Education Week - August 30, 2017 - 4

NEWS IN BRIEF
DeVos Continued Investing in Company
While It Was Under Investigation

guidance on the rights of transgender students in
public schools.
Lambda Legal filed its Freedom of Information
Act lawsuit last week, seeking all records and
correspondence related to the policy shift and its
implementation. The federal agencies have not
yet provided those documents after the organization made a formal open-records request in
March, the suit says.
The original guidance-issued by the Obama
administration-asserted that Title IX, the federal gender-nondiscrimination law, guarantees
the rights of transgender students to have access
to restrooms and locker rooms that match their
gender identity.
The Trump administration rescinded that guidance in February, leaving it to schools to interpret
federal law.
-EVIE BLAD

When the family of U.S. Secretary of Education
Betsy DeVos increased its financial stake in Neurocore this spring, the controversial "neurofeedback"
company was being investigated by an advertisingindustry group for making questionable claims about
its treatments for such conditions as autism, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and memory loss.
The National Advertising Division formally
recommended last month that the company stop
making a wide range of advertising claims and
stop promoting many of its user testimonials. Neurocore is appealing the decision.
On Feb. 10, the group alerted Neurocore that it
was opening an investigation into the company's
advertising claims. Subsequently, DeVos or one
of her immediate family members invested more
than $1 million and maybe more than $5 million.
The National Advertising Division said the investigation was initiated in part because Neurocore's claims appear to target "uniquely vulnerable" audiences.
-BENJAMIN HEROLD

Suicide Rates of Teenage Girls
Reach Record 40-Year High
The rate of teenage girls who committed suicide
is double what it was in 2007 and the highest in
40 years for that age group, according to newly released data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC analysis found that 524 females
between 15 and 19 died by suicide in 2015. The
rate for females is still much lower than for
males. That same year, 1,537 males committed suicide. Their rate rose as well, but not as
significantly.
Researchers point, in part, to teenagers' increasing access to social media, because of the
pressure it brings to fit in, and an ongoing lack
of mental-health resources as reasons behind the
increase.
-TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

Twenty-One Percent of Schools
Offer Online-Only Courses
Twenty-one percent of U.S. schools offer courses
that are entirely online, without any brick-andmortar activities, and charter schools are much
more likely than traditional schools to offer such
courses.
The Teacher and Principal Survey, released last
week by the National Center for Education Statistics, reports that in 2015-16, 20 percent of the country's 83,500 traditional public schools and 29 percent
of its 6,900 charter schools offered courses that took
place exclusively in cyberspace.
Charter schools have waded in more deeply than
have traditional schools: 14 percent of charter
schools offer all their courses in an online-only format, compared with 5 percent of traditional public
schools.
The report marks the first time the NCES has collected data on the use of online-only courses.

Ferguson Superintendent Charged
With Improper Use of Credit Card
The superintendent of the Ferguson-Florissant
school district has been arrested on charges
that he used a credit card belonging to his
former North Carolina district without
authorization.
Joseph Davis left the Washington County
school system in Plymouth, N.C., in 2015 to lead
Ferguson-Florissant, the district just outside
St. Louis where the death of a black teenager,
Michael Brown, sparked national protests
against police shootings. Davis is accused
of using the credit card on Jan. 15 of this year

-CATHERINE GEWERTZ

LGBT Group Sues Government for Records
On Transgender-Guidance-Policy Shift
A prominent LGBT legal group has sued the U.S.
departments of Education and Justice for records
related to the agencies' decision to withdraw federal

New data from the 2015-16 National Teacher and Principal Survey find most high schools
start earlier than 8:30 a.m., the American Academy of Pediatrics' recommended start time
to support adolescents' changing sleep schedules.

High Schools

4
6

Middle Schools

Primary Schools

Before 7:30 a.m.

7:30-7:59 a.m.

8-8:29 a.m.

8:30-8:59 a.m.

SOURCE: National Center for Education Statistics

4 | EDUCATION WEEK | August 30, 2017 | www.edweek.org

Incorrect Special Ed. Rules Listed
On Vermont Website for Four Years
Officials at the Vermont education department
say incorrect rules for special education services
have been posted on the state website for four
years.
The state board of education adjusted Vermont's special education guidelines in response
to federal education law changes in 2012.
According to department spokeswoman Haley
Dover, the wrong draft of the rules was sent
to the secretary of state and published on
the agency's website in 2013. She said the
error was recently discovered during website
maintenance.
Dover said the discrepancies could have actually helped students by giving them more

9:00 a.m. or later

Burst of
Creativity
Graffiti artist
Erik Wahl draws
a portrait during
a seminar at
Maquoketa High
School in Maquoketa,
Iowa, last week.
The speed painter's
primary goal was
to inspire teachers
to incorporate more
creativity into their
classrooms as a new
year of school
begins.

www.edweek.org/go/rr

"An Unintentional Pro-Black Bias in Judgement
Among Educators"

A Washington state high school football coach
took advantage of his position when he prayed on
the field after games and is not entitled to immediately get his job back, a federal appeals court
ruled last week.
The three-judge panel held that Bremerton High
School coach Joe Kennedy's prayers did not constitute protected free speech because he was acting
as a public employee, not a private citizen, when he
conducted them.
Kennedy had been leading players in postgame prayers, but the Bremerton school district
ordered him to stop in 2015, saying the practice
violated the separation of church and state required by the U.S. Constitution. He lost his job
after he defied the ban.
The case has drawn broad national attention,
including when President Donald Trump featured Kennedy at a campaign event in Virginia
last October.
-ASSOCIATED PRESS

SCHOOL DIVERSITY

Federal Appeals Court Rejects
Appeal From Praying Coach

Report Roundup

MOST HIGH SCHOOLS START EARLIER THAN RECOMMENDED

Combined Grades

to rent a hotel room and a car, according to
the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which said he
faces two counts of obtaining property by false
pretense.
Davis' lawyer said his client denies the
charges.
A North Carolina audit released last year asserted that Davis had misspent or failed to provide receipts for thousands of dollars in expenditures during his tenure in Washington County,
allegations he denied.
-DENISA R. SUPERVILLE

Educators show the same unconscious bias
favoring white people as the general U.S. population and use slightly lower academic standards when evaluating black students, finds
a new study in the latest issue of the British
Journal of Educational Psychology.
Researchers from the University of Virginia's
Project Implicit, which studies unconscious biases and how they affect behavior, asked more
than 600 mostly white education professionals
how they would select students for a hypothetical honor society. The study was part of a 2015
Education Week series on bias in K-12 schools.
They found educators at all levels required
lower academic standards when choosing black
applicants for the honor society, as compared
with white applicants. The bias held even for
participants that reported they had no racial

biases. That finding mirrors previous studies of
how members of the general public evaluated
black and white candidates.
-SARAH D. SPARKS
PARENT INVOLVEMENT
"Early Home Learning Environment Predicts
Children's 5th Grade Academic Skills"
Parents' engagement in infancy and toddlerhood can predict their children's academic
skills in 5th grade, concludes a new study in
the journal Applied Developmental Science.
Researchers from New York University studied
more than 2,200 families enrolled in the Early
Head Start Research Evaluation Project. All the
children in the study came from low-income, ethnically diverse families. Researchers conducted
five in-home observations and tested the larger
pool of children in pre-K and 5th grade for such
skills as vocabulary and problem solving.
The researchers found children whose parents
engaged them in meaningful conversations and

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Education Week - August 30, 2017

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