Compass Point
A Weekly Collection of Data, Articles and Insights from the Commonwealth Educational Policy Institute
A project of the Virginia Commonwealth University's Center for Public Policy
L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs
Recent Virginia Education News

Student fare proposed for Reserve-a-Ride
Go Dan River
October 15, 2015

With more high school students participating in educational opportunities outside traditional classrooms, Danville’s mass transit system is considering reducing the fare for students to get to those locations.

Marc Adelman, director of transportation services, notes in a summary to Danville City Council that students attending classes at the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research and at Danville Community College’s Regional Center for Advanced Technology and Training could have transportation challenges because those locations are not served by fixed-route bus services.


Search for new superintendent top issue in Chesterfield School Board election

Richmond Times Dispatch
October 17, 2015

Next month’s election will produce a major shake-up of the Chesterfield County School Board, with competitive races in two districts and an open seat in a third where one candidate is running unopposed.

Most of the eight candidates in the county’s five districts — including one mounting a write-in bid — agree that the search for a successor for Superintendent Marcus J. Newsome is one of the biggest challenges facing the school system in the immediate future. Newsome announced Wednesday that he plans to retire in July 2016 after a decade at the helm of one of the state’s largest school systems.


Attorney John M. Erbach, who faces fraud examiner Michael Jackson in the race to succeed the retiring David S. Wyman in the Dale District, said the School Board’s new composition and the selection of the new superintendent will be driving issues in the year to come. 


“It will be critical to our public schools that we get the right leadership in that role, given the crossroads at which CCPS finds itself today,” Erbach said.


Race greater indicator of challenge than poverty, LCS officials say
News Advance
October 15, 2015

Race is a greater indicator of success than economic status in Lynchburg schools, officials said at a day-long school board retreat Thursday.

The administration introduced their “Promise” plan to combat the gap at the retreat, which also covered equity between the city’s two high schools, economic disadvantage in general, teacher retention and other board-selected topics.


“The variable of race actually has a bigger part of telling the story than the variable of poverty,” said Jay McClain, the assistant superintendent responsible for instruction.

McClain displayed data showing when controlled for economic disadvantage, white students showed pass rates about 20 points higher than black students of the same economic class.

Caroline Sheriff hands school gun case to State Police, parents want answers
NBC 12 (WWBT)
October 16, 2015

Virginia State Police are investigating after a "possible weapon violation" at Caroline County Middle School, Thursday afternoon.

Principal Angela Wright says the school's administration was alerted by a student at noon saying a student had a gun on campus. The student was quickly removed from the school population by the School Resource Officer. Deputies then immediately confiscated a weapon and removed the individual from school grounds.

Recent National Education News
Education Department Launches Educational Quality Through Innovative Partnerships (EQUIP) Pilot Program
National Law Review
October 19, 2015

Last Wednesday, the Department of Education announced the launch of the Educational Quality through Innovative Partnerships (EQUIP) program. The pilot program is part of the Experimental Sites Initiative that allows colleges and universities to experiment with various measures of statutory and regulatory flexibility in disbursing Title IV federal aid. The EQUIP program is aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of granting Title IV flexibility to partnerships between institutions of higher education and non-traditional education providers, such as intensive “bootcamp”-style training, personalized online programs, massive open online courses (MOOCs), and short-term certificate programs.

Currently, institutions of higher education that receive Title IV funding are not allowed to offer an education program where more than 50 percent of the content and instruction is provided by an organization that is not another postsecondary institution. Through the EQUIP initiative, the Department would waive this limitation for institutions that are partnering with non-traditional education providers to allow students to receive financial aid.

To be considered for the EQUIP program, institutions of higher education must submit a letter of interest to the Department of Education by Monday, December 14, 2015.


Trouble with college debt? This program aims to educate students before it’s a problem
Washington Post
October 19, 2015

Andrew Brown, a Howard University senior, had a pretty enticing display of free swag, including knapsacks, pens, cups and magnets all emblazoned with one word: SALT.

“Hey, have you heard of SALT?” Brown asked a pair of students making a b-line for the pens during the hectic lunch hour at the Blackburn Center. Freshman Joshua Baldwin replied: “Is that that financial thing?”

Nodding his head, Brown explained that SALT is a free program offering all sorts of information about budgeting, grants, scholarships and repaying student loans. “Do you have any student loans?” Brown asked, pulling up SALT’s Web site on his iPhone.

Trump eyes Education Department
Politico
October 19, 2015

ED DEPARTMENT IN TRUMP’S SIGHTS: Donald Trump might want to eliminate the Education Department. Chris Wallace challenged the leading GOP candidate on “Fox News Sunday,” on whether he would “blow a hole in the deficit.” Trump first said he would cut waste and abuse. When Wallace asked if he would cut departments, Trump said he’d consider the Education Department. “I believe Common Core is a very bad thing. I believe that we should be ... educating our children from Iowa, from New Hampshire, from South Carolina, from California, from New York. I think that it should be local education.” Trump did not mention that whether to use Common Core standards is up to states. “If you look at a Jeb Bush and some of these others, they want them to be educated by — by Washington, D.C. bureaucrats,” Trump said. Regarding the department, Trump told the South Carolina Tea Party Convention in January that, “You could cut that way, way, way down.”

 

What are on-time graduation rates in Virginia?

It may seem odd to think about high school graduation season already, but a few weeks ago, the Virginia Department of Education released data on the improved number of students graduating "on-time" from Virginia's high schools for the 2014-2015 school year.  The increased rates garnered the attention of news media, both statewide and for specific school systems such as Loudoun County.

Also this week, the federal Dept. of Education noted a national positive trend from aggregate 2013-2014 statistics, especially for underserved students.  While test scores often garner greater headlines, on-time graduation rates signify students moving on to the next stage in life, whether the work force or the ranks of higher education, so improvement here is certainly worth celebrating.
The statewide on-time graduation rate increased by five percentage points, decidedly positive news.  We thought we'd take a look at some of the more detailed numbers by county, to see how many counties saw an improvement over the past six years (111) and how many did not (18).  (Click here or on the graphic below to see the full range of visualizations we developed.)   


For example, by sizing the middle diagram by number of students who completed a diploma or certificate in 2015, it's possible to see that most of the largest school systems exceeded the state average of 90.5%.  That said, a similar diagram shows that many of those same large school systems were also slightly above the state average drop-out rate.  (In addition to graduates and drop-outs there are also students who did not graduate on-time but who are still enrolled and working toward that goal.)

In general, the highest on-time graduation rates tend to cluster toward the north of the state, but marked improvement, and the limited number of drops in on-time grad rates seem scattered through some of the more rural parts of the state.  Richmond County, Sussex County and Colonial Beach all increased their on-time graduation rates by more than 20 percentage points. Charlotte County saw the largest drop (more than 5 percentage points.)

While high school completion represents a milestone accomplishment for graduates, an associated question for educators and policy-makers is whether reaching that milestone has significant meaning in terms of ability to enter the workforce or higher education.  This past Saturday, the Washington Post featured an article about the uncertain prospects high school graduates face in high poverty areas in the South.  (If you're fond of maps, as we are, be sure to take a look at the series of county level maps showing several measures of welfare, including upward mobility.)   In our Poll Snapshot, we look at public opinion about whether a high school graduate is ready for the world of work.

Also this week in Compass Point we share another excerpt of our October Education Law newsletter written by Kathleen Conn, a noted expert on bullying in education settings. Her article focuses on cyberbullying in higher education. 

Sincerely,
CEPI

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

The public tends to be more optimistic than the ACT test results about high school graduates being ready for college.

This past year we asked respondents whether they strongly or somewhat agreed (or strongly or somewhat disagreed) with the statement "today's high school graduate is:

  • ready for the world of work?
  • ready for college?

The results are summarized below and show that while a majority (64%) see high school graduates as being ready for college, an even stronger majority (70%) don't think high school grads are ready for the world of work. This doubtfulness about graduates' readiness for work is only more stark if we look at the strength of agreement or disagreement. Only 4% of respondents strongly agreed that high school grads were ready for the world of work, compared to 31% who strongly disagreed.


The youngest respondents (those aged 18-34) were the most likely to disagree that high school grads were ready. Fully 78% somewhat or strongly disagreed, compared to the rates of disagreement among those aged 35-44 (65%); 45-64 (63%) and 65+ (67%).


(To read the full results of the poll, visit our website

Cyberbullying in Higher Education:  Not Just Kid Stuff Anymore

Excerpted from from Kathleen Conn's October 2015 Education Law Newsletter.

Student-on-Instructor Cyberbullying
Limited research is available on the incidence of cyberbullying of college and university instructors by students, but cyberbullying may involve challenges to teaching skills, the level of experience of new faculty, textbook choices, or challenges to the subject matter or to grading policies (Eskey & Roehrich, 2015). Indications are that cyberbullying occurs more frequently towards instructors in online courses. In one survey of 346 online instructors from a large online university, 33.8% of instructors surveyed reported that they had been cyberbullied by students (Minor, Smith, & Brasher, 2013). Over 60% of respondents reported that they did not know what resources, if any, were available to help them, or felt that there were none. In another study of 202 online instructors at a Midwestern university, 15% reported student cyber-attacks involving their personal qualifications, and 31% reported student uses of emails to personally attack them (Eskey, Taylor, & Eskey, 2014). Almost half of those responding did not know if the institution has resources to handle cyberbullying; 20% felt that reporting cyberbullying would be held against them and 44% reported they were not sure.

The Rate My Professor site is often a venue for student cyberbullying of instructors (Martin & Olson, 2011), but YikYak may be overtaking the older “rating” site. YikYak is a social media network without user profiles that claims the dubious distinction of being the most frequently downloaded anonymous social “app” in Apple’s App Store (Mahler, 2015). The free site sorts messages by geographic location and, in many cases, by university, making it a virtual message board for the campus. Many messages are harmless, but the potential exists for ruining the reputations of professors. The app’s privacy policy fiercely protects the identity of its posters. In a 2013 commentary this author detailed the tortuous legal process involved in forcing a website to reveal the identity of its anonymous users, when Heide Irvani and Brittan Heller, two Yale Law School students, were cyberbullied on the anonymous website AutoAdmit.com (Conn, 2013). The students were forced to obtain subpoenas and the unmasking of their tormentors took years to accomplish. It is doubtful that college and university instructors would even know how to begin the process of undoing the damage to their reputations on YikYak.

Osei v. Temple University
A student who received a disciplinary suspension for his cyberbullying and threatening emails to his university professor sued his university and university administrators, alleging Fourteenth Amendment violation of his due process ( Osei v. Temple University, 2011). In an unpublished opinion, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the student was afforded all the due process to which he was entitled. The student, Michael Osei, a Ghanian native, was enrolled in the health management undergraduate program at Temple University. After receiving a grade in organic chemistry which he viewed as unfair, Osei began emailing Dr. Grant Krow, his instructor in the course, with progressively inappropriate emails. Osei’s second email promised “a curse against [your] life and family forever,” and the student continued with emails stating, “I just want justice on you physically and spiritually. Your game is over. Mine begins. You played with the wrong person this time. Cooperate to prevent things from escalating.” Another email followed, warning that, “ . . . The year 2010 will not start well for you.”

The university characterized Osei’s emails as threatening and violative of Temple’s Code of Conduct. Since the suspension the student faced was temporary, with the provision that he attend anger management classes before returning to the program, the court applied the standard in Goss v. Lopez (1975) as the court did in the Murakowski proceedings, that the accused student be provided notice and an opportunity to be heard. The court ruled that Osei had been afforded the appropriate due process.

 

To read the full brief, visit our website.