Education Week - September 14, 2016 - 1

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Federal Officials Urge
Clear, Limited Roles
For Police in Schools
Students' Civil Rights Are Major Concern

Ackerman + Gruber for Education Week

By Evie Blad

TION
ELEC

2016

Students in a 9th grade U.S. government class at Valley View Middle School in Edina, Minn., work amid
past campaign posters. Teachers say this year's divisive presidential election has proven hard to teach.

Educators Grapple With Election 2016
Inflammatory
campaign
rhetoric poses
teaching
conflicts

By Madeline Will
If Donald Trump were in school, many
of his comments would earn him a trip to
the principal's ofﬁce.
That's according to many educators
across the country, who say they are
struggling with how to teach an election
cycle that has inﬂamed racial and ethnic
tensions, sparked name-calling between
the Republican presidential nominee and
Democratic standard-bearer Hillary Clinton, and drawn stark lines between-and
even within-the parties.
Some teachers say they have found
themselves trying to strike a balance
with their own code of ethics as educa-

tors: They feel they have a responsibility
to condemn some of Trump's controversial
remarks, despite their wish to maintain
objectivity in front of their students.
"I try to be very neutral in class-that's
always been my philosophy," said Erik
Anderson, a U.S. government teacher
at Valley View Middle School in Edina,
Minn. "Probably for the ﬁrst time, there
have been some things said in the campaign that I can't just ignore. I have to
say, 'This isn't right.' I don't remember
ever before being unable to play it right
down the middle."
Trump's comments on immigration, in
particular, have struck a nerve with AnPAGE 12 >

PRESIDENTIAL CONTEST: GOP White House nominee Donald Trump backs merit pay for teachers,

federal funding for school choice. PAGE 17

ESSA Raises K-12 Stakes in State-Level Races
By Daarel Burnette II
The stakes for K-12 policy in this year's state-level
elections couldn't be clearer: Whoever voters pick in the
legislative and gubernatorial races will have signiﬁcant
new leverage in shaping states' education agendas in
the years ahead.
The reason is the new federal Every Student Succeeds Act, which gives state governments sweeping
authority to design, among other things, teacher evaluations and school accountability systems, topics that
political observers expect to dominate policymakers'
2017 legislative seasons.
Observers wouldn't necessarily know that, however,
by hanging out on the campaign trails this year.

Aside from school ﬁnance, teacher pay, and transgender students' access to bathrooms, education policy has
mostly stayed out of the fray of this year's topsy-turvy
election cycle.
But, among education scholars, advocates, and lobbyists, it's no secret that state elections this year matter
greatly.
"It all looks huge for those of us who spend all of
our time on it," said Frederick M. Hess, the director
of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and an opinion blogger for Education
Week. "But when candidates are trying to convince
people that they have a better idea on how to incorporate [student] growth rather than proficiency in
PAGE 16 >

With the goal of protecting students' civil rights and limiting
unnecessarily harsh school discipline, the Obama administration
is calling on schools to ensure that the role of on-site police is
limited and clearly deﬁned.
The U.S. departments of Education and Justice released new
resources last week related to the hiring and training of school
resource ofﬁcers, which come amid national discussions about
school discipline and the role of law-enforcement ofﬁcers following
several high-proﬁle student arrests. They are the latest efforts by
the administration to reshape school discipline by pushing back
against zero-tolerance policies.
Among the resources are guidelines for crafting agreements
between schools and local law-enforcement agencies, monitoring
the actions of school-based police ofﬁcers, and training police in
such areas as child development and conﬂict de-escalation.
Those recommended practices will now serve as requirements
for agencies that hire school resource ofﬁcers through Justice Department grants, said Ronald L. Davis, the director of the Ofﬁce of
Community Oriented Policing Services at the agency.
Local law-enforcement agencies around the country use those
grants, administered on a three-year cycle, to hire between 100
and 150 school resource ofﬁcers every year, which means about
PAGE 13 >

Post-Labor Day Starting Date
Sparks Pitched Debate in Md.
By Marva Hinton
Is a longer summer break a good thing for students?
That's the question raised by a late-summer executive order from
Maryland's governor that schools across the state not begin classes
until after Labor Day, starting in 2017-18. The move has some educators warning about the impact on summer learning loss by lowincome students in particular, and a cascade of scheduling complications for local administrators.
The order by Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, will still require
schools to provide 180 days of instruction but in a more compressed
amount of time. The order also speciﬁes that classes can't end any
later than June 15.
Only three other states-Michigan, Minnesota, and Virginia-
have laws on the books that school may not start before Labor Day,
and all three offer exemptions, as will Maryland.
"This policy at ﬁrst glance looks like a longer summer. Who wants
to argue with that?" asked Steven Hershkowitz, the spokesman and
policy-research specialist for the Maryland State Education Association. "But when you start to actually look at the policy implications,
this could potentially have a negative effect on education outcomes."
But Amelia Chassé, Hogan's deputy communications director, said
PAGE 16 >

SNAPSHOT | Policy Primer

ESSA Rules Update
A one-stop guide to the
state of play on Every
Student Succeeds Act
regulations. See the
primer, Page 15.

http://www.edweek.org

Education Week - September 14, 2016

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