Education Week - February 17, 2016 - 1

Education Week

VOL. 35, NO. 21 * FEBRUARY 17, 2016

edweek.org:

BRE AKING NEWS DAILY

DIGITAL DIRECTIONS

BEYOND BIAS
Countering Stereotypes in School

Letting Students
Work From Home
Adds Policy Twist

Third installment in a yearlong series

By Benjamin Herold

Edmund D. Fountain for Eduction Week

Park Ridge, N.J.

Chrissell Rhone speaks with Gage Harrison, a student at the Picayune Center for Alternative Education in Picayune, Miss. After teaching for 10
years in a school system with an ample supply of black teachers, Rhone is now the only African-American teacher in his workplace.

Preservice Programs Seek
To Head Off Teacher Biases
By Stephen Sawchuk
High school senior Darius Miller
has felt singled out all week.
A lunchroom monitor called him
out for being rowdy but ignored his
white teammates. He was asked to
comment on civil rights in a history
class in which he's the only black
student. Finally, after being shushed
in last period for talking out of turn,
he erupts. He stomps out, muttering,
"Why are you always picking on me?"
Now he's sitting across a table
from the teacher who scolded him.
In the real world, what she says in

the next five minutes can mean the
difference between a relationship
salvaged and one that deteriorates.
Fortunately, this is actually a sophisticated simulation, not life, and
"Darius" is Hasan Clayton, a Vanderbilt University graduate student who
moonlights as an actor. The "teachers"
he interacts with in this scenario are
education students in Nashville, Tenn.
Clayton's performance aligns to
a set of carefully crafted protocols.
Often, he explains, candidates playing the "teacher" role will deny the
issue of race as a factor in their

Black Male Teachers a Rarity

PAGE 12 >

By Corey Mitchell
When Hurricane Katrina swept through New Orleans,
Chrissell Rhone lost lots: his home, his job, and the sense
of security that came from teaching alongside people who
looked like him.
The storm forced Rhone to pack up and leave New Orleans, where an ample supply of black educators populated
the city's classrooms. He settled just 45 miles northeast,
in Picayune, Miss., a town of 11,000 near the MississippiLouisiana border, and is now the lone black teacher at the
district's alternative education center and among only a
handful of black male educators in a district where a majority of students are white
As a result, the past decade of Rhone's 20-year career has
taken a shape that differs from the first. He went from a place

Creating a single-enrollment system for
district and charter schools is touted by many
K-12 policymakers and researchers as a way
to streamline and make more equitable the
school application process in cities fragmented
by school choice. But getting buy-in from parents can be another story-one that's currently
playing out on both sides of the country.
Both Boston and Oakland, Calif., have proposed plans to combine all district and charter
schools into a single application process, and

Rural Districts Put on Hot Seat
By Daarel Burnette II

application form for all or most public schools
in a city. Families submit their top choices, and
a computer uses an algorithm to match students to schools based on family preferences
and available seats. So far, four cities-Denver,
the District of Columbia, Newark, N.J., and
New Orleans-use this approach.
Denver and New Orleans were the first
cities to jump on board in 2012, although for
somewhat different reasons. Denver officials
wanted to simplify the application process for
parents as the number of school choices exPAGE 13 >

PAGE 19 >

PAGE 9 >

PAGE 8 >

in both cities, proponents are facing pushback
from some parents. In Boston's case, the issue
is getting lumped in with larger concerns over
funding and an effort to increase the number
of charters in Massachusetts.
"I think we have a very sound public policy
that could die on politics," said Rachel Weinstein, the chief collaboration officer with the
Boston Compact, a partnership among Boston's district, charter, and Roman Catholic
schools.
A common-enrollment system, also called
single or universal enrollment, provides one

Consolidation Fight
Erupts in Vermont

Consolidating rural school districts with
sparse enrollment is a complicated-and
contentious-process that can unfold over
several years.
Case in point: Vermont, where the issue
has been roiling the local and legislative
landscape for a year now.
Amid rising education costs for a rapidly
dwindling student population, that state's
legislature last year passed a law aiming to
reward residents of districts willing to consolidate with a series of tax breaks-and to
significantly increase the local homesteadtax rate on those districts that stay independent and spend beyond a series of caps set
by the state.
The state-which spends an average of
$18,000 per student, the highest rate in the
nation-has more than 280 districts, serving
just 80,000 students. At least 79 of those districts have fewer than 100 students, and one
district has just 19.
By 2018, the state legislature hopes the

In Cities With Choice, Single-Enrollment Systems Hit Hurdles
By Arianna Prothero

A growing share of the U.S. labor force
works from home, and some tech-savvy
school districts are taking note.
The local high school in this upscale
suburb, for example, recently held its
first "virtual day," allowing most of its
561 students to log in to school from the
comfort of their bedrooms or kitchen
tables.
"The main reason we're doing this is to
prepare students for life after high school,"
said Principal Troy Lederman. "Almost
every college has some type of online or
virtual course, and a lot of companies now
tell employees they can work remotely, so
we are exposing students to that."
The strategy-currently being used by
a handful of schools in Alabama, Minnesota, and New Jersey-represents a new
twist on established trends in digital
learning.
For more than a decade, districts have
offered online courses, given students
their own computing devices, and embraced "blended" classrooms that merge
face-to-face and computer-based instruction. In recent years, states such as Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, and Pennsylvania have approved laws that allow
schools to leverage those technologies
via e-learning days in response to health

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Education Week - February 17, 2016

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