Education Week

VOL. 34, NO. 36 * JULY 8, 2015

edweek.org:

BRE AKING NEWS DAILY

Supreme Court
To Decide Case
On Union Fees

DIGITAL DIRECTIONS

NEA, AFT Financing Threatened

Photos by Charles Mostoller for Education Week

By Stephen Sawchuk

ED-TECH EXTRAVAGANZA: Nearly 20,000 ed-tech enthusiasts descended on Philadelphia last week for the annual conference of

the International Society for Technology in Education. The event featured hundreds of technology companies touting digital
learning products, "maker movement" workshops for educators, and developments in 3-D learning software. PAGE 10

Crazy Quilt of State Responses to Cries of Overtesting
By Andrew Ujifusa
After years of outcry and intensifying
public debate about whether students are
overtested, many states are attempting to
definitively address the issue this year. But
there's no consistent strategy across the
country, and just what the proposed solutions will mean for assessments could vary
dramatically.
The Council of Chief State School Officers
says that 39 states are examining how to
reduce overtesting or cut redundant tests
in some fashion, as part of their efforts to

Advocates Scrutinize
Head Start Proposals
By Christina A. Samuels
Early-childhood advocates are praising
a proposed top-to-bottom revision of the
rules governing Head Start, the federally funded program that serves a million
children from low-income families and
pregnant women and children nationwide, even as they raise questions about
whether the budget resources would be
available to bring those plans to fruition.
Head Start officials see the proposal,
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"reduce unnecessary burden" from testing.
Yet many states, rather than placing
hard caps on testing time or cutting specific
exams through legislation, are choosing to
hand responsibility for reducing testing to
new state commissions or to work directly
with local schools.
"How it is in one district might be very different from what it is in another district in
the same state," said Lynn Jennings, a legislative affairs associate with the Education
Trust, a Washington-based advocacy group.
Although new tests tied to the Common
Core State Standards have triggered much

of the discussion about overtesting, many
state chiefs and elected officials support
how those tests will inform their policy decisions, or else can't dramatically cut back
their administration because of federal
law. Uncertainty about the fate of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in
Congress also creates challenges for state
officials.
That means the burden of cutting tests is
also falling on many district administrators,
who have to tread carefully.
"There will be some teachers who will be

As states continue to draw lines in the
sand about whether or not they have
adopted the Common Core State Standards, there's some evidence the new
benchmarks have crept into classrooms
in all states-mainly through instructional materials.
Four states-Alaska, Nebraska, Texas,
and Virginia-have firmly refused to adopt
the standards since they were unveiled
five years ago, and yet there are examples
in each place of schools and districts using
common-core-aligned curricula.

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HIGH COURT ROUNDUP: Education issues fell within the broad
sweep of important rulings in the U.S. Supreme Court's recently
concluded 2014-15 term. PAGE 14

Nev. Moves to Split
Clark Co. District
By Denisa R. Superville

In fact, some curriculum providers say
as many as 1 in 12 users of their commoncore-aligned materials hail from states
that either never adopted or have repealed
adoption of the standards.
Educators' reasons for using commoncore-aligned materials vary: Some say
such materials are simply the most
well-vetted and widely available at this
point, and that they line up nicely with
their own states' standards. "From the
classroom perspective, you're not thinking about is this a common-core lesson
or is this not, you're thinking about is

Nevada's Clark County school system, the nation's
fifth largest, with more than 318,000 students, could be
broken up into smaller districts under a new state law
that is raising major questions about how to reorganize
a rapidly changing urban system.
The law-signed last month by Gov. Brian Sandoval,
a Republican-authorizes setting up two committees to
spearhead the district's reorganization by the 2018-19
school year.
Supporters say the reorganization would streamline
services and improve communications between administrators and parents in a sprawling district of 357
schools that spans 8,000 square miles across 15 municipalities, including the city of Las Vegas, and unincorporated areas.
But among the questions that remain for critics:
How will the new district lines be drawn? How will
real estate assets and debt held by the Clark County
district be divided? Will students be able to attend any
magnet school of their choice? Will the reorganization
create a set of districts of haves and have-nots? And
more immediately, how will the law affect the Clark
County district's plan to issue $4 billion in bonds to
build new schools and retrofit others to keep up with
growing student enrollment?
Pat Skorkowsky, Clark County's superintendent,
said that a reorganization is worth considering if it
results in "a better way of doing business," without

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PAGE 21 >

Common Core Trickles Into All States
By Liana Heitin

The U.S. Supreme Court last week agreed to hear a
challenge to its nearly 40-year-old precedent permitting
public-sector unions to compel nonmembers to pay service
fees, a move that threatens to further undercut the already
weakened labor organizations, including in K-12 education.
If the court overrules its 1977 decision, teachers'
unions in 25 states and the District of Columbia could
no longer collect the fees from teachers who do not wish
to be members. They would face the elimination of a significant source of revenue, and would almost certainly
experience member defections.
"The court is threatening to put a dagger very close to
the heart, financially speaking, of the way labor unions
operate," said Lee Howard Adler, a lecturer at Cornell
University's Institute of Labor Relations and an expert
on public-sector bargaining.
Brought by 10 California teachers and a Christian educators' group they belong to, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association alleges that requiring nonmembers to pay
what are called "fair share" or "agency" fees violates the
teachers' constitutional rights to free speech.
Unions charge those service fees to cover the admin-

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Education Week - July 8, 2015

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Education Week - July 8, 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - July 8, 2015