Education Week - September 25, 2013 - 5

EDUCATION WEEK
n
SEPTEMBER 25, 2013 www.edweek.org
n
REPORT
ROUNDUP
TRANSITIONS
Libia Gil, who currently serves as a vice president
for the Collaborative for Academic, Social and
Emotional Learning, in Chicago, has been named
as an assistant deputy secretary and director of the
U.S. Department of Education’s office of Englishlanguage
acquisition. The OELA job had been filled
on an interim basis for nearly a year since Rosalinda
Barrera resigned last October.
Pam Stewart was named by the Florida board of
education as the state’s education commissioner.
Ms. Stewart had been serving as the state’s interim
commissioner following the Aug. 1 resignation of Tony
Bennett. She was also interim education commissioner
after the resignation of Gerard Robinson in 2012 until
Mr. Bennett took over in January.
For links to these reports, go to
www.edweek.org/go/rr.
OUT-OF-SCHOOL LEARNING
“The Educational Value of School
Field Trips”
A new experimental study has
found that school visits to an art
museum yield multiple benefits
for students—especially those
from low-income families.
The outcomes identified in-
clude improvements in students’
knowledge of and ability to think
critically about art, a stronger
display of “historical empathy,”
greater tolerance for differing
views, and interest in returning
for another visit, according to
the study by researchers at the
University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.

with disabilities, English-language
learners, and other traditionally
underserved groups.
The data collection will fulfill a
little-noticed provision in a spending
bill that passed a year ago.
A legal ruling found that the
Education Department improperly
expanded the scope of the No
Child Left Behind Act in permitting
alternatively certified teachers
to be considered “highly qualified”
under the law. (The statute
says teachers have to be fully certified,
among other things.) Teachers
in alternative-certification programs
generally earn certification
while teaching full time.
The lawsuit was brought by a
group of advocates who generally
believe that teachers should have
to complete their training to be
deemed highly qualified.
Advocates for alternative-route
programs succeeded in getting
Congress to allow the “loophole”
to stand in the 2012 spending
bill, which directed the Education
Department to report on
where such teachers are located
by this year’s end. —STEPHEN SAWCHUK
Pa. Officials Institute
New School Grading
Education officials unveiled a
new grading system for Pennsylvania’s
public schools last week
that they described as a tool for
parents, administrators, and the
public to monitor and improve student
achievement.
School Performance Profiles will
offer academic ratings for each
building based on a 100-point
scale. Scores for all 3,200 traditional,
charter, cyber, and technical
schools in the state will be available
online beginning Sept. 30.
Acting state education Secretary
Carolyn Dumaresq offered a preview
of the rating system at a news
conference and explained in detail
how the figures are weighted and
calculated. Buildings that score
above 70 are considered to be satisfactory.

The new profiles replace the previous
standard—known as AYP, or
adequate yearly progress—which
was based solely on student math
CORRECTIONS
A story in the Sept. 18, 2013,
issue of Education Week misstated
the year that the Higher Education
Act was last reauthorized. It
was 2008.
A story about new ACT data in
the Aug. 28, 2013, issue provided
inaccurate composite test results
for certain subgroups of students.
For the class of 2013, the average
score for Asian students was 23.5,
for white students 22.2, for Pacific
Islanders 19.5, for Latinos 18.8,
for American Indians 18, and for
African-American students 16.9.
The five-year trend, meanwhile,
shows Latino students scoring an
average of 18.8 this year, representing
a slight increase from 18.7
in 2009. In the same period, Asian
students increased their scores on
average from 23.2 to 23.5.
and reading scores. Pennsylvania
is no longer required to use
that benchmark since receiving a
waiver from the federal No Child
Left Behind law.
Schools are now judged on data
including attendance, participation
in standardized testing, graduation
rates, and closing achievement
gaps.
—ASSOCIATED PRESS
Schools Get Access
To Civil Rights Films
A new initiative from the National
Endowment for the Humanities
will provide schools and
communities with free access to
documentaries that trace the history
of the civil rights movement,
from the first seeds of change
that sprouted in the 1820s to the
1967 Supreme Court decision that
overturned the ban on interracial
marriage.
The launch of a website comes in
the wake of the 150th anniversary
of the Emancipation Proclamation
and the 50th anniversary of the
March on Washington.
The featured documentaries
include “The Abolitionists,” “Slavery
by Another Name,” “The Loving
Story,” and “Freedom Riders.”
—ALYSSA MORONES
“Impacts of Five Expeditionary
Learning Middle Schools on
Academic Achievement”
Expeditionary Learning middle
schools in Washington and New
York City improved mathematics
and reading learning, particularly
for students who remained
with the project-based
school model for all three years
The study focused on visits to
the Crystal Bridges Museum
of American Art in Bentonville,
Ark. An overview of the research
was published online last week
in the journal Education Next.
—ERIK R. ROBELEN
EXPEDITIONARY LEARNING
TEACHING READING
“Live Webcam-Coaching to Help
Early Elementary Classroom
Teachers Provide Effective
Literacy Instruction for Struggling
Readers: Targeted Reading
Intervention”
A webcam-based professionaldevelopment
program for
rural teachers in high-poverty
> > For links to these reports, go to www.edweek.org/go/rr
A Fifth of Children Remain Poor, Says Census
“Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance
Coverage in the United States: 2012”
Child poverty has leveled off but remains
higher than it was before the recession, according
to the latest data from the U.S. Census
Bureau’s American Community Survey.
In an analysis released with the data, Census
researchers found the poverty rate for
those under 18 hovered just below 22 percent.
At least 1 in 5 American children have lived in
poverty since 2009—the highest rate, by far, of
any age group.
Researchers also found that children were
the group most likely to be in deep poverty,
PERCENTAGE OF POPULATION
IN POVERTY
17.6
16.7
12.9
10.6
10.4
2002
10.8
10.2
2003
11.3
9.8
2004
11.1
10.1
2005
10.8
9.4
2006
10.9
9.7
2007
11.7
9.7
2008
8.9
2009
8.9
2010
8.7
2011
9.1
2012
SOURCE: U.S. Census Bureau
17.8
Under 18
18-64
65+
20.7
17.6
17.4
18
19
13.8
13.7
13.7
which means living on less than half of the
federal poverty line of $23,942 for a family of
four.
Of 20.4 million Americans with income less
than one-half of the poverty threshold, 7.1 million
were under age 18. As of 2012, nearly 1 in
10 children lived in deep poverty and nearly
1 in 4 lived in families with incomes at 150 percent
of the poverty line.
Poverty rates have been slowly dipping for
Asian, black, and Hispanic children, though not
for white children. Still, more than a third of
Hispanic children, nearly 40 percent of black
children, and nearly 19 percent of white children
remain poor.
—SARAH D. SPARKS
of middle school.
That’s the conclusion of a new
longitudinal study by Mathematica
Policy Research that matched
students in Expeditionary Learning
schools with demographically
similar district students.
Students who stayed in the
program for three years gained,
on average, seven months more
learning in reading—and 10
months more in math—than
their counterparts in other district
schools.
—SARAH D. SPARKS
COMMON CORE
“Year 3 of Implementing the
Common Core State Standards”
Most states report that the K-12
and higher education sectors are
working together to implement
the Common Core State Standards,
a survey of state education
officials finds.
But it’s not been easy.
Of state K-12 officials in the
40 states that responded to a
survey by the Center on Education
Policy, those in 35 states
reported facing major or minor
challenges in collaborating with
higher education. —CARALEE ADAMS
5
schools has the potential to
help students improve their
reading skills, according to a
new study.
The study, published this
month in the Journal of Educational
Psychology, focuses
on Targeted Reading Intervention,
a program at the University
of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill.
It uses webcams to allow university-based
literacy coaches
to provide one-on-one, ongoing
support to classroom teachers
in multiple states. The results
showed that struggling readers
in the 16 schools studied
progressed at the same rate
as their more-skilled peers.
—DIETTE COURRÉGÉ CASEY
EARLY CHILDHOOD
“Head Start and Housing
(In)stability”
Head Start programs helped
improve the kindergarten readiness
of homeless or highly mobile
young children, says a report
from the Institute for Children,
Poverty, and Homelessness.
The analysis uses federal data
from a nationally representative
sample of 1,772 families with
3-year-olds entering Head Start
in 2006.
It says the homeless chil-
dren began behind their peers
from more stable homes on
socio-emotional, cognitive, and
health indicators, and improved
significantly over the next few
years. But they failed to catch
up with their counterparts from
stable homes by kindergarten.
—ALYSSA MORONES
22
21.9
21.8
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Education Week - September 25, 2013

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