Education Week - May 21, 2014 - 4

neWs IN brIef
U.S. Senators Release Draft
Of Changes to Privacy Law
In the hope of upgrading the security
of sensitive student information
held by private companies, a
bipartisan pair of U.S. senators
last week released a draft of a bill
that would amend the Family Educational
Rights and Privacy Act of
1974.
Among other changes, the proposed
Protecting Student Privacy
Act of 2014, issued by Sen. Edward
Markey, D-Mass., and Sen. Orrin
Hatch, R-Utah, would mandate
new data-security safeguards for
private companies; prohibit the use
of personally identifiable student
information for advertising; and
provide parents with the right to
access and amend their children's
information.
The proposed revisions to ferpa
would also require districts to
maintain a record of all the outside
companies that have access to student
information; promote "data
minimization"; and require that all
personally identifiable information
held by outside parties eventually
be destroyed to prevent them from
maintaining permanent dossiers on
students.
-BENJAMIN HEROLD
Charters, Closings Targeted
In Civil Rights Complaints
Minority communities are unfairly
targeted for school closures, according
to complaints filed last week
with the U.S. departments of Education
and Justice.
The Advancement Project, a civil
rights advocacy group based in
Washington, filed three complaints
alleging that school closures and
privatization in Chicago, New Orleans,
and Newark, N.J., violated
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of
1964 because they disproportionately
affected African-American and
Latino communities.
The complaints also contend that
schools in minority communities
are targeted for privatization as
school systems turn to private organizations
to manage public charter
schools.
-ARIANNA PROTHERO
Mass. High Court Upholds
Pledge of Allegiance
Massachusetts' highest court has
upheld a state law that requires
schools to lead daily recitations of
the Pledge of Allegiance, and it ruled
that the inclusion of "under God" in
the pledge does not violate the state
equal-protection rights of atheist
and humanist students.
The Supreme Judicial Court this
month ruled 7-0 in the case brought
against the Acton-Boxborough
school district. A family identified
only as Doe argued that schools conduct
a patriotic exercise that "exalts
and validates" one religious view
while marginalizing their "religious
views" on atheism and humanism,
in violation of the state constitution.
The state high court said inclusion
of the words "under God" did
not turn the pledge into a religious
exercise nor did there appear to be
any evidence that the Doe children
had been punished, criticized, ostracized,
or bullied for refusing to recite
those words during the daily pledge
exercise.
-MARK WALSH
Ohio Judge Dismisses
Lawsuit Over Bullying
A judge in northeastern Ohio has
dismissed a lawsuit claiming that officials
at a high school were negligent
in allowing bullying that eventually
drove a student to commit suicide.
Sladjana Vidovi's parents filed the
suit in 2010 against administrators
at Mentor High School and the Mentor
district, east of Cleveland. It argued
they were negligent by failing
to properly investigate, report, and
respond to the bullying. The 16-yearold
girl hanged herself in 2008.
Judge Eugene Lucci this month
dismissed the claims against all defendants.
He wrote that the school
did take steps to address the bullying
and help the girl. -ASSOCIATED PRESS
Common Application Makes
Changes After Tough Year
The creators of the Common Application
for college admissions say they
have made changes that should prevent
snags that had the high school
class of 2014 tweeting horror stories.
The Common Application is acTHE
WORLD IS WATCHING
A girl from a South African school
displays a poster demanding the
return of girls kidnapped from a
school in Nigeria by an extremist
group. The event has ignited a viral
social-media campaign, bringing
attention to Boko Haram's violence.
REPORT ROUNDUP www.edweek.org/go/rr
ABILITY GROUPING
"An International Comparison of Achievement Inequality in Withinand
Between-School Tracking Systems"
Regardless of the form it takes, academic tracking does little
to close achievement gaps between students, according to a
20-nation study published this month in the American Journal
of Education.
Most Seniors Unprepared for College, NAEP Analysis Finds
The governing board for "the nation's report card"
concludes in a new analysis that only 39 percent of
12th graders are prepared for entry-level college
courses in math and 38 percent are ready in reading.
The announcement came a week after a fresh set of
National Assessment of Educational Progress data,
for 2013, showed no change in seniors' average scores
in either reading or mathematics, as compared with
2009, when 12th graders were last tested.
The National Assessment Governing Board analysis
unveiled last week seeks to shed light on what
those scores mean for students' academic preparedness
for college.
Nagb set a cutoff score for the level of achievement
a student must reach to be considered academically
prepared for college. In math, students must score
at least 163, on a 300-point scale, to be considered
prepared for college; in reading, they must score 302,
on a 500-point scale.
In 2013, the average scores for the nation were 153
in math and 288 in reading.
Naep has long used a proficiency score indicating
whether students are successful with challenging
content. The academic-preparedness score set by
nagb is the same as the proficiency score in math.
In reading, it is 13 points below the proficiency score.
The governing board determined the academic-preparedness
scores by reviewing more than 30 studies
over a 10-year period. The studies looked at whether
the content on naep is aligned with other tests, such
as the sat and the act; the relationship between performance
on naep and other tests; and cutoff scores
on college-placement tests, among other factors.
-LIANA HEITIN
Around the world, researchers say, tracking tends to take two
forms: traditional rigid high school tracking, such as that between
academic and vocational programs; and a subtler, more
flexible system in which students can enroll in different levels
of classes for different subjects. To compare student outcomes
for countries using each system, researchers drew on data from
the 2003 Program for International Student Assessment, or
pIsa, math results for 99,000 15-year-olds in 3,400 schools.
While the two systems differ in important ways, "in terms of the
key outcome-math achievement gaps between tracks-they do
not differ dramatically," concludes author Anna K. Chmielewski,
a postdoctoral fellow in Michigan State University's Pathways to
Adulthood program.
-HOLLY YETTICK
READING
"Children, Teens, and Reading"
A prominent child-advocacy group is calling for stepped-up research
into the impact of digital technology on children's reading.
" 'Reading' used to mean sitting down with a book and turning
pages as a story unfolded. Today it may mean sitting down with
a device that offers multimedia experiences and blurs the line between
books and toys," says a news release accompanying the report
from the San Francisco-based nonprofit Common Sense Media.
In a review of existing research and data, Common Sense Media
found an abundance of evidence pointing to worrisome trends in
children's reading habits and abilities in recent decades. But it
4 | EDUCATION WEEK | May 21, 2014 | www.edweek.org
Denis Farrell/AP
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Education Week - May 21, 2014

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