Education Week - August 5, 2015 - 1

EDUCATION WEEK

VOL. 34, NO. 37 * AUGUST 5, 2015

edweek.org:

BRE AKING NEWS DAILY

Crowded Field of Online News Sites Focuses on Education
By Mark Walsh
Joshua P. Starr considers himself a big
consumer of news about education. The
veteran educator and former superintendent has had a lot more content available
to peruse lately.
The past two years or so have seen a
boom in online news outlets covering
education. New local and national sites

are focusing exclusively on the subject;
general-interest sites have education beat
reporters or otherwise include K-12 issues
in their mix.
"I happen to be a pretty avid reader of a
lot of those things," said Mr. Starr, who was
in the news himself in February after he
and the Montgomery County, Md., school
board failed to come to terms on renewing
his contract as district chief.

He rattled off a few news sources he
checks regularly, including some that fit
the definition of new, some that are decidedly old-school, and others that fall
somewhere in the middle: Education Post,
The Hechinger Report, Politico Morning
Education, The Washington Post's Answer
Sheet blog, and Education Week.
He also checks a number of other blogs,
print publications, and news "aggregators,"

By Andrew Ujifusa

Lopsided Votes on Dueling Bills
May Obscure Stark Policy Splits

When state school superintendents decide to
leave their posts in favor of running districts, an
outsider might see it as a step down the traditional K-12 career ladder.
But at a time of unusual stress and relatively
high turnover among state chiefs, a few who have
made the switch say there's no state-level substitute for being more directly engaged with their
own set of schools, students, and teachers.
Perhaps the most prominent recent example of
such a switch is former Rhode Island chief Deborah A. Gist. She stepped down earlier this year to
take over as the Tulsa, Okla., superintendent, following a period of uncertainty about her contract
and her relationship with the Ocean State's board.
The last two state chiefs in Iowa, meanwhile,
have left to become local superintendents. Jason
Glass left the state in 2013 to take over the Eagle
County district in Colorado, while Brad Buck left
earlier this year to take over the district in Cedar
Rapids.
And after leaving New Jersey's top K-12 job in
early 2014, Christopher Cerf last month agreed to

Justin T. Gellerson for Education Week

By Lauren Camera

PAGE 19 >

PARCC Under Gun
As States Drop Out
If you're a fan of federally financed tests
aligned to the Common Core State Standards,
you've reached for the sad trombone several
times this year. (Womp, womp ... ) That's particularly true if you're a fan of the Partnership
for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers exam.
At its height, the testing consortium boasted 24
states, plus the District of Columbia, as members.
After a couple of years of damaging political battles, PARCC now officially lists 12 member states
and the District of Columbia. But three of those
states no longer plan to give the test, and others
could join them.
Laura Slover, the CEO of PARCC Inc., has publicly acknowledged the consortium's challenges,
including those connected to costs, as the numbers dwindle. Part of the promise of tests like
PAGE 18 >

PAGE 14 >

Collision Alert:
House, Senate
ESEA Rewrites

Road Less Traveled
When State Chiefs
Take District Reins

By Andrew Ujifusa

which are sites such as Real Clear Education that link to articles from a variety of
sources.
"I do think that superintendents need
to stay abreast of what's being said about
public education, and what the discourse
is," said Mr. Starr, who in June became
the chief executive officer of Phi Delta
Kappa International, the professional as-

Malik Slye, a new graduate of District of Columbia schools, attended a workshop in
Washington last month on the transition to college. A nonprofit group is helping him get
his paperwork in order so that he can attend Rosemont College, in Pennsylvania, in the fall.

'Melting' Off the Path to College
By Caralee J. Adams
Switching his college choice in late June
has made the summer hectic for Christopher M. Triplett, a recent graduate of Lindblom Math and Science Academy on the
South Side of Chicago.
On his own financially and the first in
his family to go to college, Christopher
has relied on his school counselor, Karen
M. Fitzpatrick, to make sure everything
gets done so he can attend Virginia State
University in the fall. He had to submit his
financial-aid documents three times and

had trouble logging into the online housing system for the Petersburg, Va., college.
But, with his counselor's help, Christopher
said he is "99 percent" sure he will report
to VSU in August.
"I'm ready to go. I'm focused. I know what
I need to do," he said.
Low-income and first-generation college
students, in particular, can lose momentum
when they leave the support system of high
school. They are at risk of a phenomenon
that educators call the "summer melt"-
when students who leave high school with
PAGE 13 >

"The pundits told us it would never happen-that Republicans and Democrats will
never agree on a way to replace No Child Left
Behind."
So said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., just hours before the U.S. Senate did just that-passing its own version of
an Elementary and Secondary Education Act
rewrite with overwhelming bipartisan support
July 16.
But sending a final bill to President Barack
Obama's desk-at least one that he's willing
to sign-will be an entirely different challenge.
Across the Capitol, the House of Representatives narrowly passed its own, Republicanbacked version of an ESEA reauthorization a
week earlier, without the support of a single
Democrat.
The dueling bills, which contain some stark
policy differences, now move to a conference
process, in which the authors of both measures
and other lawmakers from both chambers and
parties will try to cobble together a proposal
that appeals to everyone.
To do so, they'll have to overcome some serious divergences in revising the law, whose current version is the No Child Left Behind Act.
Chief among them: how to beef up accountability in a way that assures Democrats and civil rights groups that the result
will include stronger federal guardrails for
the most disadvantaged students, while at
the same time ensuring the small federal
PAGE 21 >

CHEAT SHEET: Side-by-side highlights of the

two ESEA proposals, current law, and NCLB
waivers. PAGE 20-21

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Education Week - August 5, 2015

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