Education Week - July 20, 2016 - 5

REPORT ROUNDUP

| OBITUARY |
Jerome Seymour Bruner, one of the primary drivers of the
"cognitive revolution" in psychology in the 1960s and an
active scholar, died June 5. He was 100.
Through his groundbreaking 1959 book, The Process of
Education, and others, Bruner led a new focus on education
through social interactions and the need to understand
how both culture and content affect learning. He found
much of his own public schooling "boring" and passionately
argued against viewing children as "blank slates" to be filled with facts, as
many behaviorist theories of learning held at the time.
Bruner co-founded and served as the director of the Center for Cognitive
Studies at Harvard and also was on the faculty of Oxford University in
England. He served as a president of the American Psychological Association,
which gave him a Distinguished Scientific Award. As an outgrowth of his belief
that children can learn at any age, he became a key architect of the federal
Head Start program.
-SARAH D. SPARKS

| TRANSITIONS |
Martin Blank,
the president
of the Institute
for Educational
Leadership, will
step down in early
2017. Since 2009,
he has led the IEL, where he
worked for 25 years.
Mimi Clarke Corcoran
became the president
of the National
Center for Learning
Disabilities on July
11. Corcoran was
the vice president of
talent development at New Visions
for Public Schools. Prior to that
role, she was the president and
chief executive officer of ANDRUS,
a nonprofit focused on helping
individuals and families overcome
extreme childhood adversity.
Sydnee Dickson, the interim schools
superintendent in Utah, has been
selected to stay in that position.
She has worked
for the state board
of education since
2007. Before that,
she worked in
Utah's Granite,
Davis, and Murray
districts as an administrator
and in other school leadership
positions.
Mark Edwards, the 2013 National
Superintendent of the Year who
taught thousands of educators
how technology can play a pivotal
role in improving
academic results,
will join Discovery
Education in
August. Edwards,
who has been the
superintendent
of the Mooresville, N.C., district
since 2007, will be the senior
vice president of digital learning
for the company. Before joining
Mooresville, he served as a school
of education dean and a school
superintendent.
Kaya Henderson is
stepping down
after more than
five years as the

chancellor of the District of
Columbia's public schools.
She succeeded the polarizing
Michelle Rhee in the position
after serving as Rhee's top
deputy.
Michael Johnson, the
superintendent of
the Copper River
district in Alaska,
has been named the
state's new education
commissioner. He
comes to the role after serving as
president of the statewide school
superintendents' association.
Valeria Silva, the
superintendent of
the St. Paul, Minn.,
schools, has been
fired but will stay on
board for 15 months
as a consultant. She
has led the district since 2009. Silva
had been praised for focusing efforts
on English-language learners
and racial equity, but in recent
months, she has had to face
questions about school safety and
the district's declining enrollment
as more students moved to
charter schools and suburban
districts. Silva started in St. Paul
in 1987 as a Spanish-immersion
teacher.
Carole Smith, the superintendent
of the Portland, Ore., public
schools, plans to retire at the end
of the coming school year after
10 years of leading Oregon's
largest district. She became the
superintendent in 2007.
Lynne Mooney Teta, the headmaster
of a prestigious high school that's
been plagued by allegations of civil
rights violations, has resigned from
Boston Latin School. The local
U.S. attorney's office announced
in March that it was launching
an investigation into allegations
of racial harassment and
discrimination after community
members and civil rights
organizations submitted a written
complaint. Teta's replacement is
Michael Contompasis. Boston Latin
is the nation's oldest public school.
It was founded April 23, 1635.

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EDUCATION SPENDING
"State and Local Expenditures on Corrections
And Education"
From 1979 to 2013, the growth in corrections
spending by states and localities rose by 324 percent, compared with the 107 percent growth rate
in money for education over that period.
That's according to a brief released this month
by the U.S. Department of Education. Overall
spending on preK-12, however, still far outpaces
that spent on correctional facilities. The department reports that across roughly 25 years, spending on corrections rose from $17 billion to $71
billion, while education spending rose from $258
billion to $534 billion, after adjusting for inflation.
The growth gap between corrections and
school spending was the largest in seven
states-Idaho, Michigan, Montana, North
Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, and
West Virginia-where money spent on corrections grew at five times the rate for education.

-ANDREW UJIFUSA

CURRICULUM
"Simplifying Teaching: A Field Experiment With
Online 'Off the Shelf' Products"
A study has found that giving middle
school math teachers access to inquiry-based
lesson plans and online support significantly
improved student achievement-and benefited weaker teachers the most.
The effect on student learning was about
the same as moving from an average-performing teacher to one at the 80th percentile.
Northwestern University researchers conducted the study with about 360 teachers in
three Virginia districts. Teachers were randomly assigned to one of three groups: a control group that maintained business as usual,
a group that received a login for the online curriculum, and the group that saw the most success, which received both a login and online supports
for using the lesson plans.
-LIANA HEITIN
TEACHER PIPELINE
"The Condition of Future Educators 2015"
High school students are getting less and less
interested in becoming teachers, a trend that's
picking up speed at an "alarming" rate, ACT Inc.
said this month.
An ACT survey of 1.9 million high school graduates who took its college-entrance exam shows
that in the class of 2015, only 4 percent said they
planned to become teachers, counselors, or administrators. In 2014, 5 percent said they had such
plans, and in 2010, 7 percent did. Twenty years
ago, that figure was 9 percent.
ACT also found a continuation of another disturbing trend: The students who plan to become educators are lower-than-average achievers as measured
by their scores on its college-readiness benchmarks.-

-CATHERINE GEWERTZ

EARLY-CHILDHOOD
"Primary Early-Care and -Education Efforts and
Achievement at Kindergarten Entry"
New data show that a growing percentage of
children, especially those from well-off
households, attend center-based care in the year
before they attend kindergarten. In fact, only 21
percent of children now spend the year before
kindergarten in parent-only care, though that
percentage jumps to 35 percent among children
from lower-income families.
The report, produced by the American Institutes
for Research for the U.S. Department of Education,
is based on a broad sample of children entering kindergarten. It also links center-based care to a boost
in children's math and reading skills. -LILLIAN MONGEAU

Shortcut Paths to Teaching
Linked to Higher Turnover
"Easy In, Easy Out: Are Alternatively Certified
Teachers Turning Over at Increased Rates?"
Alternative-certification programs are bringing in scores more teachers of color, male teachers, and teachers who attended selective colleges
than traditional programs. But teachers who enter
the profession through such programs also appear
to leave it at higher rates-a gap that has grown
since 1999, a study concludes.
By 2007-08, teachers who entered the profession
through alternative-certification programs were
2½ times more likely to leave it altogether than
those who came in the traditional way, says the
study by researchers from Vanderbilt University
and the University of California, Riverside. It was
published online last month in the American Educational Research Journal.
Alternative-path programs allow individuals to
teach right away or after minimal training, while
traditional certification programs usually require
students to do some pedagogy coursework and
student-teaching first.
The study draws on four waves of data, starting
in 1999-2000, from a federal, nationally representative study of teachers. Because alternative-route
graduates tend to work in hard-to-staff schools, the
researchers accounted for working conditions via
teachers' reports of principal effectiveness, availability of materials, and class size, and measured
teachers' access to mentors. There weren't big differences in turnover rates at the study's start, but by
2007-08, alternative-route teachers were 83 percent
more likely to turn over than traditionally trained
teachers. And the turnover was driven largely by
teachers leaving teaching altogether, rather than
just changing schools.
-STEPHEN SAWCHUK

DIGITAL EDUCATION
"Online Credit Recovery: Enrollment and Passing
Patterns in Montana Digital Academy Courses"
Of the thousands of Montana students who
turned to a state-run virtual program to make up
courses they previously failed, 57 percent passed, according to a study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences.
The study is the latest to look into the controversial
world of online credit recovery, which has exploded in
popularity despite scant evidence of its effectiveness.
It looked at enrollment and course-passage patterns
at the Montana Digital Academy during the 2013-14
school year.
Course-passage rates were higher for girls (60 percent), 12th graders (63 percent), and students in social
studies courses (71 percent), but lower for students in
math (49 percent) and English/language arts courses
(52 percent).-
-BENJAMIN HEROLD
SECONDARY SCHOOL
"Addressing Early-Warning Indicators"
In efforts to keep high school students on track to
graduate, an evaluation of the Diplomas Now intervention suggests an ounce of prevention is better than a
pound of cure.
After a year, MDRC researchers found Diplomas Now
significantly boosted the number of 6th graders who had
none of the "red flags" for dropping out of high school:
shaky attendance, poor grades, or behavior problems.
The program also supported students who entered 9th
grade vulnerable but on track-but had less success
with the freshmen who had had years of problems in
middle school.
The intervention stresses tracking students' grades,
attendance, and discipline rates, and getting help-
early-to high-risk students. The study continues
through 2017-18.
-SARAH D. SPARKS
EDUCATION WEEK | July 20, 2016 | www.edweek.org | 5

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Education Week - July 20, 2016

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