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Recent State Education Articles
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4 Virginia schools to participate in pilot solar program
Education Week
October 5, 2015
Four public schools in Virginia have been selected to participate in a pilot solar education program.
The Dominion Foundation's Solar for Schools program will provide each school with a 1-kilowatt system that converts sunlight into electricity. The schools also will receive educational materials and technical support.
Schools participating in the program are: Shenandoah Valley Governor's School in Fishersville, Goochland High School in Goochland, Landstown High School in Virginia Beach and T. Clay Wood Elementary School in Prince William County. . . .
September 29, 2015
Twelve Virginia schools are being honored by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
Each has been named a National Blue Ribbon school, signifying academic rigor and dramatic gains in student achievement.
Seven public schools and five private schools are being recognized.
The public schools are Central High School in Woodstock, Cosby High in Midlothian, Crystal Spring Elementary in Roanoke, Great Neck Middle School in Virginia Beach, Patrick Henry Elementary in Arlington, Riverheads High in Staunton and Snow Creek Elementary in Penhook. . .
Rural Longwood University in Virginia scores vice presidential debate
Washington Post
November 2014
There are good Web sites and nice pamphlets, and buzzy social-media campaigns. But for forcing a little-known college into the public consciousness, it’s hard to imagine many things with a bigger impact than hosting a major presidential campaign event.
When the Commission on Presidential Debates announced the four sites for the 2016 campaign, most people probably weren’t overly familiar with Longwood University.
Its president is hoping by this time next October, many will connect the name with a pretty old campus in Virginia, the idea of leadership forged through reconciliation, and a remarkable connection to two of the most defining moments in U.S. history. . .
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Recent National Education Articles
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World Teachers’ Day: 12.6m teachers needed for universal primary education
CITIfmOnline
October 5, 2015
The United Nations Organization for Education, Science and Culture (UNESCO), says about 12.6 million primary teachers are required globally if the 2020 goal of universal primary education is to be achieved.
The organization said this on the occasion of the 2015 World Teachers’ Day, celebrated every 5th October. This year’s celebration is on the theme “Empowering teachers, building sustainable societies”.
A statement on UNESCO’s website said “It is recognized that teachers are not only a means to implementing education goals; they are the key to sustainability and national capacity in achieving learning and creating societies based on knowledge, values and ethics. However, they continue to face challenges brought about by staff shortages, poor training and low status. We will ensure that teachers and educators are empowered, adequately recruited, well-trained, professionally qualified, motivated and supported within well-resourced, efficient and effectively governed systems”.
5 Things to Know About the New Education Secretary
US News & World Report
October 5, 2015
Last week, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan shocked the education world and announced he'll be resigning in December. Riding out the rest of the Obama administration as acting secretary will be John King, who is currently the No. 2 at the department. Here's what you need to know about him:
1. King was most recently the commissioner of New York state public schools. In this role, King oversaw New York's schools during a period of tumultuous change driven largely by the state's winning of a federal Race to the Top grant. He supervised the implementation of the Common Core State Standards, new teacher evaluations based in part on student test scores and the expansion of charter schools, among many other significant policy changes.
2. King says he owes his life to public school teachers: "Education can be the difference between life and death," King said last week during a press conference at the White House where President Barack Obama introduced him as the new acting education secretary. "I know that's true because it was for me. New York City public schools teachers are the reason I am alive. They are the reason I became a teacher and the reason I'm standing here today." King had a difficult childhood. By the age of 12, both of his parents, who were public school teachers, had died. After that, he lived with his half-brother, who had alcohol problems, and later his aunt and uncle. School, he said, was his sanctuary.
Reactions to Arne Duncan’s departure illustrate national divide over education
The Washington Post
October 5, 2015
Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s announcement on Friday that he plans to step down later this year was greeted by a range of reactions that illustrate how deeply divided the country is over the Obama administration’s education policies.
Former California congressman George Miller, a Democrat who worked closely with Duncan as chairman of the House education committee, called Duncan’s departure “a huge loss,” and said no one has been more committed to improving the education of the nation’s most disadvantaged children.
Gus Morales, a Massachussetts teacher and member of the Badass Teachers Association, a fierce critic of Duncan’s policies, called him “one of the most destructive people to hold the title of Secretary of Education.”
11 quotes on education from 2016 presidential candidates
MSNBC
October 5, 2015
We’re celebrating World Teachers’ Day today in honor of the progress made for teachers at the UNESCO conference on October 5, 1966. The day is dedicated to empowering teachers and assessing world education goals. On the campaign trail, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is likely celebrating today in light of her recent endorsement from the National Education Association, the country’s largest labor union.
Here’s a look at what Clinton and other presidential candidates have said about education:
1. “We have to face the fact that we have a lot of people who come out of school burdened with student loans and decide they can’t go into teaching, so we lose a lot of good young people.” —Hillary Clinton, at the New York State United Teachers convention in April 2007
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Caring for student-athletes who suffer from concussions: what more needs to be done?
The fall sports season is well under way for high-school athletes and mitigating concussions and other traumatic brain injuries for young athletes is increasingly an important policy issue, not only in sports like football, but also others like
girls soccer. Centers for Disease Control estimated a total number of reported concussions in 2012 of 3.8 million, about twice the number as were reported in 2002.
State-mandated policies for dealing with student-athlete concussions is still a relatively new phenomenon - the first state to pass such a law was Washington in 2009. As the map sequence below shows, adoption by other states was rapid with every state passing some sort of legislation by 2014.
On September 22nd, the
Virginia Commission on Youth COY, under the leadership of Del. Christopher Peace, held a round table discussion on the topic which reviewed
current policy and discussed possible recommendations to improve existing policy.
In addition to state-wide concussion mitigation efforts facilitated by the
Virginia High School League, a presentation by the Virginia Department of Education noted that 30 different school or regional Traumatic Brain Injury teams now exist within Virginia (the map below visualizes the school systems listed by the
presentation.)
According to BreAuna Beasley, a VCU graduate student working with the Commission on Youth, the focus of much discussion at the Roundtable was the significant percentage of schools without a Return-to-Learn protocol (which refers to a set of procedures and allowances for students who suffer concussions to return to the classroom and catch up on assignments that were missed while they were suffering concussion effects.) Recent legislation required the Boards of Education to adopt guidelines for Return-to-Learn but did not propose a deadline, so while many school systems may be in the process of creating a policy, about 29% do not currently have one (see chart below).
The Roundtable also discussed additional methods employed by other states, including:
- a focus on emergency preparedness, including identifying healthcare professionals available for games;
- ensuring safer play by limiting the amount of contact student-athletes experience during practices;
- improving awareness by collecting data from schools about the number of concussion incurred;
- managing the Return-to-Learn process by utilizing a concussion management team, consisting of teachers, healthcare providers, school executives, and coaches, as well as family members and other students.
Attendees also worked in small groups to consider practical recommendations to address concussions in student-athletes and encourage school districts to implement the guidelines. A few of the recommendations discussed were:
- Provide outreach to lower-income families through a collaboration with the Virginia Department of Health to develop culturally tailored public health initiatives, such as public service announcements, pamphlets, informational sessions, and transportation to sessions and school trainings for those without access.
- Mandate the development of a Return-to-Learn protocol.
- Identify concrete and measurable outcomes of Return-to-Learn, as a means of developing mechanisms to track progress and compliance with the concussion policies and guidelines.
- Require ongoing equipment checks (fitting and use) for all student-athletes and sports programs.
- Provide a funding mechanism (e.g. use of federal Perkins funds) for lower income school districts to fund athletic trainers and healthcare professionals - many rural and underserved districts have one athletic trainer for 3-4 schools, or have none.
- Require ongoing concussion training and Return-to-Learn for teachers, coaches, and athletic trainers, as well as school health professionals.
- Increase communication between schools with more developed polices, i.e. Bedford and Prince William (see
linked presentation given by Prince William representatives at the COY meeting) and those with underdeveloped policies through online tracking system.
Additional resources on concussion mitigation can be found at the websites of the CDC (
learning from early implementers of return to play) and the National Federation of State High School Associations (
Legal Perspectives, Recommendations on State Concussion Laws)
In keeping with this focus on athletics, our
poll snapshot this week takes a look at whether the public thinks that home-schooled athletes should be able to play on public sports teams.
We also share another
excerpt from our most recent Ed Law newsletter by Professor Mark Weber which looks at the protocols and case law of Child Find provisions.
Sincerely,
CEPI
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Poll Snapshot: "Tebow Bill"
Whether home-schooled students should be able to participate on local public school sports teams is an ongoing question - legislation to allow such participation is often dubbed a "Tebow Bill" because former standout college athlete Tim Tebow benefitted from similar legislation in Florida. For a review of some of the views about the Tebow bill, check out
this series of opinions compiled by the New York Times, including one by the Institute's founder, Dr. Bosher. His point about accountability may raise an interesting question if home-schooled athletes were included in public school sports teams - what leverage would coaches have to enforce concussion protocols.
In our 2013 and 2014 CEPI Education Polls we asked respondents about whether they would support the idea of homeschooled athletes participating on local public school sports teams (see below).
A strong majority (72%) favor allowing homeschooled athletes to participate on public school sports teams. This percentage was slightly higher than the previous year in 2013.
Support for homeschool participation in public school athletics was highest among younger respondents - 85% of those aged 18-34 favored the idea whereas support dropped off among each successive age group (35-44 had 79% support; 45-64 had 65% support and among those older than 65 there was only 61% support).
Support was also higher among respondents with some college or a college diploma (77% and 74%) compared to those with high school or less (66%). Support was roughly the same across genders and when comparing responses of whites to those of minorities.
School employees (current or former) were less likely to support the provision however - only 61% favored the potential policy, compared to 74% of respondents who had never worked in the schools.
(To read the full results of all the polls, visit our
website. In 2014, question 13 is the question reported above - topline results are on page 32; crosstabs are on page 58.)
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Ed Law: CHILD-FIND FOR CHILDREN WITH DISABILITIES: POLICY AND PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS
Excerpted from our September
Education Law Newsletter by Mark Weber
"Recent legal developments
Although child-find has been around for more than forty years and, like the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act as a whole, has been a notable public policy success, legal controversies about its implementation continue. Recent legal developments concerning child-find include individual cases as well as major class action litigation.
The individual cases represent situations in which courts have taken school authorities to task for failing to identify and evaluate children who act in ways that give ground to suspect disability as well as situations in which courts say there was no good ground to suspect the child had a disability. For example, in
Compton Unified School District v. Addison, the federal court of appeals for the area that includes the Western United States affirmed an award of compensatory education and attorneys’ fees for a high schooler who scored in the first percentile on standardized tests, turned in classwork that was nonsensical, colored with crayons and played with dolls in class, and exhibited other problem behaviors, but was never identified and evaluated for special education throughout her academic career. The court upheld the claim for failure to identify, holding that ignoring the child’s needs over a long period of time violated the law.
The duty to identify and evaluate may be triggered by situations far less extreme. The federal district court in
C.C. Jr. v. Beaumont Independent School District allowed a case to go forward when the notice to the school district that the child should have been suspected to have a disability was the mother’s playing of a recording of the child’s speech to a district speech pathologist, but the school delayed from January to April in evaluating the child. Failing grades and expressions of concern by a parent triggered the duty to evaluate in a federal district court case,
A.W. v. Middletown Area School District, though the failure to identify was excused for a short period before the grades were available and the mother made contact with the school. Evidence of bullying, persistently poor peer relationships, many trips to the school nurse, and a decline in grades were found to be ground for suspicion of disability in another district court case,
Jana K. v. Annville-Cleona School District.
On the other hand, in
D.K. v. Abington School District, the federal court of appeals for the area that includes Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware ruled that a school district did not violate child-find by failing to identify a child whose behavior, though troublesome, was not unusual for an early primary school student, and whose report cards and other records showed progress and academic success in several areas. One federal court in Illinois said that a school district must overlook clear signs of disability to be liable for failure to evaluate a child (
Demarcus L. v. Board of Education).
Groups of parents claiming large-scale, systemic failures to evaluate children have brought class action cases seeking court orders to change school district procedures and impose other corrective action. In one case,
Jamie S. v. Milwaukee Public Schools, the federal court of appeals for the area that includes Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana ruled that claims of failure to evaluate and make timely eligibility determinations for children and provide efficient transition from infant and toddler to IDEA Part B services were not suitable for class action treatment under federal procedural law. By contrast, the federal courts have permitted plaintiffs to go forward in
DL v. District of Columbia, a class action based on similar allegations against the District of Columbia schools, and the district court there recently issued an opinion finding extensive violations of the child-find provision. A federal district court in California recently approved a settlement in a
G.F. v. Contra Costa County, a class action case brought to remedy alleged failures to identify and provide appropriate services to children in juvenile detention who had not previously been classified as children with disabilities by their school districts.”
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