Education Week - August 21, 2019 - 1

To inspire and empower.

Years of Work
But Still
Separated
By Race

| Vol. 39 * Issue 1 * August 21, 2019 |

edweek.org

| BUILDING A TRAUMA-SENSITIVE SCHOOL

Few districts have done as much as Wake
County, N.C., has to keep its schools racially
and socioeconomically diverse.
It is a battle that the school board says it
has been losing.
Now, the school board in Wake County,
which includes the state capital of Raleigh,
has publicly declared that it wants to reverse
a trend where increasing numbers of its
schools are overwhelmingly poor or affluent, and as a result, increasingly separated
by race. In the county, as in North Carolina
as a whole, schools with predominantly poor
and minority students have more inexperienced teachers and fewer rated by the state
as effective, even though the children may
have the highest academic needs.
If any district might be able to slow the
trend, it would be Wake County, the nation's
16th largest school system.
The question is, will it?
Wake County's latest conversation about
school diversity started earlier this summer,
just a few weeks before the Democratic
presidential debate that propelled courtordered desegregation-and the role that
busing played to achieve it-back into the
national consciousness. Striving for racially
and economically mixed schools has long
been part of Wake County's community
PAGE 16 >

Activist Auditor
Decries W.Va.'s
Funding Data

Sarah Rice for Education Week

By Christina A. Samuels

First grader Conner MacElhiney slaps the color block that represents his mood during physical education class at Bethlehem Elementary School in
New Hampshire. The school is leading the way in a statewide experiment to build schools that are more supportive of students dealing with trauma.

'Nobody
Learns It
In a Day'
With little to guide them,
schools scramble to create
learning environments for
students in chronic stress
PART 1 of a 3-part series

By Sarah D. Sparks
Bethlehem, N.H.

There's never been a clearer scientific picture of the ways damaging experiences and
intense, chronic stress can hurt a child's ability to learn in school. But for many schools,
the picture of what trauma-sensitive schooling looks like in practice is still developing.
"We're in an all-fired hurry because there's
this 'trauma' thing and we have to help our
kids," said Melissa Sadin, the director of the
Creating Trauma-Sensitive Schools Initiative, a national group that trains school and
district staff. "Yes, but you have to do it correctly, and nobody learns it in a day."
Cognitive and neuroscience studies show
traumatic stress interferes with memory
and attention, good health, and emotional

stability. Students who experience traumatic
stress perform worse academically and cognitively, and their teachers reported worse
behavior in the classroom, according to a
2016 meta-analysis.
And that's a lot of students. Nearly half
of all U.S. children have been exposed to at
least one traumatic event, according to the
latest federal data, and more than 1 in 5 have
been exposed to several.
In the last decade, trauma-sensitive
schooling has spread, driven by the emerging research, devastating natural and manmade disasters, and school discipline debates. Federal laws on special education
and poverty now encourage schools to use
trauma-informed practices, and more than
a dozen states have passed laws or crePAGE 18 >

By Daarel Burnette II

National Study Finds That Lessons
On 'Growth Mindset' Boost Grades
By Sarah D. Sparks
Caitlin Penna for Education Week

As West Virginia's teachers waged war
with politicians last year over the fate of
the state's financially strapped and rapidly
shrinking public schools, State Auditor
John "JB" McCuskey hit the road, preaching his gospel of fiscal transparency during
dozens of late-night school board meetings
to any official willing to listen.
Open your books, he told them. Rebuild
trust by letting the public see exactly how
you spend the millions of dollars you're
provided each year.
West Virginia's public school system,
because of a series of technical, logistical, and political hurdles, is one of the
last major government bodies in the
state to detail for its citizens exactly how
PAGE 14 >

EL PASO: A mother holds her daughter tightly during a vigil,

outside the Walmart in El Paso, Texas, where a mass shooting
took place this month. Page 5 >

Any student's self-confidence can
take a hit at the start of high school.
Yet giving students even a brief opportunity to understand and reflect on
their mindsets for learning can make
them likelier to challenge themselves
and improve, finds a new national
study in the journal Nature.
The study, published earlier this
month, represents the largest experimental evaluation of a mindset intervention to date, covering a nation-

ally representative sample of nearly
12,500 9th graders in urban, suburban, and rural public high schools. It
found that two sessions of a 25-minute
online task at the start of freshman
year could boost students' grades and
willingness to take advanced classes.
"The study was timed for 9th
grade on purpose because we think
it's a transitional year for young
people, a time when the standards
are rising, but also when they're losing their support networks of friends
PAGE 14 >

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Education Week - August 21, 2019

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