Education Week - January 9, 2013 - 1

Education WEEk
VOL. 32, NO. 15 • JANUARY 9, 2013

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BREAKING NEWS DAILY

State Lawmakers Gear for Action on Broad K-12 Issues Menu
School aid, common standards, guns on campus are among topics on agendas for 2013

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By Andrew Ujifusa
State lawmakers will attempt to tackle a range of issues in legislative sessions getting under way this month, from making common academic standards a reality and funding schools based on performance, to allowing armed teachers and staff members on school grounds. Their task may be complicated by the still small and spotty economic recovery in many places, and by

federal education funding uncertainties posed by the continued wrangling in Washington over the nation’s fiscal future. (See related story, Page 22.) To the extent that K-12 issues need to be handled on a bipartisan basis, the increasingly polarized nature of state government could make that work more difficult. In 2013, only 14 states have divided government—a governor of one party and at least one chamber of the legislature controlled by another party—compared with 20 after the 2010 elections.

Half the states will have veto-proof majorities in their legislatures in 2013, when new governors in Indiana, Montana, and New Hampshire begin their terms. And a rebound in state tax revenue hasn’t prevented lawmakers from thinking about new strings to attach to school funding. While 36 states increased K-12 spending in fiscal 2013, to the tune of $4.9 billion, and states’ collective general fund revenues grew 2.2 percent from fiscal
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INDUSTRY & INNOVATION

Teachers Seek Specialized Peer Networks
By Jason Tomassini
Within the wide expanse of social networking, educators appear to be gravitating to more protected and exclusive spaces. While teachers often use such popular mainstream social networks as Facebook, they are more likely to seek out and return to less-established networks that offer the privacy, peer-to-peer connections, and resource sharing that meets their specific professional needs, according to a recent survey and interviews with educators. “A lot of teachers are on Facebook as general-population consumers,” said Jessie Arora, the founder of Teacher Square, an organization that helps teachers share information around educational technology. “[But] they aren’t on Facebook with their teacher hats on.” Educators’ use of popular networks like
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Sandy Hook Elementary School students leave on a bus in Newtown, Conn., for their new campus last week in a nearby town. Classes resumed Jan. 3 for students at an unused middle school that was rechristened as Sandy Hook.

Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty

AFTER NEWTOWN

Shootings Revive Debates on Security
Proposals Include Officers in Every School, Armed Educators, and Gun Bans
By Nirvi Shah
By nearly all accounts, the staff and students at Sandy Hook Elementary School did everything right on Dec. 14—and with the security measures they took before that day—when a young man armed with powerful weapons blasted his way into the school. But the deadliest K-12 school shooting in American history, a day that President Barack Obama has called the worst of his presidency, has revived debate over how best to ensure that schools are safe for students. The proposals include arming teachers and principals and resurrecting and bolstering an expired federal ban on assault weapons. A number of state lawmakers have said they will—or have— introduced legislation to allow school employees to carry weapons or to ease rules against concealed weapons on school grounds for people with valid permits. Two days after the killings in Newtown, Conn., former U.S. Secretary of Education William J. Bennett was among the first to suggest that principals or other school personnel should have weapons. A week after the shootings, the top executive of the National Rifle Association, Wayne R. LaPierre, called for staffing every public school with armed security officers. Arming more people, especially school staff members, drew sharp criticism from many in education, however, including teachers’ unions and principals’ associations. President Obama, likewise, seemed unconvinced that additional weaponry was the best solution. “I am not going to prejudge the recommendations that are given to me,” he said on the nbc
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RELATED STORIES 14 MOVING ON
Leaders face tough decisions after school violence strikes.

Student-Press Ruling Resonates From 1988
By Mark Walsh
In late 1987, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Byron R. White circulated a draft opinion to his colleagues in a case about whether high school journalists had the right to be free of interference from school administrators. His opinion in the case, Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, sided with Missouri administrators who some four years earlier had removed articles about teenage pregnancy, divorce, and other sensitive topics from the Hazelwood East High School student newspaper before publication. And that is how the case turned out. In a landmark decision 25 years ago next week, the justices ruled 5-3 that educators usually do not violate the First Amendment when they exercise control over student speech in school-sponsored expressive activities. The
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14 GRIM NARRATIVE

News of the Sandy Hook
attack unfolded throughout the day.

16 BEARING ARMS
Legal and practical issues face advocates of guns in schools.

16 FEDERAL POLICY
A White House task force on gun violence includes the secretary of education.

18 MISCONCEPTIONS
Experts rebut portrayals of autism by the media.

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Education Week - January 9, 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - January 9, 2013