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Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice
Teachers’ training needs improvement so students benefit, new report says
Larry Gordon, EdSource
For classroom teachers, professional training can be a mixed bag that too often leaves teachers uninspired with no improvement in student learning, according to a new report by the Learning Policy Institute. So researchers for the nonprofit institute set out to find what works best in helping teachers to improve teaching methods and their students’ learning and test scores. In reviewing results of 35 previous studies, the new report urges that mid-career teacher training, which is also known as professional development, focus tightly on the academic subjects’ content, incorporate active learning, encourage collaboration, provide coaching, and be of sustained duration, among other things. “It is obviously most important that what teachers are taught reflects the practices that can actually make a positive difference for student learning. That is, the content of professional development matters, along with its form,” said the report titled “Effective Teachers Professional Development.” Its authors include Linda Darling-Hammond, president of the Learning Policy Institute and chairwoman of the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing.
Increasing salaries so teachers don’t have to become principals
Lee Hale, NPR
Spencer Campbell spends much of his days walking the halls of Elk Ridge Middle School, checking breezeways for kids playing hooky, redirecting foot traffic between classes and checking on substitute teachers. Campbell is one of two assistant principals at Elk Ridge, a school just south of Salt Lake City, Utah. It’s his first year in the role and he looks the part. He’s in his late 30s, sharply dressed, walks briskly and carries a walkie-talkie on his belt. Before coming to education, Campbell owned a small business. He says he felt drawn to schools, though, so he got a master’s degree and spent five years in the classroom as a teacher. Where, after all that, he says he just couldn’t make ends meet. “As a teacher I was making $43,000 a year and I had a part-time job where I would work another 20,” he says. “That wasn’t for the extras. That was just for the basics.” Extras like braces for his kids, piano lessons and the occasional vacation. So, he looked ahead to the next step: administration.
ACLU finds ‘over-policing’ in Stockton Unified schools
Jane Meredith Adams, EdSource
School police in the Stockton Unified School District arrested nearly 1,500 students in the last four years, with more than half of the arrests involving low-level misbehavior such as disturbing the peace or truancy, according to a new data analysis released Tuesday. The arrests indicate “a culture of over-policing” in the district, concluded “Over-Policing in Stockton: A Report Card” by the Stockton Education Equity Coalition, a collection of advocacy organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California. Teachers and school administrators should “treat school discipline as an opportunity to teach students, rather than criminalize them,” said Linnea Nelson, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California. Research has found that students who are arrested are more likely to fall behind in classes, drop out of school and wind up involved in the criminal justice system.
Language, Culture, and Power
Pregnant student barred from graduation at Md. Christian school
Tom Gjelten, NPR
Pro-life groups say the decision by the Heritage Academy, a private Christian school in Maryland, could mean other pregnant girls may choose abortion over public humiliation.
At 18, this L.A. high school poet often makes audiences go silent
Esmeralda Bermudez, Los Angeles Times
At 4 feet, 11 inches, Vanessa Tahay is what you might call a chaparrita. Her skin is dark, her accent is thick, and if you ask her, she will tell you these are the things she’s proudest of. Tahay is a poet, and at 18, considered among the best in the city. The high school senior has performed and competed not just in Los Angeles but in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. When she is on stage, audiences often go silent. They also laugh, holler, cringe and cry. She shuts her eyes and the words flow, raw with emotion — in English, Spanish, Spanglish and K’iche.
Hate speech vs. free speech: Where is the line on college campuses?
Rosanna Xia, Los Angeles Times
Free speech has once again become a highly charged issue on college campuses, where protests frequently have interrupted, and in some cases halted, appearances by polarizing speakers. At a lively panel last week during the Education Writers Assn.’s annual conference in the nation’s capital, free speech advocates and a UC Berkeley student leader debated who was at fault and what could be done. Alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos’ tour of colleges across the country drew protesters off and on campus, and sparked violent clashes, including one in which a man was shot in Seattle. At Berkeley — birthplace of the Free Speech Movement 50 years ago — university officials canceled his scheduled appearance in February and later pulled the plug on a scheduled April visit by conservative commentator Ann Coulter, citing safety concerns. In March, a protest at Middlebury College left both the speaker, controversial social scientist Charles Murray, and a professor who wasn’t his supporter injured.
Whole Children and Strong Communities
California law spurs reforms after suicide cluster
Jane Meredith Adams, EdSource
About 24 hours after a Clovis High School boy killed himself in early March, his cell phone buzzed. The incoming text was the latest in a conversation thread among the deceased boy and three teenage girls before he died. One of the girls, also from the Central Valley, was thinking of killing herself. At the Fresno County coroner’s office, a deputy coroner discovered the text and launched a search for the girl that would reach into the records of the Clovis Unified School District, law enforcement cell phone tracking technology, a network of suicide prevention leaders and a school district in adjacent Tulare County. For Clovis Unified, stunned by the suicides of four high school boys this school year, a team approach to suicide prevention has brought relief and hope. Accelerating their work is a new state law that requires schools to have programs for grades 7 through 12 in suicide prevention, intervention and “postvention” by the start of the 2017-18 school year.
The role of yoga in healing trauma
Anya Kamenetz, NPR
Missy Hart grew up in Redwood City, Calif. — in gangs, on the street, in the foster care system and in institutions. “Where I’m from,” the 26-year-old says, “you’re constantly in alert mode, like fight or flight.” But at age 13, when she was incarcerated in juvenile hall for using marijuana, she found herself closing her eyes and letting her guard down in a room full of rival gang members. Back then, she says, yoga was just another mandatory activity, run by a Bay Area program called The Art of Yoga Project. It offers what it calls “trauma-sensitive yoga” to incarcerated girls. At first, 13-year-old Hart felt uncomfortable. But, gradually, she learned to use the poses and breathing to relax, and she loved it. “Most of us [in juvenile hall] come from traumatic childhoods,” she says. “It was the only time you experienced a quiet time, when everything was so chaotic.” She believes the practice helped her cope with symptoms of bipolar disorder.
Colleges get proactive in addressing depression on campus
Alina Tugend, The New York Times
Hailey Kim, who came from South Korea to study pharmacy at Rutgers University’s campus in New Brunswick, found herself at the entrance of the school’s mental health center, terrified of going in or walking away. She was in her sophomore year, her mother back in Seoul was ill, her father had lost his job and she was depressed and having panic attacks so severe that she went to the emergency room for chest pains. “I was hesitating right in front of the door,” said Ms. Kim, 20. But she went through because, “I was desperate for help.” It is not new that the number of college students who say they are facing mental- and emotional-health troubles has been steadily growing. What is new is that colleges and universities are increasingly focused on trying to understand, through rigorous research, what interventions work best and for the broadest swath of students. “The fact that students are struggling with anxiety and depression is real,” said Thomas C. Shandley, dean of students for Davidson College in North Carolina. “It took a while to reach college campuses, and now it’s here.” According to the U.C.L.A. Higher Education Research Institute annual freshman survey, conducted since 1966, a record high of 11.9 percent of the students in the 2016 incoming class reported “frequently” feeling depressed in the past year, and 13.9 percent said “there was a very good chance they would seek personal counseling in college.” And for the first time in the survey’s history, less than half (47 percent) consider their mental health to be above average relative to their peers.
Access, Assessment, and Advancement
Why should the federal government support high-quality early education?
Valerie Strauss, The Washington Post; Steven Barnett, National Institute for Early Education Research
In his first budget proposal, President Trump calls for the Department of Education to “refocus its mission on supporting States and school districts in their efforts to provide high-quality education to all our students.” Our new national survey of state preschool education programs indicates a need for just such an approach — though one requiring more federal spending on early education, not less. Since 2002, the National Institute for Early Education Research has surveyed states regarding policies and their supports for the education of our youngest children. Over that time, the number of children enrolled has more than doubled and quality standards have risen. Some states are now committed to offering high-quality preschool to every child. In addition, some cities have moved even further ahead, including New York City, where the mayor has promised to expand pre-K for all to children at age 3, beginning with the most disadvantaged families.
More testing is forecast for nation’s ELL students
Corey Mitchell, Education Week
At a time when Congress wants to scale back K-12 testing requirements, the Every Student Succeeds Act could do just the opposite for one group of students—those who don’t yet communicate fluently in English. To ensure consistent monitoring of English-language learners, federal education law now requires annual English-language-proficiency assessments. States must also standardize criteria for identifying English-learners and for reclassifying them when they no longer need support services. The significance of English-learners is on the rise as this population grows and the changes in federal law that suggest a more precise look at how those students are performing in school are a reflection of that, advocates and experts say.
At Cal State, algebra is a civil rights issue
Christopher Edley, Jr., EdSource
The next civil rights court battle for California higher education may be about algebra. California State University is finalizing new system-wide math policies as part of an initiative to increase graduation rates and address equity gaps. But a recent move by CSU affecting students transferring from community colleges threatens to undermine community college efforts to do the same. The culprit is Intermediate Algebra, a high-school level course of technical procedures that most college students will never use, either in college or in life. Many students pass a course on this content in high school (Algebra II), but when they arrive at a community college, more than 80 percent are required to take remedial courses repeating this material if they don’t score high enough on a standardized test. And the problem is, most community college students don’t take just one remedial course. To meet the Intermediate Algebra standard, they are often required to take two years of remedial courses that don’t count for transfer credit at CSU. By contrast, a CSU student who is required to take remedial math at CSU does not have to demonstrate intermediate algebra competency in order to take credit-bearing math courses.
Inequality, Poverty, Segregation
The pre-K boom in D.C.: Can it help end school segregation?
Alan Richard, The Washington Post
Each morning at Van Ness Elementary School, the staff takes turns welcoming children just inside the front doors. “Do you want a greeting?” asks Cynthia Robinson-Rivers, the head of the public school in Southeast Washington. Children point to images and buttons on her apron to choose a hug, handshake or a smile. “A high-five?” she asks one child, who leaps to slap her outstretched hand. The scene might be typical of many schools, but Van Ness, which this year offered pre-K through first grade, stands out in the nation’s capital because it is an exception to what Robinson-Rivers calls “an unfortunate trend.” About 84 of Van Ness preschoolers are black, 60 are white, 14 are Hispanic, and the remaining few dozen are of various Asian backgrounds, or listed as multiracial, according to the D.C. Public Schools. That makes it one of the District’s most diverse schools by race, ethnicity and social class. “Schools are becoming less, not more diverse,” Robinson-Rivers said. “The opportunity for a school like this is especially important.”
Will New York City’s plan to make its schools less segregated work?
Denisa Superville, Education Week
New York City has released its long-awaited plan to address school segregation—a 13-page document that education officials say lays out their commitment to increasing diversity in schools and classrooms in the nation’s largest public school system. But critics and advocates say the plan falls far short of what’s necessary to undo the deep segregation in most of the city’s schools. New York state, according to some research findings, is home to the most segregated public schools in the nation, an imbalance driven in large measure by the high levels of segregation in New York City’s schools. Other big cities face similar challenges. Dallas and Denver, for example, are coming up with plans to promote integration. Denver, specifically, is digging into how housing patterns are affecting schools, with an eye toward creating school policies around admissions, school choice, academic program offerings, that would help promote integration. New York City’s plan, “Equity and Excellence for All: Diversity in New York City Public Schools,” aims to increase the number of students who attend more racially balanced schools by 50,000 over the next five years; reduce the number of students attending schools that are economically stratified (this can be a concentration of students in poverty on one end of the spectrum or a concentration of high-income students on the other end) by 10 percent—or by 150 schools—in the next five years; and increase the number of inclusive schools serving English-language learners and students with disabilities.
How education-funding formulas target poor kids
Hayley Glatter, The Atlantic
Districts serving many low-income children in New Jersey receive nearly $5,000 more per pupil from the state government than districts with a fewer poor students. If that same district was located in Montana, it would only receive an extra $18 per student from the state. Despite the fact that the majority of states have education funding formulas meant to target low-income students, the effectiveness of this targeting varies widely around the country. In states where districts are more economically segregated, policymakers have an easier time targeting funding to the neediest students. Because poor children benefit more than their wealthier counterparts from increased per pupil funding, a correctly tuned targeting formula could be an important step toward closing the achievement gap. According to a new report released by the Urban Institute, a social- and economic-policy nonprofit in Washington, D.C., the degree to which funding is targeted is inconsistent among states. In three states—Nevada, Wyoming, and Illinois—non-poor students attend better funded school districts despite state and federal government efforts to level the playing field.
Public Schools and Private $
In states’ private-school vouchers, few safeguards against discrimination
Arianna Prothero and Andrew Ujifusa, Education Week
How far can private schools that take taxpayer-funded vouchers go in selecting students without running afoul of civil rights and antidiscrimination laws? The answer is complicated—and less than reassuring to those concerned about the rights of students of color, LGBT students, and children with disabilities. And it’s a question supercharged now by the Trump administration’s strong advocacy for expanding school choice and U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’ opaque stance on the issue, especially in recent testimony before members of Congress. This tension took center stage in a recent congressional hearing on Trump’s proposed education budget—which includes $250 million in competitive grants to fund vouchers, and to study their effects—as Democrats pushed DeVos to say whether she would prohibit federally funded vouchers from going to private schools that don’t admit certain groups of students. DeVos did not name an instance of discrimination that would rule out a private school from participating. But she did stress that her agency would investigate any alleged civil rights violations in schools.
As Trump pushes school choice, Heritage wants to let 800K military kids use public dollars for private education
Emma Brown, The Washington Post
The conservative Heritage Foundation is pushing to allow 800,000 military children to use federal tax dollars for private education, a proposal that comes as President Trump seeks to make good on his promise to dramatically expand school choice nationwide. Under the Heritage proposal, military children would be able to elect to leave their public schools and instead receive a lump sum — an “education savings account” — that they could put toward private school tuition, tutoring or online school. The proposal would require redirecting money from $1.3 billion in “impact aid” funds that currently go to support public school districts near military bases and tribal lands, spending that has enjoyed bipartisan support in Congress. But Lindsey Burke, an education policy analyst at Heritage, argues that it is a way to support military families — a matter of national defense, she said — and would dramatically expand the universe of private-school choice.
What does federal law say about vouchers and students with disabilities?
Christina Samuels, Education Week
Anyone watching U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’ testimony Tuesday before a Senate education appropriations subcommittee heard some version of this statement secretary several times: “Schools that receive federal funds must follow federal laws.” That was her response to questions about whether any school that receives federal money for vouchers would be allowed to discriminate by gender or by sexual orientation, for example. My colleagues Arianna Prothero and Andrew Ujifusa have written about anti-bias provisions in state voucher programs more broadly, but I want to explore what federal law has to say about students with disabilities more specifically. The answer, in a nutshell, as always: It’s complicated. Why this matters now is that the Trump administration’s proposed education budget includes $250 million to pay for and to study private school vouchers. The program would not send federal dollars directly to private schools in the form of vouchers; instead, it would create a competitive-grant program for states to start voucher programs or expand the voucher programs they already have operating.
Other News of Note
Harvard rescinds admission of 10 students over obscene Facebook messages
Anya Kamenetz, NPR
This week saw a remarkable collision of free speech, toxic Internet culture and more, unfolding at one of the world’s most prestigious universities. At least 10 admitted Harvard students in the Class of 2021 had their admissions offers rescinded after a group exchange of racist and sexually offensive Facebook messages, the Harvard Crimson student newspaper reported this week. NPR Ed tries to focus on the types of colleges that the vast majority of American students attend. But this incident, small as it was, took place at the end of a school year that has been marked by clashes and riots pitting free speech against hate speech, both online and on campus.