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
Articles of Interest
State & Local Policy


Should state -- not just local school boards -- have power to approve charter schools?
The Daily Press
December 6, 2015

Should Virginia amend its constitution to allow the state — not just local school boards — the authority to establish charter schools?


That question could be before voters in a November 2016 referendum.


The issue has the potential to become a heated one in the upcoming General Assembly session, pitting school boards and an education establishment who say they want to protect existing public schools against those who say they want to bring more options to parents.


Charter schools — which operate with public money but hold some autonomy from local school divisions — have grown in number across the country in recent years.


But while many states have hundreds of charter schools, Virginia has only nine — seven now operating and two on the way. That's less than 0.5 percent of the 1,823 schools statewide, 17 years after charter schools were first allowed in the Old Dominion.


That's a far lower rate than the national average.


Virginia Dept. of Education supports major revision of No Child Left Behind

NBC 10 (WSLS)
December 3, 2015

The 2002 No Child Left Behind education law is headed for a major revision after the House voted to dramatically limit the federal government’s role in education policy but keep the law’s annual testing requirements for the nation’s public schoolchildren.

 

The Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) supports the changes.


In October, Superintendent of Public Instruction Dr. Steven Staples said Virginia is well positioned to assume more authority over accountability. Dr. Staples and the board have already been talking about what changes might be needed with the state’s accountability if the measure is passed.

Federal Policy

Congress is getting rid of No Child Left Behind. Here’s what will replace it.
Vox
December 2, 2015

The days of No Child Left Behind are numbered.

The House of Representatives voted Wednesday night, with a massive bipartisan majority of 359 to 64, in favor of a new education bill that would reduce the federal role in K-12 education for the first time since the 1980s.

The bill, the Every Student Succeeds Act, would keep the most familiar feature of No Child Left Behind: annual tests in reading and math for students in third through eighth grades. But it drops the 2002 law's other big idea: that the federal government, which spends $14 billion each year on poor schools, should directly hold those schools accountable for the quality of their education.

This is a major victory for the conservative vision for education policy, which puts the states, not Washington, in charge of holding schools accountable — and it means states could scale back their efforts to improve schools for poor and minority children.

How schools would be judged under ‘Every Student Succeeds,’ the new No Child Left Behind
Washington Post
November 30, 2015

Federal lawmakers on Monday released the final text of a compromise bill to rewrite No Child Left Behind, including closely watched language outlining how the nation’s K-12 schools would be judged — and how struggling schools would be improved — if the legislation passes.


The bill, dubbed the Every Student Succeeds Act, would largely shift authority from the federal government to states and districts, giving local officials far more power to define what it means for a school to be successful and to decide how and when to intervene in schools that persistently fail to live up to expectations.


It attempts to thread the needle between conservatives who want to shrink the federal government’s footprint in education and civil rights advocates who worry that some states, left to their own devices, will obfuscate or ignore the poor performance of schools serving low-income and minority students.

Specifically, under the Every Student Succeeds Act:

  • The testing regime remains in place. States would still be required, as they are now, to test students annually in math and reading in grades 3 through 8 and once in high school, and publicly report the scores according to race, income, ethnicity, disability and whether students are English-language learners.
  • States get to set their own academic goals. Where No Child Left Behind set forth one goal for the nation — 100 percent proficiency in math and reading by 2014 — the new bill would require each state to set and measure progress toward its own academic goals.
  • Test scores still matter, but how much is up to the states. States would be charged with designing systems for judging schools. Each system would have to include measures of academic progress, including test scores, graduation rates and (for non-native English speakers) English language acquisition. But it would also have to include a measure of school climate, such as student engagement or access to advanced courses. All of the academic indicators together must count for “much” more than the non-academic factor, but the definition of “much” is not clear.
 
Did school disciplinary actions rise or fall in 2014?
School safety is an ongoing concern for all educators and meting out discipline for students who violate schools standards of conduct can be a difficult task.  The positive news in Virginia is that educators needed to take significantly less disciplinary action in 2013-14 than they did in the 2012-13 school year.

We recently pulled figures from the Virginia Department of Education's 2013-14 Discipline, Crime, and Violence Annual Report which was published in August.  Table 2 of that report provides the basis of the charts below.  The charts report the number of offenses (e.g. there were 20,812 incidents of insubordination), show the share of each type of offense (representated by the size of the box) and indicate the percentage change from the prior year (green is a decline - e.g. insubordination dropped 14.2%).  You can look at the charts interactively by clicking on the graphic or going here.


We also visualized the incidence and year on year change of weapons offenses reported (bottom left) - here the news is generally positive as well.  Only offenses concerning "other weapons" besides knives, firearms, fireworks and look-alike guns increased.  Perhaps the most concerning category - handguns - dropped by 50% to only 11 incidents.

We also visualized in similar fashion the offenses reported that might be broadly grouped under bullying/harrassment, including those of a sexual nature.  Concerns about bullying and cyberbullying have increased in recent years (see our review of poll responses on whether bullying is a serious problem in schools in or Poll Snapshot below).  However, incidents of general bullying or harrassment were down significantly from 2012-13 to 2013-14 (31% and 48% respectively).  You may also enjoy reading the excerpt below of Dr. Vacca's April 2015 Education Law Newsletter regarding bullying and students with disabilities.    Cyberbullying disciplinary actions also declined, by about 10%.  

We look forward to being able to report on public opinion regarding four school safety questions in our 2016 Commonwealth Education Poll:
  • Based on what you know, how serious of a problem is bullying and harassment in schools? Is it [Very serious; somewhat serious; Not too serious; OR Not at all serious]?
  • In general, do you feel the public schools in your community are [Very safe; Safe; Not too safe, OR Not at all safe]?
  • Which approach to school safety do you most agree with, even if neither is exactly right? [We should address school safety issues with additional security measures OR We should address school safety issues through the mental health system.]
  • Which approach to school discipline do you most agree with, even if neither is exactly right? [Students suspected of committing a crime in school must always be cited and referred to juvenile court for processing; OR Students suspected of committing a crime may be warned and released to parents or to the school for discipline.]
As always, we hope these data visualizations and links are helpful. 

Sincerely,
CEPI

Poll Snapshot:  How serious of a problem is bullying and harassment in scholls?

In the last decade, bullying in schools has been a major issue of interest to policymakers. Virginia legislators passed a 2005 provision that required school boards to have programs in place that mitigated bullying and required principals to report any incidents to parents of students who suffered bullying. Legislator activity continued in most recent session with a bill (HB1537) that authorizes principals to contact parents and request that they receive training on preventing bullying.

Given this interest, we asked respondents to our 2015 Commonwealth Education Poll whether they see bullying and harassment as a serious problem in schools. Substantial majorities said they did with 50% saying bullying and harassment was a very serious problem and 37% saying it was a somewhat serious problem. As noted in the graph above, minorities (61%) and women (57%) were more likely to view bullying and harassment as a very serious problem than were whites (44%) and men (41%). Those from South Central and Tidewater regions (56%) were also more likely than respondents from other regions to see the prevalence of bullying and harassment as a very serious problem.

Responses were also different across income, education and party identification lines:

  • Respondents from households with less than $50,000 in income more frequently saw bullying and harassment as a very serious problem (57%) than did those from households with $50,000 to $100,000 in income (46%) and those from households with $100,000 or more in income (42%).
  • Respondents with a high school education or less were more likely to see bullying and harassment as a very serious problem (56%) when compared to those who had some college (49%) and those with a college degree or more (43%).
  • Democratic respondents were also more likely to see it as a very serious problem (55%) when contrasted with Independents (49%) and Republicans (42%).

The survey also found that a majority (56%) of respondents think bullying in schools is more of a problem today than it was in the past, while 36% think the reverse is true. Only 7% feel that bullying as a problem is about the same as it was in the past.

Similar to perceptions of whether bullying is a serious problem, women (67%) and minorities (63%) were more likely to see bullying as a greater problem today, compared to 52% of white respondents and only 43% of male respondents. Those aged 65 and older also said more frequently (69%) that bullying is more of a problem today. In comparison, 55% of those aged 35-44 and 45-64 and only 48% of those aged 18-34 said the same.

(To read the full results of the poll, visit our website. Question 14 & 15 are cited above  - topline results are on page 28 of the 2015 poll with demographic breakouts on pages 52-53.)

Bullying and Students with Educational Disabilities:  Policy Implications

Excerpted from from Dr. Vacca's April 2015 Education Law Newsletter.

Overview

In Chapter Ten of our textbook my late co-author Bill Bosher and I include bullying as a part of our general discussion of student-on-student harassment. In our discussion we include a variety of cases where courts have held that school officials who exhibit deliberate indifference (i.e., know about or willfully avoid knowing about the possibility of serious harm to a student, but fail to take prompt and appropriate action) may be held liable when a student suffers harm. In these decisions the courts consistently rely on and expand a standard set by the United States Supreme Court in Davis v. Monroe County School Board (1999) where, in a Title IX case, the Court opined that “in the context of student-on-student harassment, damages are available only where the behavior is so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it denies its victims the equal access to education….” Subsequent courts applied the Davis standard to situations where the harassment (including bullying) actually created a “hostile learning environment” keeping the harassed student from accessing educational opportunities available to all students and from making “meaningful educational progress.” (See also, Vacca, 2012) In a footnote in our Chapter we make the following prediction: “the same elements of analysis will be used in a claim of student harassment based on educational disability, especially where the student victim has an I.E.P.” (Vacca and Bosher, 2012)

Students with Disabilities and Educational Progress. The primary intent of various federal and state statutes covering students with disabilities is fourfold. First, that students with disabilities not be discriminated against solely because of their disability. Second, that they receive a free appropriate public education (FAPE), including necessary related services, designed to meet their unique needs, in the least restrictive environment (LRE). Third, that they be included (not excluded) in all school (academic, social, and extra-curricular) offerings and activities, to the extent practicable, with their age appropriate peers, in general education settings. Fourth, as the United States Supreme Court opined in Board of Education v. Rowley (1982), that students with disabilities have access to a “meaningful educational program…a program designed to deliver educational benefit to that student.” Thus, the emphasis in post-Rowley court decisions has been on students with disabilities making meaningful and measurable educational progress, receiving some meaningful educational benefit, and not regressing. Where the matter involves the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA 2014), it is the student’s I.E.P. that serves as the fundamental document on which such a determination is made.

Recently I came across a very interesting federal district court case where plaintiff parents claimed that school officials failed to remedy bullying behavior by some students against their son (hereafter referred to as N.M.) and, as such, discriminated against and denied him FAPE under the mandates of special education law (IDEA, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act). The issue analysis and decision have implications for local school system policy.

 

To read the full brief, visit our website.