 |
Recent State and Local Education News
|
Governor signs legislation to transform Va. high school graduation requirements
Richmond Times Dispatch
May 12, 2016
Gov. Terry McAuliffe signed legislation Thursday aimed at transforming how high schools prepare students for the future.
The legislation directs the Virginia Department of Education to create a “Profile of a Virginia Graduate,” which will identify what skills students need in high school and then change statewide graduation requirements to meet the expectations laid out in the profile.
Driving the new standards is a realization that not all students want, need or should go to college. The idea is for the profiles to identify the core skills individual students need for the tracks they should follow in order to make sure they are prepared to enter either the workforce or college.
These 3 high-poverty schools in Norfolk and Virginia Beach are beating the odds. Here's how they're doing it.
Virginian-Pilot
May 16, 2016
At high-poverty schools, students often start their days hungry, educators say. Many arrive in kindergarten lacking the language and counting skills that make a strong educational foundation. Without intervention, they can fall behind in class and lag their peers, contributing to an achievement gap that can widen as the children move through school.
But across South Hampton Roads, three schools have improved academic achievement in the face of those problems. Earlier this school year, the Virginia Department of Education gave Title I Distinguished School awards to Norfolk’s Willoughby and Sewells Point elementaries and Virginia Beach’s Rosemont Elementary. Willoughby won the Highly Distinguished honor. Title I is a federal designation for schools that serve high percentages of children from low-income families and receive additional federal money.
The state award is given to high-poverty schools whose students exceed goals on Standards of Learning exams. Here’s how they did it.
Willoughby Elementary School, Norfolk
Students come and go at Willoughby. Located near Norfolk Naval Station, the school serves mostly military kids. More than half of its 200 students qualify for free or reduced-priced lunch, a poverty indicator.
But expectations remain high – and the teachers steadfast – and test scores show it. Standards of Learning pass rates top 90 percent in most core subjects, beating the state target by about 15 percentage points.
CVCC selected for experimental funding program
ABC 13 (WSET)
May 17, 2016
Thousands of low-income students across the nation will soon get federal grants to take college courses for credit while still in high school.
The Department of Education announced Monday that they'll be investing $20 million dollars through dual enrollment programs in 44 colleges across the nation for the 2016-2017 school year.
Central Virginia Community College (CVCC) is one of the two colleges selected in the entire state of Virginia, along with Germanna Community College in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
"We're very excited, ecstatic actually," says Dr. Muriel Mickles, Vice President of Academic and Student Affairs at CVCC. "This is a great day for us and the entire community."
House Appropriations leaders criticize William & Mary tuition hike
Richmond Times-Dispatch
May 16, 2016
House of Delegates budget leaders say they are outraged over the College of William & Mary’s decision not to reduce a planned 12 percent increase in tuition for incoming freshmen in the next academic year, despite a big increase in state funding in next year’s budget that will give the school an additional $3.8 million.
The decision to maintain the proposed increase under the college’s promise to freeze tuition over the four-year term of each class upset members of the House Appropriations Committee. They said they boosted state funding for higher education by more than $300 million over the next two years to prevent tuition from rising more than 3 percent a year.
“I’m extremely disappointed,” said Appropriations Chairman S. Chris Jones, R-Suffolk. He had summoned higher education officials to his office with other legislative leaders at the end of the General Assembly session in March to rebuke the efforts by some of them to undermine the House position on tuition increases in negotiations with the Senate.
|
Recent National Education News
|
Education Department's Transgender Guidance: Congress, K-12 Leaders React
Education Week
May 16, 2016
On Friday, the U.S. Department of Education issued guidance to schools stating that they should allow transgender students to use the restrooms associated with their gender identity. Elected officials, advocates, and others in influential education positions quickly weighed in with their views.
The guidance was released at a time when transgender rights are making waves on the national stage. North Carolina and the U.S. Department of Justice are suing each other in the wake of the approval of House Bill 2 by the Tar Heel State earlier this year, and a total of four federal suits have been filed in the matter, including three just last week. However, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Friday that the Education Department's guidance to both K-12 and higher education was not an "enforcement action," and was released after schools had asked the department for guidance.
L.A. school district reaches $88-million settlement in sex misconduct cases at two campuses
Los Angeles Times
May 16, 2016
The Los Angeles school district will pay $88 million to settle sexual abuse cases at two elementary schools where complaints about the teachers behavior had surfaced long before their arrest, officials confirmed Monday.
The settlement with 30 children and their families, finalized over the weekend, is the second largest in district history, and brings a dark chapter to an apparent close.
The cases at De La Torre Elementary in Wilmington and Telfair Avenue Elementary in Pacoima, emerged in the aftermath of better-known sexual misconduct at Miramonte Elementary, south of downtown. Altogether, a spate of prosecutions and lawsuits led to huge settlements and spurred the district to announce a raft of reforms at the nation's second-largest school system.
|
|
|
How is Virginia changing education to match with new technology?
Technology in education was in the news this week in Virginia. The most visible example was the ceremonial delivery of legislation to Governor McAuliffe
via student built robot. The legislation (
HB831)
requires the state board of education to incorporate computer science, computational thinking and computer coding in the Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL).
Nationally,
recent headlines surrounded the findings of the first Technology and Learning assessment carried out by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, often called "The nation's report card." Though science and technology are often very male-dominated fields in current industry, the test showed females outscoring males at the 8th grade level. As the Washington Post reported,
"among eighth-grade students in public and private schools, 45 percent of girls and 42 percent of boys scored proficient on the exam . . . overall, 43 percent of all students were proficient. . . The test was designed to measure students’ abilities in areas such as understanding technological principles, designing solutions and communicating and collaborating. Girls were particularly strong in the latter."
The breakout for these different test sections, provided by the
NAEP website, are shown below.
Though compared to current patterns in technology industries, this finding seems striking, the higher scores among female students overall is not surprising given other recent testing data. Back in September, we took a look at gender gaps on SOL scores in Virginia (based on the 2014-15 school year). We saw a picture where females generally outperform males on the average of all five SOL areas, a fact driven mainly by higher female scores in writing, reading and math. There is general parity with regard to science and a slight pattern of males outperforming females in social studies. (Click
here or on the map below to see each of the maps.) Based on this data, it makes sense that there would be general parity for design and systems technology but a higher female average around communication and collaboration with technology (which requires clear comprehension and cogent writing).
The NAEP-TEL assessment showed more profound gaps along lines of race/ethnicity and between English Language Learners and fluent English speakers. Again from the
Washington Post article:
"Just 25 percent of students who received free and reduced-price lunch scored proficient, compared to 59 percent of more affluent students. Eighteen percent of black students and 28 percent of Latino students scored proficient, for example, compared to 56 percent of white and Asian students.
The test was particularly difficult for students learning English as a second language: Five percent of them scored proficient. And 60 percent of private school students were proficient, outperforming their public-school peers, 42 percent of whom were proficient."
These gaps will impact instructional choices moving forward, but CEPI's Senior Fellow, Dr. Richard Vacca, also points out in his
annual preview of what education law issues are likely to emerge in 2016-17 that
"emerging issues involving a growing population of students from families where the primary language spoken is not English—students who enter school with little to no understanding or speaking ability in English (English language learners)—will require local school officials to reexamine and define the concept of “necessary related services” in a different, non-special education, context."
We excerpt other portions of his May Education Law newsletter
below.
Finally, in
this week's poll snapshot we take a brief look at whether there is any gender gap in perspectives on SOL tests and their impact on school accountability and student performance.
Sincerely,
CEPI
|
Poll Snapshot - A Gender Gap on the Costs and Benefits of Testing?
In the past we've looked at public perspectives on testing overall, but we've rarely broken that out by gender. This year's poll, however, showed a gender gap on several aspects of testing, including whether it helps student achievement and whether it puts too much pressure on students.
Though part of the argument for standardized testing has been its potential use as a tool for assessing and improving student achievement, a majority of Virginians (58%) disagree with the statement that SOLs help improve student achievement. Women (65%) were more likely to disagree than were Men (51%).
When it comes to asking respondents to agree or disagree with the following statement, there was also a siginificant gender gap:
- The SOL tests are putting too much pressure on students.
Among women, 54% strongly agreed, compared to 34% of men.
To read the full poll, visit our
website.
|
Education Law Newsletter - Potential Issues 2016-2017
Excerpted from the May edition of CEPI's Education Law Newsletter. This wrap-up issue for the year is written by Dr. Richard Vacca and looks ahead at issues likely to face school systems in the coming school year. Read the full newsletter on our
website.
"In keeping with past practice this final commentary of the 2015-2016 series is devoted to predicting potential legal and policy issues to watch next school year—a risky business to say the least. The paragraphs below are the results of this year’s “issue spotting” exercise.
School Safety and Security
Over this past year articles and reports both in the popular media and professional literature have continued to feature reports and discussions of the critical need to move forward with policies and procedures aimed at keeping public school system property and events secure and safe. Not only focusing attention on the security and safety of students and staff from violence (e.g., student-on-student initiated verbal harassment and physical altercations; attacks by outside school system third parties; etc.), several are devoted to potential dangers caused by crumbling, outdated school buildings—including but not limited to unsafe drinking water, inadequate ventilation, and other health hazards. Suffice it to say, such issues will become more intense next school year as budgetary constraints continue to escalate.
In 2016-2017, involvement of local police agencies in assisting school principals in providing and maintaining school security and safety will continue to raise questions of policy and practice. Generally referred to as School Resource Officers (SRO), armed police officers, while not employees of the school system, have nonetheless become a visible and integral part of the school environment, including their presence in school hallways, and at school system activities and events. In recent years, as the need to protect the safety of school students and staff from violence and disruption has grown, the involvement of the SRO has sometimes developed to an extent where the prerogatives and lines of authority between school administrators and the SRO are blurred. Critics claim that too many routine student disciplinary problems, usually the prerogative of a principal or assistant principal, are too often handled as a police matter by the SRO. In 2016-2017, where this is happening, local school system policy-makers must continue to work toward clarifying the disciplinary authority, roles, functions, and expectations of the SRO in student disciplinary matters vis-à-vis building administrators.
Another possible issue to watch involves safety and security of transgender students. While it is premature to predict the broad implications of a recent Virginia case with national implications, where a student has challenged (under both 14th Amendment Equal Protection, and Title IX, Education Amendments Act, 20 U.S.C. 1681 [a]) a local school board’s access to school bathrooms policy, this Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals case is important for school system policy-makers to watch as it works its way through the judicial process. G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 7026 (4th Cir. 2016) The final ruling in this case (possibly by the United States Supreme Court) will have major implications for school system policies and procedures stretching well beyond those dealing solely with school safety and security.
Special Education
In 2016-2017 issues involving special education will continue to flourish. In my view there are three reasons for this. First, because Congress has not reauthorized IDEA since 2004, school officials are operating on decade-old interpretations of IDEA and each state remains responsible for implementing and paying the lion’s share of financial support of an expanding population of special education eligible children. Second, under the most recent publication of the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) once separate and specific categories of disability have been reorganized and expanded into larger more general categories with specific characteristics listed in the larger category (e.g., Autistic Spectrum Disorders). This will likely add to confusion among non-special education school administrators and staff. Third, claims of discrimination for an over-identification of special education students, resulting in a high percentage of minority students being placed in special education classes and programs, likely will continue to surface.
|
|
