Education Week - May 11, 2016 - 4

NEWS IN BRIEF
Detroit Restructuring Plan
Advances During Sickouts
Michigan lawmakers were moving
last week to advance a $500 million
plan to restructure Detroit public
schools by creating a new district-a
vote intended to ease the concerns of
teachers who had shut down the district for two days by calling out sick.
Teachers staged the protest out of
fear they might not get paid if the
district runs out of money.
The plan aims to ensure that the
newly created district could spend
more on academics if freed of debt
payments. But lawmakers remain
at odds over some issues. The House
bill, for instance, would restrict
labor contracts.
-ASSOCIATED PRESS

AASA, the School Superintendents
Association, has launched an initiative to help women reach the superintendency earlier in their careers and
persist once they are on the job.
The AASA is still putting together
the building blocks of the initiative,
More Than A Power Lunch: Building
Networks to Support and Advance
Women in School Leadership, but
officials say that they expected the
program to benefit women who are
both aspiring and current superintendents.
The organization has assembled
a team of 10 women from the K-12,
education research, and business
worlds who will serve as partners
and mentors to those in the program. This team is expected to
tackle some of the barriers women
face in moving up the ranks and
come up with a plan to address
those issues.
-DENISA R. SUPERVILLE

Suicide Rate Triples
For Girls Ages 10-14
Suicide rates across the nation
are on the rise, according to new
data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But
even though the numbers of suicides for children remain low compared with other populations, girls
10-14 had the highest growth of
any group between 1999 and 2014.
In that time, the rate of suicides
for girls in that age group tripled-
from 0.5 per 100,000 people to 1.5
per 100,000 people.
For boys ages 10-14, the rate
climbed from 1.9 per 100,000 people
to 2.6. Among females ages 15-24, the
rate grew from 3 to 4.6 per 100,000
people, and among males in that age
group, it grew from 16.8 to 18.2 per
100,000 people, the data show.
Suicide-prevention organizations
say they have taken a new approach
with schools in recent years, working to help teachers identify warning
signs of suicide and mental-health issues at earlier ages.
-EVIE BLAD

Popular Math Text Found
Unaligned to Common Core
The most recent round of textbook
reviews from EdReports.org show
that Everyday Math, which is used

Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

AASA Launches Effort
To Boost Women Leaders

'DREAMING BIGGER'
President Barack Obama,
accompanied by U.S. Secretary
of Education John B. King Jr.,
right, hosts 2016 National
Teacher of the Year Jahana Hayes
last week during a ceremony
at the White House. Hayes
is a social studies teacher
at John F. Kennedy High School
in Waterbury, Conn. Her passion
for education stems from her own
background. She was a teenage
mother in high school and was
witness to a "cycle of drugs,
welfare, and abuse" in her
family. Teachers "challenged
me to dream bigger and imagine
myself in a different set of
circumstances," she wrote in her
application.

in about 200,000 classrooms around
the country, does not meet the expectations of the Common Core
State Standards.
The newest reviews were released
last week. Everyday Math, a particularly popular K-6 math program
developed by the University of Chicago, did not meet the expectations
for alignment at any grade level.
Publisher McGraw-Hill called the
review "incomplete, inaccurate, and
misleading."
EdReports.org also found that
Math Innovations, a middle school
curriculum by Kendall Hunt, did not
meet expectations. Stepping Stones,
by Origo Education, partially met
expectations at some grade levels.
Bridges in Mathematics performed quite well: The K-5 materials were found to be both aligned to
the common core and easy to use at
all grade levels.
-LIANA HEITIN

4 | EDUCATION WEEK | May 11, 2016 | www.edweek.org

Ed. Dept. Seeks Reversal
Of Transgender Actions
The U.S. Department of Justice
last week put North Carolina Gov.
Pat McCrory on notice that a new
state law that forbids local antidiscrimination ordinances and
restricts which restrooms transgender students can use at school
violates the federal Civil Rights
Act, The Charlotte Observer reports.
The notice, which asks McCrory
to remedy the situation by ensuring that the law will not be implemented, came on the same day
that a group of Illinois parents and
students sued the U.S. Department
of Education over its position on
transgender students.
The suit challenges the federal
agency's assertion that Title IX
requires schools to allow students
to access sex-segregated facilities
based on their gender identity,
even if it differs from their sex at
birth.
The suit appears to be the first
federal challenge of the department's position on transgender
students.
-E.B.

Changes Coming
To National Spelling Bee
After two straight years of ties,
the Scripps National Spelling Bee
is adding more sting: The championship rounds will last longer, and
the words will be harder.
The bee, now televised in prime
time by ESPN, has exploded in
popularity over the past two decades. And the spellers have gotten
increasingly savvy. So instead of
sticking to a list of 25 "championship words" selected weeks earlier, the final rounds could have as
many as 75 words. And the organizers can choose harder words on

the fly if the spellers don't appear
to be struggling.
Rewards will also be bigger for
the May 24-26 championship. The
first-place cash prize is rising from
$30,000 to $40,000, while second
place will now get $30,000 and
third place, $20,000.
-AP

In Texas, Administrators
Arrested for Cheating
Five El Paso educators have been
charged with scheming to defraud
the federal accountability system
and, in some cases, retaliating
against co-workers who cooperated
with the FBI's 5½-year investigation of the Texas school district.
One of the administrators arrested was a former El Paso Independent school district associate
superintendent, while the other
four worked at Austin High School.
Several have maintained their innocence.
Two other former district administrators had been previously
charged in the cheating scheme,
which sought to falsely boost the
school system's accountability
scores by a variety of means, including preventing limited-English
proficiency students from taking
the test used by Texas to measure
progress under the federal No
Child Left Behind law. -TRIBUNE NEWS
SERVICE

Board Chairman Accused
Of Cheating on GED Resigns
The chairman of a Kentucky
school board, who dropped out of
high school at 17, has been accused
by Kentucky state police of cheating
on the GED exam.
State police found surveillance
video showing another person taking the test in the name of Dexter
Smith, the Knox County school

board chairman.
The issue erupted when a local
newspaper reported that the online
school listed on Smith's diploma is
an unaccredited "diploma mill,"
described by the Better Business
Bureau as a scam.
The Kentucky education department requires that school board
members have a high school diploma or a GED. Police say Smith
signed a statement declaring he met
the requirements when he ran for
office three years ago. He has since
resigned from the board.
-AP

Reading Coaches to Be Put
In All N.Y.C. Primary Schools
As part of a larger equity-focused
agenda announced by Mayor Bill
de Blasio and Chancellor Carmen
Fariña last fall, New York City will
put one reading coach, on average,
in every elementary school.
The district is currently looking
to hire about 100 reading coaches
for this September, and officials are
planning to fill all the positions by
the 2018-19 school year.
The coaches will train and support K-2 teachers in their schools.
They'll receive intensive professional development over the summer to get ready for the role. The
district is also pushing efforts to
get all students taking Algebra 1
by the end of 9th grade and to require all schools to offer computer
science courses.
-L.H.

Teacher Applications
Flood Hawaii Schools
Hawaii's education department
has been inundated with thousands of applications from people
all over the world after bringing
attention to the state's teacher
shortage, but officials say it has
been frustrating to find that many

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Education Week - May 11, 2016

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