Education Week - July 20, 2016 - 4

Majority of States Need
Help With Spec. Ed. Rules
Twenty-six states and the District
of Columbia need some degree of
support in meeting the requirements
of the Individuals with Disabilities
Education Act, according to the U.S.
Department of Education's most recent evaluation of state performance.
States were measured on the percentage of students with disabilities
participating in state tests and the
National Assessment of Educational
Progress, the percentage with disabilities scoring at or above "basic"
on NAEP, the percentage of students
who dropped out, and the percentage with disabilities who graduated
with a regular high school diploma.
In the category of "meets requirements" were 24 states, up five from
last year. The remaining states were
deemed "needs assistance" or "needs
intervention," each of which comes
with some level of increased help or
oversight by the department.

-CHRISTINA A. SAMUELS

Kansas Governor Signs
K-12 Funding Patch
Gov. Sam Brownback, a Republican, has signed legislation to provide
$38 million more to Kansas' poor districts this coming school year after
the state's supreme court threatened
to cut off all school funding unless
the legislature made school aid more
equitable. The plaintiff 's lawyers
signed a letter to the court acknowledging that they were satisfied with
the new formula.
Now, the state now has to address
a more sticky-and costly-issue regarding the "adequacy" of its education funding. A lower court ruled last
year that the state's funding formula
falls an estimated $548 million per
year short of what districts need to
help students learn the state's standards.
-DAAREL BURNETTE II

Union Clashes With Police
Leave 8 Dead in Mexico
Violent clashes between police
and members of a radical teachers'
union who had blockaded roads in

TRANSGENDER
CHALLENGES
Twenty-four
states have joined
various lawsuits
against the Obama
administration,
challenging its
requirement that
schools allow
transgender students
to use the restrooms
and locker rooms
that align with their
gender identity.

WFFF-TV via AP

NEWS IN BRIEF

burned vehicles, while Associated
Press journalists saw riot police firing on protesters. -ASSOCIATED PRESS

POLITICAL LESSONS
Jace Laquerre, 17, looks at a civics
book at Colchester High in
Colchester, Vt. One of the youngest
delegates set to attend this week's
GOP convention, Jace has been the
target of online vitriol for not
supporting Donald Trump as the
nominee.

Phila. Enacts Beverage Tax
To Pay for Prekindergarten
Philadelphia's City Council has
voted in favor of a tax on sugaradded and artificially sweetened
beverages that is expected to raise
$409 million over five years for preschool and other city programs.
The vote makes Philadelphia the
largest city to date to enact a beverage tax; the only other is Berkeley,
Calif., which enacted one in 2014 and
funnels the money to its general fund.
Barring legal challenges, the tax will
go into effect in Philadelphia Jan. 1.
The tax will be levied on distributors, according to The Philadelphia
Inquirer. Eventually, consumers
might pay up to 18 cents more for
a 12-ounce can, $1 for a 2-liter container, and $2.16 for a 12-pack. About
half the beverage-tax money is slated
to go to prekindergarten.
-C.A.S.

southern Mexico left at least eight
people dead and more than 100 injured, officials said.
Teachers from the National Coordinator of Education Workers are
opposed to the mandatory testing of teachers as part of Mexico's
sweeping education reform and are
also protesting the arrest of union
leaders on money laundering and
other charges. The government last
week said it would revise teacher
evaluations.
In last month's clashes in the
state of Oaxaca, protesters threw
stones and Molotov cocktails and

WA
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VT

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MN

OR
ID
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UT
CA

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IL

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OK

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KY

NJ
DE
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FL

4 | EDUCATION WEEK | July 20, 2016 | www.edweek.org

MS
TX

SOURCE: Education Week

l 13-state suit filed in Texas
l 10-state suit filed in Nebraska
l Suit over North Carolina Law

RI
CT

Desegregation Program
To End in St. Louis Area

Publishers Get Poor Marks
On Common-Core Math Texts

The nation's largest and longestrunning school desegregation program that has allowed more than
60,000 African-American students
in St. Louis to attend suburban
schools over several decades will be
coming to an end.
Starting in fall 2019, the only children that will be admitted as new
students will be those with siblings
already enrolled.
In the early 1980s, thousands of
black children from St. Louis began
attending predominately white
schools in St. Louis County as the
result of a federal school desegregation lawsuit. The program also
allows white county students to attend city magnet schools. In 1999,
a federally approved agreement
turned the school desegregation
program into a voluntary one.

-TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

The curriculum-review website
EdReports.org has released its first
round of results for high school
math textbooks, and three of the
major publishers performed poorly.
Textbooks from the College
Board, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt,
and Pearson all failed to meet the
expectations for being considered
aligned to the Common Core State
Standards. A program by Carnegie Learning partially met expectations. Of the five programs
reviewed, only a math textbook by
CPM Educational Program was
found to be fully aligned to the common core.
Pearson said the evaluations "continue to be plagued by inaccuracies,
misunderstandings of program instructional models, misinterpretations" of the standards' expectations,
"and a lack of understanding of effective curriculum development and
pedagogy."
-LIANA HEITIN

N.J. Governor Wants to Send
Less Money to Poor Districts
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie
has proposed to flatten the state's
funding formula by equalizing the
amount of money it distributes to
poor and wealthy students, according to local news media.
The revision would serve as a
major blow to the state's urban
districts, which have a high proportion of disadvantaged students and
which have been battling lawmakers over funding for more than four
decades.
Newark, for example, would lose
as much as $14 million, or 69 percent of its state funding, says an
analysis released by the Republican
governor's office. Meanwhile, suburban districts would stand to receive
millions more in funding. For example, the North Caldwell Borough
school system would receive $6 million more in funds, a 1,714 percent
increase.
-D.B.

La. to Require the Teaching
Of Cursive Through Grade 12
Starting in 2017, Louisiana
students will learn cursive writing in 3rd grade-and they'll keep
getting instruction on it through
graduation.
A bill signed by Gov. John Bel Edwards last month applies to both traditional public schools and charter
schools. State lawmakers that supported the measure cited students'
ability to write their names and to
read documents written in cursive,
such as the U.S. Constitution.
The Common Core State Standards, which have caused controversy
in Louisiana, do not require teaching
handwriting, though states are welcome to add it. Louisiana recently
adopted a new set of standards to
replace the common core, but the two
sets of standards are nearly identical
in many ways.
-L.H.

http://www.EdReports.org http://www.edweek.org

Education Week - July 20, 2016

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