Education Week - April 13, 2016 - 4

NEWS IN BRIEF
FBI Urged to Dump
Extremism Website

BIE Director Replaced
Amid Federal Probe
The director of the U.S. Bureau of
Indian Education has been stripped
of his duties and demoted after federal investigators determined he
used his influence to get jobs for a
relative and a woman with whom he
was romantically involved.
Charles "Monty" Roessel improperly used his position to help
a woman secure multiple jobs and
to get the relative hired on the
Navajo Nation, says a report from
the Department of the Interior's
inspector general released late
last month.
Roessel had led the bureau since December 2013 after serving as interim
director for two years. Ann Marie
Bledsoe Downes, a deputy assistant
secretary in the Interior Department,
will take over as the bureau's acting
director.
-COREY MITCHELL

Marco Garcia/AP-File

A coalition of groups, including the
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination
Committee and the American Civil
Liberties Union, asked the FBI last
week to dismantle its Don't Be a
Puppet website, which the agency
created to educate youths about violent extremism but has been criticized as targeting American Muslims and encouraging the policing of
thoughts in schools.
"Not only will Don't Be a Puppet
hinder the free exchange of speech,
ideas, and debate on controversial
topics because students are afraid
of being labeled suspect and being
reported to the police, but it will also
isolate students and possibly subject them to bullying," the coalition
wrote to FBI Director James Comey.
The FBI unveiled the interactive website in February for use in
schools to teach teenagers about violent extremism groups, and to try to
keep them from being radicalized
and recruited. The website urges
students to report suspicious behavior to teachers or others, including
law enforcement. -TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

New Seal of Approval Born
For Districts Protecting Data
School systems can now apply
for a Trusted Learning Environment Seal, intended to demonstrate that they are taking appropriate steps to protect the privacy
and security of sensitive student
information.
T he sea l w ill be issued by
the Consortium for School Networking, a group for school technology leaders. Also supporting
the initiative are A A SA , the
School Superintendents Association; the Association of School
Business Officials International;
and ASCD.
Numerous statements of principle, guidance documents, industry pledges, and toolkits related
to the hot-button issue of studentdata privacy have been released

in recent years. But the new seal
is different, CoSN leaders say, because it is meant both as a comprehensive guide for what school
systems should be doing, and as a
framework for how they can move
beyond compliance with state and
federal laws and begin implementing a set of "aspirational"
practices.
-BENJAMIN HEROLD

Detroit Educators Charged
In Kickback Scheme
A dozen current and former Detroit public school principals, an
assistant superintendent, and a
well-connected school vendor are
facing federal charges for their alleged roles in a bribery and kickback scheme.
The owner of the school supply company Allstate Sales is
charged with paying $ 908,500

Internet Trouble Pushes Back Assessments in Many States
A disruption to Internet access at the site of a
Kansas-based assessment provider delayed testing
of students across the country and caused Alaska to
cancel state assessments altogether this school year.
A backhoe used in construction work at the University of Kansas on March 29 accidentally cut a fiberoptic cable providing the campus's digital connection.
Servers at the university's Center for Educational
Testing & Evaluation, which provides state assessments for students in Kansas and Alaska, went down.
The stoppage meant students in those states taking CETE tests could not finish or begin testing. And
students in 15 other states, in addition to Kansas
and Alaska, which use the center's Dynamic Learning Maps to assess students with significant cognitive disabilities, also were unable to access the tests.
The university worked quickly to patch the cable,
and testing resumed with limited capacity the following day, said Marianne Perie, the director of
CETE. On March 31, CETE told states they could

4 | EDUCATION WEEK | April 13, 2016 | www.edweek.org

return to normal testing, but the system was overloaded and went down again. Testing resumed last
week and was back to normal with 21,000 students
testing simultaneously with no difficulties, she said.
Still, Alaska's interim education commissioner,
Susan McCauley, announced on April 1 that the state
would cancel CETE's testing for all students this academic year. McCauley said the unreliability of the
system-being told it was back online only to have it
crash again-and considerations unique to Alaska,
such as the remoteness of many schools, prompted
her decision.
"The amount of chaos in Alaska schools ... cannot be
overstated," she said in an interview last week, adding
that teachers had to scramble to create lessons when
they thought testing was to take place instead. "To ask
teachers and students to 'try it again' with no guarantee that it was going to work was irresponsible."
The center plans to put a contingency plan in place
to prevent future issues, Perie said.
-MICHELLE DAVIS

in kickbacks to at least a dozen
principals who used him as a
vendor. The principals certified
and submitted phony invoices
for school supplies to the assistant superintendent, who steered
close to $3 million in business to
Allstate Sales, U.S. Attorney Bar-

REPORT ROUNDUP

bara McQuade said. The supplies
and materials were rarely delivered, she said.
The charges come at a critical
time for the Detroit district, as
state lawmakers mull bailing
out the financially strapped district.
-C.M.

www.edweek.org/go/rr

SCHOOL LEADERSHIP
"Trends in Public and Private
School Principal Demographics
and Qualifications"
Gender gaps among public
school leaders have reversed since
the late 1980s, finds a new federal
analysis.
The National Center for Education Statistics found that 1 in
4 public and private school principals in 1987-88 was a woman.
That rate remains the same for
private schools, but in public
schools in 2011-12, 52 percent of
principals were women. Slight upticks also occurred in the share of
school leaders who are nonwhite,
but white principals still make
up nearly 90 percent of the total.
The analysis, based on more than
750,000 administrators, also found
that there were about 12,000 more
principals in 2011-12 than in 198788, and that contemporary school
leaders were more likely to have
master's degrees. -SARAH D. SPARKS

their children's education, few get
seats on the governing boards at
Massachusetts campuses, according to a new report.
Parents make up just 14 percent
of governing-board members overseeing charter schools statewide
this school year, says the study
released last month by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at
Brown University. About 60 percent
of Massachusetts' charter schools
have no parent representatives on
their governing boards.
Researchers looked at the websites of charter schools to determine where parents sat on their
governing boards, as well as the
affiliations of other members. Most
schools with strong parent representation had predominantly
white student populations, the report says.
Annenberg recommends that
at least half the board be made
up of parents from the school or
students at high school campuses.

-SARAH TULLY

SPORTS INJURY
INVOLVING PARENTS
"Whose Schools: An Examination
of Charter School Governance in
Massachusetts"
While charter schools are intended to give parents a say in

"Age Differences in Recovery From
Sport-Related Injury"
High school athletes do not take
significantly longer to recover from
concussions than their collegiate
counterparts, negating the need for

http://www.edweek.org/go/rr http://www.edweek.org

Education Week - April 13, 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - April 13, 2016