Education Week - March 4, 2015 - 5

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social studies exam for grades 5 and
7, a move that will save those students
an hour of testing time.
-AP
Newark, N.J., Schools Chief
Gets Contract Extension
The New Jersey education commissioner
has extended the contract
of embattled Newark Superintendent
Cami Anderson despite calls
in some quarters of the community
for her to step down.
Ms. Anderson and the state education
department struck a threeyear
"hybrid" agreement last year
that required each party to agree
annually to an extension.
Under the terms, Ms. Anderson
will receive a 1.6 percent increase
to her $251,500 base salary. In a
district-released statement, Ms. Anderson
said that she accepted the
offer from Education Commissioner
David Hespe.
Ms. Anderson, who is a state-appointed
superintendent, has had a
rocky tenure in the district, which
has been under state control since
1995.
-DENISA R. SUPERVILLE
N.Y. Gov. Calls for Probe
Of Teacher Evaluations
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo
says the state education department
should investigate the results
of teacher evaluations to see
whether the process is skewed to
favor teachers.
The administration sent a letter
to acting Commissioner of Education
Elizabeth Berlin last week,
following a Newsday report that
said the portion of teacher evaluations
that is controlled by districts
is weighted in most Long Island
districts toward ensuring that
teachers score high enough to get
favorable evaluations.
The New York State United
Teachers responded with a statement
saying that each district's
teacher-evaluation plan was approved
by the education department.
The union accused Mr. Cuomo
of scapegoating teachers for a statedirected
process.
-AP
Former Superintendent Sues
District Over Remarks
A former Albuquerque, N.M.,
schools superintendent is suing
the district, claiming that his replacement
breached an agreement
that neither party would vilify one
another.
Television station KOAT reported
that Winston Brooks is seeking
$125,000 plus lawyer's fees for comments
that interim schools chief
Brad Winter made in an Albuquerque
Journal article published
Sept. 16, roughly a month after Mr.
Brooks agreed to resign. At that
time, he and the district signed
a termination agreement with a
$350,000 buyout.
The Albuquerque Journal reported
that Mr. Winter said he
couldn't work with Mr. Brooks any
longer, because he was fed up with
what he described as the superintendent's
unwillingness to work
Marten
Roorda, the
chief executive
officer of
Cito, an international,
not-for-profit
test-publishing
company based in
the Netherlands, has been
named the new chief executive
officer of act Inc., beginning
this fall.
He will succeed Jon Whitmore,
who has led the Iowa
City, Iowa-based organization
for five years.
Mr. Roorda has been with
Cito for 12 years, leading the
600-employee company in
advancing learning analytics
and adaptive testing, according
to a press release. He is
the founder of the Association
of Test Publishers Europe and
atp Asia.
with the business community, the
state education department, and
neighborhood groups.
Sexual-Harassment Claim
Refiled Against L.A. Chief
A school district manager last
week filed a new sexual-harassment
lawsuit against Superintendent
Ramon C. Cortines and the Los Angeles
Unified School District.
The suit expands on previous
claims made by Scot Graham.
The allegations stem largely from
incidents that occurred during
Mr. Graham's visit to Mr. Cortines'
ranch in 2010. An earlier lawsuit
had been dismissed in 2013
because lawyers failed to file it in
time.
Mr. Graham's new legal team asserts
the claims have new standing
with the return of Mr. Cortines to
the helm of the school system.
The district called the new filing
"frivolous."
-MCT
President Offers Students
Free Access to Parks
President Barack Obama has announced
that, starting in September,
all 4th grade students and their
families will have free access to national
parks and other public lands
and waters for a year.
The initiative coincides with the
100th birthday of the National
Park Service, which takes place in
2016.
In a speech, Mr. Obama said: "We
want every 4th grader to have the
experience of getting out and discovering
America. We want them
to see the outside of a classroom,
too; see all the places that make
America great."
The initiative is also aimed at getting
students outside-and off their
electronic devices.
The National Park Service provides
instructional materials for
teachers on its website.
-LIANA HEITIN
| TRANSITION |
ADEQUATE YEARLY PROGRESS
"Accountability Pressure and Non-Achievement
Student Behaviors"
-C.M.
As pressure increases for schools who miss accountability
benchmarks, students become less likely to be
late or miss class-but more likely to get into fights
and get reported or suspended for misbehavior.
That's the conclusion of a study by Duke University
researchers John B. Holbein and Helen F. Ladd,
for the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal
Data in Education Research, or calder. It suggests
that just as there may be a tendency to focus academically
on tested subjects, like math and reading, schools
may also focus on improving student behaviors, such
as attendance, that are measured for accountability
purposes.
The study draws on administrative data for 11,000
North Carolina schools from 2007 to 2012. The researchers
compared student behavior in schools that barely
missed making adequate yearly progress to schools that
just made ayp.
-SARAH D. SPARKS
EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY
"Personal Computing in K-12 Q4 2014 Market Track
Report"
By the next academic year, mobile devices will be
available for 1-to-1 computing for half the K-12 student
and teacher population in the United States,
according to Futuresource Consulting Ltd., a research
and forecasting company based in the United
Kingdom.
In fact, by calendar year 2016, 54 percent of students
and teachers will have access to a school-issued
personal computing device, the study projects.
The company also predicts a 10 percent growth in
mobile devices in schools in the United States alone,
and a 12 percent growth globally.
Chromebooks-which commanded a 39 percent
market share in the United States in 2014-overtook
Apple's iPads, at 26 percent, as the bestselling device on
the market last year, the study found. More than
3 million Chromebooks were shipped last year, according
to Futuresource statistics.
-MICHELE MOLNAR
COLLEGE GRADUATION
"Completing College: A State-Level View of Student
Attainment Rates"
New statistics on college-completion rates by state
give a more comprehensive-and encouraging-graduation
picture than traditional federal data by including
transfer and part-time students.
For its new state-level report, the Herndon, Va.based
National Student Clearinghouse tracked 2.7
million students who began college in 2008 for six
years to document their pathways. It included fulltime
and part-time students who attended two-year
public colleges, four-year public universities, and fouryear
private nonprofit institutions.
While about 50 percent of U.S. students who started
at a four-year public institution graduated from that
school within six years, another 13 percent finished
elsewhere, boosting the total completion rate for fouryear
schools to 63 percent, according to the findings.
The transfer activity varied widely by state, with
25 percent of students who started at one four-year
school in Minnesota finishing at another, while just
7 percent did so in Nevada. Across all categories of
schools, the six-year graduation rate was 55 percent
for students followed through 2014.
-CARALEE J. ADAMS
TEACHER COMPENSATION
"Paying the Best Teachers More to Teach More Students"
Giving the most-effective teachers in a district just
a few more students to instruct could potentially improve
student outcomes while controlling personnel
costs, says an analysis released last week.
The paper is based on data from one growing Texas
-CARALEE ADAMS
school district, Cypress-Fairbanks near Houston.
Analysts Marguerite Roza and Amanda Works, both
of the Eduonomics Lab at Georgetown University in
Social and Emotional Lessons
Pay Off, According to Study
"The Economic Value of Social and Emotional
Learning"
For every dollar schools spend on six commonly
used social-emotional-learning programs, those
interventions return an average $11 worth of benefits
to society.
That's the finding of a study released last week by
the Center for Benefit-Cost Studies of Education at
Teachers College, Columbia University.
To arrive at their conclusions, researchers analyzed
existing evaluations of six prominent social-emotional-learning
programs designed for use in K-12
schools. They are: 4R's, Life Skills Training, Positive
Action, Responsive Classroom, Second Step, and Social
and Emotional Skills Training.
"We estimate each intervention's costs based on
the ingredients employed during the implementation
previously evaluated," the report says. Costs included
personnel, materials and equipment, facilities, and
other inputs.
Information on program effects was drawn from
previous research on the interventions.
Researchers estimated benefits by measuring the
financial impacts of the interventions' outcomes. For
example, a successful bullying intervention may reduce
missed school days that can cause students to
struggle and need extra academic supports, and it
may reduce the amount of costly personnel time that
staff members spend addressing student complaints.
And programs that lead to improved academic results
may lead to higher income for students later
in life.
"In the past, [cost-benefit] studies have been limited
largely to increases in educational attainment
and to improvements in cognitive test scores," the
report says.
"But it is now becoming widely recognized that
social and emotional learning in schools can be as
important as or even more important than cognitive
gains in explaining important developmental and life
outcomes," the authors conclude.
The study was requested by the Chicago-based
Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional
Learning, or casel, and the NoVo Foundation, based
in New York City. The latter helps support coverage
of school climate issues in Education Week. -EVIE BLAD
Washington, estimate that if each teacher in the district's
top performance quartile were willing to take
on three additional students-raising their class size
from about 22 to 25 at the elementary level-the district
could save over $11 million in salary and benefits.
The district could return the savings to teachers in the
form of a bonus of about $8,000 apiece.
In all, the paper concludes, such a scenario would
help improve access to effective teachers without increasing
costs.
-STEPHEN SAWCHUK
PRESCHOOL
"State Pre-K Funding: 2014-15 Fiscal Year"
State funding for preschool has increased by 12 percent,
or $672 million, since the 2013-14 school year,
according to a report by the Denver-based Education
Commission of the States.
This year's increase builds on a 6.9 percent funding
increase from 2012-13 to 2013-14, according to
the commission's annual report, released in January.
Twenty-eight of the 44 states and the District of
Columbia that provide public preschool funding increased
their spending. Funding remained flat in 11
states, and five states-Nevada, Oklahoma, Tennessee,
Florida, and Maine-reduced funding.
California led the states that increased funding with
an additional $397.5 million, a 78.6 percent increase
over the previous year. The state's budget agreement
calls for the creation of 11,500 new full-day, full-year
preschool slots in the coming year.
-LILLIAN MONGEAU
EDUCATION WEEK | March 4, 2015 | www.edweek.org | 5
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Education Week - March 4, 2015

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