Education Week - September 25, 2013 - (Page 5)

EDUCATION WEEK n SEPTEMBER 25, 2013 www.edweek.org n REPORT ROUNDUP TRANSITIONS Libia Gil, who currently serves as a vice president for the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning, in Chicago, has been named as an assistant deputy secretary and director of the U.S. Department of Education’s office of Englishlanguage acquisition. The OELA job had been filled on an interim basis for nearly a year since Rosalinda Barrera resigned last October. Pam Stewart was named by the Florida board of education as the state’s education commissioner. Ms. Stewart had been serving as the state’s interim commissioner following the Aug. 1 resignation of Tony Bennett. She was also interim education commissioner after the resignation of Gerard Robinson in 2012 until Mr. Bennett took over in January. For links to these reports, go to www.edweek.org/go/rr. OUT-OF-SCHOOL LEARNING “The Educational Value of School Field Trips” A new experimental study has found that school visits to an art museum yield multiple benefits for students—especially those from low-income families. The outcomes identified in- clude improvements in students’ knowledge of and ability to think critically about art, a stronger display of “historical empathy,” greater tolerance for differing views, and interest in returning for another visit, according to the study by researchers at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. with disabilities, English-language learners, and other traditionally underserved groups. The data collection will fulfill a little-noticed provision in a spending bill that passed a year ago. A legal ruling found that the Education Department improperly expanded the scope of the No Child Left Behind Act in permitting alternatively certified teachers to be considered “highly qualified” under the law. (The statute says teachers have to be fully certified, among other things.) Teachers in alternative-certification programs generally earn certification while teaching full time. The lawsuit was brought by a group of advocates who generally believe that teachers should have to complete their training to be deemed highly qualified. Advocates for alternative-route programs succeeded in getting Congress to allow the “loophole” to stand in the 2012 spending bill, which directed the Education Department to report on where such teachers are located by this year’s end. —STEPHEN SAWCHUK Pa. Officials Institute New School Grading Education officials unveiled a new grading system for Pennsylvania’s public schools last week that they described as a tool for parents, administrators, and the public to monitor and improve student achievement. School Performance Profiles will offer academic ratings for each building based on a 100-point scale. Scores for all 3,200 traditional, charter, cyber, and technical schools in the state will be available online beginning Sept. 30. Acting state education Secretary Carolyn Dumaresq offered a preview of the rating system at a news conference and explained in detail how the figures are weighted and calculated. Buildings that score above 70 are considered to be satisfactory. The new profiles replace the previous standard—known as AYP, or adequate yearly progress—which was based solely on student math CORRECTIONS A story in the Sept. 18, 2013, issue of Education Week misstated the year that the Higher Education Act was last reauthorized. It was 2008. A story about new ACT data in the Aug. 28, 2013, issue provided inaccurate composite test results for certain subgroups of students. For the class of 2013, the average score for Asian students was 23.5, for white students 22.2, for Pacific Islanders 19.5, for Latinos 18.8, for American Indians 18, and for African-American students 16.9. The five-year trend, meanwhile, shows Latino students scoring an average of 18.8 this year, representing a slight increase from 18.7 in 2009. In the same period, Asian students increased their scores on average from 23.2 to 23.5. and reading scores. Pennsylvania is no longer required to use that benchmark since receiving a waiver from the federal No Child Left Behind law. Schools are now judged on data including attendance, participation in standardized testing, graduation rates, and closing achievement gaps. —ASSOCIATED PRESS Schools Get Access To Civil Rights Films A new initiative from the National Endowment for the Humanities will provide schools and communities with free access to documentaries that trace the history of the civil rights movement, from the first seeds of change that sprouted in the 1820s to the 1967 Supreme Court decision that overturned the ban on interracial marriage. The launch of a website comes in the wake of the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. The featured documentaries include “The Abolitionists,” “Slavery by Another Name,” “The Loving Story,” and “Freedom Riders.” —ALYSSA MORONES “Impacts of Five Expeditionary Learning Middle Schools on Academic Achievement” Expeditionary Learning middle schools in Washington and New York City improved mathematics and reading learning, particularly for students who remained with the project-based school model for all three years The study focused on visits to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark. An overview of the research was published online last week in the journal Education Next. —ERIK R. ROBELEN EXPEDITIONARY LEARNING TEACHING READING “Live Webcam-Coaching to Help Early Elementary Classroom Teachers Provide Effective Literacy Instruction for Struggling Readers: Targeted Reading Intervention” A webcam-based professionaldevelopment program for rural teachers in high-poverty > > For links to these reports, go to www.edweek.org/go/rr A Fifth of Children Remain Poor, Says Census “Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2012” Child poverty has leveled off but remains higher than it was before the recession, according to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. In an analysis released with the data, Census researchers found the poverty rate for those under 18 hovered just below 22 percent. At least 1 in 5 American children have lived in poverty since 2009—the highest rate, by far, of any age group. Researchers also found that children were the group most likely to be in deep poverty, PERCENTAGE OF POPULATION IN POVERTY 17.6 16.7 12.9 10.6 10.4 2002 10.8 10.2 2003 11.3 9.8 2004 11.1 10.1 2005 10.8 9.4 2006 10.9 9.7 2007 11.7 9.7 2008 8.9 2009 8.9 2010 8.7 2011 9.1 2012 SOURCE: U.S. Census Bureau 17.8 Under 18 18-64 65+ 20.7 17.6 17.4 18 19 13.8 13.7 13.7 which means living on less than half of the federal poverty line of $23,942 for a family of four. Of 20.4 million Americans with income less than one-half of the poverty threshold, 7.1 million were under age 18. As of 2012, nearly 1 in 10 children lived in deep poverty and nearly 1 in 4 lived in families with incomes at 150 percent of the poverty line. Poverty rates have been slowly dipping for Asian, black, and Hispanic children, though not for white children. Still, more than a third of Hispanic children, nearly 40 percent of black children, and nearly 19 percent of white children remain poor. —SARAH D. SPARKS of middle school. That’s the conclusion of a new longitudinal study by Mathematica Policy Research that matched students in Expeditionary Learning schools with demographically similar district students. Students who stayed in the program for three years gained, on average, seven months more learning in reading—and 10 months more in math—than their counterparts in other district schools. —SARAH D. SPARKS COMMON CORE “Year 3 of Implementing the Common Core State Standards” Most states report that the K-12 and higher education sectors are working together to implement the Common Core State Standards, a survey of state education officials finds. But it’s not been easy. Of state K-12 officials in the 40 states that responded to a survey by the Center on Education Policy, those in 35 states reported facing major or minor challenges in collaborating with higher education. —CARALEE ADAMS 5 schools has the potential to help students improve their reading skills, according to a new study. The study, published this month in the Journal of Educational Psychology, focuses on Targeted Reading Intervention, a program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It uses webcams to allow university-based literacy coaches to provide one-on-one, ongoing support to classroom teachers in multiple states. The results showed that struggling readers in the 16 schools studied progressed at the same rate as their more-skilled peers. —DIETTE COURRÉGÉ CASEY EARLY CHILDHOOD “Head Start and Housing (In)stability” Head Start programs helped improve the kindergarten readiness of homeless or highly mobile young children, says a report from the Institute for Children, Poverty, and Homelessness. The analysis uses federal data from a nationally representative sample of 1,772 families with 3-year-olds entering Head Start in 2006. It says the homeless chil- dren began behind their peers from more stable homes on socio-emotional, cognitive, and health indicators, and improved significantly over the next few years. But they failed to catch up with their counterparts from stable homes by kindergarten. —ALYSSA MORONES 22 21.9 21.8 http://www.edweek.org http://www.edweek.org/go/rr

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - September 25, 2013

Education Week - September 25, 2013
DIGITAL DIRECTIONS: Phila. Seeks Salvation in Lessons From Model School
INDUSTRY & INNOVATION: Schools Investing in New Measures To Boost Security
For Intellectually Disabled, a ‘Landmark’
States Mull Next Steps on Testing
Contents
News in Brief
Report Roundup
New Research Consortium Targets D.C. Schools
Social Studies Framework to Guide Standards
Charters Turn to More-Unified Application Systems
Blogs of the Week
Texas Lesson-Plan Brawl Resonates Beyond State Border
Business Organizations Rally on Common Core
Fiscal Face-Off
How to Improve the Common Core
Silence Is Not Neutrality
What Are We Doing to Support Great Teachers?
Letters
TopSchoolJobs Recruitment Marketplace
A Pathway for the Future of Education

Education Week - September 25, 2013