Just News from Center X – October 28, 2016

Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

 

The big problems with the Obama administration’s new teacher-education regulations

Valerie Strauss, The Washington Post

The Obama administration recently published long-awaited regulations for programs that prepare new K-12 teachers. The U.S. Education Department had attempted to do this several years ago, but that effort was notable for several controversies, one of them a suggestion that teacher-preparation programs be evaluated in part by the standardized test scores of the students being taught by program graduates. Now we have the final regulations — and critics of the original draft remain unsatisfied.

 

 

Chiefs for Change seeks to diversify education leadership

Theresa Harrington, EdSource

Antwan Wilson is one of only 26 African-American school district or charter superintendents in California, out of nearly 1,000 districts. As the leader of Oakland Unified, he heads up a large, diverse district and faces many of the same challenges that superintendents of other large, diverse districts must tackle around the country. One way he gets support is through Chiefs for Change, a nonprofit committed to providing a professional network for leaders like Wilson. Chiefs for Change allows members to share their experiences and expertise, while also grooming the next generation of diverse superintendents.

 

$300,000 program seeks to help SF teachers live in the city

Jill Tucker, San Francisco Chronicle

San Francisco Unified School District teachers will gain special access to housing and antieviction services under a $300,000-a-year city and school district effort to help educators live in one of the most expensive markets in the country, officials said Tuesday. The program will offer teachers legal guidance and representation if they face eviction, a service otherwise available only to low-income residents. The Eviction Defense Collaborative will waive the income requirements for teachers needing support. The money allocated by the district and city will also pay for one-on-one counseling sessions and workshops specifically for teachers, to be held monthly at various locations across the city to help them find housing and down-payment assistance.

 

 

Language, Culture, and Power

 

How we teach English learners: 3 basic approaches

Claudio Sanchez, NPR

In a small room in Philadelphia’s school administration building, Rosario Maribel Mendoza Lemus, 16, sits in a corner, rubbing sweaty palms on her jeans. In front of her is a binder with a test she has to take before she’s assigned to a new school. A counselor hovers over her shoulder, pointing to a drawing of a book. She asks, in English: “Do you know what that is?” “No,” says Rosario, who arrived this summer from Honduras, where she made it no further than the sixth grade. She keeps shaking her head, and it’s clear that Rosario does not understand anything the counselor is saying. There are 5 million students like Rosario — English Language Learners or ELLs — living in the U.S., and we’re going to spend much of the next year reporting on them. They raise one of the biggest questions facing educators: What’s the best way to teach English without losing time on the content students need to learn?

 

 

SDSU professor revives fight to change Aztec mascot

Gary Warth, The San Diego Union-Tribune

San Diego State University professor is bringing up a new argument to revisit an old fight.

American Indian Studies professor Ozzie Monge would like his school to drop its Aztec mascot, which he finds racist, and replace it with a non-human character. Others have asked for the mascot to be dropped because they see it as racist, but he is adding a new objection to his case. Monge says the school should have never adopted the mascot in the first place because it perpetuates the misconception that the Aztecs lived in the southwest United States.

 

 

One of America’s ‘best’ school districts is actually kind of racist, report says

Collier Meyerson, Business Insider

A big sign that reads “America’s best urban schools” hangs in the window of the building where Long Beach Unified School District board meetings are held, says Sarah Omojola, one of the co-authors of a damning  report released Tuesday  that admonishes the California district for mistreating its students of color. It’s ironic considering “Untold Stories Behind One of America’s Best Urban School Districts” describes how such students are disproportionately punished, suspended, and policed. The report was compiled by the Children’s Defense Fund-California, a nonprofit child advocacy organization, and Public Counsel, a nonprofit law firm that provides services to low-income Americans.

 

 

 

Whole Children and Strong Communities

 

Feds release guidance for block grants to support a ‘well-rounded’ education

Jane Meredith Adams, EdSource

Moving away from the no-frills, test-driven approach to education of the No Child Left Behind era, U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King Jr. on Friday released guidance about new federal block grants designed to fund a more varied curriculum, a more positive school environment and a more integrated use of technology. The newly authorized Student Support and Academic Enrichment Grants are intended to provide schools the flexibility to fund programs they feel are most crucial to well-being and intellectual curiosity of their students. Created under the federal education law known as the Every Student Succeeds Act, the grant program consolidates targeted grants that were used under the previous federal education law, No Child Left Behind.

 

Aiming to curb drug abuse, new program will teach teens the science of addiction

Moriah Ballingit, The Washington Post

Chuck Rosenberg is the acting administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, a former prosecutor and investigator with more than two decades of experience. His administration is on the front lines of a rising opioid abuse epidemic that is projected to kill about 30,000 people in the United States this year. But when it comes to teaching teenagers about the dangers of opioid abuse — about how the drugs are killing their peers — he said he realizes that he might not be the best source.

 

Who’s minding the neighborhood?

Jonathan F. Zaff and Thomas Malone, Center for Promise

A new brief from the Center for Promise explores whether increasing the number of adults in a community results in more young people on a positive path to adult success. While there has been a steady improvement over the last 40 years in the overall rate of youth leaving school, researchers have long noted substantial variation by state, city and neighborhood. Using Decennial Census data (1970-2010), Center for Promise researchers looked into reasons for the variation.

 

 

 

Access, Assessment, and Advancement

 

Study: Middle school is key to girls’ coding interest

Gaby Galvin, U.S. News

The gender gap in computing jobs has gotten worse in the last 30 years, even as computer science job opportunities expand rapidly, according to new research from Accenture and Girls Who Code. In 1984, 37 percent of computer science majors were women, but by 2014 that number had dropped to 18 percent, according to the study. The computing industry’s rate of U.S. job creation is three times the national average, but if trends continue, the study estimates that women will hold only 20 percent of computing jobs by 2025.

California officials reject federal government’s push to administer old science tests

Pat Maio, EdSource

California education officials have decided that students will take only one statewide standardized test in science this spring, a pilot test based on new standards known as the Next Generation Science Standards. The decision, made in recent weeks, pits state education officials against the U.S. Department of Education, which told California officials in a Sept. 30 letter that they must continue to administer the older science based on standards adopted in 1998, and publish the scores on those tests. California has been administering the multiple choice, paper-and-pencil California Standards Tests in science to 5th, 8th and10th graders until as recently as last year, as required by the No Child Left Behind law.

 

Here’s why ESSA might direct more federal dollars to private schools

Andrew Ujifusa, Education Week

The Every Student Succeeds Act makes plenty of changes to education policy, including several key ones that provide more control to states. But here’s one that’s been largely overlooked in discussions about ESSA: the possibility that the law will ultimately enable private schools to obtain more federal aid to K-12 than they have previously. Here’s what we mean: As with the No Child Left Behind Act, ESSA requires that districts provide “equitable services” to certain students in private schools, after consulting with private school officials. This can impact migrant students in private schools, students who are English-language learners, and others. (The delivery of equitable services has been complicated by the growth of school choice programs, according to a recent report from the federal Government Accountability Office.)

 

 

 

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

 

The racial disparity of the student-loan crisis

Emily Deruy, The Atlantic

Black college graduates are more likely than their white peers to leave school with student debt and to default on those loans. Those are both well-known, widely covered issues. Now a Brookings Institution report from a pair of researchers at Columbia University points out a troubling new finding: The gap in debt between black graduates and white graduates more than triples just several years after college, a crucial time for saving and laying the groundwork for retirement.

 

For many schools the recession never ended

Cory Turner, NPR

The Great Recession technically ended in June of 2009, but many of America’s schools are still feeling the pinch. A new study of state budget documents and Census Bureau data finds that the lion’s share of spending on schools in at least 23 states will be lower this school year than it was when the recession began nearly a decade ago. This analysis looked specifically at what’s called general formula funding, which accounts for roughly 70 percent of the money states spend in their K-12 schools. The report, from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, suggests that many of the nation’s schools are being asked to educate a growing number of students without state lawmakers growing their budgets.

 

Disadvantaged students outnumbered at top public boarding schools

Sarah D. Sparks, Education Week

Thriving in an academically rigorous environment is about more than simply being prepared for classes; it’s about a student fitting in and seeing herself as a top student. As advanced academic programs work to find and enroll more poor and minority students, new research suggests just how complex it can be for students from traditionally disadvantaged groups to feel at home in such programs. These students can be particularly vulnerable as they encounter more academically challenging classes and peers who are economically better off. How a school presents its programs and provides emotional support to students can mean the difference between students struggling and excelling.

 

 

 

Public Schools and Private $

 

L.A. Unified takes a harder look at its charter schools. Critics blame politics

Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times

Some years back, when administrators at a group of Los Angeles charter schools ordered the entire instructional staff to cheat on state standardized tests, the charter division at the Los Angeles Unified School District was at first willing to forgive what had happened and move on.

But last week, the L.A. Board of Education followed the recommendation of the charter division and voted to shut down three charters, ostensibly because their parent organization had been sluggish in providing requested paperwork that was important but not crucial to the schooling of students.

 

Why the shine is off the charter school movement

Valerie Strauss, The Washington Post; Carol Burris, Network for Public Education

The shine is off the charter school movement.  Freedom from regulation, thesine qua non

of the charter world, has resulted too often in troubled schools, taxpayer fleecing and outright fraud.  Charters have become material for late-night comedians. That is never a good sign; just ask the proponents of the Common Core. The greatest blow to charter momentum, however, was delivered by the NAACP. When delegates’ voted for a moratorium on new charters, it unleashed the fury of the charterphiles. A piece on the pro-reform website Education Post was titled, “The NAACP Was Founded by White People and It Still Isn’t Looking Out for Black Families,” accusing the premier civil rights organization of being “morally anemic.” And yet, despite the vitriol and critique, the NAACP board of directors stood fast, supported its delegates, and issued a strong statement calling for charter reform.

 

Does high school choice really expand students’ options?

Catherine Gewertz, Education Week

A new study of New York City’s high school choice system shows that even high-achieving students from lower-performing middle schools often don’t aim for the most competitive high schools, a finding that raises questions about how well the choice system, by itself, expands students’ options. The report by the city’s Independent Budget Office says the computer algorithm that matches the city’s 80,000 applicants with their top choices works well. It’s what happens before

students make those choices that exerts a powerful influence on the outcomes.

 

 

Other News of Note

 

Tom Hayden’s reforms and today’s protesters

Jonathan Zimmerman, The Chronicle of Higher Education

We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit.” So began the Port Huron Statement, the student manifesto that Tom Hayden drafted in 1962. When Hayden died on Sunday, most accounts emphasized his many different roles in the tumultuous world he inherited: civil-rights organizer, antiwar protester, California state lawmaker. But Hayden and his fellow activists were educational reformers, too, focusing much of their dissent on the institution where they were housed: the modern university. Put simply, Hayden believed that college should teach people to critique the world around them. But too many colleges functioned more like assembly lines, stamping out students who would conform rather than question.

 

Just News from Center X is produced weekly by Leah Bueso, Anthony Berryman, Beth Happel, and John Rogers. Generous support from the Stuart Foundation allows Center X to provide this service free to the general public.