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Recent State and Local Education News
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Urban Coalition Presses Virginia Lawmakers to 'Meaningfully Increase' Education Funding
WAMU
December 14, 2015
Lawmakers from Virginia's urban areas are getting ready to make the case for education dollars to the General Assembly. To accomplish the task, they have formed a coalition known as the "Urban Crescent" because of the curve-shaped boundaries that stretch from Arlington and Fairfax though Fredericksburg and Richmond to Norfolk and Virginia Beach. It's an idea that is patterned after a similar strategy that successfully pressed for transportation funding back in 2012.
"Local governments cannot realistically sustain the extraordinary funding demands of the past several years without experiencing dramatic impacts on other essential local services," says a letter the group will be sending Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe this week.
Last week, leaders from 130 local governments, school divisions and business leaders from across Virginia met in Fredericksburg to plot strategy. Part of that strategy is coordinating a message, and the group is seizing on two particular data points. One is that the commonwealth has reduced its share of funding for public education by more than $1 billion since 2009. Another is that state funding on a per pupil inflation adjusted basis has decreased from $4,275 per student in 2009 to $3,655 per student in 2015.
Sen. Tim Kaine discusses major topics in education with students around Virginia
The Breeze
December 13, 2015
On Dec. 4, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) held a conference call during which he fielded questions from representatives of college newspapers around the state.
Kaine, the former governor of Virginia, spoke for nearly an hour, first explaining his work in the various congressional committees he’s involved with and then addressing questions about his stance on events taking place in Virginia and around the world. Following the call, The Breeze got reaction from some students on campus.
The Every Student Succeeds Act, reauthorizing and amending the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, passed through the Senate on Wednesday on a vote of 81 to 17 after passing the House of Representatives 359 to 64 one week earlier, according to congressional websites. President Barack Obama is expected to sign the bill.
Report: Va. Spending More on Education
NBC 29
December 14, 2015
A new report from a General Assembly watchdog group shows state spending went up in the last year to meet education mandates for Virginia.
Staffers for the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) made a presentation on the topic Monday morning in Richmond.
According to the report, the commonwealth spent about $5.7 billion dollars in fiscal year 2015 on standards of quality requirements, an increase by nearly 7.5 percent from fiscal year 2014.
"That was a considerable increase from the year before. There was a variety of reasons for that," said JLARC Associate Director Justin Brown.
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Recent National Education News
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A Tale of 2 States: Lessons to Be Learned
US News and World Report
December 14, 2015
The new Every Student Succeeds Act wisely returns to the states much of the authority for directing school improvement that the federal government had assumed in the past 15 years. Some states are ready to roll, but plenty are searching for potential role models. Fortunately, at least two such candidates are easy to find.
Earlier this fall, the 2015 National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the "Nation's Report Card," provided a snapshot of student achievement across the land. Amidst generally disappointing results, there were a few bright spots. Washington, D.C., and Hawaii, led the nation in aggregate national assessment improvement over the past decade. From dismal depths in 2005, the two have climbed their way to respectability. In a new report for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, entitled, "Laggards to Leaders in K-12," we take a deeper look at what has transpired in these locales that can help account for their outsized gains.
Special education teacher shortage creates opportunity for students
USA Today
December 14, 2015
Teachers like Paxton are vital to the special education system, yet they’re in short supply. For the 2015–16 school year, the U.S. Department of Education reported a shortage of qualified special ed teachers and personnel in 49 states. And this comes at time when more students than ever are in special education programs: The National Education Association reports that the number of students enrolled in special education programs has increased by 30% over the past decade.
“This is a nationwide need,” said Michael Humphrey, Ed.D. chair of the Special Education Department at Boise State University in Idaho. “When we think of the highest need in teachers across the nation it’s special education, math and science.”
Boise State University in Idaho is one school looking for professionals with the right stuff via an innovative online program that places general ed teachers on a fast track to receive a master’s in special education. “Our calendar year goes from July to July,” said Humphrey. “It fits into people’s schedules because we put as much as we can into the summers.”
Obama Signs Bipartisan Education Bill Into Law
The Wall Street Journal
December 19, 2015
President Barack Obama signed a sweeping bipartisan education bill into law Thursday, making some the most significant changes in federal education policy in more than a decade.
The new Every Student Succeeds Act replaces the 13-year old No Child Left Behind, returning to the states powers to determine how poorly performing schools should be improved and curbing the authority of the secretary of education.
The bipartisan consensus on curtailing the federal role in education emerged about a dozen years after Republican President George W. Bush pushed to expand Washington’s control over the nation’s patchwork of state, county and local school systems with his signature No Child Left Behind law.
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What are the potential impacts of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)?
Last week the big news out of Washington was the long-awaited reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, known since 2006 as No Child Left Behind (NCLB). In crafting a bi-partisan bill, legislators decided to send significant elements of NCLB to the dustbin of history, including the concept of "adequate yearly progress" determinations for every school in the country that became a lightening rod for criticism.
There were various summaries of the changes, including the graphic below designed by the National Education Association (NEA).
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| Courtesy of the NEA |
The
Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, the
House Education and Workforce Committee and the
White House all released summaries of the 1,000+ page bill. (We confess that we have not read the whole thing.) The Democratic White House summary, for example, emphasized that the legislation provides greater flexibility to states in determining accountability regimes while creating provisions that push states to focus additional resources on the lowest performing 5 percent of schools in their state. The House committee (under Republican leadership) emphasized 10 ways in which the bill was a win for Republican principles, including new restrictions on the authority of the Secretary of Education.
The new legislation also drew editorials from various major newspapers, including the
LA Times ("a compromise that benefits pretty much everyone but the students most in need of improved schools"), and the
Wall Street Journal ("the largest devolution of federal control to the states in a quarter-century.”) Though most legislators obviously approved of the package, some analysts, including
The Atlantic, thought very little would change, while others, like
EdCentral, suggested that the changes were "a big deal." Time will tell which estimation is closer to being correct. In the meantime, numerous education groups, including
Superintendents in Virginia, will spend significant time parsing what the changes are and how they are likely to affect their own locality.
One of the central intentions of NCLB was its commitment to identifying and closing the gap in educational outcomes between all students and specific groups - for example the economically disadvantaged. This is a key relationship, because as this
2011 OpEd in the New York Times notes - "Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress show that more than 40 percent of the variation in average reading scores and 46 percent of the variation in average math scores across states is associated with variation in child poverty rates."
In Virginia, a student is designated as economically disadvantaged if the student:
- is eligible for Free/Reduced Meals,
- receives TANF, or
- is eligible for Medicaid.
To get a sense of what the variation in the percent of students who are economically disadvantaged, we pulled data from the Virginia DOE figures on fall membership for the current school year. (Click on the map below to look at an interactive version.) Obviously there is a huge difference between, for example, Hanover County with 13.6% of its students designated as economically disadvantaged and Richmond City or Essex County, which both have almost 70% of their students qualifying as economically disadvantaged.
As suggested above, the relationship between failure rates on standardized tests is not exactly correlated to the percentage of students that are economically disadvantaged, but as can be seen by the scatterplot below, there is a relationship. Those systems at the bottom left with very low failure rates on math and reading tests also tend to have lighter shading, indicating they have a lower percentage of economically disadvantaged students. (The size of the circle is based on the size of the total student population.)
Figuring out how to support low-performing schools like those in the top right area of the chart is the major task of education officials.
Below, in
this week's poll snapshot we take a brief look at the ethnicity and income gap in perspectives on SOL tests and their impact on school accountability and student performance.
Also this week, we share an excerpt from Dr. Vacca's latest Education Law Newsletter which explores the issue of mandatory immunizations.
Sincerely,
CEPI
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Poll Snapshot - a Gap on the Benefits of Testing by Ethnicity and Income?
In the past, we've reported the differences associated with the demographic categories of white/minority status, education level and household income (see the chart below) on the question of whether testing helped, hurt or made no difference and whether SOLs help improve student achievement.
As you can see from the chart below, the differences between white and minority opinion are less on several other questions related to testing. Minority respondents tend to have a more positive view of SOLs as an accountability mechanism for schools on student achievement but are very similar in viewpoint to whites that test preparation means teachers can't cover all important material.
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The gap between upper household income respondents (greater than $100,000) and lower household income respondents (less than $50,000) is also greatest with respect to the student achievement question. On other questions about students meeting the same academic standards across the state and holding schools accountable for student achievement, the portion of lower income respondents in agreement is 10% and 9% higher respectively. The two income groups are similar in the proportion agreeing that SOL tests put too much pressure on students. Only in regards to whether SOL tests mean teachers can't cover all the important material do a higher proportion of upper income respondents agree than lower income - 8% greater.
To read the full poll, visit our
website.
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Mandatory Immunizations: Legal and Policy Issues
Overview
In recent years the subject of childhood immunizations against vaccine-preventable diseases has generated a heated debate in communities across this country—often producing a number of perplexing legal and policy issues having a direct impact on local school board policy. Some parents refuse to have their school-aged children immunized complaining that their children often receive too many immunizations (more often than not administered at the same time). Other parents object because they suspect a link between contents in the immunization vaccines and certain disabilities (e.g., autism spectrum disorders). On the other side of the debate are parents who claim that because their children are being exposed to other children in school who have not been immunized (including children entering school from other countries), their children are being needlessly placed at risk to dangerously infectious, contagious, and sometimes fatal diseases (e.g., exposure to whooping cough, measles, mumps).
At the same time, individual states are insisting on strict enforcement of statutes requiring parents (as defined in state statutory law - e.g., natural, adoptive, custodial, surrogate, guardian, court appointed special advocate) to present documentary proof (e.g., certificate of immunizations) of their child’s immunizations for vaccine-preventable diseases as a precondition of enrollment in, and attendance at, school. From time-to-time these statutes are challenged by parents and parent advocates and find their way into court. When the controversy is before the court, the competing interests involved are: state law, local school board policy, parent rights, and the best interests of the child.
Policy Implications
In recent years, articles in the national media and in professional journals have reported a number of incidents involving a reappearance of certain communicable diseases (e.g., rubella, mumps, whooping cough) once brought under control by virtue of the universal administration of new and effective vaccines. While it is not within my professional training or expertise to venture a litany of reasons why, it is nonetheless important and appropriate for me to offer an opinion. As parents and advocates continue to challenge required immunization statutes and policies, and as local public school districts in this nation experience a growing immigrant population of children and parents, many of whom do not speak English and are from countries where health care and disease prevention protocols are either lacking or nonexistent, receiving valid certificates of immunizations by the first day of school will be a disconcerting struggle. However, implications for policy can be gleaned from the Second Circuit’s opinion and decision in Phillips (2015). School district policies must make it clear that:
- In the best interests of the children and all employees in this school district, it is the intent of the Board and administration to enforce and implement all laws, state regulations, and policies governing required immunizations of all children registering for, entering, and attending schools in the school district.
- Requests for exemptions from immunizations specified and provided for in state law, accompanied by appropriate documentation, must be presented to an official designee of the Board for consideration, and a final decision must be made on that request, prior to a child registering for, enrolling, and attending a district public school.
- All state and school system immunization requirements and all registration materials and procedures (including the location of the office where materials may be obtained) shall be widely publicized and made available to all parents and prospective parents of school-age children residing within the boundaries of the school system.
- The board seeks the cooperation and involvement of community agencies, both public and private, including faith-based groups, to help in the distribution and interpretation of immunization requirements and procedures, especially to parents and prospective parents whose native language is not English.
To read the full brief, visit our
website.
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