Just News from Center X – August 4, 2017

Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

Justice Dept. to take on affirmative action in college admissions

Charlie Savage, The New York Times
The Trump administration is preparing to redirect resources of the Justice Department’s civil rights division toward investigating and suing universities over affirmative action admissions policies deemed to discriminate against white applicants, according to a document obtained by The New York Times. The document, an internal announcement to the civil rights division, seeks current lawyers interested in working for a new project on “investigations and possible litigation related to intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions.” The announcement suggests that the project will be run out of the division’s front office, where the Trump administration’s political appointees work, rather than its Educational Opportunities Section, which is run by career civil servants and normally handles work involving schools and universities. The document does not explicitly identify whom the Justice Department considers at risk of discrimination because of affirmative action admissions policies. But the phrasing it uses, “intentional race-based discrimination,” cuts to the heart of programs designed to bring more minority students to university campuses.

One in four D.C. public schools have had at least three principals since 2012

Alejandra Matos, The Washington Post
More than a quarter of D.C. Public Schools have had at least three principals since August 2012, a pattern of upheaval that worries parents and teachers who say constant change in leadership can generate instability, inhibit trust and stall academic progress. Capitol Hill’s Eliot-Hine Middle School, for example, is heading into its second straight school year with a new principal. In 2016, a fresh chief took over after the previous one left for another DCPS school. But the position will be filled anew this upcoming academic year. “With the constant churn, it’s impossible to build loyalty to the neighborhood school,” said Joe Weedon, father of a seventh-grader at Eliot-Hine and a representative on the D.C. State Board of Education. DCPS Chancellor Antwan Wilson is sympathetic, saying he expects principals to lead the same school for at least five years. That’s how long he and others believe it typically takes to produce strong academic results and build a vibrant school community through strong relationships with parents, teachers and students.

Nationwide, teachers supplement school supplies with their salaries

Noel King, NPR
“We are talking about trends in education from time to time this summer. And the trend we’re talking about today is one that will be familiar to many parents – spending money on school supplies. For a lot of families, back-to-school shopping is a stretch, but there are also a lot of teachers out there who are buying classroom supplies using their own money. One Oklahoma teacher got so frustrated, she decided to do something about it. Third-grade teacher Teresa Danks recently went out to a busy highway in Tulsa and she panhandled. She wore a pink Minnie Mouse backpack and held a sign that said, teacher needs school supplies, anything helps. Thank you. Teresa’s with us now from her home outside of Tulsa. Hi, Teresa.”

Language, Culture, and Power

Record high vaccination rates of 7th-graders reported in first year of stricter requirements

Jane Meredith Adams, EdSource
Vaccination rates for California 7th-graders reached their highest recorded levels, the California Department of Public Health reported, in another sign that a stricter vaccination law is having an effect in its first year. The increase in 7th-grade immunizations follows previously released record-high levels of kindergarten vaccination rates. The new results end a year of speculation and angst in school districts about what parents opposed to vaccinations might do in the face of the law, which on July 1, 2016 ended the “personal belief exemption” that allowed thousands of parents not to vaccinate their children in public and private schools. In 2013-14, nearly 17,000 California kindergartners were granted personal belief exemptions from school-required vaccinations — about 3.2 percent of total kindergarten enrollment. Communities of children who were not fully vaccinated emerged, among them the Yuba River Charter School in Nevada City, where 81 percent of kindergartners in 2013-14 were not up-to-date in immunizations. In emotionally charged testimony at state legislative hearings on the matter, some parents from around the state vowed to homeschool their children or move rather than have them immunized to attend school. Speculation swirled that parents would persuade doctors to give their children coveted medical exemptions to vaccinations.

The field where men still call the shots

Linda Flanagan, The Atlantic
For teenagers aspiring to make it onto a high-school sports team, the summer-vacation days of sleeping in are drawing to a close. By mid-August, many hopeful athletes will be exerting themselves before a cadre of school coaches, striving to demonstrate their fitness or conceal their summer sloth. Younger kids, too, soon will be back on the playing fields—if they ever left—and will begin training for their miniature versions of various varsity sports. Maggie Moriarty was one of those kids. Long before she began competing for the women’s lacrosse team at Holy Cross College, she shined on dozens of youth and school athletic squads. As a tiny, ponytailed 5-year-old, Moriarty played soccer on the town league, adding lacrosse and basketball the next year. Her athletic prowess followed her to high school, where every fall she played varsity soccer as the team’s scrappy midfielder, and every spring she excelled from the attack position as a four-year varsity lacrosse player. By the time she graduated in 2016, she held her high school’s record for assists. . . . Moriarty estimated that as many as 20 coaches guided her various sports teams before college. What united all her head coaches, across sports, was gender: All were male.

New Florida law lets residents challenge school textbooks

Greg Allen, NPR
Keith Flaugh is a retired IBM executive living in Naples, Fla., and a man with a mission. He describes it as “getting the school boards to recognize … the garbage that’s in our textbooks.” Flaugh helped found Florida Citizens’ Alliance, a conservative group that fought unsuccessfully to stop Florida from signing on to Common Core educational standards. More recently, the group has turned its attention to the books being used in Florida’s schools. A new state law, developed and pushed through by Flaugh’s group, allows parents, and any residents, to challenge the use of textbooks and instructional materials they find objectionable via an independent hearing. Flaugh finds many objections with the books used by Florida students. Two years ago, members of the alliance did what he calls a “deep dive” into 60 textbooks. “We found them to be full of political indoctrination, religious indoctrination, revisionist history and distorting our founding values and principles, even a significant quantity of pornography,” he says.

Whole Children and Strong Communities

Hundreds of Maryland students get to know careers that could follow high school

Donna St. George, The Washington Post
Some high school students shadowed firefighters, learning about the physical rigor of their work, the intense training required, the rhythms of life in a firehouse. Others followed medical staff at a health-care facility in a Maryland suburb. Then there was Tyler Kitts, 17, who spent part of July at a technology recruiting and staffing firm. By day 4, he’d learned key aspects of a new computer language and was well into a special project. He previously worked as a lifeguard. “It’s definitely useful to know more about the career that I’ve chosen,” said the student at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring. These teenagers and more than 400 others in Montgomery County are marking the debut of a program called Summer RISE (Real Interesting Summer Experience). For three weeks of summer, ending Friday, they are matched with a business, government agency or nonprofit organization, earning a $300 stipend as they get to know more about potential careers.

Treehouse tops goal in boosting five-year graduation rates

Paige Cornwell, The Seattle Times
When Brianna had to move from Renton to Bellevue during her senior year of high school, she wasn’t sure if she could maintain the A’s and B’s she was earning at Renton High School. Her foster parents were moving out of the state, so she was on her own for the first time. Such a big change would be a challenge for any student. But with the help of Treehouse, a nonprofit that helps foster-care youth, she arranged a schedule where she could come in during third period, giving her more time to work on college applications in the morning. That helped her maintain her grades and earn her diploma, the 18-year-old said. Of the 80 students in Treehouse’s Graduation Success program who were supposed to graduate this year, Brianna was one of 54 to do so. That’s an on-time graduation rate of 68 percent, 15 percentage points higher than the state average for youth in foster care.

Eyeglass company paints improvements at Barrio Logan school

Gary Warth, The San Diego Union-Tribune
Perkins School in Barrio Logan is a little more colorful today after a visit from employees of Carl Zeiss Vision. On July 22, some Zeiss employees spent their Saturday painting walls and a mural, lining the asphalt play area, organizing classrooms and unpacking sports equipment donated by the company. “I truly hope this is the first step in what will become a lasting partnership,” said Jens Boy, president of Carl Zeiss Vision, North America. “From the moment the Zeiss team set foot on Perkins’ grounds, they could feel the passion beaming from its extremely engaging and committed principal, Mr. Fernando Hernandez.”

Access, Assessment, and Advancement

How to prepare preschoolers for an automated economy

Claire Cain Miller and Jess Bidgood, The New York TimesAmory Kahan, 7, wanted to know when it would be snack time. Harvey Borisy, 5, complained about a scrape on his elbow. And Declan Lewis, 8, was wondering why the two-wheeled wooden robot he was programming to do the Hokey Pokey wasn’t working. He sighed, “Forward, backward, and it stops.” Declan tried it again, and this time the robot shook back and forth on the gray rug. “It did it!” he cried. Amanda Sullivan, a camp coordinator and a postdoctoral researcher in early childhood technology, smiled. “They’ve been debugging their Hokey Pokeys,” she said.Nervous about the future, some parents are pushing children to learn to code as early as age 2, and advocates say it’s as important as learning letters and numbers. But many researchers and educators say that the focus on coding is misplaced, and that the more important skills to teach have to do with playing with other children and nothing to do with machines: human skills that machines can’t easily replicate, like empathy, collaboration and problem-solving.

Summer program teaches key skills to prepare children for kindergarten

Ashley Hopkinson, EdSource
Children coming into kindergarten with no preschool experience may not know how to share or how to wait in line. Many don’t have a firm grasp on numbers, shapes and colors. This is especially true when children come from poor neighborhoods where there are fewer opportunities to attend programs that teach classroom etiquette and other basics. Helping these children so they don’t fall behind in social or academic skills has been the goal of a month-long summer bridge program in California’s Bay Area. The Summer Pre-K camp, located in several schools in East and West Oakland, runs for four weeks and provides free breakfast and lunch as well as parent-and teacher workshops, home visits and dental screenings. It is financially supported by the non-profit organizations First 5 Alameda County and Oakland Fund for Children and Youth.

CSU takes algebra out of the equation for non-math and science majors

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez, KPCC
After months of deliberation California State University officials say they’re sending an executive order to their campuses next month to eliminate a math requirement for entering students who are not pursuing math or science related careers. “For students entering the Fall 2018 and beyond, that notion of, ‘you must complete the prerequisite of intermediate algebra,’ will be gone,” said Alison Wrynn, associate dean for academic programs for the 23 campus California State University. The university system’s math requirements in its A-G admissions policies will not change, she said, what has been eliminated is the requirement of a prerequisite of intermediate algebra for all CSU general education math courses.

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

Why the myth of meritocracy hurts kids of color

Melinda D. Anderson, The Atlantic
Brighton Park is a predominantly Latino community on the southwest side of Chicago. It’s a neighborhood threatened by poverty, gang violence, ICE raids, and isolation—in a city where income, race, and zip code can determine access to jobs, schools, healthy food, and essential services. It is against this backdrop that the Chicago teacher Xian Franzinger Barrett arrived at the neighborhood’s elementary school in 2014. Recognizing the vast economic and racial inequalities his students faced, he chose what some might consider a radical approach for his writing and social-studies classes, weaving in concepts such as racism, classism, oppression, and prejudice. Barrett said it was vital to reject the oft-perpetuated narrative that society is fair and equal to address students’ questions and concerns about their current conditions. And Brighton Elementary’s seventh- and eighth-graders quickly put the lessons to work—confronting the school board over inequitable funding, fighting to install a playground, and creating a classroom library focused on black and Latino authors. “Students who are told that things are fair implode pretty quickly in middle school as self-doubt hits them,” he said, “and they begin to blame themselves for problems they can’t control.”

Girls learn about power at a science camp for ‘invisible’ foster and homeless youth

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez, KPCC
In a middle school classroom in Lynwood, two dozen girls wear blue lab coats as they listen to an instructor leading their one-week summer science camp. It’s the second-to-last day of the camp and sixth-grader Mayra Ramirez thinks about how different it’s been this week making friends compared to the school year. “No one likes me because I’m too weird, they said,” Ramirez said. “I tried to make friends, and some friends came to me – but not a lot.” Now, things are different. She looks over at one of the girls in her group. “Gabby, she’s is really nice to me, and she tells me all the stuff we need to do, and I really wanted to be her friend and I’m happy she’s in my group.” School programs to motivate girls into science, technology, engineering, and math careers aren’t new. Girls Pursuing Science, the organization that runs this camp for Lynwood schools, does so in half a dozen other states. What’s new is that this school district targeted middle school girls either in foster care or classified as homeless. Ramirez is one of the students they targeted. It’s the first time the school district has held a summer camp for this group of students.

A reservation, restored

Emily Jan, The Atlantic
In the late 19th-century legend of Crazy Horse, the Oglala Sioux leader prophesied an economic, spiritual, and social renaissance among Native Americans. Now that prophesied generation, the Seventh Generation, is here—and they’re determined to live up to the legend. The South Dakota-based photographer Kristina Barker spent several days on Pine Ridge Reservation recently meeting the young leaders who are confronting generational poverty, trauma, and cultural disconnection and using educational attainment as key to reclaiming Native identity and culture. Read the feature story “The Real Legacy of Crazy Horse” by Alia Wong, here.

Public Schools and Private $

How a savings program could be used to expand school choice

Alyson Klein, Education Week
President Donald Trump and U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos came to Washington promising a massive new federal investment in school choice. So far, they’re having trouble getting momentum—and money—for vouchers or a tax-credit scholarship. But some school choice supporters may have another policy up their sleeves: allowing parents to save for private school the same way many of them save for college, through the use of so-called 529 plans. These plans—named for a section of the federal tax code—are a tax-advantaged investment fund that works somewhat like an IRA or 401(k) retirement plan. Parents or guardians put a portion of their income in the fund and can receive a tax credit or deduction, depending on the specifics of the plan, which can vary state-by-state. Right now, 529s are primarily for college expenses. But the Heritage Foundation, a favorite think tank for the Trump team and Republicans in Congress, would love to see the accounts expanded to K-12 schools.

Proposal would let charter schools certify their own teachers

Elizabeth A. Harris, The New York Times
It is usually a sleepy civic exercise: A proposed change to a specialized bit of state regulations is published in the State Register, officially marking the beginning of a public comment period. But on Wednesday, rules that would make it easier for some New York charter schools to hire teachers are scheduled for publication, and the debate is expected to be fierce. Many charter schools rely on young, new teachers to staff their classrooms, and have struggled to hire enough of them, even as more schools are opened. The new rules, written by the State University of New York Charter Schools Institute, which authorizes charter operators, would let the schools it oversees design their own training programs and certify teachers, with some restrictions.

‘No shots, no school’? Vaccination rates lag in California charter schools

Kyle Stokes, KPCC
Vaccination rates in California schools reached an all-time high last school year, but one subset of public schools still appears to be lagging behind: charter schools. A KPCC analysis of recently-released state vaccination rate data shows students in charter schools are much less likely than their peers in traditional, district-run public schools to be up to date on all of the shots California law says they should receive by seventh grade. That’s not necessarily because charter schools — which are managed by non-profit entities and independent boards, not school districts — are openly flouting the rules. Many charter schools operate as virtual schools or “independent study” home school programs, meaning their students would be exempt from the state’s immunization laws. “A majority of charter schools operate like the regular public schools do — it’s ‘no shots, no school,’ and they’re very strict about it,” said California Immunization Coalition executive director Catherine Martin. “But,” Martin added, “there are also some charter schools that I believe get the [immunization] records, but if they feel like they’ve gone as far as they can in requesting those records [from parents], then I think they let it go and they don’t follow up.”

Other News of Note

Japan might be what equality in education looks like

Alana Semuels, The Atlantic
In many countries, the United States included, students’ economic backgrounds often determine the quality of the education they receive. Richer students tend to go to schools funded by high property taxes, with top-notch facilities and staff that help them succeed. In districts where poorer students live, students often get shoddy facilities, out-of-date textbooks, and fewer guidance counselors. Not in Japan. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a group of 35 wealthy countries, Japan ranks highly among its peers in providing its rich and poor students with equal educational opportunities: The OECD estimates that in Japan only about 9 percent of the variation in student performance is explained by students’ socioeconomic backgrounds. The OECD average is 14 percent, and in the United States, it’s 17 percent. “In Japan, you may have poor areas, but you don’t have poor schools,” John Mock, an anthropologist at Temple University’s Japan campus, told me.