Education Week - May 11, 2016 - 5

REPORT ROUNDUP

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STUDENT ENROLLMENT
applicants have little or no teaching experience.
Officials said more than 8,300
people from 98 countries have registered on the department website,
and nearly 5,000 of them have
completed their applications.
The department is expected to
have as many as 1,600 vacancies
next school year and has sent recruitment teams to meet with applicants throughout the United
States.
-AP

Agreement Reached
For Arizona ELLs
At the behest of the federal government, the Arizona education department will take steps to correct
civil rights violations that have affected thousands of K-12 Englishlanguage learners.
The U.S. departments of Justice and Education found that,
since the 2012-13 school year, the
state has failed to properly identify English-learners and prematurely labeled others as fluent in
English, cutting off their access to
language-assistance programs.
The settlement requires the
state to raise its standards for the
reading and writing tests it uses
to determine English proficiency.
It must also ensure that districts
offer language-support services to
thousands of students who were
prematurely moved out of programs or incorrectly identified as
English proficient.
-COREY MITCHELL

Pa. Teacher Faces Trial
For Urging Student Walkout
A former charter school teacher
is set for trial on dozens of summary charges of corruption of minors after encouraging hundreds
of students to walk out of school in
Allentown, Pa., last year.
Michael Frassetto, 29, allegedly
encouraged students at the Medical Academy Charter School to
walk out in September to call for
better treatment of minorities and

more textbooks and other supplies. He has said that the walkouts were in the best interests of
the students, and that he merely
helped them speak up for themselves.
The district has said encouraging
truancy is an unlawful disruption
of the educational process.
-AP

Wis. Police Kill Gunman
Outside School Prom
Police seized spent ammunition,
a gun sling, and journals from the
home of an 18-year-old who opened
fire on students at a prom at his
former school in northern Wisconsin before being fatally shot by an
officer, court records show.
Jakob Wagner was shot multiple
times to stop the attack. He was
taken to a hospital where he was
pronounced dead.
Officers were checking cars in
the Antigo High School parking lot
last month when Wagner opened
fire and wounded two people as
they left the dance, according to
police. One 18-year-old male student was struck in the leg, and a
bullet grazed his date's thigh. Both
are recovering.
Authorities haven't revealed a
motive in the case, but people who
knew Wagner have said he was
bullied.
-AP

Low Enrollment Spells
End for STEM High School
The first science-focused high
school on Long Island, N.Y., is
slated to close in June because of
a $1 million budget gap and low
enrollment.
The Doshi STEM Institute,
which focuses on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics,
opened in 2013.
Its closing will affect 46 students
in grades 9-11, one-quarter less
than what was needed to keep the
school going. The projected enrollment for the 2016-17 academic
year was only 50 students.
-AP

| TRANSITIONS |
James H. Shelton, a former U.S. deputy secretary
of education, will head the education efforts of the
multibillion-dollar philanthropic organization created
last fall by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his
wife, pediatrician Priscilla Chan.
Shelton departed the Education Department last
summer to become the president and chief impact
officer of 2U Inc., an education technology company. He
previously worked as a program director at the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation and as a partner at the NewSchools Venture Fund.
Sonja Santelises, a former chief academic officer in the
Baltimore district, will become CEO as of July 1.
She replaces Gregory Thornton, who came to the
district in 2014.
Santelises is the vice president of K-12 policy and
practice at the Education Trust, a Washington-based
education policy organization. She also served as an
assistant superintendent of pilot schools and assistant
superintendent in charge of professional development in the Boston
school system.

"Digest of Education Statistics 2014"
After relatively flat enrollment through
the end of the 2000s, public K-12 enrollment
started to tick up again in 2014, according to
the federal government's latest Digest of Education Statistics.
In it, the National Center for Education Statistics predicts total K-12 enrollment will continue
to grow from 55 million students today to an alltime high of 57.9 million by 2024, with secondary
school enrollment rising 3 percent in that period.
"The elementary enrollments have been primarily
about demographics," because more children overall
are being born and 99 percent of children in the age
group for elementary grades are enrolled, said Tom
Snyder, the NCES program director for annual reports like the digest. "But in terms of high school,
we've had increased graduation rates, so more young
people are remaining in school longer, too."
The rate of 16- to 24-year-olds who had not completed high school and were not in school dropped
from 12.1 percent in 1990 to 6.8 percent in 2013.
-SARAH D. SPARKS

TESTING
"Make Assessment Work for All Students: Multiple
Measures Matter"
Parents, students, teachers, and administrators
place greater value on classroom tests and formative assessments than they do on summative tests
used for accountability, according to a survey.
The results, from a Gallup poll released last
week, reflect a view reported widely: that families and educators find statewide accountability
testing to have limited value. It was commissioned by the Northwest Evaluation Association, which has a keen interest in these matters: The NWEA is the maker of the widely
used MAP formative assessments.
Gallup examined the attitudes of 4,200 students, parents, teachers, principals, and superintendents.
-CATHERINE GEWERTZ
EARLY-CHILDHOOD TEACHERS
"Leading Colorado's Early Care and Education
Workforce"
Early educators, including center directors, make
far less than other Colorado professionals with similar
degrees, says a report by Qualistar Colorado and the
Women's Foundation of Colorado.
Most early-childhood teachers in that state earn
between $20,800 and $31,200 per year, according to
survey results summarized in the report, which was
released last month. That means salaries only meet
the standards for a self-sufficient wage in one Colorado county. Average salaries are higher when school
leaders are included, but still below the bar for selfsufficiency, the report notes.
The early education workforce in Colorado is 97 percent female and 86 percent white. About 40 percent
of early educators hold a bachelor's degree, but more
than half of those degrees are in an unrelated field.
-LILLIAN MONGEAU

TEENAGE PREGNANCY
"Reduced Disparities in Birth Rates Among Teens Ages
15-19 in the U.S."
Births to American teenagers have dropped 40
percent in the past decade, hitting an all-time low
in 2014, according to the most recent federal data
released last week.
But the U.S. teenage-pregnancy rate is still "substantially higher" than in other Western, industrialized nations, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. In 2014, a total of 249,078 babies were born to
girls ages 15 to 19, a birthrate of 24.2 per 1,000 teenage
girls, the CDC reports. That represents an historic low for
U.S. teenagers and a drop of 9 percent from 2013.

'Balanced' Technology Diet
Prescribed for Teens, Parents
"Technology Addiction: Concern, Controversy,
and Finding Balance"
Although researchers have yet to reach a consensus on whether 'Internet addiction' is real, parents
are increasingly-and justifiably-concerned about
their children's technology and media usage, according to a new report released last week by Common
Sense Media.
The tonic, the report suggests, is a "balanced" technology diet for children that includes tech-free times and
zones. Common Sense also recommends that parents
and caregivers put down their own phones while driving, at the dinner table, and during family time.
The report consists of a literature review of more
than 180 journal articles, press accounts, interviews,
books, and industry papers on the topic, as well as a
new, nationally representative phone survey of 620
mobile-phone-using parents and 620 of their mobilephone-using children between the ages of 12 and 18.
Among the findings:
* Fifty-nine percent of parents-but just 27 percent
of teenagers-feel that teens are addicted to their mobile devices.
* Seventy-eight percent of teens check their devices
at least hourly, compared to 69 percent of parents.
* Roughly one-third of both parents and teens said
they argued about device use daily, and more than
three-fourths of parents reported feeling that their
teens are distracted by devices and don't pay attention to family members at least a few times per week.
The report also notes, however, that researchers have
not established any formal link between social media
usage and decreasing empathy among teens. And it
says research is limited on the developmental impact of
extensive Internet and mobile device usage on tweens
and teens.
-BENJAMIN HEROLD

Pregnancy rates for Hispanic and black teenagers,
which fell 51 percent and 44 percent, respectively,
contributed to the overall drop, the CDC found. But
nationally, birthrates remain twice as high for teenagers in those groups as they are for white teenagers, the
agency said, adding "in some states, birth rates among
Hispanic and black teens were more than three times
as high as those of whites."
Public-health advocates credit a variety of factors
for the declining teenage-pregnancy rate, including
expanded access to contraceptive information outside of schools, more teenagers choosing to delay
sexual activity, improved sex education programs in
some areas, and access to long-term contraceptives
like intrauterine devices.
-EVIE BLAD
PHYSICAL EDUCATION
"2016 Shape of the Nation"
A new report finds that most states are lagging
behind when it comes to meeting recommendations
for physical education.
Only Oregon and the District of Columbia require
the amount of weekly physical education time recommended by national experts at the elementary
and middle school levels, the report found.
SHAPE America (Society of Health and Physical
Educators) and Voices for Healthy Kids, a joint initiative of the American Heart Association and the Robert
Wood Johnson Foundation, produced the study.
The authors recommend that elementary schools
provide students with 150 minutes per week of instructional P.E., while middle and high schools should
provide 225 minutes per week. But only 37 percent of
states require that a specific amount of time be spent
in gym class in elementary school. That percentage
drops to 29 percent in middle and high schools. And
62 percent of states permit schools to allow students
to substitute other activities for physical education.
-MARVA HINTON

EDUCATION WEEK | May 11, 2016 | www.edweek.org | 5

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Education Week - May 11, 2016

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