Education Week - May 17, 2017 - 5

From the Archives
TRANSITIONS

Indiana Virtual Charter
Again Escapes the Ax
An online virtual charter school in Indiana has
once again been spared from closing, despite persistently low academic scores.
The state school board last week deferred closing
the Hoosier Academy Virtual School, which is operated by K12 Inc. Instead, the school, which serves
more than 3,000 students, will be prohibited from
enrolling new students, and the amount of administrative fees its authorizer, Ball State University,
receives will be cut.
Hoosier Academy Virtual has posted failing grades
for six consecutive years. State board members
learned last week that much of the school's curriculum is not aligned to Indiana's academic standards.
-ARIANNA PROTHERO

KYLA JOHNSONTRAMMELL has been
named the new
superintendent of the
Oakland district in
California, effective July 1.
Currently the interim deputy
superintendent, JohnsonTrammell started out as an
elementary teacher in the
49,000-student district,
where she has worked for
nearly two decades.

Teachers Say More Training
Needed on Discipline Methods
Almost three years since California joined the vanguard of a burgeoning national movement to sharply
curtail the use of student suspensions and expulsions, nearly 9 in 10 Golden State teachers say they
still need more training and support for utilizing
alternative-discipline techniques, reports EdSource.
In that same survey-an online poll of 3,500 members by the California Teachers Association-40 percent of teachers reported they had received "little or
no training" on so-called restorative practices like
peer mediation.
The results of the survey underscore a national
trend: Educators, both fans and foes of the recent
student-discipline-reform efforts, say they aren't getting the kinds of training and support they need to
manage their classrooms without employing exclusionary discipline techniques such as suspensions.

LAURA MITCHELL
is expected to take the
helm of the Cincinnati
public schools, pending
contract negotiations.
Mitchell, the district's
deputy superintendent
and chief academic
officer, will succeed Mary
Ronan, who will retire this
summer after leading the
35,000-student school
system for nine years.

-EMMANUEL FELTON

Kellogg to Give $51 Million
To Single School District
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation has announced that
it's giving $51 million over five years to the public
schools in its hometown of Battle Creek, Mich., in the
hopes of tackling low academic performance linked
to long-standing racial inequality and segregation.
The grant ranks among the largest to a single, public K-12 school system. It will be put toward hiring
early-literacy support staff, offering a free prekindergarten summer program, and crafting a plan to
improve student behavior that includes alternatives

academic proficiency rates-information easily available on the MySchoolDC website-but
high-income parents tended to rank schools
based on accountability ratings, information
that tended to be harder to find. -SARAH D. SPARKS

to suspensions. It also will be used to launch academies aligned with students' fields of interest, invest
in the arts and athletics, and offer recruitment and
retention incentives for teachers.
The gift comes after a year of planning by school
officials and the release of a study that highlights decades of racial disparities in the city of about 50,000
people that's roughly 70 percent white, 18 percent
black, and 7 percent Hispanic or Latino, according to
the 2010 U.S. Census.
-AP

Teacher-Prep Accreditor Gives
Nod to First Online Program
Teach-Now, an online teacher-preparation program, has received full seven-year accreditation from
the Council for Accreditation of Educator Preparation-making it the first online institution to meet
the council's new, more rigorous standards.
The program, founded in 2011 by C. Emily Feistritzer, takes candidates nine months to complete.
The first class began in March 2013, and since then,
the longtime promoter of alternative certification
said, it has accepted and enrolled almost 1,500 people in 80 countries and 44 states.
CAEP unveiled its more ambitious standards for
program accreditation in 2013. Teacher-prep programs are judged on five standards: equipping candidates with content knowledge and appropriate pedagogical tools; working in partnership with districts to
provide strong student-teaching practice and feedback; recruiting a diverse and academically strong
group of candidates; demonstrating that graduates
are successfully boosting preK-12 students' academic
achievement; and maintaining a quality-assurance
system.
-MADELINE WILL

Voters in Santa Fe, N.M., Reject
Beverage Tax to Fund Preschool
Voters in Santa Fe, N.M., have rejected a 2-centsper-ounce tax on distributors of sodas and other
sugary beverages that, if passed, would have
helped support prekindergarten within the Santa
Fe public schools.
The proposed tax was estimated to have been one
of the nation's highest of its kind, projected to generate about $7.7 million in its first year, in preparation
for use starting in summer 2018.
Voter turnout of 37.6 percent represented more
than came out for a recent mayoral race. The high
turnout was primarily the result of contributions
from political action committees on both sides, which
spent more than $3.1 million on promotional materials for the campaign. Critics painted the proposed
tax as an ineffective and unfair overreach of government authority.
-MARGARET LOVEY COOPER

options; provide adult academic support
before, during, and after incarceration; and
return students to their previous school after
returning from incarceration.
-S.D.S.
CHARTER SCHOOLS

AT-RISK YOUTHS
"Blueprint for Change: Education Success for
Youth in the Juvenile Justice System"
Students who enter the juvenile-justice system are significantly less likely to graduate
from high school, and a new online report offers
a roadmap for states to make sure incarcerated
students get back on track academically.
The Legal Center for Youth Justice and
Education, a collaboration of child-advocacy
groups, lays out goals to support incarcerated students and highlights promising
state practices, in an interactive report.
Among the recommendations: help students stay informed about their education

"Charter School Funding: Inequity in the City"
Traditional public schools on average received about 29 percent more funding per student than charter schools in 14 metropolitan
areas, finds a new study by the University of
Arkansas' education reform department.
Researchers examined the disparities among
federal, state, local, and private revenue in
2013-14. While public schools received about
$19,922 on average, charters took in about
$14,200 in a weighted average.
The biggest disparities came from local public-revenue sources. Charters in eight of the
cities studied collected no money from local
revenue sources.
-SARAH TULLY

Health care is dominating the policy
debate in Washington these days,
and a quick spin through the EdWeek
archives reveals it's not the first time
K-12 has been swept into its orbit.
Children's Advocates
Seek to Influence
Health-Care-Reform Plan
WASHINGTON | As the Clinton administration
scrambles to fulfill its self-imposed deadline to
complete a national health-care-reform plan, a
coalition linking health and children's advocates
has laid out an agenda for how a transformed
health-care system should meet the special
needs of children. (April 14, 1993)

Health Bill Includes Funds
for Education, School Clinics
WASHINGTON | President Bill Clinton and first
lady Hillary Rodham Clinton last week delivered
their proposed "health security act'' to Capitol
Hill with a few key changes from early drafts that
may have important implications for schools.
(Nov. 3, 1993)

Education Groups Put Muscle
Behind Health-Care Overhaul
Education organizations-including both
national teachers' unions-are putting their
muscle and money behind an effort by President
Barack Obama and congressional Democrats to
revamp the nation's health-care system.
(Aug. 25, 2009)

Federal Abstinence-Only
Sex Ed. Program Revived
Although overshadowed by other issues in the
health-care debate, a controversial abstinenceonly approach to sex education that recently
saw its federal support severed is getting a new
lease on life under the final health-care package
signed by President Barack Obama.
(April 5, 2010)

Evan Vucci/AP-File

secutive years, or rated "poor," lose their ability to
sponsor charter schools.
-AP

ENGLISH-LANGUAGE LEARNERS
"I Came Here to Learn"
Schools that want to improve the educational prospects for English-language learners should take account of what's happening
in their students' lives outside the classroom,
a new report from the research arm of America's Promise Alliance finds.
Drawing on state data and interviews with
Spanish-speaking English-learners, researchers
from the Center for Promise found a host of factors-including family or job conflicts or a lack
of supportive school relationships-can derail
students on their path to earning a diploma.
The report calls for schools to create more
avenues for students to connect with peers,
teachers, and school staff; allow students to
help design their education; and give Englishlearners who are new to the country or qualify
for free or reduced-price lunch more time to
graduate, among other policies. -COREY MITCHELL

Supporters celebrate the U.S. Supreme Court
ruling upholding the Affordable Care Act
outside the high court in Washington in 2012.

Education Spending
Raised in Arguments
On Health-Care Law
WASHINGTON | For the U.S. Supreme Court,
the closely watched arguments last week
were all about the Patient Protection and
Affordable Care Act. So how did the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act, teacher
tenure, curriculum, Title IX, and other education
topics become part of the discussion?
(April 2, 2012)

Education Week - May 17, 2017

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