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Recent State and Local Education News
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Physics Revival at Virginia Union
Inside Higher Education
February 6, 2017
At a time when a number of small colleges and universities are rethinking and shrinking their curricula due to budget, enrollment and other concerns -- in some cases shuttering programs in what are traditionally viewed as core disciplines -- developments at Virginia Union University stand out. The university recently reintroduced its physics major.
“Physics is the basis of all sciences -- that’s why so many departments do service courses for chemistry majors, or teach physics for math or biology,” said Shaheen Islam, a professor of physics at Virginia Union who won a $100,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to reopen the physics department. “Everybody knows this, so hopefully now we’ll start to see the trend move the other way.”
Islam was referring to a trend of institutions considering shuttering their physics departments as they look for ways to cut costs in a time of uncertain enrollments and financial futures. The University of Southern Maine’s physics department was on the chopping block in 2013, for example, but survived. A number of departments in Texas weren’t so lucky, with the state’s Higher Education Coordinating Board announcing in 2011 that it would begin phasing out up to seven of its 24 public undergraduate physics programs for failing to graduate 25 majors every five years, or about five annually. Several cut programs were at Texas’ historically black colleges and universities, causing scientists to worry that the discipline’s diversity gap would be widened as a result.
Virginia Senate, House budgets diverge on pay for teachers, faculty, Capitol Police
Richmond Times Dispatch
February 5, 2017
The General Assembly’s budget committees agree that more pay for public employees is their top priority, but they take much different paths on providing raises for teachers, college and university faculty, and the Virginia Capitol Police.
The Senate Finance Committee adopted a proposed budget on Sunday that would include a 2 percent pay increase for teachers in K-12 and higher education faculty, while the spending plan the House Appropriations Committee approved provides more money to local school divisions and colleges and universities to spend as they want, but not necessarily on raises.
The Senate budget includes $83 million for the state’s share of a 2 percent pay increase for teachers, regardless of whether their local school division gave the raises in December out of their own funds. All but 12 of the 135 school divisions gave the raise last year after the state backed out of its share.
“The Senate took a more direct approach,” said Norment, noting concern about treating teachers differently than other public employees.
The House chose to use the governor’s bonus funds and other revenues to add $61 million to the $157 million already budgeted to free up Virginia Lottery money for local school divisions to use as they wish, without a requirement that they match the grants with local funds.
Information security issues at Virginia Department of Education being addressed
NBC 10 (WSLS)
February 3, 2017
A WSLS 10 investigation leads to new information on Friday.
We first told you Thursday about personal information, including data on students and teachers, at possible risk. It’s being stored by the Virginia Department of Education (DOE) and it’s not secure according to an audit released this week.
The Virginia Department of Education was notified Friday that all 13 computer servers that needed to be upgraded were installed as of Friday morning. This is weeks ahead of what they were planning on and weeks ahead of what they told WSLS 10 when we started asking questions this week.
The Virginia Auditor of Public Accounts (APA) said software and hardware needed to be upgraded to keep personal information protected. The outdated servers have names, addresses and social security numbers of Virginia teachers and anyone who has a Virginia teaching license. Student data, such as names and some addresses is also not secure according to the audit report.
The report says “Education does not upgrade certain IT software… which increases the risk that a malicious attacker will exploit these vulnerabilities, leading to a data breach.”
Richmond Times-Dispatch
February 5, 2017
Where have all the high school seniors gone? That’s the question perplexing state higher education officials.
Total enrollment at the state’s public and private colleges and universities dropped this academic year — a loss that came despite an increase in the pool of high school seniors who could have filled those seats.
Although public four-year universities posted a modest increase, overall enrollment fell by 1.5 percent from the prior year because of declines at the Virginia Community College System and at Liberty University.
“I don’t have an explanation for these numbers,” said Tod R. Massa, director of policy research and data warehousing for the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia.
U.Va. officials discuss changing landscape of higher education
Richmond Times-Dispatch
February 2, 2017
University of Virginia officials talked about affordability in higher education at a nonvoting work session Thursday at Morven Farm in Albemarle County.
The U.Va. Board of Visitors heard from a venture capital investor who argued that higher education as a whole will shift away from the four-year degree and more toward fragmented, technical credentials satisfying the needs of employers.
Ryan Craig, who heads University Ventures, prefaced his presentation by saying that the top-rated institutions, like U.Va., would be insulated from these changes. But the ripple effect on all of higher education will eventually have an impact on U.Va.
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Recent National Education News
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On Higher Education, Trump is Hard to Read
Wall Street Journal
February 2, 2017
The higher-education agenda of the U.S. Education Department under Donald Trump remains largely unknown nearly two weeks into his presidency, fueling doubts among some college leaders and education experts about how much he will prioritize issues like reining in student debt or expanding college access.
Mr. Trump was expected by higher-education insiders to take a more hands-off approach to the industry than his predecessor did. He took a step in that direction this week when he appointed Jerry Falwell Jr., the president of Evangelical Christian Liberty University and an outspoken critic of what he said was heavy-handed oversight by the Education Department, to lead a task force on lightening regulations on college.
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Do Virginians want to send their own children to virtual schools?
This week, our
legislation spotlight focuses on the prospects of bills that would create a state-wide virtual school in Virginia, with it's own governing board. A number of other states (see the map below which shows the status in the 2013-14 school year) have set up a fully online school, but the number of students enrolled varies considerably. As
this article from the Education Writers Association notes, there are a number of challenges, including accountability and the decision of whether the states should set up it's own virtual school or contract with a for profit company to provide such services.
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Another question about online schools is how many students and parents are interested in a fully online environment. In our annual
Commonwealth Education Poll one of the questions we've asked the last several years is whether respondents in our representative sample of Virginians would be willing to have their own child earn all, some or none of their high school credits online. The responses provide a very broad sense of the potential demand for fully online schooling. See the results summarized
below in the legislation spotlight.
We'll have more analysis next week on the state budget that is starting to emerge from the General Assembly. The Senate and House both reported out their versions of a budget on Sunday (read the
Richmond Times-Dispatch summary here.) As lawmakers weigh how much funding to send to local school systems and the best mechanisms to use in doing so, we wanted to review a more basic question - does the public think that the amount of funding schools have will affect the quality of the education they can provide to students? As you can see from the chart below, the basic answer is "Yes" - sixty-nine percent (69%) of respondents to our poll this year think that the amount of funding spent on public schools affects the quality of students' education either "a great deal" or "quite a lot."
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Those with higher amounts of formal education (some college or a college degree) were more likely (at 74%) to see a connection between funding and education quality, compared to 62% of those with a high school education or less.
The partisan breakdown shows that Democrats (at 79%) were more likely to think there was a connection between funding and education quality, with a clear majority of Republicans (64%) thinking the same. Among Independents, there was less consensus on the connection between funding and quality - only 51% said funding had a great deal or quite a lot of a role in affecting education quality.
Women, at 74%, were also more likely to think the connection was pronounced, compared to 66% of men.
This is only one of numerous insights contained in this year's poll. We hope you'll browse through the results of the 82 page full report, now available on
our website. And, of course, we'll feature other results in future issues of Compass Point.
CEPI
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Legislation Spotlight - Virginia Virtual School (
HB 1400 and
SB 1240)
Excerpted from the February 3rd General Assemby K-12 Education Update, written by David Blount. Read the full update on our
website.
Background: Delegate Dickie Bell introduced HB 1400 this year with the same language as his 2016 bill that was approved by the legislature, but ultimately vetoed by the governor. His measure, along with Senator Dunnavant’s SB 1240, would establish the Virginia Virtual School, governed by a Board of primarily legislative and citizen members. Under the bills, any student may enroll with any one, approved, multi-division online provider. Such students are still responsible for taking the applicable Standards of Learning tests. Beginning with the 2019-20 school year, the average state share of SOQ per pupil funding for such students would be transferred to the school, which is limited by the legislation to enrolling no more than 5,000 students statewide.
The push for virtual education at the state level in Virginia first met success in 2010, when the General Assembly directed the Department of Education (DOE) to provide a series of online courses with instructional content delivered by multi-division online providers (see the Virtual Learning page on the DOE website). In the ensuing years, there were unsuccessful attempts to have state and local shares of SOQ per pupil funding transferred from the school division of residence to the enrolling school division for any student who enrolls full-time in a virtual school program outside her or his school division. The current effort began in 2013, with a bill establishing a Virginia Virtual School later being approved in 2015. However, the approved legislation contained a reenactment clause requiring it to be approved the following year. The General Assembly approved the legislation again last year, but is was then vetoed by the governor, who took issue with creation of a new state agency outside the Constitutional framework governing school divisions and school boards.
This year, while moving the aforementioned bills forward, the legislature has dispatched the governor’s proposal to expand the current DOE pilot program available to all middle and high schools. It also has turned back bills to establish regional school boards to contract with online providers to operate a full-time virtual school program for students among the school divisions.
Research on Virtual Schools:
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Virtual Schools in the U.S. 2014: Politics, Performance, Policy, and Research Evidence. Shafer, S.R. et al.,
National Education Policy Center, University of Colorado, Boulder.
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Online Learning: Virtual Schools Accountability Issues Brief (2013), International Association for K-12 Online Learning, posted on the VDOE website.
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Evaluating Online Learning Challenges and Strategies for Success (2008), U.S. Department of Education, Office of Innovation and Improvement
What the public thinks: We recently released results of our annual education poll - it found a majority of respondents (56%) willing to have their child earn some high school credits online but only 14% were willing to have their child in a fully online learning environment. Twenty-eight percent (28%) of Virginians prefer their child take no credits online.
Those employed in, or retired from schools, were less likely (at 7%) to be willing to see their child have all courses be online (compared to 16% for those without school employment connections). There was also a partisan difference on the question (see chart, above).
Likely outcome in 2017: Given the unchanged language, the bill may again be approved in the General Assembly but ultimately be vetoed by the Governor.
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General Assembly Update - Legislation Filed
Excerpted from the January 20th General Assemby K-12 Education Update, written by David Blount. Read the full update on our
website.
Budget Update
Senate and House budget leaders this past week signaled their intention to provide a 3% pay raise for 70,000 state employees and to hike law enforcement officer salaries in the next fiscal year. A state salary supplement for teachers and other school employees would not be provided. It recently was reported that all but a dozen local school divisions gave teachers a pay hike for the current year, when it was anticipated that a state supplement was going to be provided (those raises later were scuttled due to falling state revenues), so there is a sense among state leaders that pay for local educators will be addressed by local governing bodies. The latest teacher salary survey from the Department of Education (DOE) shows the average, budgeted classroom teacher salary for the current year is $56,148, up 2.29% percent from last year.
The committees responsible for the budget bills will be putting the finishing touches on their proposed amendments to the introduced budget this coming week. The competing House and Senate spending plans will be released on Sunday, February 5, 2017.
More detailed information about proposed budget amendments submitted by legislators is available
here. Information from the DOE about the introduced budget can be found
here.
Education Legislation
As the General Assembly races toward the February 7 “crossover day,” consideration of bills in committees has been proceeding, but at a pace that means some additional meetings beyond those regularly scheduled. Some “heavy lifting” will have to occur next week, as the House Education Committee has over 60 bills left on its docket, while Senate Education and Health has just under 50.
As noted in last week’s “spotlight” on school calendar legislation, the House has grown supportive in recent years of giving local school boards control over setting the school calendar. The House continued that trend last week, first in committee, where with the backing of education and chamber of commerce groups, the panel endorsed
HB 1983 on a 15 to 6 vote. The hospitality industry provided the usual opposition. Later in the week, the bill handily passed the House, 75 to 24. This is the lone “school calendar” legislation remaining, following Senate Education and Health’s narrow defeat (on an 8 to 7 vote) of
SB 1111, which would have allowed an exception from the post-Labor Day opening law for a school division that has a dual enrollment agreement with a community college and participating students are required to attend college credit courses that begin prior to Labor Day.
The House Education Committee also spent considerable time discussing
HB 1757 before shipping the bill off to Appropriations in the face of fiscal and other concerns. A substitute version of the bill would have set school nurse ratios at one per 550 students, effective July 1, 2018. There also was concern about singling out nurses for special treatment to the exclusion of other school support services.
With little discussion, the full House of Delegates approved the “Tebow” bill,
HB 1578, to allow participation by homeschoolers in public high school athletics and other interscholastic activities governed by the Virginia High School League (VHSL). The vote was 60 to 38.
The full House easily passed
HB 1770 to allow local school divisions to waive teacher licensure requirements for career and technical education teachers. A companion version,
SB 1583, awaits approval on the Senate floor. The House also has endorsed
HB 2341 to require at least two of the nine Board of Education (BOE) members to represent business and industry in the private sector in the Commonwealth. The vote was 92 to 7. Finally,
HJ 546 has been defeated for the session. The bill proposed a Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) study of the Virginia High School League, but was dispatched by the House Rules Committee.
The Senate Education and Health Committee has been focused thus far on the many health-related bills before it. It did handle some education bills this past week. In addition to the school calendar bill previously noted, the Committee narrowly defeated
SB 828 that would have required the learning objectives for family life education to include age-appropriate instruction in the prevention, recognition, and awareness of child abduction, child abuse, child sexual exploitation, and child sexual abuse in all grades. The vote was 8 to 6.
The Committee did approve
SB 1245 to require the BOE, by July 1, 2018, to include evaluating the economic value of a postsecondary degree, including the cost of attendance, potential student loan debt and potential earnings, in the Board's objectives for economics education and financial literacy. The Committee narrowly backed sending
SB 1243 to the Senate Finance Committee. This is the Parental Choice Education Savings Accounts legislation. It would allow the parent of a public school student to apply to the relevant local school division for a one-year, renewable Parental Choice Education Savings Account, to consist of up to one-quarter of all applicable state per pupil and sales tax funds applicable to the student, for use at a private or religious school or for various other education expenses. The House version,
HB 1605, is in the House Appropriations Committee.
Read the full update on our
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