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Articles of Interest
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State & Local Policy
President of Virginia's Board of Education meets with local educators
NBC 5 (WCYB)
August 25, 2014
Educators across Southwest Virginia had the chance to talk to the president of Virginia's Board of Education on Monday evening. President Chris Braunlich held a meeting in Bristol to get feedback from local teachers and school board members.
He discussed changes to the Standards of Learning tests that went into effect this year, including requirements that teachers give their own alternative assessments.
Braunlich told us he's heard positive feedback.
"I think part of what they hope to do is be able to do a number of reformative assessments so it's not just one end of year test but there are a couple of assessments during the course of the year that will measure how students are learning," said Braunlich.
Virginia Gets NASA Funding for STEM Education
U.S. News & World Report
August 26, 2014
Virginia is sharing more than $17.3 million from NASA to increase student and faculty engagement in science, technology, engineering and mathematics at community colleges and technical schools.
Officials say the Virginia Community College System is getting funding through the National Space Grant and Fellowship Program.
Thirty-five awards were granted after a solicitation to members of the national Space Grant Consortia. Each award has a two-year performance period and a maximum value of $500,000.
NASA says the winning proposals outlined ways to attract and retain more students from community and technical colleges in STEM education and develop stronger collaborations to increase student access to NASA's STEM education content.
Federal Policy
Pediatrics group: Schools should let teens sleep in
The Virginia Pilot, August 25, 2014
Just in time for school, the country's largest pediatric organization has issued a recommendation that teens will be waving in the faces of principals: Let students in middle and high schools sleep in a little!
The policy brief, released today by the American Academy of Pediatrics, recommends that middle and high schools start no earlier than 8:30 a.m. It's the first such policy for the group, though its journal has published numerous studies linking teen sleepiness to poor school performance and more car accidents.
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News outlets have recently been gripped by events in Ferguson, Mo. following the shooting of a young black man named Michael Brown by a white police officer Darren Wilson. One of the key storylines around the resulting protests (many peaceful, some violent) was a debate about the militarization of police in the U.S., a debate that appears to be leading to a bipartisan review of the programs that facilitate the flow of equipment to local police forces.
The militarization of police debate parallels a similar question for education officials - what policies, tactics and equipment help keep school students, staff and administrators safe and which might result in greater harm. Resources on best practices for school safety range from those offered by the Dept. of Homeland Security and research institutes. The state of Virginia has, for a number of years, had a standing school safety audit protocol.
In the context of such a debate, the recent decision by Compton, Ca. school officials to allow certain school police to carry AR-15 assault rifles in schools drew national attention.
In light of this debate, our poll snapshot this week looks at public preferences between two general policy responses to the potential of violence in schools - more security measures or improved mental health systems. We also revisit Dr. Vacca's April 2014 review of education law elements important to search and seizure decisions by school personnell.
Finally, Dr. Bosher's editorial this week provides some wisdom for new kindergarteners (and the rest of us).
Sincerely,
CEPI
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Poll Snapshot: Approaches to School Safety
This past year, we asked a representative sample of Virginians which approach to school safety they most agree with, even if neither is exactly right - "additional security measures" or "through the mental health system." The chart below shows the responses for the state as a whole, as well as broken down by regions.
Clearly a majority prefer the "additional security measures" approach while only about a quarter of the responses preferred a mental health approach. Significantly, 10% of respondents volunteered that both were important.
There were significant differences among regions with the preference for the security measures approach reaching a high of 64% in Northwest and West regions of Virginia. Only in Northern Virginia did security measures not receive a majority response.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Republicans had a stronger preference for security measures (61%) than Independents (54%) or Democrats (47%). Independents were slightly more likely (15%) to volunteer that both were best than were the two party-affiliated groups (9-10%).
Support for security measures was also higher among lower income respondents and respondents with less years of formal education. Among respondents from households making less than $50,000, 63% supported additional security measures while only 41% of respondents from households making more than $100,000 annually said the same. Sixty-nine percent of respondents with high school or less education favored security measures while only 41% of respondents with a college degree or more said the same.
(To read the full results of the poll, visit our website. Question 17 is the question cited above on school safety approaches - topline results are on page 33; crosstabs are on pages 62.)
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Search and Seizure in Educational Settings
Excerpted from Dr. Vacca's April 2014 Ed Law Newsletter on legal and policy issues related to search and seizure
"Beginning in the mid-1970s and moving through the mid-1980s public school administrators across this country were being called upon “to search students and their property, principally for harboring or dealing in drugs.” (Vacca and Bosher, 2012) Because a growing number of these searches raised a question regarding the applicability of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution they found their way into court where, as a general rule, final decisions were inconsistent. A uniform judicial standard was needed to specifically address public school administrator- not police- initiated searches. This was accomplished when the United States Supreme Court handed down New Jersey v. T.L.O. (1985)—its first public school student-related search decision.
The T.L.O Standard. Emphasizing that students do not forfeit their Fourth Amendment protections or waive their privacy interests and expectations simply because they enter school property, Justice White also made it clear that student privacy interests and expectations must be balanced against the fact that school officials (as government agents) possess a “legitimate need to maintain an environment in which learning can take place.” In his view, while “[m]aintaining order in the classroom has never been easy…. in recent years, school disorder has often taken particularly ugly forms: drug use and violent crime in schools have become major problems….” Because school officials are different from the police they need “a certain degree of flexibility in school disciplinary procedures….” To enable this the standard created by the Court to apply in school administrator-initiated searches poses the following questions: (1) At its inception do school administrators have reasonable suspicion (different from and lesser than the police standard of probable cause) to suspect that a violation of school policy, or school rules, or the law is present? (2) Is the search, as conducted (i.e., its scope), reasonably related to the purpose for the search?"
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