Education Week - March 12, 2014 - 5

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San Francisco Bans
'Defiance' Suspensions
The San Francisco school board has
adopted a measure forbidding suspensions
or expulsion referrals made solely
for "disruption/willful defiance." It is set
to kick in by fall. Los Angeles approved
a similar measure last spring.
The resolution calls for alternative
discipline that "shall reflect evidencebased
interventions for differing levels
of defiant or disruptive behavior."
Many schools more frequently cite
students of certain racial groups for
infractions like "disobedience" because
some teachers perceive greater threat
from the behavior of black students, for
example, than from their white peers,
say school discipline policy critics. -E.B.
Mo. Teachers Balk
At School Shooting Drill
A realistic school shooting drill at
a southeast Missouri high school
prompted several teachers concerned
about their safety to seek legal advice
from the local prosecutor.
Four Farmington High School teachers
called the St. Francois County prosecuting
attorney last week about the
drill, which was held on a professionaldevelopment
day.
The prosecutor's office advised the
teachers to either leave the training
or file a complaint. No teachers did so,
but the training was stopped once the
school learned of the complaints.
Superintendent Matt Ruble says
teachers were given the option in advance
to opt out of the active shooter
training, which used plastic pellet guns
powered by compressed air.
-AP
Comcast Extends Service
For Low-Income Families
Comcast Corp., facing federal and
state government reviews of its proposed
$45.2 billion deal for Time Warner
Cable Inc., said last week that it
would indefinitely continue a $9.95-amonth
Internet service for low-income
families with schoolchildren.
The company agreed to offer the
discounted service as a public-interest
benefit and a condition of its acquisition
of NBCUniversal in 2011. The program
was set to expire this June.
If the Time Warner Cable deal is approved,
Comcast's discounted Internet
program will be available in Time Warner
Cable areas and 19 of the nation's
20 largest metropolitan markets, Comcast
officials said.
-MCT
Virtual Charter Academy Bill
Vetoed by Maine's Governor
Republican Gov. Paul LePage vetoed
a bill last week that would direct the
state to work toward creating a staterun
virtual charter academy, citing
concerns with part of the proposal that
places a moratorium on cyber schools
until next year.
In his veto letter, the Republican
governor said the bill aims to halt the
opening of to the Maine Connections
Academy, a virtual charter school that
was approved last week by the Maine
Charter School Commission. The
school is poised to open in the fall, and
would serve up to 750 students, Gov.
LePage said.
The veto came hours after the Democratic-controlled
Senate voted 24-11 in
favor of the measure. The legislature
would need two-thirds support in each
house for the veto to be overturned. -AP
Teacher-Evaluation Bill
Gets Final Push in Wash.
Gov. Jay Inslee said he hopes law-
makers can come to an agreement on
the state's teacher-evaluation system
before the legislature adjourns this
week.
If they don't, Washington's public
school system stands to lose control of
about $40 million in federal funds.
His proposed law change would
likely extend a waiver from the federal
government from requirements of the
No Child Left Behind law.
Two different teacher- and principal-
evaluation bills were making their
way through the legislature last week.
The House proposal, supported by Gov.
Inslee, would require statewide standardized
tests be used in some teacher
evaluations, but wouldn't go into effect
until the 2017-18 school year. The new
rule would go away if the federal government
does not extend the waiver.
An alternative bill, proposed by Senate
Republican Sen. Andy Hill, would
not delay implementation or consider
the waiver.
-AP
Students have consumed more vegetables
since the U.S. Department of Agriculture
implemented new school food standards,
suggests a study published this month in
the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

The new standards, created following the
passage of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids
Act of 2010, require schools to serve more
grains, fruits, and vegetables.
Researchers from Harvard University collected
plate waste data from 1,030 students
in four schools in an unnamed urban, lowincome
school district, both before and after
the new standards went into effect, to measure
how much food students put on their
trays and how much they threw away.
In addition to the increase in vegetable
consumption, the researchers found that,
even though overall consumption of fruits
remained the same, more students were eating
them.
And, while students still threw away much
of what they were served, the total amount of
fruits and vegetables discarded went down following
the standards' implementation, according
to the report.
-EVIE BLAD
ONLINE SCHOOLING
"Virtual Schools in the U.S. 2014: Politics,
Performance, Policy, and Research Evidence"
Enrollment in full-time virtual schools for
K-12 students continues to grow, but the online
sector is serving smaller percentages
of impoverished, limited-English, and special-needs
students than brick-and-mortar
schools, according to a new report.
The National Education Policy Center says
it identified 338 full-time virtual schools, enrolling
243,000 students, in the 2012-13 academic year.
That represents a 22 percent rise in the number of
students served over the previous year.
Forty-four percent of the full-time virtual schools
studied were operated by private "education management"
companies, and those schools account for
72 percent of all students served, the center says.
That represents a rise in the share of enrollment
in schools managed by private companies since
2011-12, when that figure was 67 percent. K12
Inc., based in Herndon, Va., remains the largest
for-profit provider of full-time virtual schools programs,
the authors say, serving about 86,000 students
in 2011-12.
The NEPC, based in Boulder, Colo., has released
numerous reports on charter and virtual schools
over the years, and many of its analyses have cast
those schools' growth and development in a critical
light. The latest report, the second to focus on virtual
schools, was supported with funding provided by
the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and
Practice, a nonprofit whose members include teachers'
unions, according to the organization's website.
-SEAN CAVANAGH
BEHAVIOR MANAGEMENT
"Variation Found in Rates of Restraint and Seclusion
Among Students With a Disability"
FLIGHT TEST l Andy Semenak, 10, a student at Trinity Lutheran School,
launches a paper airplane during the elementary-level event
of the 27th Annual Science Olympiad in Benton Harbor, Mich.
The noncompetitive event gives local students an opportunity to learn
about science through hands-on activities and experiments.
School districts with high concentrations of
poverty and high numbers of black and Latino
students have lower incidences of restraint and
seclusion than their wealthier and less-diverse
counterparts, according to an analysis of nationwide
civil rights data from the U.S. Department
of Education.
The new analysis came from the Carsey
Institute, a research center that studies
vulnerable youth and families at the University
SCHOOL LUNCHES
"Impact of the New U.S. Department of
Agriculture School Meal Standards on Food
Selection, Consumption, and Waste"
Survey Finds School Buildings
In Need of Improvements
Upgrading the nation's public K-12 school buildings
to a "good overall condition" would cost about
$200 billion, according to a new, nationally representative
survey released last week by the National
Center for Education Statistics.
Fifty-three percent of public schools need to
spend money on repairs, renovations, and modernizations
to put them in good condition-improvements
that would cost about $4.5 million per
school, results from the survey show.
Among schools where 75 percent or more of
students are eligible for free and reduced-price
meals, the percentage of schools in need of substantial
upgrades to reach good condition is
60 percent.
Thirty-one percent of public schools use portable
buildings for classroom space on their sites, but
such temporary buildings are more commonly
found in schools that serve large numbers of poor
and minority students, the survey found.
The survey sample drew from responses of administrators
at approximately 1,800 regular public
elementary, middle, and secondary/combined
schools in all 50 states and the District of Columbia
and represents the reported conditions of
school facilities in the 2012-13 academic year.
Its other findings include:
* Sixty percent of public schools have written
long-range facilities plans, with 17 percent reporting
that major repairs and modernization work
was already under way in the 2012-13 school year;
* Thirty-nine percent said major renovations and
modernizations were on tap for the next two years,
mostly for security-system replacements and technology
upgrades; and,
* The average age of public schools' main instructional
buildings is 44 years.
-LESLI A. MAXWELL
of New Hampshire in Durham.
According to the report, poor, high-diversity districts
in the 90th percentile for incidences of restraint
and seclusion reported an average of 2.7 events per
100 students. In contrast, high-income, low-diversity
districts that fell in the same percentile reported 6.7
events per 100 students.
Regardless of demographics, students with disabilities
were far more likely to be restrained or secluded
than nondisabled students.
-CHRISTINA A. SAMUELS
GRADUATION NUMBERS
"Projections of Education Statistics to 2022"
New data from the National Center for Education
Statistics forecast a decline in the number of
high school graduates over the next decade and
college enrollment rising, but at a much slower
pace than in recent years.
The projected decline in the number of high
school graduates is traced primarily to demographic
shifts, and past trends in factors such as
dropouts, migration, and transfers between public
and private high schools, according to the federal
researchers.
The report shows that the number of public and
private high school graduates increased by 27 percent
nationally from around 2.7 million in the 199798
school year to around 3.4 million in 2009-10.
But that number is expected to decline by 2 per-
cent, to 3.37 million, between the 2009-10 and 202223
school years.
Within those estimates, public high school graduates
are projected to increase 1 percent, to 3.1 million,
by 2022-23 while private high school completers
will decline by 29 percent, to 223,000.
The center also anticipates that the number
of graduates will likely expand in the South and
West, while the Northeast and Midwest see fewer.
-CARALEE J. ADAMS
EDUCATION WEEK | March 12, 2014 | www.edweek.org | 5
Don Campbell/The Herald-Palladium/AP
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Education Week - March 12, 2014

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