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| State & Local Education News |
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Supreme Court to hear case of transgender bathroom policy
Washington Post
October 29, 2016
The Supreme Court will take up transgender rights for the first time in the case of a Virginia school board that wants to prevent a transgender teenager from using the boys’ bathroom at his high school.
The justices said Friday they will hear the appeal from the Gloucester County school board sometime next year. The high court’s order means that student Gavin Grimm will not be able to use the boys’ bathroom in the meantime.
The court could use the case to resolve similar disputes across the country, said Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. “Obviously, for transgender people, the stakes of this case are incredibly high. Whatever the court rules in Grimm may ensure that transgender people are accepted and included as equal members of our society, or it may relegate them to outsiders for decades to come,” Minter said..
Education Secretary John B. King to speak at UVA on Wednesday
Augusta Free Press
November 1, 2016
John B. King Jr., the U.S. Secretary of Education, will deliver the twelfth annual Walter N. Ridley lecture at the University of Virginia on Wednesday, November 2 at 4:00 p.m. at Alumni Hall, 221 Emmet Street South, Charlottesville, VA.
During his lecture, King will speak about the importance of quality preschool and early learning.
The event is open to the public, though an RSVP registration is required.
In tapping King to lead the U.S. Department of Education in January 2016, President Obama called Dr. King “an exceptionally talented educator,” citing his commitment to “preparing every child for success” and his lifelong dedication to education as a teacher, principal, and leader of schools and school systems.
Virginia outperforms most states on national science tests
CBS 9 (WUSA)
October 28, 2016
Virginia students performed better on a national science exam than their peers in most other states.
The Virginia Department of Education says that 50 percent of Virginia fourth graders met or exceeded the proficiency standard on the 2015 national science tests compared to 37 percent of fourth graders nationwide.
Among eighth grade students, 40 percent of Virginia students met or exceeded proficiency. That's compared to 33 percent of eighth graders nationwide.
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National & Federal Education News
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California ballot revives debate on expanding bilingual education
PBS Newshour
November 1, 2016
There are important ballot initiatives all around the country. Tonight, we look at one of those battles, over bilingual education in California.
More than 9 percent of all students in the United States don’t speak English fluently. They struggle more in school, trailing behind in every academic measure and at every grade. In California, that’s true for nearly one in every four children, or almost 1.5 million kids.
Special correspondent Kavitha Cardoza with our partner Education Week visited California, where voters will soon decide how to best teach these children.
Microsoft launches Minecraft: Education Edition for schools
The Verge
November 1, 2016
Microsoft wants kids playing Minecraft in class, and it’s hoping that schools will not just let them, but support them. It’s launching a version of Minecraft today called Minecraft: Education Edition that includes some classroom tools and a way to roll out accounts to every student in a class or district.
The app has been in development since last January, when Microsoft purchased a mod working toward the same goal. The educational tools went into a beta period this summer, with Microsoft hoping to have a full release ready by the time school started. It missed that date by a couple months, but the game is now ready to go on both Windows 10 and macOS.
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How large are Virginia college and university endowments?
An Education Dive column took the Halloween holiday this week as inspiration to review
Seven Frightening Trends in Higher Education. Among the trends were a decline in public funding and decreased (annual) alumni giving. The writer argued that when set beside continued expansion in health care costs and staffing changes required by new overtime laws, "many leaders are frightened by the prospect that their institutions could be in danger of closing" in the coming decades.
One bulwark against such financial pressures is an institution's endowment. A recent Richmond Times Dispatch article noted a resolution by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) "affirming its support for the financial autonomy of public universities and pointing out that, under state code, lawmakers can’t reduce appropriations because of endowment funds and gifts." In short, the amount of public funding a public university receives cannot be reduced because it has a larger endowment.
But endowments are an asset that colleges and universities possess in differing sizes. As with many things, Ivy League powerhouses Harvard and Yale lead U.S. institutions with endowments larger than $36 billion and $25 billion respectively. In 2015, nine universities had endowments valued at $10 billion or higher. (A sortable list compiled by Hugh U. Chou based on data from National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) is available
here.)
We were curious how wide the variation is among Virginia institutions. Accessing the data from the same site mentioned above, we visualized the size of each institution's endowment and their rough location to produce this map. (Click
here or on the map itself to access an interactive version that displays the endowment size, growth (in percentage terms) from 2014-2015 and the national rank of the endowment for each institution.)
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| Endowments for Virginia Colleges and Universities (2015) |
The giant circle in the center of the commonwealth is the University of Virginia. With a total endowment of close to $6.2 billion, UVA ranks 18th in the nation - an enviable position. Most other institutions have much more modest resources in their endowment. A second tier consists of the University of Richmond at $2.3 billion, Virginia Commonwealth University at just over $2 billion (combining the University and Medical College of Virginia amounts), and Washington & Lee at $1.4 billion. Most, however, have less than $100 million in their endowment.
The contrast is particularly striking when the data is visualized based on each institution's share of the total. UVA alone has 38% of the total funds, while the top 5 institutions (UVA, Richmond, VCU, W&L, Virginia Tech) possess almost 80% of the total. Moreover, most of the larger instititutions saw their endowments grow from 2014 to 2015 (symbolized by the green shading) while a number of the smaller institutions saw endowments shrink (those in red).
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| Share of Endowments for Virginia Colleges and Universities (2015) |
Endowments as a bulwark against stormy financial seas is not just of interest to university administrators or the many people who work at these institutions. Those communities with a college or university nearby know that they also have an impact on the local economy. (If you're interested in reading more deeply on this, check out a 2015 study by the
Brookings Institute on direct impacts via increase consumption of goods and services or this article by Jaison R. Abel and Richard Deitz of the New York Federal Reserve on
how colleges can help local economies more.) In light of this type of research on the more widespread impact of higher education, we also wanted to share in our weekly
Poll Snapshot whether the Virginia public sees public colleges and universities contributing to economic development in their area.
Have a great week working on all the left over Halloween candy!
Sincerely,
CEPI
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CEPI Poll Snapshot - How much the public thinks Virginia public colleges contribute to economic development in their area
A short data insight from our 2015-16
Commonwealth Education Poll.
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.
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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%). 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.”
(To read the full poll, visit our
website.)
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