Education Week - August 30, 2017 - 5

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TEACHER VOICES

to "meet standards" if at least 8 percent of their
students graduate on time and to "exceed standards" if 36 percent get a diploma in four years.
-TNS

Jessica Reilly/Telegraph Herald/AP

Unveiling New School, Maine's Governor
Labels Teachers 'A Dime a Dozen'

time and support. The department doesn't
believe any child was adversely affected, she
added.
-AP

Beleaguered Ohio Online Charter School
Wants to Take on Dropout Recovery
ECOT, Ohio's online charter giant that one study
found produced more dropouts than any other
school in the nation, is moving into the dropoutprevention line of business.
The switch by the school, which has been fighting the state over funding, was to begin immediately but would be subject to state approval by
December.
Dropout-recovery schools get a separate, much
more lenient state report than traditional schools,
and the move could allow the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow to expand enrollment at a time
it's under order from the Ohio education department to refund $60 million for lax attendance. The
department considers dropout-recovery charters

provided them with books and toys designed
to increase learning were much more likely to
develop early cognitive skills that led to later
academic success. Children with the lowestacademically enriched home environments
during infancy and toddlerhood averaged 10
books in the home by 5th grade, while the
children with the highest-quality home environments averaged more than 100. Those
findings were true across all ethnic and racial
groups studied.
-MARVA HINTON
CHARACTER EDUCATION
"Do Storybooks With Anthropomorphized
Animal Characters Promote Prosocial
Behaviors in Young Children?"
Children are more likely to learn and apply
character lessons from books that feature
human characters than from stories using
humanlike animals, finds a new study in the
journal Developmental Science.

Maine Gov. Paul LePage criticized traditional
education while unveiling a new vocational
school, describing classroom teachers as "a dime
a dozen."
The Republican governor made the comments
this month at a company-workforce-development
center, called the Cianbro Institute. The new center
in Pittsfield offers classes such as shop and home
economics.
LePage said mentoring offered at the center will
be "more than just teaching out of a book."
Lois Kilby-Chesley, the president of Maine's largest teachers' union, said she disagrees with the
governor's "dime-a-dozen" statement, especially
since Maine is struggling to fill teaching positions.
-AP

Student Protest Over Dress Code
Leads to Parents' Arrest in Miss.
A protest over the dress code at a Mississippi
high school has resulted in the arrest of some parents for trespassing.
Students at Rosa Fort High School in Tunica
walked out this month after school officials told
them they couldn't wear colored shoes to school
because of possible gang affiliation. According to
the district's 2017-18 student handbook, students
can only wear solid black, brown, or white shoes.
Students and parents said they didn't know of the
change.
At least two parents face charges for allegedly
taking their children off campus without permission. One parent said she was there during
the protest and was arrested when she got home
on charges of trespassing, harassment, disturbing a public school, and contributing to child
delinquency.
-AP

CORRECTION
An article in the Aug. 23 issue of Education Week
on kindergarten transition programs misstated
the number of school districts that have Kids in
Transition to School programs. KITS operates in
13 districts in Lane County, Ore.

Researchers from the University of Toronto
read books to 96 children ages 4-6, whom they
divided into three groups: one group heard a
book on seeds, and two heard the same story
about sharing using either human or humanlike animal characters. Researchers allowed
the children to select 10 stickers before the experiment. They were given chances to share
stickers with other children before and after
reading the books.
Researchers found children who heard
the book with human characters were more
likely to share the stickers than they were before. Children who heard the other two books
became less likely to share.
-EVIE BLAD
TEACHER PAY
"Illinois' Teacher Pension Plans Deepen
School Funding Inequities"
Teachers who work at high-poverty
schools and with mostly students of color

are paid less than their peers at affluent
schools with mostly white students-but
the disparity is worse than people think,
argues a new paper from Bellwether Education Partners, a Washington-based consulting firm, because retirement contributions
are often left out of analyses of what it costs
to employ a teacher.
Researchers looked at 10 years of data on
the salaries and pensions of Illinois educators
and then compared those to student demographics. "After accounting for teacher pensions, the disparity in school-level-personnel
expenditures between high- and low-poverty
schools increases dramatically," found the
report. That pattern was also true when
looking at race: Schools with the highest percentages of black and Hispanic students put
less money toward teacher retirement. When
pensions were added to an analysis of Illinois
school funding, the gaps between high- and
low-poverty schools increased by more than
200 percent.
-LIANA LOEWUS

Tough Talk on Race:
Advice for Educators
Controversy over the removal of Confederate statues
from public spaces-boiling over earlier this month
in the violent protests in Charlottesville, Va.-
prompted thoughtful essays from educators around
the country. See excerpts from those articles below.

Honesty Is a Must
First and foremost, teachers must equip
themselves with sound knowledge on the
history of slavery, racism, xenophobia, and
the constant quest for equality that many
nonwhite groups in this country faced historically and still struggle for today. ... But
students need to be given honest accounts
about some of the ugly histories of this
country and learn about how the United
States has not always lived up to its lofty
ideals. We are a work in progress.
TYRONE C. HOWARD
University of California, Los Angeles

Make Social Justice Part of a Curriculum
As the school year begins across America,
many educators across our nation have been
posting sample lessons and urging each other
to teach lessons about Charlottesville... . But
a more powerful way that we as a nation can
counteract overt acts of white supremacy is if
all teachers in white classrooms teach lessons
about Charlottesville and infuse social justice
into the curricula and school culture.
KEVIN M. LEVIN
Boston-based historian and educator

Race and Politics Have a Place
In the Classroom
The goal is not for teachers to push their
own agendas but rather to explore nuance
with students to sharpen their analytic and
critical-thinking skills that are transferable to other situations. Offer counterviews
to students' positions as they participate in
classroom discussion; expect and encourage
students to do the same.
MELVIN PATRICK ELY
Professor of humanities, College of William & Mary,
Williamsburg, Va.

Dialogue Starts With History
History teachers are constantly asked to
justify their discipline. Rarely does an opportunity like this present itself. Let's get to work.
GINA CANEVA
Lindblom Math and Science Academy, Chicago

What to Do With Our Confederate Past
The debate over contextualizing monuments
can teach our students an important life lesson: that compromise is not always possible.
H. RICHARD MILNER IV
University of Pittsburgh

edweek.org/go/RaceTalk

http://www.edweek.org/go/RaceTalk

Education Week - August 30, 2017

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