Education Week - April 2, 2014 - 1

EDUCATIONWEEK
VOL. 33, NO. 27 * APRIL 2, 2014
AMERICAN EDUCATION'S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD * © 2014 Editorial Projects in Education * $4
New State Laws
Revive Focus
On Child Abuse
By Evie Blad
An Illinois woman has turned the lessons
she learned in her recovery from her own
childhood sexual abuse into a nationwide push
to pass state laws that require student lessons
and teacher training about the issue in public
schools.
Starting in her home state in 2011, Erin
Merryn has successfully pushed for passage
of a so-called "Erin's Law" in 10 states, and she
expects that number to grow as 26 have considered
or are considering similar bills in their
2013 and 2014 legislative sessions.
The bills, which vary state by state, generally
require age-appropriate instruction
for children as young as prekindergarten on
preventing, recognizing, and reporting sexual
abuse. They also either allow teachers to count
training on sexual abuse toward continuing
education requirements or mandate such
training for all public school personnel.
Schools are a natural place for young chil-
dren to learn what sorts of behaviors by
adults are appropriate, Ms. Merryn said. And
teachers, who often form trusting relationships
with students, will be better equipped to
intervene in abuse situations if they recognize
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DIGITAL DIRECTIONS
By Sean Cavanagh
Even though Massachusetts is one of the
highest-flying states by academic reputation
and test-score rankings, it needs to
shake up how it operates and push ahead
with a series of ambitious changes to its education
system to avoid slipping into complacency,
contends a new report released
last week.
Commissioned by a leading business organization
in the state, the document offers the
latest and one of the most elaborate arguments
to date that education systems in the
United States, even high-performing ones,
need to judge themselves against academically
stellar foreign nations, whose practices
are examined throughout the report.
The argument for educational changes
comes from the Massachusetts Business
Alliance for Education, which was a lead
player in the state's efforts to establish
strong academic standards and other policies
in the early 1990s, steps that some
argue helped pave the way for years of academic
gains.
One of the report's authors is Sir Michael
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Local STEM Hubs
Emerge to Bolster
Math, Science Ed.
By Liana Heitin
For Emmely Briley, a high school chemistry
and physics teacher, working in the rural logging
community of Molalla, Ore., for the past
13 years has at times felt isolating.
While students 30 miles north in Portland
had access to STEM fairs and camps, Ms. Briley's
students have historically had few such programs
for science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics closer to home. Although Ms. Briley
would have liked to make her classes more
authentic-by bringing in scientists as guest
speakers or having her students conduct experiments
in the community, for instance-she
wasn't sure how to go about forging the connections
to do so.
"I've felt cut off from some opportunities,"
she said. "I always wanted somebody I could
call up at Xerox and say, 'Hey, we want to take
a tour,' but I didn't know how or who to call."
Now, Ms. Briley says, that's changing. The
2,400-student Molalla River school system,
where she works, is one of many districts across
the state involved in a regional STEM hub-essentially
a coalition of K-12 schools, universities,
businesses, and community organizations, such
as nonprofits and museums, that work together
to improve education in the STEM fields.
These sorts of coalitions are popping up in
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Salman Khan, the founder and CEO of the Khan Academy, is pushing his nonprofit
educational resource organization deeper into the K-12 mainstream by establishing
stronger connections with new academic standards and college-readiness measures.
Khan Academy Lessons Linked
To Common-Core Standards
Strategic Move Seen as Key Step for Field of Open Ed. Resources
By Benjamin Herold
Continuing its evolution from quirky
disruptor of traditional classroom learning
to mainstream player aligned with
the education establishment, the nonprofit
Khan Academy recently unveiled
new online math resources tied to
the Common Core State Standards.
Observers say the materials-which
feature interactive high-tech user interfaces
and sophisticated back-end software
that adapts to individual learners-represent
a critical step for the field of free
"open education resources," or OER.
"I think those [features] are going to
be the staple for anybody producing instructional
materials in the future," said
Barbara Chow, the education program di-
rector for the William and Flora Hewlett
Foundation, which has donated heavily
to support the creation of open education
resources. "OER providers are starting to
piece that together."
(The foundation also supports Education
Week's coverage of "deeper learning.")
The common core is a major catalyst
for that evolution, experts say: As all
but a handful of states implement the
new standards, thousands of educators
are searching for relevant instructional
resources, spurring competition among
traditional educational publishers, other
for-profit vendors, and OER providers (typically
nonprofits, universities, or government
agencies).
While many digital learning proponents
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edweek.org: BREAKING NEWS DAILY
Mass. Advised
To Establish
Higher Goals
Business Group Calls for State
To Make Ambitious Changes
INDUSTRY & INNOVATION
K12 Inc. Building
A New Brand
For Some Services
By Sean Cavanagh
As education companies fight for space in
the digital learning market, one of the biggest
and most controversial players in the school
industry is betting that a simple strategy-
changing the name of a line of products and
services-will give it an edge.
K12 Inc., the publicly traded virtual education
provider, says the rebranding move is
meant to group a number of similar resources
under a single, marketable banner, Fuel Education-and
not to distance those offerings
from a recent spate of critical news reports affecting
the company as a whole.
The Herndon, Va.-based company is
probably best known as an operator of online
schools. It manages schools and offers
blended learning programs in more than 30
states and enrolls about 125,000 students.
But it also sells numerous other online and
blended learning curricular products and
instructional services, and the company
says the rebranding is bringing together a
number of related offerings-collectively accounting
for less than 10 percent of its busiPAGE
16>
Ramin Rahimian for Education Week
http://www.edweek.org
Education Week - April 2, 2014

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