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September 30, 2016

 

Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

   

Almost all education research takes place in the US — but Finland is using it better

Chris Weller, Business Insider

Year after year, Finland is ranked as one of the world leaders in education while America lags far behind. But it's not that Finland knows more about how to build effective schools than the US does. Almost all education research takes place in the US, and American schools can't seem to learn from any of it — and yet Finnish people do. According to Sahlberg, the most influential figure behind Finland's achievements in education is the American philosopher John Dewey, who is known for his seminal theories on education and psychology.

   

We're no. 3: U.S. infrastructure, education faulted in global competitiveness index

Bill Chappell, NPR

The U.S. trails Switzerland and Singapore in economic competitiveness in a new global index that finds America's infrastructure, health system and primary education all lagging. The World Economic Forum's index also notes three U.S. strengths: its large market, financial sophistication and labor efficiency. Out of 138 economies worldwide, the U.S. "does not rank in the top 10 on any of the basic requirements pillars (institutions, infrastructure, macroeconomic environment, health and primary education)," this year's Global Competitiveness Index says. The authors add that the U.S.' high ranking is supported by its "innovation, business sophistication, market size, financial market development, labor market efficiency, and higher education."

 

ESSA clears out underbrush on school improvement path

Alyson Klein, Education Week

For more than a decade, states and districts have had to consider off-the-shelf, federally prescribed interventions for many schools in which students weren't meeting expectations.

That's about to change. The new Every Student Succeeds Act, the latest revision of the nation's main K-12 education law, gives local leaders a freer hand when it comes to fixing their lowest-performing schools, those with serious dropout problems, and schools that are doing well overall but where a particular group of students might be struggling. Instead of choosing from a list of federal options as they had to do under the previous version of the law, the No Child Left Behind Act, districts and even schools will be able to cook up their own improvement strategies, as long as there is evidence to back up their approaches.

 

 

Language, Culture, and Power

 

Nearly half of U.S. states offer special recognition for bilingual graduates

Corey Mitchell, Education Week

Twenty-two states and the District of Columbia are promoting bilingualism among K-12 students by offering the seal of biliteracy—special recognition on high school diplomas for graduates who demonstrate fluency in two or more languages. The popularity of the seals of biliteracy stems in part from the expansion of dual-language programs across public schools that bring both native English-speakers and English-language learners together into classrooms to learn all academic content in English and the target language.

 

Obama administration gives historic control of education system to Navajo Nation

Vincent Schilling, Indian Country Today Media Network

In what Navajo Nation tribal leaders lauded as an historic agreement with the Bureau of Indian Education and the Department of the Interior, the Obama Administration has approved the first phase of the Navajo Nation’s request to implement an alternative system of accountability for schools. In addition to giving control to the Navajo Nation as to how they teach their Navajo youth, the Obama Administration also is issuing two new rounds of federal grants totaling nearly $25 million to support native youth and educators.

 

Eye-tracking technology shows that preschool teachers have implicit bias against black boys

Melissa Healy, Los Angeles Times

For African American boys, the presumption of guilt starts before they have entered a kindergarten classroom, new research shows. In a study presented Wednesday to a meeting of education policy officials, researchers found that pre-K educators who were prompted to expect trouble in a classroom trained their gaze significantly longer on black students, especially boys, than they did on white students.

 

 

Whole Children and Strong Communities

 

California passes legislation requiring suicide prevention policies in schools statewide

Christina Cox, The Santa Clarita Valley Signal

California is now the first state in the county to require suicide prevention policies in middle schools and high schools statewide. Assembly Bill 2246 “Suicide Prevention Policies in School,” authored by Assemblymember Patrick O’Donnell (D-Long Beach) and sponsored by Equality California and The Trevor Project, was signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown Tuesday. The new law requires local district schools to adopt unique suicide prevention, intervention and follow-up plans for students in grades 7 to 12. Policymakers hope the law will save lives and reduce the statistics of what the Center for Disease Control and Prevention calls the second-leading cause of death among young people ages 10 to 24.

 

Physical fitness central to Sacramento district's focus on the 'whole child'

Michael Collier, EdSource

When Gov. Jerry Brown pushed his idea for giving local schools and districts more control over decision making, few people would have predicted that in at least one California elementary school district physical education would rise to the top of its list of priorities.

That’s what happened in the K-6 Robla School District on the outskirts of Sacramento, which serves mostly low-income Latino and Asian students. Using funds received from the Local Control Funding Formula, the district hired five new physical education teachers this year – one for each school in the district. But school leaders have gone way beyond more P.E. They have come up with an ambitious plan to revolutionize the way the district’s 2,200 students, their families, teachers and staff eat, exercise and relax – with additional help from charitable organizations.

 

No grammar schools, lots of play: the secrets of Europe’s top education system

Patrick Butler, The Guardian

In Finland, whose comprehensive school system has sat at the top of Europe’s rankings for the past 16 years, the narrow, heated debates on school governance and structure that obsess the UK – free schools, academies, grammars – do not exist. Schools ultimately deliver academic success, the Finns would agree - and there has been intense worldwide interest in how they manage it (see below) – but they would also argue that groundwork for good school performance begins earlier, long before children enter formal school, and arguably while their future pupils are still in nappies.

 

Access, Assessment, and Advancement

 

How 'daycare' became 'school'

Jessica Levy, The Atlantic

Chelsea Clinton made headlines recently as she campaigned for her mother—not for the policy proposals she defended, but for the fact that she did not accompany her not-quite-2-year-old daughter Charlotte to the first day of her Manhattan "school." While detractors were quick to berate her for missing this defining event in her child's life, supporters rushed to her defense by noting that the child’s father, who took Charlotte to school together with the family nanny, is perfectly capable of taking the lead. But what's missing from the discussion is an objection to the controversy’s premise—since when has "school" started at age 2? The question highlights recent changes in the favored everyday lexicon of parents to refer to programs for their babies and young toddlers—programs that were once simply called “daycare.” Whether consciously or subconsciously, though, educators, psychologists, and parents themselves are noticing that parents are increasingly swapping out the term for the more in-vogue "school."

 

Eligible but got nothing: Hundreds of thousands of people with disabilities blocked from college aid

Meredith Kolodner, The Hechinger Report

Wendy Thompson always knew she wanted her son to go to college, but she didn’t realize so many people would disagree. Her son was born with cerebral palsy, a disease that has him using a wheelchair, but has little impact on his academic abilities. He graduated from high school with a Regents diploma in 2013 — a feat accomplished by only 18 percent of students with disabilities in New York City that year, compared to 70 percent of students without disabilities. But when Thompson met with a counselor from the state agency that is supposed to help people with disabilities get training or a degree that will lead to a job, the counselor refused to sign off on her son’s plan to go to community college. That meant he wouldn’t get wheelchair-accessible transportation, tuition help or voice-activated software from the agency — all of which he qualified for under federal law.

 

L.A. Unified paves the way for 15,000 students to take community college classes — during their high school day

Sonali Kohli, Los Angeles Times

It will be easier from now on for L.A. students to take community college classes for free — while sitting in their high school classrooms. The Los Angeles Unified School District board approved an agreement Tuesday with the Los Angeles Community College District that will let high schools enter partnerships with their local community colleges to offer classes on campus, during the regular school day. The schools hope to serve 15,000 L.A. Unified students a year.

 

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

 

CA student scores improve overall, but black students lag behind

Madeleine Brand, Guest: Tyrone Howard, KCRW

New standardized test results prove that California is struggling when it comes to race, education and closing the achievement gap. The racial divide between the lowest and highest scorers is remarkable; black students had the lowest scores of any group. About a third met grade-level standards in English and fewer than 20 percent were proficient in math. Compare that to the highest-scoring group, Asian-Americans: roughly 70 percent met or exceeded the standards. The tests are based on the Common Core learning standards, and they’re supposed to measure whether students are on track to be college-ready, so the implications could be far-reaching.

 

Virtual classrooms can be as unequal as real ones

Kaveh Waddell, The Atlantic

When massive open online courses, or MOOCs, exploded in popularity in the early 2010s, educators were particularly excited about the courses’ potential to give disadvantaged students equal access to a quality education. But a bevy of recent research has shown that online learning has largely fallen short of that goal. The same factors that have held back low-income or minority students in physical classrooms also plague virtual ones. Studies have found that online-learning resources had trouble attracting low-income students—or, in the case of school-age children, their parents—and that those who did participate in online classes performed more poorly than their peers.

 

 

Public Schools and Private $

 

Why California’s charter school sector is called ‘the Wild West’

Valerie Strauss, Answer Sheet, The Washington Post

The charter school sector has grown over the last few decades amid a debate about its virtues and drawbacks — and even whether the publicly funded schools are actually public. Some charters do a great job, but even some advocates (though not all) are finally admitting that too many states allowed charters to open and operate without sufficient oversight.

 

Massachusetts plays host to renewed charter school debate

Lauren Camera, U.S. News

In the lead up to the November elections, Massachusetts has become the epicenter of a renewed and newly divisive charter school debate as voters there prepare to decide whether or not to support a ballot question that would raise the cap on the number of charters allowed in the state.

Charter schools have always represented a flashpoint in the education space. But the looming decision for Massachusetts voters has driven a wedge between the state’s Democrats, and highlights a new era of sorts for the sector.

 

 

U.S. Department of education awards $245 million to support high-quality public charter schools

U.S. Department of Education

The U.S. Department of Education announced today new grants totaling approximately $245 million under its Charter Schools Program (CSP), which funds the creation and expansion of public charter schools across the nation. Today’s grants are being awarded to state educational agencies and charter management organizations. The CSP supports the creation of high-quality public charter schools by providing start-up funds for new charter schools, strengthening accountability for charter school performance, sharing leading practices that enable school success, and ultimately, improving educational outcomes for students from high-need communities. The CSP has invested over $3 billion since the program’s inception in 1995 to states and charter school developers. In the past decade, CSP investments have enabled the launch of over 2,500 charter schools, serving approximately one million students.

 

 

Other News of Note

At Boston Latin, student voices drive 'reset' on race

Christian Kenworthy, Christian Science Monitor

When it came to prompting a federal investigation into racial discrimination at America’s oldest public high school, one voice proved pivotal: that of students. This week, US Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz released the findings of a nearly half-year investigation into allegations that the selective Boston Latin School had mishandled a number of racially-charged incidents – including failing to notify the parents of a black female student after a non-black peer used a racial slur against her and threatened to lynch her with an electrical cord. It wasn't the first time such hostility had roiled the school, which admits students based on an entrance exam score and grades. But it wasn't till Martin Luther King Jr. Day this year – Jan. 18 – that two black 12th-graders, Meggie Noel and Kylie Webster-Cazeau, pushed the problem to the fore. 

 

 

Don’t forget to read our interview with Patricia Gándara about bilingual education at JUST TALK:  Voices of Education and Justice.

 

 

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.

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