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| State & Local Education News |
Virginia Tech researchers fought for Flint in water crisis
Roanoke Times
January 23, 2016
Members of the Virginia Tech Flint Water Study team get a lot of questions.
They come from family, friends and more than two dozen media requests daily in recent weeks for the team’s leader, professor Marc Edwards, a nationally known expert on municipal water quality.
How much lead is in the water in Flint? What’s the risk to the public? How does it feel to have the president and a governor address your research?
The group of 25 researchers from Blacksburg traveled to Michigan four times to analyze the tap water and then worked to make their findings public after they were ignored by government agencies.
Sunday Q&A with ... Virginia Secretary of Education Anne Holton
Richmond Times-Dispatch
January 23, 2016
Virginia Secretary of Education Anne Holton is entering her third year in the post at a time when big changes are coming to how schools and school systems operate.
The recent passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act, an overhaul of the No Child Left Behind policy, means states will have a freer hand to track schools’ progress and what needs to be done to fix troubled ones.
GOP bill gives parents state funds for private or home schooling use
Richmond Times Dispatch
January 27, 2016
Parents of children attending public schools in Virginia would be able to use state funds to pay for private schools or home schooling under a bill Republican legislators say is part of their efforts to promote choice and opportunity in education.
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National & Federal Education News
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Education Spending Gap Widens Between College Haves and Have-Nots
US News and World Report
January 25, 2016
Students are getting the message that a college education is a necessary prerequisite for a middle class life. Today, more than 85 percent of high school graduates eventually make their way to college. But much of the increase in college-going isn't at traditional four-year universities with grassy quads and intellectually stimulating seminars. Instead, the nation's community colleges are absorbing the largest chunk of the new students.
Sometimes, teacher turnover is a good thing, study finds
Washington Post
January 25, 2016
Education experts have long viewed teacher turnover as a negative factor that erodes student achievement and contributes to an unstable school environment. But a new study of IMPACT — the controversial D.C. Public Schools teacher evaluation system that has been accused of contributing to the city’s higher-than-average turnover — suggests that not all turnover is created equal.
The departure of teachers who score poorly on IMPACT is actually a good thing because student scores on math and reading tests tend to improve substantially after such teachers depart, according to a working paper to be published Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Why the New Education Law Is a Game-Changer
Governing
January 21, 2016
As Congress reformed the No Child Left Behind law in December, much attention was paid to the additional responsibilities the new law gives the states and to its reduction in the burden of over-testing of students. What is not well known is that the Every Student Succeeds Act could shift more than $2 billion of federal funds annually over the next four years toward building evidence on what works in education. It also invests in proven efforts that give America's students greater odds of developing, learning and graduating from high school ready to succeed. This all may sound like common sense, but it is actually quite rare in public policy. And we think it is a game-changer for education.
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What is the economic impact of colleges and universities?
According to the
newly released results of the 2016 Commonwealth Education Poll, conducted by CEPI, in the eyes of the public Virginia's colleges and universities make a significant economic impact on their communities.
While colleges and universities are often touted for their role in developing a highly skilled workforce, they also impact local economies in a variety of ways, from construction of new facilities to jobs for residents in the nearby community. For the first time in the Commonwealth Education Poll, we asked respondents how much they thought these institutions had an impact on economic development in their area.
A clear majority (60%) of respondents felt that colleges and universities impacted their local economy “a great deal” or “quite a lot.” Only 33% said “not much” or “not at all.”
Factors of education level and geographic region both showed significant differences in responses. Though a majority in all regions placed the level of impact at a great deal or quite a lot, respondents living in Northern Virginia (at 67%) were more likely to think there was a significant impact, compared to respondents from the West (62%), the Northwest (58%), South Central (57%) and the Tidewater region (55%). This variation could be due to the larger distances between potential respondents and colleges in regions other than the geographically concentrated Northern Virginia (light blue in map below).
Likewise, those with a college degree or more (at 70%) were more likely than those with some college (57%) or a high school diploma or less (54%) to see the economic impact of colleges and universities as “a great deal” or “quite a lot.”
Please go to
our website to read the full second release on higher education and workforce development, as well as the results released on January 11th that pertain to K-12 funding and policy issues. We hope you have a great week!
Sincerely,
CEPI
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General Assembly Update - Week 2
Excerpted from CEPI's
General Assembly Update, written by Policy Analyst David Blount. The update will be published weekly during the General Assembly session.
"Overview/Budget Issues
The legislature cancelled its Friday meetings and floor sessions in advance of the major winter storm that hit the state. Still, Friday afternoon was the final deadline for legislators to submit bills and resolutions; more than 2,550 proposed pieces of legislation have been submitted for consideration. Committee work now kicks into high gear, as three full weeks remain until the mid-February “crossover” of bills.
Also this past week, hundreds of amendments to the proposed biennial budget that had been suggested by lawmakers were made available. Some of the most prominent education-related proposals provide for the following:
- Several proposals double funding, from $1.5 million in the introduced budget to $3 million per year, for the Virginia Early Childhood Foundation to use to promote the public-private delivery of Pre-K services to high-risk children and communities.
- There is an amendment to add $83.3 million for a first year teacher salary increase of 2%. Another amendment would provide a 4% increase in both years of the biennium.
- Amendments propose from $2 to $10 million to support efforts to attract, train and retain quality teachers in hard-to-staff schools.
- Between $36 million and $40 million is proposed to fully restore the cost of competing adjustment for SOQ-funded support positions in Northern Virginia school divisions, while several amendments propose to increase funding for teachers of English Language Learners (ELL)
- $50 million each year is requested for local school construction and renovation needs.
- Funding is requested to increase the Virginia Preschool Initiative per pupil amount of $6,000 by two percent in each year of the biennium.
- Numerous amendments would add to the $250,000 proposed in the introduced budget to increase Project Discovery program participation by more than 2,000 students.
- An additional $1.5 million each year to increase state aid to public libraries is proposed to be used for summer reading materials and programs and STEM instructional materials, and additional dollars also would be targeted for the Virginia Virtual School program.
- For the Department of Education (DOE), language directs DOE to convene an interagency workgroup to assess the barriers to serving students with disabilities in public schools. Up to $2.5 million is proposed for developing an advanced analytical model to measure student growth in schools, to be incorporated into the school accreditation process and School Performance Report Card. A pair of amendments would provide the Board of Education (BOE) with a stand-alone budget of $100,000 each year.
- Finally, $2.5 million proposed each year would support the Virginia Marketplace and Resource Center (which provides schools divisions with a one-stop, online platform for high-quality, media-rich digital content and tools for both core and supplemental instruction) to reimburse local school divisions for the per student platform fee associated with accessing the materials. A proposed two-year joint subcommittee to study the need for revisions to, or reorganization of, the Standard of Quality (SOQ) would be funded with $24,600 in the first year, pursuant to
HJ 112.
Legislators are keeping a close eye on the state’s economy. The revised revenue forecast for the current fiscal year calls for collections to be 3.2 percent greater than the previous fiscal year amount. Secretary of Finance Ric Brown told legislators this past week that revenue collections have risen only 1.6 percent through the first half of FY16. While Virginia is experiencing payroll/job growth, it still lags that of the nation. If legislators reduce the revenue forecast for the current fiscal year, that also would mean lower expected collections for FY17 and FY18. Budget writers will receive an updated revenue estimate in February (to account for January collections) to be used in shaping the state budget over the final weeks of the session.
Click
here for additional information about Governor McAuliffe's proposed changes to the public education budget for the remainder of FY16; and
here for the proposed FY17/FY18 education budget."
(To read the full update, visit our
website.)
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