Education Week - October 23, 2013 - (Page 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

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - October 23, 2013

Education Week - October 23, 2013
Colorado Tax Boosting K-12 Up to Voters
Paddling Persists in U.S. Schools
Health-Care Law Raises Questions For Districts
K12 Inc. Learning Difficult Lessons This School Year
Contents
News in Brief
Report Roundup
New Student Majority in South and West: Poor Children
School Poverty Said to Hurt College Access
Media Group Calls on Companies To Protect Students’ Personal Data
D.C. Teachers Improved After Overhaul Of Evaluations, Pay
Blogs of the Week
K-12 Advocates Remain Braced For Fiscal Fight
Illinois Among Outliers With No NCLB Waiver
Appeal Argued on Affirmative-Action Ban
The Public School Ownership Gap
We Need a National Monument to Teachers
Changing the World, One Student at a Time
Letters
TopSchoolJobs Recruitment Marketplace
Common Core’s Power for Disadvantaged Students

Education Week - October 23, 2013