Education Week - March 4, 2020 - 1

To inspire and empower.

Vol. 39 ‫ظ‬Issue 24 ‫ظ‬March 4, 2020

edweek.org

Schools' Fight
Over Vaping
Grows
Nearly 100 districts sue
JUUL, other companies
By Stephen Sawchuk

Walid Berrazeg / SOPA Images

& Denisa R. Superville

A teacher at the American School of Taipei teaches an English lesson to his students via a remote learning program while schools were closed in
Taiwan to help prevent the spread of coronavirus. Schools in other countries, including China and Japan, are also closed.

Feds to Schools: Get Ready for Coronavirus
By Denisa R. Superville
Even as President Donald Trump has sought
to reassure the American public that the risk
for the spread of the coronavirus in the United
States remains low, federal public health officials have said that schools should be gearing
up their efforts to limit its impact.
Trump, who announced last week that Vice
President Mike Pence will oversee the federal
government's efforts to respond to the corona-

virus, said he believes that American schools
should be prepared to respond.
"I think schools should be preparing," Trump
said during a news conference. "Get ready just
in case."
Federal health officials began warning last
week that coronavirus outbreaks are "inevitable" in the U.S. One official with the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention advised people to ask their children's schools about plans
for dismissals, closures, and remote learning,

Dyslexia Is Not a Bad
Word, Advocates Say.
Schools Should Use It
By Corey Mitchell
Eleven words.
The parents of the advocacy group Decoding Dyslexia Wisconsin pressed for years to see this 11-word
definition enshrined in state law: "Dyslexia means a
specific learning disability that is neurobiological in
origin." Last month, they succeeded as Wisconsin Gov.
Tony Evers signed a bill into law that includes the definition and makes Wisconsin one of nearly 40 states to
require dyslexia guidebooks for school districts.
The push is part of a long and ongoing fight to get the
learning disability defined in state law and persuade
educators to say the word dyslexia. It comes amid a nationwide debate over dyslexia-what it is, what it means
PAGE 16 >

putting many school officials on urgent notice.
Daniel Domenech, the president of the
AASA, the School Superintendents Association,
was fielding calls and emails from superintendents seeking more information on what they
should do.
They are looking for concrete details from
the CDC on how to respond, what to communicate to parents, when to actually shut down
a school system if that becomes necessary, and
PAGE 10>

A Space for Teacher-Candidates
To Air Touchy Issues of Identity
By Madeline Will
What does it mean to be a teacher of
color? How can a white teacher support
students of color? How have teachers'
race and other demographics shaped
who they are and how they'll act in the
classroom?
Teacher-candidates at the University
of Washington are mulling over these
questions on a regular basis, in what are
known as caucus groups with others who
share their identity.
Caucuses, which are nonpolitical affinity groups, are places where people can
talk in a structured format with others
who share a part of their identity, such as
race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orienta-

tion. In these groups, people can unpack
shared experiences and reflect on how
their identity shapes their worldview.
The most common form of caucusing
is based on race, where white people are
given a chance to work through structural racism and internal biases without
the fear of offending people of color, and
where people of color are able to talk
about their experiences without feeling
like they have to educate white people.
Caucusing is often seen at conferences with a social-justice bent, or at
equity-minded companies. It has also
been done in some education settings,
including during professional development. But the University of Washington
PAGE 18 >

School districts are at the head of a cresting
wave of litigation against JUUL and other
e-cigarette manufacturers, seeking to recover
the costs of prevention programs, counseling,
and treatment for addicted students.
Nearly 100 districts have sued, and the
dozens of filings indicate the epidemic of
youth vaping has penetrated nearly all corners of the nation's public education system-from a rural district in Mississippi to
the nation's second largest school system,
Los Angeles.
While some of the fundamental claims in
the lawsuits reflect those in litigation over tobacco and opioid medication, districts' primary role in fighting against vaping comes as
a novel development in consumer-protection
litigation, and reflects that they've become
the de facto first responders to the crisis.
"School districts, by no control or choice of
their own, have effectively become ground
zero for the infiltration of JUUL's marketing
and the epidemic JUUL has created," said
PAGE 12 >

States Exerting
New Control
Over Reading
By Catherine Gewertz
Worried that far too many students have
weak reading skills, states are passing new
laws that require aspiring teachers-and, increasingly, teachers who are already in the
classroom-to master reading instruction
that's solidly grounded in research.
In the past three years alone, at least 11
states have enacted laws designed to expand
evidence-based reading instruction in grades
K-3. Legislative analysts and activists who
monitor the issue have noticed a flurry of recent state action on it.
"There is an absolute buzz around the
science of reading. There's no question that
states are getting on board with this," said
Laura Stewart, the director of the Reading
League, a group that works to build understanding of what research says about good
reading instruction.
The "science of reading" generally refers
PAGE 14 >

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