Education Week - January 7, 2015 - 1

Education WEEk
AMERICAN EDUCATION'S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD * © 2015 Editorial Projects in Education * $4
Despite Monitoring, Ed. School Closures Are Rare
Analysis
By Stephen Sawchuk
finds states
reluctant to
suspend
faltering
teacher-prep
programs
When Michigan officials suspended six
teacher education programs at Lake Superior
State University in 2012, citing poor licensing-test
scores and other problems, the
action sparked a period of soul-searching
for the university's top brass. And it made
for painful conversations with the school's
current and prospective teacher-candidates.
But it was also a needed wake-up call, according
to Donna Fiebelkorn, the assistant
dean of the education school. "My sense is
that if there had not been some external
force, things would not have changed," said
Ms. Fiebelkorn, who arrived at the school,
in Sault Ste. Marie, just months before the
programs were suspended.
Amid the intense recent policy interest in
educator quality, the list of proposed remedies
for improving teacher preparation has
grown long. It ranges from using performance
assessments to measure candidates'
classroom skill, to giving prospective teachers
higher doses of hands-on "clinical" training
in K-12 schools, to setting up charterschool-like
preparation academies outside
traditional teacher colleges.
Yet what has been all but ignored
in such discussions is the crucial role
that states play in auditing existing
providers -and the power they have to
PAGE 13 >
DIFFUSE CRITERIA:
Teacher-prep approval
systems are seen as
lacking clarity. PAGE 12
VOL. 34, NO. 15 * JANUARY 7, 2015
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TEACHING
THE TEACHERS
An occasional series
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
BALANCING ACT: A New
York college's reprieve
reveals conflicts. PAGE 12
Fla. Wins Reprieve
In Testing of ELLs
By Corey Mitchell
The U.S. Department of Education has granted
Florida flexibility in how it assesses English-language
learners, bringing an end to a months-long
dispute between the federal agency and state officials
that had included a threat from Gov. Rick
Scott to file a lawsuit.
Federal officials last month agreed to Florida's
request to give its ell students two years in a
U.S. school before factoring their scores on annual
English/language arts and mathematics tests into
school grades. Florida had sought the two-year testing
timeline as part of its waiver from some requirements
of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
The change contradicts federal rules that demand
all children be counted equally in accountability
measures. This also marks the first time
that the Education Department is relenting on the
PAGE 18 >
In Class, Soft Noises
Found to Distract
Students from William Penn Senior High School in York, Pa., protest last month against plans to convert their district's schools to charters.
District's Distress Prompts All-Charter Plan
By Denisa R. Superville
The financially strapped and academically
challenged York city school system in
Pennsylvania could become the state's first
where all schools are run by a charter organization,
after a county judge approved a
state request to appoint a receiver to take
charge of the nearly 7,500-student district.
The receiver, David G. Meckley, who has
been serving as the district's chief recovery
officer since 2012, says he wants to transfer
Politics, Fiscal Issues
Set Up Pa. Aid Fight
By Andrew Ujifusa
In November's Republican-dominated elections,
the Pennsylvania governor's race was
a big outlier, and the implications for public
school spending in the Keystone State are just
the management of the schools to an outside
agency because the local school board has
not been following a recovery plan it approved
in 2013.
Observers are watching closely what happens
in York, a city of some 44,000 people located
about 100 miles west of Philadelphia.
"This is very much an exceptional case as
you look around the country, but I would add
a big asterisk to that," said Nelson Smith, a
senior adviser for the National Association
of Charter School Authorizers. "When you
By Sarah D. Sparks
It's easy to understand why learning may sufthink
about the number of districts that are
both in financial distress and also have persistently
low achievement in at least some
of their schools, you might see states taking
[these] actions more frequently."
The Dec. 26 order by President Judge Stephen
P. Linebaugh of the York County Court
of Common Pleas drew an immediate appeal
by the school district and pledges from the
local teachers' union to do the same. Mr.
Meckley, meanwhile, has begun a three-year
PAGE 11 >
fer when the teacher's voice has to compete with a
passing 747, but emerging research suggests that
quieter noises can have varied effects on student
learning and memory.
"It doesn't take very much sound to really be detrimental
to the listeners," said Gail M. Whitelaw,
the director of the Ohio State University SpeechLanguage-Hearing
Clinic in Columbus. "So much
of school is auditory, oral learning, and one of the
things we know is sound can create more issues
with kids with anxiety and attention."
Low or barely perceptible sound-be it from a lecture
in the classroom next door, a heating system
PAGE 16 >
starting to play out.
The Democratic victor, newly elected Gov.
Tom Wolf, made support for increased school
spending a centerpiece of a campaign that
ousted incumbent Gov. Tom Corbett, the only
Republican governor who won a seat in 2010,
but then lost it in 2014.
Now, Pennsylvania joins Nevada and Georgia
as states with momentum building to
overhaul school funding.
In Pennsylvania, which has the nation's
sixth-largest public school enrollment according
to recent federal statistics, official efforts
got under way prior to Mr. Wolf's election to
change the K-12 funding system. The debate
moves now to the gop-controlled state legislature,
which was set to reconvene Jan. 6.
In Nevada, a legislative task force last June
recommended switching to a weighted funding
formula that would direct more resources
to English-language learners and low-income
students. And in Georgia, gop Gov. Nathan
Deal has expressed a desire to revamp education
spending.
But unlike in those two states, where there
is one-party, gop rule, Pennsylvania faces obstacles
to achieving that broadly shared objective
that other states don't.
Mr. Wolf may face a fight with Republicans,
who increased their majorities in the state
legislature two months ago and could be
interested in attaching other policy changes to
PAGE 25 >
Jason Plotkin/Daily Record/Sunday News

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Education Week - January 7, 2015

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