Education Week - August 30, 2017 - 1

Education Week
VOL. 37, NO. 2 * AUGUST 30, 2017

edweek.org:

BRE AKING NEWS DAILY

State Chiefs' Pay Squeezed Between Duties, Politics
By Daarel Burnette II
The stakes are higher than ever for state education
chiefs under the Every Student Succeeds Act-but
whether they're being compensated any better is a
much murkier picture, an Education Week salary review shows.
State schools superintendents today lead often-emaciated departments tasked with lengthy federal and state
to-do lists. They're also directly in charge of designing
and implementing state accountability systems and

improving their states' worst-performing schools under
the new federal K-12 law that kicks into high gear this
school year.
Despite that, state chiefs are paid, on average,
$174,000-about $60,000 less than the average pay for
the superintendent leading their state's largest district,
according to an Education Week analysis of the most recently made available data.
There are some big outliers along the way. Mississippi, for example, which has the nation's 46th lowest
per-pupil spending rates, pays its state chief, Carey

Wright, $300,000-the highest salary of any state superintendent.
And Arizona, which has the country's 49th lowest
per-pupil spending, pays its state chief Diane Douglas
$85,000, the lowest state salary in the nation.
But of the 19 superintendents who were hired after
ESSA was passed in 2015, only four received a bump
in pay compared to their predecessors. And about half
the nation's chiefs were paid either the same or less
than those they replaced, even as they took on the new

Despite new
ESSA-era
responsibilities,
many earn
much less than
heads of big
local districts

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More Americans Give
Top Grades to Schools
In Latest PDK Poll

Seniors take part in
graduation practice
earlier this year at
Mississinewa High
School in Gas City,
Ind. Offering several
different diploma
options for students,
Indiana is feeling
pressure from a new
law that requires
states to base their
graduation rates on
only the students who
get the "standard"
diploma earned by
most students.

Jeff Morehead/Chronicle-Tribune/AP-File

By Sarah D. Sparks

Grad. Rate Rule Creates Quandary for States

Americans' support for public schools has risen in
the last year-across the country and across the political spectrum-but the public also wants schools to go
beyond academics to provide more career and student
health supports, according to the 49th annual education poll by Phi Delta Kappa International.
The percentage of Americans rating K-12 education
quality-at both the national and local levels-at an "A"
or "B" is the highest it's been since the 1980s.
That echoes the results of a Gallup opinion poll released last week, which found 47 percent of Americans
completely or somewhat "satisfied" with the quality of
K-12 education, up 4 percentage points from last year.
More Democrats reported being satisfied than Republicans, but conservative participants showed the biggest
jump in support, from 32 percent in 2016 to 43 percent
this year.
"I do think some of this is a Trump effect," said Nat
Malkus, a resident scholar and deputy director of education policy programs at the free-market-oriented

Under ESSA, Some States Face Prospect of Having to Lower Graduation Numbers
By Catherine Gewertz
A little-noticed change in the country's
main federal education law could force
many states to lower their high school
graduation rates, a politically explosive
move no state would relish.
Indiana is the first state to be caught
in the crosshairs of the law's new language, but other states are likely to be
affected soon. The resulting debate could
throw a sharp spotlight on a topic that's
been lurking in the wings: the wildly
varying levels of accomplishment signi-

Delayed Start to School
Tough Call for Parents
By Christina A. Samuels
To start kindergarten, or not to start
kindergarten?
Many parents wrestle with that question
if their children are turning 5 years old close
to when the new school year starts. And new
research suggesting that older kindergartners have an edge over their younger class-

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fied by a high school diploma.
"This is about to become a national
issue," said Phillip Lovell, the policy director of the Alliance for Excellent Education, an advocacy group that focuses on
high school issues.
In Indiana, the state faces the prospect
of having to lower its graduation rate
from 89 percent to 76 percent, a move its
state superintendent fears could harm its
economy and reputation.
The state's in a bind because it offers
several types of high school diplomas, and
some are easier to earn than others. Half

of Indiana's students earn the default college-prep diploma, known as the Core 40.
Thirty-eight percent earn the Core 40 with
honors, and 12 percent earn the "general"
diploma, which has lesser requirements.
Diplomas with less-rigorous requirements
are the target of new language in the Every
Student Succeeds Act. The law requires
states to calculate their graduation rates by
including only "standard" diplomas awarded
to a "preponderance" of students, or diplomas with tougher requirements.
For Indiana, that means the state might

mates has the potential to add more fuel to
an already complex debate.
In most states, children must be 5 years
old by late summer or fall in order to enroll
in kindergarten. For children whose birthdays fall right around a state's cutoff date,
that means starting school as a newlyminted 5-year-old-or even as a 4-year-old.
Children born after the cutoff, on the other
hand, would start kindergarten at nearly 6.
Borrowing a term and a practice from
college athletics, some parents-about 7
percent of boys and 5 percent of girls in fall

2010, according to previous research- are
choosing to "redshirt" their children. The
practice is more prevalent among the summer-born boys of college-educated parents;
while the same research shows that 12
percent of this group was held back overall,
college-educated parents held their boys
back at a rate of about 20 percent.
The new research on kindergartners, published as a working paper by the National
Bureau of Economic Research, a nonprofit
organization, found that children who are

The Every Student Succeeds Act covers a vast swath
of federal education policy, from testing to teacher-training to turning around struggling schools. But language
tucked into the 400-plus-page statute also has another,
less-expected goal: informing students and parents about
"the harms of copyright piracy."
Wording that urges school officials and parents to
explain the importance of preventing the illicit use of
copyrighted material is found in three sections of the
law, alongside more predictable school policy decrees on
teaching and learning.
It turns out the language can be traced to the insertion
of an amendment to the massive statute made at the urging of a coalition of film-, music-, and publishing-industry
organizations, which have fought for years to establish
stronger copyright protections.
The wording reflects the long-standing interest among
those influential lobbies in preventing online files, images, and print and digital resources from being copied

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DIGITAL DIRECTIONS

An Unlikely ESSA Provision:
Warning on Copyright Piracy
By Sean Cavanagh

http://www.edweek.org

Education Week - August 30, 2017

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