Education Week - April 2, 2014 - 5

REPORT ROUNDUP www.edweek.org/go/rr
lege on their own and that the eligibility
criteria hurt disadvantaged students,
according to the Miami Herald.
-CARALEE J. ADAMS
Appeals Court Upholds
Corporal Punishment
A federal appeals court has rejected
the lawsuit of a Mississippi 8th grader
whose misbehavior led to a paddling
by a school administrator. After the
paddling, the student fainted and fell
face first to the floor, breaking his jaw
and five teeth, court papers say.
A three-judge panel in New Orleans
was unmoved by the student's lawsuit.
It ruled unanimously that it was
bound by the U.S. Supreme Court's
1977 decision in Ingraham v. Wright,
which upheld the constitutionality of
corporal punishment in schools. -M.W.
Philadelphia to Skirt
Seniority in Hiring
Unable to reach an agreement with
the local teachers' union on revisions
to seniority policies, Philadelphia
schools Superintendent William Hite
said last week that he will institute
new work rules that allow principals
to take other factors into consideration
when selecting and assigning teachers.
The new guidelines say decisions
will be "based on student and school
needs; a committee comprised of the
principal, teachers, and a parent will
determine teacher staffing at each
school."
Philadelphia Federation of Teachers
President Jerry Jordan said the union
will challenge the new work rules.
-STEPHEN SAWCHUK
Closing Arguments Heard
In Calif. Teacher-Tenure Case
Attorneys for a group seeking to
eliminate tenure protection for California
teachers argued last week
that such iron-clad job security
makes it almost impossible to fire
an incompetent instructor.
Attorneys for the teachers
and the state responded that the
real problem lies not with bad teachers
but with unqualified school administrators.

The conflicting opinions were expressed
during nearly five hours of
closing arguments in the trial of a
lawsuit asking that the courts strike
down as unconstitutional several
laws providing teachers with tenure,
seniority-based job protection
and other benefits.
Superior Court Judge Rolf M.
Treu, who is hearing the case, Vergara
v. California, without a jury,
indicated it could be several weeks
before he issues a ruling.
-AP
CORRECTIONS
A story in the March 21, 2014,
issue of Education Week about the
field-testing of common-core exams
misspelled the name of Jesse Register,
the director of schools for the
Nashville, Tenn., school district.
In a Commentary written by
Geraldo Gonzalez in the March
5, 2014, issue of Education Week,
Teach Plus Indianapolis was identified
incorrectly.
| TRANSITIONS |
Thomas M. Brady, a former
superintendent of the
Providence, R.I., school
district, has been
named director of the
Department of Defense
Education Activity.
He will oversee 191
DOD schools in the United
States and abroad that serve
more than 82,000 students.
Mr. Brady was also the CEO
of the Philadelphia district
and the chief operating
officer for both the District
of Columbia and the Fairfax
County schools in Virginia.
Pam Grossman will
take over as the
dean of the graduate
school of education
at the University of
Pennsylvania on Jan. 1.
At present, she is
the Nomellini-Olivier
professor of education in the
graduate school of education
at Stanford University
and the faculty director of
Stanford's Center to Support
Excellence in Teaching.
She will succeed Andy
Porter, who has served as
dean at Penn since 2007.
Lawrence Feinberg has
retired from the staff of
the National Assessment
Governing Board, which
makes policy for the
National Assessment of
Educational Progress.
He was a longtime
education reporter for
The Washington Post
before moving to NAGB
in 1989. Mr. Feinberg
was the board's
chief staff expert on
reporting, disseminating,
and analyzing NAEP results.
He has written extensively
on student testing and on
demographic topics and
trends.
Two former governors,
James Geringer of Wyoming
and Ronnie Musgrove of
Mississippi, have been
appointed to the National
Assessment
Governing Board.
Mr. Geringer, a
Republican, has
been a member of
numerous education
organizations,
including the
National Commission on
Mathematics and Science
Teaching for the 21st
Century and the National
Research Council.
Mr. Musgrove, a
Democrat, served as
a NAGB member from
2001 to 2004. He has
long been an advocate
for education initiatives
in Mississippi.
SPECIAL EDUCATION
"Prevalence of Autism Spectrum
Disorder Among Children Age 8
Years"
About 1 in 68 children in 10
states monitored by the Centers
for Disease Control have been
identified with an autism spectrum
disorder, the highest prevalence
of the diagnosis since the
agency first started monitoring
it in 2000.
In 2008, the estimate was that
approximately 1 in 88 children
in the monitored states had been
diagnosed with an ASD.
The latest estimates are based
on information collected from
the health and special education
records of children who were 8
years old and lived in Alabama,
Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado,
Georgia, Maryland, Missouri,
New Jersey, North Carolina,
Utah, and Wisconsin in 2010.
They showed that the disorder
was far more prevalent among
boys than girls.
Likewise, white children were
more likely to be identified with
the disorder than black or Hispanic
children.
The Centers for Disease Control
said it did not know what was
driving the increased prevalence,
though some of it may be due to
the way children are identified, diagnosed,
and served in their local
communities.
-CHRISTINA A. SAMUELS
COLLEGE READINESS
"The Condition of College & Career
Readiness 2013: African American
Students"
Most college-going African-American
students aren't getting the education
they need to succeed there,
according to a new study from the
ACT testing company.
Only 10 percent of AfricanAmericans
who graduated high
school in 2013 met at least three
of the ACT's four College-Readiness
Benchmarks, compared
to 39 percent of all graduates
who took the test. According to
research by the Iowa City, Iowa,
test-maker, students who meet
these benchmarks are more
likely to stay in college.
Among African-American students
who met at least two benchmarks,
71 percent persisted into
a second year of postsecondary
study-the same rate achieved
by all ACT-tested graduates who
met two or more benchmarks.
-ALYSSA MORONES
ARTS LEARNING
"A Snapshot of State Policies for
Arts Education"
Forty-one states now have instructional
requirements for arts
education at the elementary, middle,
and high school levels, though
only 17 states have policies on assessment
in the subject, according
to a new report by the Arts Education
Partnership.
The partnership, a part of the
Washington-based Council of
Chief State School Officers, also
finds that:
*Twenty-seven states now
consider the arts a "core" or "academic"
subject;
*Only one state-Iowa-has
not established state standards
in arts education for elementary
and secondary levels; and,
*About half of states require
high school students to take art
classes to graduate.
-LIANA HEITIN
SCHOOL BOARDS
"Does School Board Leadership
Matter?"
Districts that "beat the odds"
academically have school board
members who are focused narrowly
on improving student learning, according
to a new report.
The report, produced by the
Thomas B. Fordham Institute,
a Washington-based education
research and advocacy group,
looked at survey data from 900
school board members in 417
districts to examine how board
members' characteristics and
knowledge link up with districts'
success at producing higher-thanexpected
student achievement.
The study also found that:
* Most board members possess
accurate information about their
districts;
*Board members' political beliefs
seem to affect their knowledge
of their districts. Political
moderates, for example, were
more likely to be informed about
district money matters than liberals
and conservatives; and
*Board members with a background
in public education were
less knowledgeable than other
members about district conditions.
-A.M.
YOUTH BEHAVIOR
"Long-Term Consequences of
Adolescent Youth Gang
Membership"
A study published this month
in the American Journal of Public
Health illustrates the long-term
detrimental effects of joining a
gang in adolescence.
Researchers from the Social
Development Research Group at
the University of Washington in
Seattle used survey data to track
808 5th grade students who were
attending 18 elementary schools
in high-crime neighborhoods in
1985. About one-fifth of the students
eventually reported joining
a gang.
In adulthood, the students who
joined a gang were nearly three
times as likely as other students to
report having committed a crime
in the preceding year.
Gang membership also predicted
lower rates of high school graduation,
poorer mental and physical
health, and higher rates of drug
dependence at ages 27, 30, or 33.
That was true even though many
youths left gangs before entering
adulthood.
-EVIE BLAD
EDUCATION WEEK | April 2, 2014 | www.edweek.org | 5
Study Finds N.Y. State Schools
Are Most Racially Isolated
"New York State's Extreme Segregation: Inequality, Inaction,
and a Damaged Future"
New York state is home to the nation's most-segregated pub-
lic schools, with the share of black students who attend "intensely
segregated" schools-those where fewer than 10 percent
of students are white-having increased steadily since the late
1980s, according to a new study from the Civil Rights Project/
Proyecto Derechos Civiles at the University of California, Los
Angeles.
In 2010, the study found, more than half of New York's black
and Latino students were in schools with a white enrollment
of less than 10 percent. The study also found segregation
by income: While nearly 50 percent of New York's students
came from low-income families in 2010, the typical white student
attended a school where fewer than 30 percent of students
were poor. At the schools attended by black and Latino
students, nearly 70 percent of students were from low-income
households.
The findings on New York state, the study's authors said, are
heavily affected by segregation patterns in the 1.1 million-student
New York City system. Of the city's 32 community school
districts, 19 had white-student enrollments of 10 percent or less.
Authors John Kucsera and Gary Orfield draw on segregation
research since the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board
of Education of Topeka, Kan., decision and use federal statistics
from the 1989-90, 1999-2000, and 2010-11 school years. It's the
fifth report in a series on school segregation patterns in communities
along the East Coast.
The authors attribute New York state's segregation to a number
of factors, including persistent residential segregation and the
abandonment of earlier efforts by districts to desegregate schools.
-LESLI A. MAXWELL
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Education Week - April 2, 2014

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