Education Week - October 22, 2014 - 1

Education WEEk
Steep Drops Seen in Teacher-Prep Enrollment Numbers
VOL. 34, NO. 9 * OCTOBER 22, 2014
AMERICAN EDUCATION'S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD * © 2014 Editorial Projects in Education * $4
edweek.org: BREAKING NEWS DAILY
California and
other big states
particularly
hard hit, raising
supply concerns
By Stephen Sawchuk
Fresh from the United States Air Force, Zachary
Branson, 33, wanted a career with a structured day
and hours that would allow him to be home in time to
watch his kids in the evening. But just a month into
his online teacher-preparation program at the University
of North Carolina at Charlotte, he had something
of a crisis of faith.
It was brought on, he said, by the sense of being
in the middle of an ideological war that surfaced in
everything from state-level education policy on down
to his course textbook, which had a distinct anti-standardized-testing
bent.
"I feel like teachers are becoming a wedge politically,
and I don't want anything to do with that," Mr.
Branson said.
He's not alone in having qualms about entering the
teaching profession.
Massive changes to the profession, coupled with
budget woes, appear to be shaking the image of teaching
as a stable, engaging career. Nationwide, enrollments
in university teacher-preparation programs
have fallen by about 10 percent from 2004 to 2012,
according to federal estimates from the U.S. Department
of Education's postsecondary data collection.
Some large states, like heavyweight California, appear
to have been particularly hard hit. The Golden
State lost some 22,000 teacher-prep enrollments, or
PAGE 10 >
Conflicting Visions
Fuel Furious Battle
For California Chief
By Andrew Ujifusa
San Jose, Calif.
The race between incumbent California Superintendent
of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson
and challenger Marshall Tuck for the
state's top schools spot centers largely on one
policy debate: Is the state with the
nation's biggest K-12 enrollment
reinventing its public schools the
right way and through the right
power brokers?
The officially nonpartisan contest is
between two self-declared Democrats, and
Mr. Torlakson and Mr. Tuck represent divisions
within the Democratic Party over the right labor
protections for teachers, the political power of
teachers' unions, and the proper relationship between
more money for schools and certain forms
of accountability.
The former president of the Green Dot Public
Abram Bolanos, an 18-year-old senior who is gay, left his last school after he was bullied by students because of his sexual orientation.
Efforts Build to Track Climate for LGBT Students
By Evie Blad
San Diego high school student Abram Bolanos,
who is 18 and gay, said he dropped
out of high school after administrators
failed to handle his complaints that his
peers were bullying him because of his
sexual orientation.
Boys pushed Mr. Bolanos in the hallway
and called him derogatory names because
his friends were mostly girls, he said, and because
he was careful about how he dressed.
"When I talked to [administrators], they
were like, 'What could you do differently
about it?' " Mr. Bolanos said. "I felt like they
were trying to blame me."
Advocates say many lesbian, gay, bisexual,
and transgender students have similar experiences
in schools. In addition to bullying,
they are disciplined at higher rates than
their peers, they say. But without consistent,
reliable national data about lgbt students,
researchers have struggled to prove the extent
of the problem or to track the effectiveness
of educators' efforts to address it.
Federal survey measures that track
school climate issues such as peer victimization
and disparate discipline rates don't
include questions about the sexual orientaPAGE
12 >
Schools network of charter schools in Los Angeles,
Mr. Tuck says he would fight for individual
schools seeking freedom from portions of state education
law. He says such a shift would improve
achievement and eliminate what he sees as the
dead weight of the state's traditional K-12 political
power structure.
"We have a status quo that has been broken
for kids for a long time, that's failing kids," Mr.
Tuck said in an interview this month, citing the
state's relatively low rankings on the National Assessment
of Educational Progress. "And you have
consistent leadership in Sacramento that isn't
driving change," he said.
But Mr. Torlakson, a former teacher and state
legislator who is endorsed by the state teachers'
unions, argues that California's K-12 leadership
PAGE 18 >
Handful of State Holdouts
Poised to Accept Charters
By Arianna Prothero
The eight states that have staunchly resisted charter
laws could shrink in number after midterm elections next
month. That, combined with forceful advocacy efforts,
could help push the holdouts toward embracing the publicly
funded, independently operated schools.
Alabama-where legislators who favor charters for
years have fallen short of mustering enough political
support-is predicted to be the next to join the ranks of
the District of Columbia and more than 40 states that
have charter schools. Kentucky and Nebraska may also
follow suit.
Even though Alabama's next legislative session doesn't
start until spring 2015, charter supporters in that state
say they are mounting their most comprehensive campaign
to date to get a charter law enacted. The situation
in that state has made for some unusual allies who are
PAGE 17 >
Taking Stock of Personalized Learning
This special report takes a close look
at the personalized-learning movement,
arguably one of the hottest topics in
education this year, and an educational
concept that raises questions and
concerns about how students should
learn in the digital age.
See the pullout section opposite Page 14.
Sandy Huffaker for Education Week
ELECTION
2014

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Education Week - October 22, 2014

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