Education Week - October 23, 2013 - 1

EDUCATIONWEEK
VOL. 33, NO. 9 * OCTOBER 23, 2013
AMERICAN EDUCATION'S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD * © 2013 Editorial Projects in Education * $4
By Andrew Ujifusa
Denver
Colorado's vote next month on whether
to increase state spending on schools-and
radically change how that money is spent-
may serve as a test case for how
a school funding formula being
retooled on the basis of tax increases
and appeals to equity
will fare in an uncertain economic
climate.
The state "has to subject this sausage-making
process to the voting public," said Dan
Thatcher, an education policy specialist with
the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Amendment 66, a proposed change to the
Colorado Constitution that would institute
PAGE 16 >
Mike McQueen, a high school librarian from
Jefferson County, Colo., speaks at a rally in
favor of a tax-hike referendum that would
pour some $950 million into public schools.
edweek.org: BREAKING NEWS DAILY
Colorado Tax
Boosting K-12
Up to Voters
INDUSTRY & INNOVATION
K12 Inc. Learning
Difficult Lessons
This School Year
By Michele Molnar
K12 Inc. is on a remedial course of ac-
tion after learning hard lessons about
managing student enrollment and addressing
public criticism about the academic
performance of its students.
The Herndon, Va.-based company-the
largest for-profit provider of precollegiate
online learning and one of the few publicly
traded companies in the K-12 marketplace-showed
an inability to enroll
as many students as anticipated for the
2013-14 school year. That sent its stock
into a nose dive earlier this month-a
38 percent drop that also came three
weeks after a prominent hedge fund manager,
Whitney R. Tilson, took a position
that the company was overvalued.
Company management responded to
both developments in different ways.
During an Oct. 10 call with stock ana-
lysts, K12 Executive Chairman Nate
Davis took full responsibility for management
issues that left 11,000 fewer students
signed up than the company had
the potential to enroll. Behind the scenes,
founder and CEO Ronald Packard met
with Mr. Tilson about the public lashing
represented by the Kase Capital managing
partner's presentation at a conference
in New York last month.
October represents an annual rite of
PAGE 12 >
Paddling Persists in U.S. Schools
By Alyssa Morones
Three years ago, school officials in Marion
County, Fla., banned corporal punishment,
but this school year, students returned to
class to find the discipline practice was once
again firmly in place.
Marion County's back and forth on school
spanking illustrates the persistence of corporal
punishment in the nation's schools as
a discipline technique for use on wayward
students. Even as an increasing number
of districts and states abolish the practice,
corporal punishment remains a legal form
of discipline in 19 states, most of them in
the South, according to the Center for Effective
Discipline, a nonprofit based in
Columbus, Ohio, that provides educational
information on corporal punishment and alternatives
to its use. That's a decrease from
2004, when 22 states permitted the practice.
No federal policy exists on corporal punishment
in schools. The U.S. Supreme Court
has ruled that it's an issue left to the states.
In the 1977 case Ingraham v. Wright, students
argued that Florida's corporal punishment
policy violated their rights under the
Eighth Amendment, which bars cruel and
unusual punishment, and their 14th Amendment
rights to "procedural due process." The
high court upheld Florida' s policy, reasoning
that the student was provided ample due
process, and found the Eighth Amendment
PAGE 10 >
Health-Care Law Raises
Questions for Districts
By Sean Cavanagh
School districts are facing vexing financial and op-
erational questions about how they will comply with
the Affordable Care Act, which some administrators
say is forcing them to choose between absorbing the
hefty costs of health coverage for currently uninsured
employees or cutting back on those workers' hours.
Among districts' biggest concerns is a provision
in the 2010 federal law that mandates that public
and private employers with at least 50 workers provide
health insurance to full-time workers-defined
as those working an average of at least 30 hours a
week-or face potentially steep fines.
Many districts have long relied on support-staff
PAGE 13 >
Budget Battle Brews,
Even in Deal's Wake
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne
Duncan greets federal workers,
including Carolyn Lee, right, on their
first day back to work after the partial
government shutdown, which ended
Oct. 17. Though lawmakers and the
White House worked out a deal to
reopen the government and raise
the federal debt ceiling, education
advocates are steeled for the next
round of fiscal negotiations. Stakes
include the fate of across-the-board
funding cuts that loom for federal
agencies in January. PAGE 14
Katherine Frey/Washington Post/Getty
Nathan Armes for Education Week
2013
ELECTION
http://www.edweek.org
Education Week - October 23, 2013

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