Education Week - August 28, 2013 - 1

EDUCATIONWEEK
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VOL. 33, NO. 2 • AUGUST 28, 2013
AMERICAN EDUCATION’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD • © 2013 Editorial Projects in Education • $4
Under Scrutiny
Initial Phase of Federal Monitoring
Turns Up Implementation Soft Spots
By Michele McNeil
In the wake of the U.S. Department of Education’s
decision to place three states on “high-risk status”
for problems with their No Child Left Behind Act
waivers, it’s clear that the federal push to grant
states sweeping flexibility in school accountability
will be fraught with stumbles.
Implementing teacher evaluations tied to student
growth is a significant sticking point for many
waiver states, including Kansas, Oregon, and Washington—which
were formally warned by federal officials
Aug. 15 that they might lose their waivers if
they don’t get new evaluations back on track.
But during an initial phase of monitoring by the
Education Department, federal officials are anxiously
eyeing other potential land mines as well,
according to an Education Week review of the first
round of oversight reports issued over the past several
months by the department.
In those reports, federal officials raised
PAGE 24 >
edweek.org: BREAKING NEWS DAILY
Common Core:
A Puzzle to Public
By Lesli A. Maxwell
In a pair of new national polls aiming to cap-
ture the American public’s view of the state of
K-12 education, one finding is clear: Most of those
surveyed are clueless about the Common Core
State Standards.
Sixty-two percent of all respondents in a poll
from Phi Delta Kappa and Gallup had never
heard of the common core, and awareness among
public school parents was not much better, at 55
percent. In a separate survey from the Associated
Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research,
which polled parents of K-12 students,
52 percent said they knew little or nothing about
the common core, even though educators have
PAGE 20 >
GAUGING AWARENESS
Q:
SCIENCE FRONTIERS: Lynn-Steven Engelke of the Smithsonian Institution monitors presentations on a projector at the Space
Telescope and Science Institute in Baltimore. Cultural institutions are among those helping teachers use technology. PAGE 14
DIGITAL DIRECTIONS
Fla. Virtual School Faces Hard Times
Enrollment Declines for Country’s Largest State-Run E-School
Before today, have you ever
heard of the Common Core
State Standards?
45%
55%
PUBLIC
SCHOOL
PARENTS
62%
NO
ALL RESPONDENTS
SOURCE: PDK/Gallup
38%
Yes
Yes
No
By Benjamin Herold
The Florida Virtual School—the largest
state-sponsored online K-12 school in the
country—is facing troubled times, a sign of
major policy shifts now reshaping the world
of online education.
On the heels of new state legislation
aimed at containing costs and promoting
competition among providers offering individual
online courses to students, Florida
Virtual School officials expect to see a 20
percent drop in state revenue this school
year and announced this month that they
have shed one-third of their workforce.
Experts in online education say the cuts
reflect a national trend.
“States are moving away from singularly
funding a state virtual school,” said Susan
D. Patrick, the president and CEO of the
International Association for K-12 Online
Learning, or iNACOL, in Vienna, Va. “They
want to have multiple providers for students
to choose from.”
She cited as another example the Loui-
siana education department’s recent decision
to replace the Louisiana Virtual School
with a broader menu of course options for
students. (See story, Page 22.)
An analogous shift occurred in the recording
industry following the launch of iTunes
and the “debundling” of music albums, said
John Bailey, the executive director of Digital
Learning Now, a national advocacy group
PAGE 19 >
Stacked Deck Seen
In Growth of PBIS
By Christina A. Samuels
Developers of some school climate
reform models say their programs are
often bypassed by schools and districts
in favor of what they see as specific
strategies promoted by a federally
funded technical-assistance center.
In 1997, Congress inserted language
into the Individuals with Disabilities
Education Act on the issue of discipline
for students with disabilities.
In an attempt to steer schools away
from using punishment-based strategies
for dealing with such students,
the law was revised to say that special
education teams should consider
“positive behavioral interventions,
strategies, and supports” to cut down
on problem behavior.
Since then, positive behavior interPAGE
16 >
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Swikar Patel/Education Week

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Education Week - August 28, 2013

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