Education Week - May 10, 2017 - 5

Wash. State District Cancels
International Field Trips
A district in Washington state has halted all international field trips over concerns students in the
country illegally wouldn't be able to get back in.
The decision immediately canceled an education
exchange to Japan, and a band trip to Canada.
District spokesman Chris Loftis said confusing
messages from President Donald Trump's administration caused uncertainty about whether students
would be allowed back into the United States.
When a school official called U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the agency said there was a very high
chance a student would be detained at the border if he
or she lacked information to return, Loftis said.
-AP

New York City to Expand
Preschool to 3-Year-Olds

TRANSITIONS

NIKOLAI VITTI, the
superintendent of the Duval
County district in Jacksonville,
Fla., has been selected as the
head of the new Detroit school
system, pending contract
negotiations.
The job would bring
Vitti back to the Detroit
metropolitan area, where
he grew up.
He has led the Duval
County schools since 2012.
Robert F. Bukaty/AP

The grant money is for new schools opened by
sponsors receiving ratings of "effective" or "exemplary." Ohio officials say only five of 65 sponsors
achieved effective ratings, and none was rated exemplary last fall.
David Hansen, Ohio's former charter schools chief,
resigned in 2015 after acknowledging he omitted
data of poor-performing online charter schools in
evaluations of their sponsors.
-ASSOCIATED PRESS

Associated Press
Investigation

DONNA HARGENS, the

New York City, which in three years expanded
its prekindergarten program to serve all the city's
4-year-olds, now plans to offer a universal program
for 3-year-olds-and it expects that the state and the
federal government will contribute money to make
that happen.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said the program plans to
start by serving 3-year-olds in the South Bronx and
in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Brownsville, two of
the city's lowest-income areas. It will continue expanding based on neighborhood districts until universal access is achieved by 2021. -CHRISTINA A. SAMUELS

Agreement With State Saves Schools
In Detroit From Forced Closure
Two dozen Detroit schools have been saved from
forced closure after the district school board signed
on to a deal with the state that will give Detroit the
ultimate authority to control the future of the schools.
The schools had been identified for closure by the
Michigan School Reform Office because they've ranked
in the bottom academically for three straight years.
The 24 schools will also benefit from a partnership with four state universities that have signed
on to help.
-TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

racial bias in hiring: Applicants who had names
commonly associated with African-Americans
and Hispanics were less likely to be called back
for interviews. That finding was surprising, they
said, considering that the early-childhood workforce is 40 percent nonwhite. -CHRISTINA A. SAMUELS
EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES
"Education Needs to Improve Oversight of
21st-Century Program"
The 21st-Century Community Learning
Centers, which receives federal funding to
provide after-school and summer programs
and other enrichment activities, needs
more oversight, finds a new report from the
federal Government Accountability Office.
The U.S. Department of Education "lacks
useful data" about the programs' effects on
children's attendance and discipline, even
though research suggests the program
helps in those areas, the GAO found.

Chaz, a high school student in Brunswick, Maine, has testified that he was raped by classmates
three times in junior high, even after he complained of harassment. The Associated Press
chronicles how thousands of students have been sexually assaulted by other students.

superintendent of the Jefferson
County, Ky., school system,
which includes Louisville and
is the state's largest district,
will resign, effective July 1.
Hargens came to the
district in 2011 from the
Wake County, N.C., system,
where she was the chief
academic officer.

S. DALLAS DANCE has
announced that he will
step down as the
superintendent of the
Baltimore County, Md.,
district, as of June 30.
He has led the district
since 2012. Dance previously
served as the chief middle
school officer in the Houston
school system.

Student-on-Student
Sexual Assaults
MICHAEL MARTIRANO,
will serve as acting
superintendent of the
Howard County, Md.,
schools. Martirano is
a longtime Maryland
educator who also served
as West Virginia's state
education chief.
He replaces RENEE
FOOSE, who has been
locked in a power struggle
with the district's school
board and has resigned
her post.

Programs receiving grant money tend to
have a more positive effect on behavioral
outcomes than on reading and math scores,
the report says, but only 26 states choose to
measure either the attendance or disciplinary
records of students who participate, or both.
Moreover, the Education Department had not
set any performance measures for social-emotional skills, though social-skill development
is one of the program's goals, the GAO found.
-ANDREW UJIFUSA

STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES
"Prevalence of Visual Impairment Among
Preschool Children"
The number of preschool children with visual impairments is expected to rise significantly by 2060, says a new study in the journal JAMA Ophthalmology.
Researchers from the University of Southern
California analyzed data from two national

JOE GOTHARD,
the superintendent of
Minnesota's BurnsvilleEagan-Savage school
district, has been tapped
to lead the nearby
St. Paul schools.
Gothard, who came
on board in BurnsvilleEagan-Savage in
2013, previously
was an assistant
superintendent
in Madison, Wis.

population studies on the rates of children
ages 3 to 5 who were diagnosed with visual
impairments. Early vision problems also put
students at greater risk of delays in cognitive
and motor development.
As of 2015, the researchers found 174,000
young children had vision problems, with white
Hispanic children making up the largest share,
at 38 percent. In the next 45 years, researchers
predict the number of young children with impaired vision will rise 26 percent, with the biggest increases in California, Florida, and Texas.
White Hispanic children are expected to make
up 44 percent of vision problems, while the rate
for non-Hispanic white children is expected to
drop by 21 percent during that time.
Because most vision problems in early childhood can be corrected, the authors said, "vision
screening in preschool age and follow-up care
will have a significant, prolonged effect on visual function and academic and social achievements and therefore should be recommended
for all children."
-SARAH D. SPARKS

Sexual assaults occurred anywhere
students were left unsupervised, in buses
and bathrooms, hallways and locker
rooms-a hidden horror of thousands of
attacks in high schools, junior highs, and
even elementary schools.
The attackers were other students-
some as young as 5.
In a series of stories released last week,
The Associated Press reveals how student
sexual assaults by peers are far more
common than those by teachers.
Relying on state education records and
federal crime data, the AP's yearlong
investigation uncovered about 17,000
official reports of sexual assaults by
students in U.S. schools over a recent fouryear period.
That figure-which represents the
most complete tally yet of student sexual
assault in grades K-12-is a decided
undercount, because such attacks are
greatly underreported, there are no federal
tracking mandates, and states vary widely
in how they classify and catalog sexual
violence in school.
The sexual violence that the AP
tracked-including rape, sodomy,
forced oral sex, and fondling-often
was mischaracterized as bullying,
harassment, or hazing. And schools
frequently were unwilling or ill-equipped
to address the problem.
Read the first installment of s tories
at www.edweek.org/go/APsexassault,
including one student's terrifying ordeal,
research into the problem, state-by-state
policies and data, and guidance for schools
and parents. Subsequent installments will
be published in mid- and late May.
-ASSOCIATED PRESS

Education Week - May 10, 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - May 10, 2017