Education Week

VOL. 35, NO. 24 * MARCH 16, 2016

edweek.org:

BRE AKING NEWS DAILY

States Hit Accelerator
On Accountability
ESSA Adds New Fuel to Push for Retooled Systems
By Daarel Burnette II
After years of pent-up frustration among state officials over what
they've considered to be a heavy and
prescriptive federal role in education
policy, some states are bolting to overhaul their accountability systems in
ways that could have lasting impact
on schools' priorities.
Sparked by new flexibility promised under the Every Student Succeeds Act, they're rushing ahead of
the U.S. Department of Education,
which is still in the initial phases of
interpreting the new law and figur-

ing out how it will regulate under it,
a process that could take months. The
law doesn't go into full effect until the
2017-18 school year.
Because of timing, political pressures, and unhappiness with existing
school report cards, some states don't
want to wait-setting up the prospect
of conflicts down the road if retooled
state systems don't meet what will be
required in the way of ESSA-compliant accountability.
For example, California state school
board members, who last week discussed ways to revamp their system,
PAGE 16>

Researchers Flag Downside
Of Moving to Better Schools
By Sarah D. Sparks

Swikar Patel/Education Week

Washington

District open-enrollment policies
have gained traction in many urban
areas as a way to give students more
access to high-quality schools, but a
new study suggests students who were
"big fish" in their neighborhood schools
can have a rough road in a new school,
even if it is academically better.
Researchers at the University of
Chicago Consortium on Chicago
School Research found that class
rank affects Windy City students'
grades and test scores and even
their persistence in college, and that
students of similar academic ability
in 8th grade can nonetheless hold
very different class ranks depending
on the school they choose to attend.

"Even if you are high-achieving, you
are surrounded by other high-achieving kids, and somebody has to be the
lower rank," said Lauren Sartain, a
research analyst at the Chicago consortium, during a presentation of the
forthcoming study at the annual meeting of the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness here.
The study grew out of a puzzling
finding, both in ongoing Chicago research and in other open-enrollment
districts such as New York: While
open enrollment often allowed students to move to more academically
rigorous schools, there were surprisingly few academic benefits for
students attending the most elite,
selective public high schools. That
spurred the researchers to dig into
PAGE 12>

Second grader Zeinab Ahmed watches her classmates play a game in gym class at Discovery
Community School in St. Cloud, Minn. The school serves a growing number of Somali students.

Immigrant Influxes Test U.S. Schools
By Corey Mitchell
St. Cloud, Minn.

Bishar Hassan spends his days navigating the
halls and classrooms of Talahi Elementary School,
working to embrace and empower the dozens of Somali students who have arrived since the start of
the year.
Across town, his brother, Ahmed Hassan, fills a
similar role at Discovery Community School, another
campus that has experienced a recent surge in enrollment of Somali students.
The Hassan brothers are part of a growing community of Somali residents in this central Minnesota city
of 65,000. The recent influx of immigrant students is
nothing new in the St. Cloud school district, where

English-language-learner enrollment has spiked by
350 percent in the past 15 years.
Today, roughly 20 percent of the district's 10,000
students are English-language learners, many of
them with ties to the East African nation of Somalia.
Similar situations are developing in districts
around the country.
The United States is now home to the largest number of foreign-born black people in its history-and
many are K-12 students enrolled in public schools.
The English-learners among them are overwhelmingly native Spanish, French, or Hatian Creole
speakers, but districts have had to adjust on the fly
to meet the needs of students who arrive communicating in less frequently spoken languages such as
PAGE 10>

Charles Mostoller for Education Week

Minn. District Grapples With Somali Language, Cultural Differences

PROGRAM SWEETENER: Mayor Jim Kenney visits Rising Stars APM Preschool in North
Philadelphia. He is proposing a soft-drink tax to help fund early education. PAGE 13

http://www.edweek.org

Education Week - March 16, 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - March 16, 2016

Education Week - March 16, 2016 - 1

Education Week - March 16, 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - March 16, 2016