Education Week - January 18, 2017 - 5

REPORT ROUNDUP

the fine 30 days from the date of
the notice of violation.
If approved, the bill would take effect July 1.
-TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

Racist Petition Circulates
At Maryland High School
Administrators at an Anne Arundel County school in Maryland have
condemned a racist petition circulated by students that encouraged
classmates to join a white-supremacist movement.
The petition was written by the
"Kool Kids Klan" and signed by
two Arundel High School students.
Administrators confiscated it this
month and interviewed the students involved.
Anne Arundel County police investigated the incident and along with
the state's attorney's office determined
that no crime had been committed
and declined to file charges.
-AP

Justice Dept. Files Appeal
On Transgender Guidance
The Obama administration is
making an 11th-hour effort to defend its policies on allowing transgender individuals to use restrooms
at public schools and workplaces
that correspond to their gender
identity, stressing that its guidance
on the subject is non-binding on
states and school districts.
The U.S. Department of Justice
filed a brief Jan. 6 in the U.S. Court
of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, in
New Orleans, asking the court to
toss out a nationwide injunction issued by a federal district judge in
Texas last year that blocks various
forms of the administration's transgender guidance.
While Texas and 10 other states,
along with school districts from
two other states, filed the lawsuit and sought the injunction, 12
other states and the District of Columbia filed a brief in the district
court stating that they welcome the
transgender guidance, the department points out.
-MARK WALSH

Wyo. Consolidation Proposal
Seen as Politically Toxic
A proposal to slash the number of
school districts in Wyoming by more
than half in order to save money
doesn't appear it will make the grade
in the state legislature this year.
Consolidating the state's 48 school
districts into 23, or one per county,
is among a number of ideas suggested to help address the state's
K-12 funding crisis.
Lawmakers meeting in Cheyenne
are expected to draft legislation
soon on dealing with the shortfall.
Consolidating school districts would
save an estimated $7.5 million,
mainly by eliminating well paid
district administrators.
However, the idea isn't expected to
get anywhere as lawmakers begin
to tackle the issue.
Opponents and even supporters
say district consolidation is politically toxic because it erodes local
control and would save relatively
little money.
-AP

www.edweek.org/go/rr

THE LANGUAGE OF THE CLASSROOM

ESSA IMPLEMENTATION
"Evidence-Based Improvement: A Guide for
States to Strengthen Their Frameworks and
Supports Aligned to the Evidence Requirements
of ESSA"

A study of Washington state students finds that Spanish-speakers, regardless of
their proficiency in English, take fewer advanced courses than their peers whose first
language is English or English-learners of other language backgrounds.

A new practice guide from the Regional Educational Laboratory-West walks states and districts through ways to build capacity to identify and build evidence for school improvement
under the Every Student Succeeds Act.
The guide includes six tools for states and
districts to: take inventory of their existing
school improvement practices; develop guidelines on evidence-based interventions; compare
different interventions for a specific need; and
determine how well a given intervention fits a
particular school's context.
-SARAH D. SPARKS

Average number of advanced courses per school year
3
n Spanish primary language
n Other primary language
n English-only speakers
2

1

SEX EDUCATION
"Efficacy of Infant Simulator Programs to
Prevent Teenage Pregnancy: A School-Based
Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial in Western
Australia"
Robotic "infant simulators" marketed to
schools as a way to help prevent teen pregnancy may have the opposite effect, according
to a study published in August in the British
health journal The Lancet.
Australian researchers randomly assigned nearly 3,000 teenage girls to one of
two groups: Some received an automated
doll (programmed to cry, sleep, eat, and
spoil its diapers on a realistic schedule, and
equipped with sensors to track whether students are properly caring for it), while others received just standard health education.
Then the researchers tracked the girls until
they turned 20, using records from hospitals
and abortion clinics.
Their findings: 8 percent of the girls who
received an infant simulator ended up giving birth, compared to just 4 percent of those
who received standard health education. And
9 percent of the girls who received an infant
simulator had an abortion, compared to 6 percent who received standard health education.
-BENJAMIN HEROLD

STATE STANDARDS
"Creating a Coherent System to Support
Instruction Aligned with State Standards"
A recent study from the RAND Corporation
finds that teachers in the state of Louisiana
tend to teach and think about their work in
ways that are more aligned with the Common
Core State Standards than other teachers.
The study results are based on RAND's
nationally representative American Teacher
Panel surveys from June 2015 and October
2015, which looked at states that had adopted the common core as well as states that
had adopted standards that were strikingly
similar to the common core, such as those in
Louisiana.
The study found teachers in Louisiana were
more likely than their counterparts in other
states to:
* Regularly use or consult standards-aligned
instructional resources;
* Understand state standards; and
* Implement standards-aligned classroom
practices.
The study notes that Louisiana has worked
with teachers to develop its own coherent curriculum and has provided aligned materials to
support better understanding and implementation of its standards, including free, online annotated reviews of K-12 textbooks for math and
English/language arts.
-MARVA HINTON

0

Current

Former

Bilingual

ENGLISH-LEARNER STUDENTS

English-only

NEVER-ENGLISH-LEARNER STUDENTS

SOURCE: Regional Educational Laboratory Northwest

"Advanced Course Enrollment and
Performance in Washington State:
Comparing Spanish-Speaking Students With
Other Language-Minority Students and
English-Only Speakers"
Regardless or whether they are proficient in English, Spanish-speaking
students in Washington state are less
likely to take advanced coursework than
students who speak other languages or
only English, according to a new study by
the Regional Educational Laboratory
Northwest.
Researchers compared participation for
English-learner and English-proficient
students of various language backgrounds
in a variety of advanced courses, including Advanced Placement, International
Baccalaureate, honors, and dual-collegeenrollment courses, from 2009 to 2013.
They found that on average, Spanishspeaking students enrolled in half as

SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT
"Growing Up in Poverty and Civic Engagement:
The Role of Kindergarten Executive Function
and Play Predicting Participation in 8th Grade
Extracurricular Activities"
The amount of play that low-income students
experience in their kindergarten classrooms
predicts how engaged they are in school extracurricular activities in 8th grade, according to
a study in the January issue of Applied Developmental Science.
New York University researchers analyzed
data from the federal Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Class, comparing kindergarten students' cognitive skills,
play time and use of art supplies, musical
instruments, dress-up clothes and other dramatic materials to the students' later participation in sports, theater, and other school
clubs and activities.
The researchers found that kindergartners
who displayed higher levels of executive function-the kinds of cognitive skills related to
self-control-tended to participate more in

many advanced classes each year as did
English-only students or students from
different first-language backgrounds who
were at the same stage of learning English. By contrast, former English-language
learners who were not Spanish speakers
took about the same number of advanced
courses each year as English-only students, and fully bilingual students took
about one more advanced class each year
than English-only students.
The Spanish-speaking students tended
to have lower prior academic achievement
than did students of other heritage languages, but the coursetaking gap was also
likely in part because the schools with high
concentrations of Spanish-speaking students, ELL or not, offered fewer advanced
courses on average than than those with
smaller Spanish-speaking populations.
That dynamic held true even after students'
test scores and other characteristics were
taken into account.
-SARAH D. SPARKS

sports, drama, and music activities in middle
school. But after controlling for executive
function, the amount of classroom play kindergartners had predicted their involvement
in extracurricular activities later on.
-S.D.S.
SPECIAL EDUCATION
"Functional Behavioral Assessment-Based
Interventions"
A new What Works Clearinghouse intervention report finds a process called "functional behavioral assessment" could help students with
emotional disturbances become more engaged
in school.
The strategy looks at the environmental context just before a student misbehaves to identify
why the behavior might have happened and how
to target interventions. Based on an analysis of
17 studies that met the clearinghouse's evidence standards, the report found "potentially
positive effects" for the intervention in reducing
problematic behavior and increasing engagement at school for students with, or at risk of,
emotional disturbances.
-S.D.S.

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Education Week - January 18, 2017

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