Education Week

VOL. 35, NO. 31 * MAY 18, 2016

edweek.org:

BRE AKING NEWS DAILY

NEWS ANALYSIS

Chicago Fiscal
Crisis Reaches
Boiling Point
By Stephen Sawchuk
& Denisa R. Superville
"It's time to end this radically discriminatory funding system that violates the civil
rights of our children. It is racial discrimination in its purest form."
That is not a statement out of Little Rock,
Ark., circa 1957. It's from Chicago, 2016. And
the speaker is Forrest Claypool, the CEO of
the Chicago school district, who has been
making similar points repeatedly in recent
public appearances, attempting to shame
Illinois lawmakers into providing millions
more in school funding for the nation's
third-largest district.
THE HUMAN
It's a political tacCOST
tic, an unsubtle one,
As the fiscal turmoil
and increasingly, a
drags on in Chicago's
desperate one. Havschools, the city risks
ing begged for state
losing educators,
aid and borrowed
parents, and
millions at untenable
students. PAGE 17
rates, the district is
rapidly approaching
fiscal insolvency.
The state's declining investment in
K-12 education, coupled with deficits
from the city's mounting pension liabilities and debt service, have put Chicago's
schools more than $6 billion in long-term
PAGE 16 >

Photography by Alyssa Schukar for Education Week

Chicago

Jasmine Curtis, 16, a sophomore at Chicago's Lindblom Math & Science Academy, listens to a geometry lesson. BOTTOM RIGHT: Assistant
Principal Alexandra Escobar hugs 2nd grader Analise Rivera, 8, during recess at R. H. Lee Elementary School in Chicago. Escobar is
leaving the school, located in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood on the city's West Side, for a job in a suburban district.

Feds to Schools: Don't Restrict Transgender Access
By Evie Blad
The Obama administration has put the nation's school districts on notice that prohibiting
transgender students from using the restrooms
and locker rooms that match their gender identity is a violation of federal law.
That issue has stirred sharp debate as
schools, districts, and state legislatures have
considered policies that would restrict such access on the basis of biological sex. The order on

facilities access is part of a broader list of obligations federal officials said districts have to their
transgender students, detailed in the sweeping
civil rights guidance issued late last week.
Crafted by the U.S. departments of Education
and Justice, the guidance seeks to clarify the
administration's interpretation of Title IX of the
Education Amendments of 1972, which bars sex
discrimination in schools, colleges, and universities that receive federal funds.
The "dear colleague" letter to the nation's

14,000 school districts came the same week federal officials engaged in a standoff with North
Carolina over a new law that is the nation's first
to set state-level restrictions on the restrooms
and locker rooms transgender people can use in
the state's public buildings, including schools.
While the administration has increasingly
asserted in recent years that Title IX prohibits
discrimination on the basis of gender identity as
well as biological sex, advocates for transgender
students have called on the Education Depart-

shift and become less insular.
"The challenge is if certain types of people are
doing something, it's difficult for other people to
break into it," said Po-Shen Loh, the head coach
of last year's winning U.S. Math Olympiad team
and an associate professor of mathematics at
Carnegie Mellon University. Participation grows
through friends and networks and if "you realize
that's how they're growing, you can start to take
PAGE 15 >

PAGE 24 >

Top Math Competitions Struggle to Diversify Their Talent Pool
Washington

Interest in elite high school math competitions
has grown in recent years, and in light of last
summer's U.S. win at the International Math
Olympiad-the first for an American team in
more than two decades-the trend is likely to
continue.
But will such contests, which are overwhelm-

ingly dominated by Asian and white students
from middle-class and affluent families, become
any more diverse?
Many social and cultural factors play roles in
determining which promising students get on
the path toward international math recognition.
But efforts are in place to expose more black,
Hispanic, and low-income students to advanced
math, in the hope that the demographic pool of
high-level contenders will eventually begin to

By Sarah Tully
Florida schools are preparing for next
year's rollout of one of the nation's most
unrestricted open-enrollment laws allowing students to more easily cross district
lines to go to school-a practice that has
grown slowly nationwide amid both statutory and practical hurdles.
Nationwide, 23 states had some type of
mandatory, interdistrict open-enrollment
laws in 2015, prior to enactment of Florida's law, according to the National Center
for Education Statistics. But many of the
laws set strict limitations, such as granting only transfers out of low-performing
schools. Many states also have voluntary
policies both within and outside districts.
Florida's lawmakers this spring added
to that state's already robust school choice
program by approving a mandatory, interdistrict open-enrollment law, giving fami-

PAGE 1 >

By Liana Heitin

Interdistrict
Enrollment
Appealing, Tricky

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Education Week - May 18, 2016

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Education Week - May 18, 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - May 18, 2016