32 bit key) for security purposes; sites are given access passwords. Because the

system is centralized and Internet-based, NGS does not have to upload new versions to the site

users. To access the system, all a user needs is a browser and a connection to the Internet.

This database consists of student records and does not yet contain ìfamilyî records. The

system requires that each student have a unique identification number. The search system and

ìkeyî data items used to identify student records are not yet as sophisticated as the MSRTS.

Because of the systemís design, any change a user makes is available instantly to any other user.

Critical education data maintained on NGS includes:

 Secondary-level credits earned by the student
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 Grade placement (and comments from staff)

 Immunization records

 Migrant contact information

 Required course of study (secondary-level)

 Type of course schedule (block, traditional, etc.)

 Medical alerts.

At any one time, 60-80 people may be on-line out of the current 1,000 users. There are

two different levels of access. One is ìread and writeî only; this status precludes deleting

records. The other is simply ìreadî (the same provisions against deleting records apply).

Inactive records are archived. Users are able to print individual records or portions of a record.

Full reports are sent by e-mail to users upon request. The ìhome-pageî of NGS provides users

with updates on the system and other relevant notices (e.g.., scheduled system shutdowns).

Major changes to the system are approved by the national and Texas advisory boards.

Each of the other NGS member states is encouraged to have its own advisory board.

Programmers hold final approval rights as well as the authority to set priorities (in case of

excessive costs or complications). For example, a recently requested enhancement to the system

included the ability to complete ìmassî (batch) transactions.

Although consortium states cannot download NGS information directly to create a local

database, files can be created for state use upon request. Staff in Texasís ESC-1 provide

technical assistance and support to users, although the growing system needs and user demand

for these services already may have exceeded current staff and resources. If NGS expands

beyond its current membership, the support of a more robust technical support capability will be

a pressing issue. The system costs each state approximately $2.72 per student per year.

To make NGS work better, more states need to be involved in the system. Currently, all

the data on students is not complete because enrollments and withdrawals in non-member states

are not entered on the system. Texas only enters the last qualifying move. And because many of

the states are reluctant to give up the systems they have developed, further cooperation to

improve the system remains problematic.