Education Week

VOL. 35, NO. 29 * APRIL 27, 2016

edweek.org:

BRE AKING NEWS DAILY

Court Sides
With Student
On Title IX

DIGITAL DIRECTIONS

Federal Decision Could Affect
School Transgender Policies

Photos by Brandon Thibodeaux for Education Week

By Evie Blad

Hope Yen, an AP Art History student at Plano Senior High School in Texas, sketches a vase during a recent field trip to the Dallas Museum of Art.
Students use iPhones and other digital tools, below right, to conduct a scavenger hunt through the museum and then do drawings of their findings.

Better Online Images, Multimedia
Give Art History Education New Look
By Leo Doran
Over the course of an academic year, AP Art
History teachers must get their students to respond emotionally and intellectually to works
that are often found in galleries or historic sites
thousands of miles away.
The college-level course covers pieces that
include Emperor Qin's Terra Cotta Warriors,
buried in China's Shaanxi province, and Caravaggio's "Calling of St. Matthew," which hangs
in the church of San Luigi dei Francesi, a few

blocks from the Pantheon in Rome.
Figuring out how to virtually "transport"
these creations to the classroom through photos, prints, and other means is a challenge
for educators that dates back decades-even
centuries. Teachers of art history have continually adapted to incorporate changes in
image technology. Most recently, an array of
new tools, particularly high-resolution digital images, immersive technology, and multimedia textbooks, have brought about a fun-

PAGE 15>

Vergara Reversal
Leaves Questions,
Equity Concerns

PAGE 10>

Cheating in N.Y.C., Ga.
Found to Hurt Students
By Sarah D. Sparks
Cheating on standardized tests is not only common,
it can also have long-term effects on students' academic
outcomes.
Like social promotion, cheating to help students pass
a high-stakes test can allow those who are struggling
to get over procedural hurdles, like moving to the next
level in school, but it can hurt them when they try to
move to more difficult material later on, according to
new research on students in New York and Georgia,
two states that were rocked by recent high-profile
cheating scandals.
In 2011, news reports exposed widespread anomalies
in New York State Regents math and science tests, the
standardized tests required at the end of many coresubject classes for students to graduate. The anomalies
PAGE 14>

Funding Showdown in Iowa

Fed up with years of political battling over the fairness of Iowa's education funding formula, Arthur Tate, the
superintendent of the Davenport public schools, says in order to balance his
books next year, he will illegally pull
$2.7 million out of the district's reserves.
It's an amount he bases on the state's
1971 funding formula, which leaves Davenport $175 less to spend per student
compared to some other districts.
The state tightly controls how much
districts can spend, and dipping into
emergency savings accounts without
state permission is strictly forbidden. Of-

By Stephen Sawchuk

ficials say Tate could lose his superintendent's license given by the state if he goes
ahead, and the district's board members,
who unanimously approved the plan this
month, could be charged criminally.
"I'm tired of the inequality," said Tate,
the head of a district whose 15,500 students are mostly low-income, Hispanic,
and black. "I think there's a higher
philosophy and principle at stake here.
Every student should be worth the same,
and the state is saying ours are worth
much less."
But Jeff Berger, the state's deputy education director, said Davenport's problems
stem from the fact that its administrators

Despite the thousands of dollars
spent on glossy PR, both pro and con,
over the Vergara v. California case,
last week's decision by a state appeals
court to uphold teacher job protections
hinged on a far less flashy factor: the
arcana of California constitutional law.
From the beginning, both sides in
the polarizing case acknowledged that
it would probably end up before the
state's supreme court, and those gears
are already cranking, with the plaintiffs planning to seek review there.
But regardless of which way any
future decision goes, the fallout from
the appeals decision has made several
things clear.
First, it is unlikely to stop legal challenges to California's teacher-employment laws, although future lawsuits
could well take a different tack. Second,

PAGE 20>

PAGE 13>

Cash-Strapped District Vows to Break Law to Tap Reserves
By Daarel Burnette II

A federal appeals court's decision to
side with a transgender student who
sued after his school restricted his restroom access could have far-reaching implications for schools around the country
that have lacked legal clarity on this divisive issue.
The decision was called "a major
turning point" by the Gay, Lesbian &
Straight Education Network, and it
could help set the tone for discussions
about accommodations for transgender
students nationwide, school law experts
said.
A federal district court judge in Virginia erred when he did not defer to the
U.S. Department of Education's interpretation that a regulation created under
Title IX of the Education Amendments of
1972 applies to gender identity, a threejudge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals, in Richmond, Va., said in a
2-1 decision last week.
The federal appellate panel sent the
original case back to the lower court to
reconsider its denial of a preliminary injunction that would allow Gavin Grimm, a
high school student in Gloucester County,
Va., to use the boy's restroom at school.
Grimm was born a girl but he now identi-

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Education Week - April 27, 2016

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Education Week - April 27, 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - April 27, 2016