Diplomas Count - June 5, 2014 - 8

8 | EDUCATION WEEK JUNE 5, 2014
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tribute to a student's motivation:
belief in the student's own competence;
ownership of his or her
learning; interest in the subject or
at least understanding of the value
of learning it; and a feeling of social
relatedness to the school and
community.
"It's been demonstrated again
and again that academic mindsets
are real things and they do have
a significant effect on students'
achievement," said Camille A. Farrington,
the lead researcher for the
Chicago Postsecondary Transition
Project at the University of Chicago
Consortium on Chicago School
Research.
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The more students feel capable
and in control of their own learning,
for example, "the harder they
work, the better they do, and the
higher grades they receive," she
said. "It's a feedback loop. Students
are constantly in the process of
either getting confirmation of the
mindsets they already hold or their
mindsets are being changed for the
better or for the worse based on
their interactions with people in
the school environment."
Schools across the country are
also trying to motivate students
by providing direct cash incentives
to graduate, pitching ways
they can help their families and
communities through their own
academic success, and leveraging
groups of peers to push each other
toward graduation. (See articles,
Pages 10 and 20.)
"People often ask, 'Can motivation
be taught? Is that subject to
intervention?' I think certainly yes,
in the context of a class where what
the teacher is doing is building internal
motivation. It may be shortlived
or context-dependent, but at
least some part of it spills over and
becomes generalizable to things like
graduation," said Thomas J. Kane, a
professor of education and economics
at the Harvard Graduate School
of Education. "A great school experience"
is "when you've had enough
exposure to teachers who are great
at cultivating motivation, it becomes
second nature in students."
Venture Academy, the Minneapolis
charter school, is trying to create
an environment that gets students
planning their own high school and
college careers. The school primarily
serves those who previously performed
below the district average in
reading and mathematics and those
considered at risk of dropping out in
high school.
Mr. Muse and other staff members
at the school admit it has
been a matter of trial and error for
teachers and administrators tryPAGE
9 >
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PERSPECTIVE
1
EDUCATION WEEK
VOL. 33, NO. 31 * MAY 14, 2014
AMERICAN EDUCATION'S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD * © 2014 Editorial Projects in Education * 4
Some States
Overhauling
Vaccine Laws
Aim Is to Limit Opt-Outs
By Evie Blad
As outbreaks of preventable diseases
have spread around the country in recent
years, some states have been re-evaluating
how and why they allow parents to
opt their children out of vaccines required
for school attendance.
Requiring vaccines before school admission
has been a key component of a
decades-long campaign that had nearly
rid the United States of some of its most
severe illnesses, from the measles to
whooping cough, public-health experts
say. But they also warn that broad "personal
belief" exemptions that don't relate
to a child's medical condition or a family's
religious beliefs have made it too easy to
bypass vaccines, poking a sizable hole in
the public-health safety net.
While some parents act out of a sense of
personal conviction, others do so simply
because they don't have time to schedule
an appointment, said Stephanie L. Wasserman,
the executive director of the Colorado
Children's Immunization Coalition,
an Aurora, Colo.-based group that seeks
to increase vaccine coverage in the state.
"We want to close that convenience
loophole," she said. "When you choose not
to immunize, there are consequences not
PAGE 23>
OVERVIEW
Demographic Changes, Shifting Rulings
Complicate Schools' March to Integration
By Lesli A. Maxwell
American schooling will reach a milestone
DIGITAL DIRECTIONS
Texting Is Used
To Keep Students
On College Track
By Caralee J. Adams
As educators look for ways to keep high
school seniors on track for college and to
avoid the "summer melt" that leads some
astray in the months after they graduate,
a new strategy is gaining ground: texting.
This year, West Virginia launched a
pilot program that alerts students about
deadlines for financial aid, registration,
and student orientation, among other
matters, with personalized messages on
their mobile phones. The texting initiative
targets students from low-income
families-especially those set to become
the first in their families to attend college.
It
begins in January of students' senior
year and continues into the summer
and even through the freshman
year of college. After getting a text reminder,
a student may contact a counselor
at his or her high school or on
PAGE 20>
next fall when white students, for the first
time, make up fewer than half of all children
enrolled in public schools, according to federal
projections.
Black enrollment, holding fairly steady in recent
years, will hover between 16 percent and
17 percent.
Hispanic enrollment, meanwhile, will continue
to surge, with its share of the K-12 population
expected to hit 30 percent within the
JEFFERSON COUNTY:
A Kentucky district "keeps
the faith" on school
desegregation. PAGE 14
next decade. And the proportion of Asians and
Pacific Islanders in public schools is also expected
to be on the uptick, though much less
dramatic than the rise for Latinos.
But even with such ground-shifting demographic
changes in the nation's public schools,
the schools in many communities continue to
be highly segregated 60 years after the U.S.
Supreme Court, on May 17, 1954, struck down
the principle of "separate but equal" education.
"To separate them from others of similar age
and qualifications solely because of their race
PAGE 18>
FEDERAL FOOTPRINT:
Civil rights and education
laws put teeth into the
enforcement of U.S. Supreme
Court decisions. PAGE 16
LANDMARK CASES:
Decades of rulings trace the
arc of legal wrangling over
school integration. PAGE 17.
NO CLEAR END:
Nearly half a century after
it was filed, a Mississippi
court case continues. PAGE 18
COMMENTARY: Five
writers share perspectives
on how Brown plays out
in education today.
PAGES 28-31, 36
FROM ABOVE: A pair of 4th
graders mind the exit doors last
month at Wilt Elementary School,
a diverse school in Louisville, Ky,
Students jeer as Elizabeth
Eckford attempts to integrate
Central High School in Little
Rock, Ark., in 1957.
edweek.org: BREAKING NEWS DAILY
BROWN AT 60: NEW DIVERSITY, FAMILIAR DISPARITIES
Authors Contend Public Schools Outperform Private Schools
By Holly Yettick
The recent publication of a scholarly book has
reopened the debate surrounding the academic
achievement of public vs. private schools.
Public schools achieve the same or better
mathematics results as private schools with
demographically similar students, concludes
The Public School Advantage: Why Public
Schools Outperform Private Schools, published
in November by the University of Chicago
Press. The authors are Christopher and Sarah
Lubienski, a husband-and-wife team of education
professors at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign.
Central to the controversy is their suggestion
that vouchers, which provide public funding for
private school tuition, are based on the premise
that private schools do better-an assumption
that is undercut by the book's overall findings.
The Lubienskis' analysis draws on data from
the 2003 National Assessment of Educational
Progress, or NAEP, as well as the Early Childhood
Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class
of 1998-99.
After accounting for socioeconomic status, race,
and other demographic differences among students,
the researchers found that public school
math achievement equaled or outstripped math
achievement at every type of private school in
grades 4 and 8 on NAEP. The advantage was as
large as 12 score points on a scale of 0 to 500 (or
PAGE 22 >
Will Count/Arkansas Democrat Gazette/AP-File
Swikar Patel/Education Week
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Diplomas Count - June 5, 2014

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