Education Week - April 25, 2018 - 5

BLOG OF THE WEEK

tion deprives black and Latino residents of their
right to vote.
While the vast majority of the nation's 14,000 school
boards are elected, some of the largest systems have
boards appointed in some form by the city's mayor. -M.W.

Pen Pal Group Underway for Survivors
From Columbine and Stoneman Douglas
Survivors of the deadly shootings at Columbine
High School in 1999 are forming a pen pal group with
those who survived the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in February.
About 115 Columbine survivors have signed up so
far to be pen pals. Organized through networks and
Facebook groups for survivors of gun violence, the
Columbine alums have also recruited a few of their
former teachers to correspond with faculty members
at the Parkland, Fla., high school.
Thirteen people were killed by two gunmen in
the Colorado shootings, and 17 died in the attack at
Stoneman Douglas.
-EVIE BLAD

By Any Other Name, Texas Gives Nod
To Mexican-American-Studies Class
Texas' school board has given final approval to a
plan to draft standards to guide a class focused on the
experiences of Mexican-Americans, but in a decision
that riled board members and supporters, it won't be
called Mexican-American Studies.
For advocates of the new class, to be called Ethnic
Studies: An Overview of Americans of Mexican Descent, getting it on the books has been an odyssey spanning more than four years. In 2014, the board nixed
a proposal to create a course, though it left the option
up to districts to offer it as an elective. Effectively, this
meant districts had to create the course guidelines on
their own and choose materials from scratch.
The new vote means publishers will have a more
detailed set of guidelines.
-STEPHEN SAWCHUK

Amid Walkouts, Charter Fight,
Kentucky Chief Forced to Resign
Kentucky education Commissioner Stephen Pruitt,
a former science teacher who led the state through an
upending of its school accountability system, dramatic
budget cuts, and teacher walkouts over pensions,
abruptly resigned under pressure last week.
Republican Gov. Matt Bevin appointed seven new
state board of education members the day before, several of whom, local reports say, want to expedite the
growth of the state's charter schools and take over

of schoolwide programs actually consolidated their different pots of money. Principals said they didn't understand that consolidation was allowed; some thought other
federal or state rules barred it, and many
were afraid of doing it wrong. -SARAH D. SPARKS
COLLEGE ADMISSIONS
"Social Media Is Fair Game in the Admissions
Process"
More than two-thirds of colleges see
applicants' social-media profiles as "fair
game" for consideration in the admissions
process, according to survey data released
last week by Kaplan Test Prep-and 70
percent of students agreed.
But only 29 percent of admissions officers
actually look at applicants' social media as
part of their process-a drop from 35 percent in 2017 and 40 percent in 2015, according to the findings.
-RACHEL WEGNER

Jefferson County schools, the state's largest district.
Pruitt, who took office in September 2015, reportedly
disagreed with the board's direction and resigned
during a four-hour closed-doors board meeting.
Bevin cited the state's widening achievement gap as
cause for forcing Pruitt out of office.
The state's teachers' union and Democratic Party
seized on Pruitt's resignation to unleash a hail of attacks on Bevin, who is already under fire for saying
striking teachers had left children vulnerable to ingesting poison and sexual assault.
-DAAREL BURNETTE II

Ethics Lapses Don't Derail Interim Job
From Becoming Permanent in Maryland
The Baltimore County school board voted last week
to keep its interim superintendent on a permanent
basis, despite ethical lapses.
During the nine months that Verletta White served
as interim superintendent, the board's ethics panel
determined she had previously violated ethics rules
as a schools employee. White was chosen despite the
violation and concerns she was linked to ex-superintendent Dallas Dance, who was to be sentenced late
last week on perjury charges.
Several board members had wanted White to stay
on as interim superintendent of the 80,500-student
district while a national search was launched.
White is taking over the reins of the school system
that educated her and where she taught and served as a
principal and in other administrative jobs before being
named assistant superintendent in 2009.
-AP & TNS

Obituary
Former first lady BARBARA BUSH, an advocate for
early and adult literacy during her time in the White
House and afterward, died last week at the age of 92.
The wife of President George H.W. Bush and the
mother of President George W. Bush, as well as former
Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and three other children, Bush
used the bully pulpit of her office as first lady to advance the issue on behalf
of children and their parents.
In 1989, as first lady, she started the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family
Literacy. Over the past 29 years, the organization has helped provide more
than $110 million to create or expand family-literacy programs in all 50
states and the District of Columbia, according to the nonprofit's website.
And in the 1990s, Mrs. Bush helped champion her husband's signature
education initiative, America 2000, the national strategy to move the country toward the six education goals.
-ALYSON KLEIN

PRINCIPALS' WORRIES

DIGITAL MEDIA

"K-12 Principals' Assessment of Education:
2018 Edition

"A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Off-Task
Multitasking With Mobile Phones on Learning"

Among the nation's K-12 principals,
getting enough money for schools is a top concern.
More than half-52 percent-said that adequate funding was their most important concern, according to survey data published last
week by MCH Strategic Data.
Another 28 percent of principals ranked
funding as very important.
After funding, principals' said their most
important concerns are teacher morale
(38 percent); student attendance (33 percent);
aligning assessments to standards (32 percent);
behavior issues in children (31 percent); bullying (18 percent); and class size (16 percent).
The survey of more than 1,000 principals
from across the country was conducted in
January.
-DENISA R. SUPERVILLE

Multitasking with a mobile phone
negatively affects students' lecture recall, reading comprehension, and reading speed, finds an analysis presented
last week at the annual meeting of the
American Educational Research Association.
The worst effects are from using socialmedia platforms such as Facebook and
Twitter, according to the paper by doctoral student Quan Chen and associate
professor Zheng Yan of the University at
Albany, State University of New York.
They used statistical methods to aggregate results of 29 prior studies on the topic,
published between 2003 and 2016. The
studies included more than 1,900 participants (often in college).
-BENJAMIN HEROLD

A Believer
Still, Bush
Stands Tall
On NCLB Law
The federal law he championed
has been replaced by a measure
touted as more flexible and fairer
to schools, but former President
George W. Bush sees clear reasons
to stand up for the No Child Left
Behind Act.
In an appearance in San Diego
last week at a conference of
education business officials, Bush
defended the law he signed in 2002,
which became a polarizing symbol of
the testing-and-accountability era.
"For the first time, in return for
money, people had to show results. I
view it as one of the great pieces of
civil rights legislation," Bush said
at the ASU/GSV Summit.
Previously, states and schools
could skate by on middling student
achievement and faced no consequences for not delivering results,
he said.
"Finally, someone came along
and said, 'Measure it,' " Bush said.
"People said it's unfair to teachers,
or there's no role for government
in education like that, ... and my
answer was, first of all, it's fair
to kids. And second, if we spend
money, damn right we want to
know if it's working."
Bush gave the keynote speech
at the conference, a magnet for
education companies and startups,
entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, and others with an interest in
the K-12 and college markets.
The NCLB law required states to
test annually in reading and math
and to bring all students up to
"proficiency" by the 2013-14 school
year-though it allowed states to
define the standard for proficiency.
Schools were required to improve
their scores yearly or face increasingly stiff penalties.
Critics of the law said it forced
districts and teachers to focus too
much on preparing students for
high-stakes tests at the expense
of more well-rounded classroom
strategies. The law's backers
argued that it cast a spotlight on
underperforming schools, holding
them to account and helping students whose needs were previously
ignored.
In 2015, Congress replaced No
Child Left Behind with the Every
Student Succeeds Act, which gives
states and districts more flexibility
in spending and policy, including
decisions about standards for improving low-performing schools.
Bush told the ASU/GSV attendees that "maybe there was overtesting" under NCLB. But he also
argued that it forced policymakers
to set expectations for students who
too many educators and policymakers had given up on.
-SEAN CAVANAGH

Education Week - April 25, 2018

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - April 25, 2018