 |
| State & Local Education News |
Va. transgender bathroom case headed back to district court as Supreme Court considers appeal
Daily Progress
June 21, 2016
A transgender teen’s fight with the Gloucester County School Board over bathroom access is heading back to federal district court.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected the school board’s request to stay its ruling in the student’s favor until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on its appeal. On Friday the Richmond-based appeals court finalized its ruling on the stay.
The school board is appealing a court ruling that overturned the lower court’s denial of a preliminary injunction and ruled that the teen’s lawyers could reinstate a claim that the board’s bathroom policy violates federal sex discrimination law.
McAuliffe makes appointments to college boards of visitors
Inside NoVA
June 21, 2016
Gov. McAuliffe has appointed a number of local residents to the boards of visitors of Virginia public institutions of higher education.
J. Wendy Marquez and Lisa Zuccari have been appointed to the board of visitors of George Mason University. Marquez is with EVS Communications and is president emeritus and CEO of Onyx Media.
Former refugee launches scholarship for Virginia Western students
Roanoke Times
June 20, 2016
Elvir Berbic says his family came to Roanoke as refugees for one reason: His parents wanted him and his brother to have a better life.
“The reason why they came here was because of us,” Berbic said. “Their emphasis was on us to get an education.”
Berbic spoke little English when he arrived in Roanoke from the refugee camp in Croatia where his family lived for three years after leaving war-torn Bosnia. Adjusting was hard. He graduated from William Fleming High School — “barely” — and went straight to work, believing higher education wasn’t going to be part of his future.
Later, Berbic found his way to Virginia Western Community College, an experience that turned his life around and led him to Radford University for his bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
Germanna ranked among top Virginia community colleges
Free Lance-Star
June 21, 2016
According to a list published on USA Today’s website this week, Germanna Community College is among the top 10 two-year institutions in Virginia.
Germanna was included for the diversity of its offerings and access to education, especially for its distance-learning initiatives. The online enrollment percentage at Germanna was third-highest among the top 10 community colleges in Virginia.
The list also noted Germanna’s focus on healthcare training. But its biggest reason for inclusion was that the community college focused on “driving innovation.” The Fredericksburg campus is home to a hub for SkillUpVA, a program designed to help students develop skills to advance through the ranks of their chosen career.
|
National & Federal Education News
|
As Teachers Tackle New Student-Writing Expectations, Support Is Lacking
Ed Week
June 20, 2016
Writing instruction may have fallen by the wayside during the No Child Left Behind Act era, as teachers zeroed in on teaching math and reading.
But now, with most states using the Common Core State Standards, students are expected to write a lot more—and to write better.
An Education Trust study published last fall analyzed 1,500 student assignments from a two-week period at six urban middle schools and found that fewer than 1 in 10 assignments required multiple paragraphs of writing. Just 4 in 10 assignments were aligned with the grade-appropriate standard, and 16 percent required students to cite evidence from the text, which is a key component of the common core.
Joan Dabrowski, an education consultant who was the lead literacy adviser for the organization’s literacy-assignment analysis, said students across the country still aren’t doing enough writing, and what they are doing is rarely the kind of multiparagraph, evidence-based writing that is promoted in college- and career-ready standards.
|
|
|
What is the trend in Virginia high school graduation rates?
We've reached the summer solstice and that means school years are complete across the commonwealth. Thousands of students recently walked across a physical stage and into the next metaphorical stage of their lives.
In honor of those myriad individual accomplishments, we want to focus our newsletter this week on a collective one - the trend in graduation rates across the commonwealth.
From reading recent
news stories citing newly compiled data on child poverty rates in Viriginia localities we discovered the versatile
Kids Count Data Center supported by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. We're looking forward to reviewing different data compiled by them and their Virginia partner
Voices for Virginia's Children, but this week we pulled data on graduation rates over the last number of years.
As you can see from the storyboard below (click on it to visit the detailed maps at our Tableau workbook) there is significant variation across Virginia school systems in the percentage of students who graduate high school, but state-wide last year, 89.9% of students graduated on-time. (In the first map, those systems with a graduation rate below this number have a reddish shade, those above a green shade.) At the top end, Falls Church had a 98.8% on time graduation rate, followed closely by Charles City and Page County at 98.2%. Petersburg had the worst rate at 70.9%.
But we were also curious how rates had changed over the last several years. You can look at this in two ways in our visualization. The second map shows the higher or lower graduation rates of 2015 compared to 2010. For example, Richmond County went from graduating 69.9% of their students on time in 2010 to 92.7%, an increase of 22.8 percentage points. But this example also points to the importance of the third visualization, a bar chart showing the on-time graduation rate for each of the six years (2010-2015) for each locality. In Richmond County's case, 2010 was one of only two years in that period where the grad rate dropped below 83%.
Above we referred to a collective accomplishment, and that is the fact that for Virginia as a whole, the on-time graduation rate rose 4.5% from 2010 to 2015. If the pace of improvement keeps up, more than 90% of students in 2016 will be graduating on time in the commonwealth.
In addition to looking at graduation rates, we also wanted to share with you our
Poll Snapshot, which looks at a different question - does the public think that high school graduates are ready for the world of work. Many do not, though a majority believe they are ready for college.
To wrap up, we simply wanted to express our gratitude to all of the educators who finished another year of hard work on behalf of the students and are stepping into the summer work of recharging and retooling for the next year ahead. Thank you!
Sincerely,
CEPI
|
CEPI Poll Snapshot - Are high school graduates ready for the world of work?
A short data insight from our
Commonwealth Education Poll.
Majority don’t see high school grads as ready for workforce
Workforce readiness is a key area for policymakers because of its connection to attracting business to the commonwealth and long-term economic growth. Workforce development, though often thought of in terms of higher education, is also a topic in K-12 discussions both in terms of immediate readiness to join the workforce and preparation to pursue further training in college. To get a sense of public perception on how ready graduates of high school, community college and four-year colleges, we asked respondents about how prepared graduates of each level are to move into the next phase. The responses suggest that the public generally thinks high school graduates are not ready to join the workforce, but have been prepared to go to college.
 |
|
A strong majority (63%) think that high school graduates are not prepared for the workplace, strongly or somewhat disagreeing with the statement that high school graduates are ready for the world of work. Respondents with a college degree or more are more likely to disagree strongly or somewhat (71%) that high school grads are ready for the workforce, compared to those with some college (63%) and those with a high school diploma or less (53%). Household income levels also mark a difference of opinion on the question. Seventy-six percent (76%) of those with an annual income of $100,000 or more disagreed strongly or somewhat with the suggestion that high schools graduates were ready for the workforce. This compared to 60% among respondents with incomes between $50,000 and $100,000 and 54% for respondents with incomes below $50,000.
Overall, however, Virginians believe that high school graduates are prepared for higher education, which may indicate that public opinion of workforce readiness of high school graduates is less an indictment of the K-12 educational system and more a belief that the current system is geared more towards preparing students for college than it is toward preparing them for a specific career. A majority (64%) agreed that high school graduates are ready for college, with significant differences of opinion based on age, gender and income. Respondents aged 35-44, at 76%, were most likely to agree strongly or somewhat that high school graduates are ready for college, followed by those aged 18-34 (69%), those aged 45-64 (59%) and those 65 or older (57%). Likewise, 70% of women agreed strongly or somewhat with high school graduates being ready for college, compared to only 59% of men. Also, those with an annual household income of less than $50,000 (72%) were most likely to agree compared to those with incomes between $50,000 and $100,000 (60%) and those with incomes above $100,000 (61%).
(To read the full poll, visit our
website.)
|
|
