Education Week - April 13, 2016 - 5

| TRANSITIONS |

HEAT WAVE WOES
Students enter their nonair-conditioned classroom
at Campbell High School in Ewa,
Hawaii, last summer. Most of
the state's public schools
don't have air conditioning,
and record-high temperatures
have left teachers and students
saying they can't focus on their
work. The state legislature
is considering a proposal that
would pay for air conditioning and
expedite the installation process.

Oklahoma Districts Sue State
Over Funding Miscalculations
Nearly 50 Oklahoma school districts are asking the state supreme
court to compel the state education department to determine how
much it underpaid them by miscalculating state aid for nearly 22
years and to recoup overpayment
that was incorrectly awarded to
other districts.
The lawsuit centers on a state
law that allows counties to tax
commercial and agricultural personal properties between 10 percent and 15 percent. The counties
that levied taxes higher than 11
percent could keep the revenues
generated above that threshold for
their local schools.
Instead, the suit argues, the
state used those revenues in the
general fund when calculating
state school aid. -DENISA R. SUPERVILLE

separate injury-management protocols for the two groups, says a study
published online last month in the
Journal of Athletic Training.
The authors set out to determine
whether age differences between
high school and college athletes
affected the length of concussion
recovery. They analyzed data from
621 concussed athletes-405 from
high school, 216 from college-
most of whom played football. Each
concussed athlete was evaluated
immediately after the injury; two
to three hours after; and one, two,
three, five, seven, and 45 or 90 days
after, and the results were compared with baseline evaluations.
When it came to their rates of recovery, both groups showed "significantly elevated symptoms" through
the fifth day after the injury. In one
test, however--the Standardized
Assessment of Concussion-both
high school and college athletes
performed significantly worse than
the control group through the second day after the injury, but only
high schoolers performed worse
through the third day.
The authors say the finding suggests high schoolers need an extra
day or two to cognitively recover in
comparison to their college counterparts, although both groups "demonstrated a relatively rapid cognitive recovery within a few days of
injury."
-BRYAN TOPOREK

ACLU Sues New Mexico
Over Teacher Gag Order
The American Civil Liberties
Union has filed a lawsuit challenging a regulation that prohibits New
Mexico teachers and other public
school employees from disparaging
standardized tests.
The suit against the state education department says the provision
against making disparaging statements could result in a license suspension or revocation for teachers,
and it restricts free speech and violates constitutional rights. The lawsuit asserts that teachers are permitted only to praise the tests and that
parents are thus unable to obtain
honest and accurate information
about the tests' effect on children.
The department said the lawsuit is
designed to push an extreme agenda
against all student testing.

-ASSOCIATED PRESS

No Need to Flag Materials
With 'Sexual' Content
Gov. Terry McAuliffe last week
vetoed a bill that would have made
Virginia the only state to require
K-12 teachers to identify classroom
materials with "sexually explicit content" so that parents could opt their
children out of such reading.
The legislation became known
as the "Beloved bill," because it
stemmed from a parent's attempt to
remove author Toni Morrison's book
from a high school curriculum.
The bill would have required

TEACHING ECONOMICS
"Bridging the Financial Literacy
Gap: Empowering Teachers to
Support the Next Generation"
Millennial teachers are more
likely to believe that financial literacy should be taught in schools
than their older colleagues, concludes a report from professionalservices firm Pricewaterhouse
Coopers.
The report, released last week,
measures approximately 2,000
teachers' attitudes toward financial education. The research firm
MDR conducted an online survey
of teachers of various subjects and
grades from across the country.
PricewaterhouseCoopers launched
a financial-literacy effort, including
a curriculum called Earn Your Future, four years ago.
The survey found that 47 percent
of millennial teachers, compared
with 42 percent of their older colleagues, believe financial education
should be taught primarily in the
classroom and reinforced at home.
The margin of error was 2.9 percent.
Millennials were also more likely
than their peers to use grants or
to fundraise through websites like
DonorsChoose in order to teach financial literacy.
Overall, 92 percent of the teachers surveyed said they believe

schools to notify parents if a teacher
was using instructional materials
with "sexually explicit content," to
allow parents to review the content,
and to provide an alternative assignment at a parent's request. The
governor said that the legislation
"would require the label of 'sexually
explicit' to apply to an artistic work
based on a single scene, without
further context."
-LIANA HEITIN

Ed. Dept. Awarding Grants
To Save Native Languages
The U.S. Department of Education
is offering $3.2 million in grants to
support the instruction and study of
Native American languages, in an
attempt to support the preservation
of those languages and boost the
education of Native youths.
The funds will be administered
under the Native American and
Alaska Native Children in School
Program, which supports such
projects as teacher-training, curriculum-development, and community-participation initiatives that
increase the studying of Native
languages and the English-language proficiency of Native American students.
-JACKIE MADER

Tribeca Film Festival
Pulls Anti-Vaccine Film
The Tribeca Film Festival in New
York City has pulled from its schedule this month a controversial documentary asserting a causal link between childhood vaccines and autism.

that financial education should be
taught in school, but only 12 percent do so.
-JACLYN ZUBRZYCKI
STUDENT WELLNESS
"School-Based Sleep Education
Program Improves Sleep and
Academic Performance of
School-Age Children"
Extending sleep time by no
more than 20 minutes a night
was associated with better grades
for elementary students, finds a
small study in the journal Sleep
Medicine.
Researchers from McGill University in Montreal tracked the
sleep habits of 74 students who
participated in a six-week, schoolbased program on sleep health.
Then they compared the results
with those for students who did
not take part. Besides providing
lessons for students, the program
included teacher and parent
training.
Students who participated slept
on average 18 minutes more each
night than did a control group not
involved in the program.
The study also found that those
who averaged at least 91 minutes
of extra sleep each week had significantly higher math and reading grades on their subsequent
report cards.-S.D.S.

Michael Yudin, the assistant secretary for special
education and rehabilitative services, is leaving
the U.S. Department of Education April 30.
Yudin has been with the Education Department
since 2010 in a variety of capacities. He became
the acting assistant secretary for the office of
special education and rehabilitative services in
August 2012 and was officially confirmed in June
2015.
Sue Swenson, currently the deputy assistant
secretary, will take over as the acting assistant
secretary for the office.

The actor Robert De Niro, a festival co-founder, had said in a statement March 25 that because he and
his wife had a child with autism,
"we believe it is critical that all of
the issues surrounding the causes
of autism be openly discussed and
examined."
But there was a backlash to a festival platform that would include
the film "Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to
Catastrophe." The film is directed by
a British gastroenterologist whose
study linking vaccines to autism was
retracted by the medical journal The
Lancet in 2010.
A day later, De Niro and Tribeca
Film announced they were canceling
the screening because "we do not believe it contributes to or furthers the
discussion."
-MARK WALSH

1st Graders Suspended
For Plotting to Poison Peer
Three 1st graders in Alaska plotted to kill a fellow student with silica-gel packets that the girls believed

were poison, authorities say.
The three have been suspended
but not charged with any crime.
The girls attending Winterberry
Charter School in Anchorage acknowledged that they planned to
poison a female classmate, district
officials said. Police left discipline up
to the district.
-AP

Newtown Teacher Charged
For Bringing Gun to School
A teacher was arrested last week
for bringing a gun to a middle
school in Newtown, Conn., where
a gunman shot and killed 20 students and six educators at nearby
Sandy Hook Elementary School in
2012, police said.
Jason Adams, 46, has a valid pistol permit, but Connecticut state law
bans firearms on school grounds.
Adams was charged with possession of a weapon on school
grounds. He has been placed on
administrative leave pending an
investigation.
-AP

Long-Run Gains Seen for Charter Grads
"Charter High Schools' Effect on Long-Term Attainment and Learning"
Charter school graduates in Florida were more likely to stay in college and earn higher salaries than their district school peers.
That occurred even though attending charter schools did not have a
significant impact on students' test scores, according to a study published this month in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.
The study is significant, argue its authors, because research on charter schools has been largely focused on short-term effects, such as test
scores, versus long-term outcomes, such as getting college degrees and
employment earnings.
Researchers from Georgia State University, Vanderbilt University, and
Mathematica Policy Research found that charter school graduates were
12 percent more likely to persist through their second year in college, and,
by the time they were in their mid-20s, earned 12 percent more than their
district school counterparts. Even when controlling for college enrollment,
charter graduates were 6 percent more likely to persist in college.
Funded by the Joyce Foundation, the study also confirms earlier
findings from Mathematica that charter school students are more
likely to graduate from high school and enroll in college. (The Joyce
Foundation provides grant support for Education Week's coverage of
policy efforts to improve the teaching profession.)
The study's primary analysis compared Florida students who attended
charter schools throughout high school with those who switched from a
charter middle school to a district high school. Although the researchers
ran several analyses to try to control for factors like selection bias, they
admit that there are limitations to their methodology and that the findings can't necessarily be applied to charter school students in other states.
"Nonetheless," they write, "this early evidence of positive effects for
these students on educational attainment and earnings in adulthood
raises the question of whether charter schools' full long-term impacts
on their students have been underestimated by studies that examine
-ARIANNA PROTHERO
only test scores."

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Education Week - April 13, 2016

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