State & Local Policy

Study: Pay of 6 public college chiefs in Va. tops U.S. median
Richmond Times-Dispatch
June 8, 2015

It would take the tuition and fees paid by 62 students to finance the annual compensation of the president of George Mason University, 46 to support Virginia Commonwealth University President Michael Rao’s paycheck, and nearly 40 to pay the University of Virginia president’s salary.

That analysis by The Chronicle for Higher Education finds that the salaries of top executives at six of the seven Virginia public institutions included in the survey were above the national median for fiscal 2014.

George Mason’s Angel Cabrera was paid a base salary of $536,049 and total compensation of $615,759, for the 29th ranking. Rao was 41st on the list with base pay of $503,155 and total compensation of $553,155.

Dominion Seeks Applications from VA. Schools for Solar Education Program
NBC 29 WVIR-TV
June 8, 2015

Public schools in Dominion Virginia Power's service territory may soon be able to harness the power of the sun to help their students learn about solar energy.

The Dominion Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Dominion Virginia Power, is currently seeking applications from K-12 public schools for its Dominion Solar for Schools program. The Dominion Foundation will select four schools within its Virginia service area to receive a 1 kilowatt photovoltaic system that converts sunlight into electric power.

Virginia General Assembly awards UVA researchers $1M to assess kindergarten readiness
Augusta Free Press
June 8, 2015

As a result of the Virginia Kindergarten Readiness Project report released in January that found about one-third of Virginia students lacked at least one important element of readiness for kindergarten, the Virginia General Assembly has awarded $1 million to researchers at the Curry School of Education’s Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning to expand the assessment of entering kindergartners across the commonwealth.

The original study, funded by Elevate Early Education, a statewide collaborative venture supported through public and private investments, involved a representative sample of 2,036 children in 100 classrooms from 16 school divisions across the state. The new funding will allow the team to begin the process of statewide implementation of the expanded assessments, with the ultimate goal of making these assessments available to all Virginia schools over the next five years.

What is making one first-year teacher reconsider her future? Lots of testing.
Washington Post

June 5, 2015

Kimberley Asselin sits in a rocking chair in front of her 22 kindergartners, a glistening smile across her face as she greets them for the morning. Even at 9 a.m., she is effervescent and charismatic.

While she began the school year in Virginia’s Fairfax County full of optimism, Asselin now finds herself, as many young teachers do, questioning her future as an educator. What changed in the months between August and June? She says that an onslaught of tests that she’s required to give to her 5- and 6-year-old students has brought her down to reality.

Federal Policy

Education Department announces next round of Investing in Innovation grants on high school redesign
U.S. Dept. of Education
June 5, 2015

The U.S. Department of Education has launched its 2015 Investing in Innovation (i3) validation and scale-up grant competitions. The grants will fund successful innovations that support new teachers and school leaders; help educators align their instruction to college- and career-ready standards; improve student learning across science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields; or reform high schools by making the academic standards more engaging, rigorous and relevant for students.

Each validation grant will provide up to $12 million to fund efforts with prior evidence of success, and each scale-up grant will provide up to $20 million to fund the expansion of efforts that have strong track records of success. As with prior i3 competitions, all projects focus on high-need students, particularly those in rural areas.

Hillary Clinton could position herself to the left of Obama on education
MSNBC
June 4, 2015

Hillary Clinton told members of a powerful teachers union in Washington D.C. this week that organized labor has an important role to play in public education, and that critics of unions are “dead wrong to make teachers the scapegoats.”

The American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s second largest teachers’ union, met with all three declared Democratic presidential candidates to consider endorsements (former Rhode Island governor Lincoln Chafee had not yet announced). Each candidate spent an hour meeting with the union’s executive council and members who were invited to ask questions.

Debate over tenure roils UW Board of Regents
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
June 4, 2015

With angry faculty members from several campuses looking on, a committee of University of Wisconsin System regents voted Thursday to go along with the intent of Republican legislative leaders in broadening the reasons in which tenured faculty can be dismissed.

In a nutshell, regents appointed by Gov. Scott Walker voted not to ask lawmakers to reconsider the plan approved last Friday by the Joint Finance Committee to take tenure out of state law. The idea, first floated in Walker's budget proposal, is to give the UW System more flexibility to run campuses as it sees fit — and in the process, have broader ability to hire and fire. The GOP plan spells out that tenured faculty and indefinite-term staff could be laid off or terminated with proper notice "when deemed necessary due to a budget or program decision regarding program discontinuance, curtailment, modification, or redirection."

Sincerely,
CEPI

Poll Snapshot - Perceptions of High School Graduates readiness for college, world of work

From Dr. Vacca's December 2005 Education Law Newsletter: 

"Overview
Every school year the process of placing students in special schools, programs, and activities according to their abilities and/or disabilities is a subject of heated debate. This is especially true now that school systems are required to: (1) measure and monitor student academic performance, (2) disaggregate student test data, and (3) provide extensive remedial programs for underachieving students in response to the mandates of No Child Left Behind, 20 U.S.C. 6301, et seq. (2002). Suffice it to say, there is a major effort both nationally and in the states to ensure that children who for what ever reason have been in the past underserved and/or disadvantaged be provided access to high quality educational opportunities.

While it remains a legal fact that the discretionary authority of local boards of education and school officials to assign students to special programs, classes, and schools remains in tact, the enactment of various civil rights statutes (federal and state) and decisions handed down by courts (federal and state) over the past fifty years have consistently mandated that such assignments and placements shall not in any way be discriminatory. Russo (2004) This is especially true where there exists a resulting effect that demonstrates a disproportionate impact on race, or disability, or gender.

The purpose of this commentary is to focus on the general concept of ability grouping and associated legal and policy issues. The commentary will not attempt to examine and discuss specific sub-issue areas such as the impact ability grouping on students with educational disabilities.

Ability Grouping: What Does it Mean?
More than two decades ago, my old friend and legal scholar Joseph Bryson and a colleague devoted an entire book to the subject of ability grouping. In their treatise the authors define ability grouping as: “…the practice of prejudging students’ ability on some type of intelligence tests and past educational performance, and then assigning two or more students to a particular instructional setting for a sustained period of time.” Bryson and Bentley (1980) The authors then define two specific types of ability grouping. First, there is achievement grouping which involves grouping students “based on scores students make on achievement tests and on their past performance.” Second, tracking is the “practice of assigning…students to a specific curriculum such as general, vocational, business, or college preparatory…. The assignment may be based on intelligence tests, achievement tests, past performance, teacher judgments, or a combination of these.” Bryson and Bently (1980) Of the two types of ability grouping the tracking process has been the most litigious.

. . . .

Policy Implications
Over the past five years (mainly in response to new federal and state legal mandates), public school officials have been busy working to early identify students who are: (1) educationally underserved, (2) in need of specialized help, and (3) at risk of failure (academically and socially). In doing so, local school officials have moved to place students in distinct groups and/or categories, so that specialized remedial and compensatory help can be effectively designed and implemented. Thus, local school systems have had to turn away from integration/mainstreaming models relied on for the past fifty-years, and create new student assignment and placement models that separate students into ability (or disability) groups. To put it another way, if students need remedial and/or compensatory help with mathematics, or reading, or science, or English, then they must be early identified, placed in specialized settings, and not left to flounder, underachieve, and ultimately fail.

In effect this new “ability (achievement) grouping era” in public education is forcing school officials to revisit and revise existing policies and procedures and, where necessary, to create new ones more conducive to the task at hand. However, the pitfalls and mistakes of past ability grouping efforts must be avoided. To assist in this task the following suggestions for policy are offered for consideration. Local school officials must make it clear that:

• The intent of the school board is to provide all students (especially those who have been in the past underserved and/or disadvantaged) with equal access to appropriate and meaningful educational opportunities.
• The school board, administrators, classroom teachers, and staff shall work to early identify and assist students who need specialized help to achieve and succeed in school, both academically and socially.
• Parents will be informed and involved in the identification, assignment, and placement processes.
• No student will be assigned or placed in any school, program, or class solely based upon race, or ethnicity, or gender, or disability, or socio-economic status.
• Students who need specialized services and settings will be assigned and placed in schools, programs, and schools based upon research-tested criteria.
• Specialized assignments and placements of students will be implemented solely for the purpose of providing the help and assistance necessary to: (1) meet the particular needs of students, and (2) nurture academic achievement and social progress in students.
• Student progress will be continuously monitored and evaluated.
• The intent of the school board is to transition students who need specialized assistance and services, in specialized settings, back into the mainstream of the student population.

I have little doubt that a new era of ability (achievement) grouping students is upon us and new legal and policy issues will spring to life. However, if it is made clear at the outset that local school systems are implementing such processes not solely to comply with federal and state statutory mandates, but rather to help all students (especially those who heretofore have been underserved and/or disadvantaged) achieve and succeed in school (both academically and socially), past history will be overcome. It is important to remember that in order to make a Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection case, the complaining party has the burden to show that public school officials possessed an unlawful discriminatory intent. Helping all students achieve and succeed academically in school certainly does not fit that description."