Education Week - July 15, 2020 - 2

Graduation Events Spread
Virus, Despite Emphasis
On Safety Measures
Don't drink and drive. Add another piece of graduation advice from high school principals these
days: Keep your distance.
Health officials in at least a half-dozen states have
traced coronavirus clusters to high school and college graduations. In several of those outbreaks,
school and district leaders found their creative efforts to provide a virus-safe ceremony may have
been thwarted by students and guests abandoning
social-distancing rules soon afterwards.
Christine Ackerman, the superintendent of the
Chappaqua district in New York, said her district
planned with the local health department and "repeatedly provided clear guidance and protocols for
families" on how to stay safe and socially distant
during the graduation ceremony for Horace Greeley
High School. "Unfortunately, at the event, and despite police presence, numerous individuals failed
to follow our protocols."
On the weekend of June 20, a student returned
from a visit to hotspot Florida to attend the commencement, followed by days of private parties
and a large, multicommunity graduation celebration that included juniors and seniors from Horace
Greeley and surrounding schools. That student became the first of a still-expanding cluster of at least
19 coronavirus cases in Westchester County.
Elsewhere, fully half the new coronavirus cases
in Lane County, Ore., have come from a 20-person
cluster following a college graduation and another
11-person cluster following high school graduations.
In both the New York outbreak and another following postgraduation house parties in New Orleans, witnesses told health officials that students
packed inside private homes without masks. The
Crescent City's health director, Jennifer Avegno,
called the private parties "superspreader events" in
a city struggling to contain new outbreaks.
The independent Lovett School in Atlanta honored seniors with a car parade in mid-May, but several students tested positive for COVID-19 in the
days that followed. School officials later learned
about several social gatherings after the parade
but did not know whether guests at the off-campus
events followed health recommendations.

Suicidal behavior 10,840
Injury 7,830
3,385 Fighting/Physical aggression
2,738 Accident
2,416 Inappropriate conduct by employee

As districts debate the use of
police in schools, a new analysis by
researchers suggests disruptive

2,406 Medical

incidents in the Los Angeles Unified
school district are increasingly

2,169 Threat

related to mental-health needs. The
data show the top 10 reported issues

1,398 Sex crime/inappropriate behavior

for 2018-2019.

1,296 Illegal/controlled substance
SOURCE: Black Male InstituteUniversity of California, Los Angeles

1,228 Bullying

Department of Education Prediction Comes True:
States Sue Over COVID-19 School Funding
Who knew U.S. Department of Education officials were
soothsayers?
Jim Blew, the department's assistant secretary for planning,
evaluation, and policy development, told reporters during a
conference call last month that he expected the department
to be sued over the rule that, essentially, requires public
school districts to share federal coronavirus aid with all private school students-poor or wealthy. 
His prediction came true last week when attorneys general
from five states-California, Maine, Michigan, New Mexico,
and Wisconsin-and the District of Columbia sued to overturn the recently published rule.
The rule says districts that share CARES Act funds with
all their schools, including those that didn't get federal aid
for low-income students in the last school year, must reserve money to provide certain services to all local private
school students.
"The Trump administration is undermining the rule of
law" and defying Congress, California Attorney General
Xavier Becerra said in a press conference. "It's not just sinful.

It's against the law. ... Ultimately, it's a shakedown of public
schools across the country."
In April, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos released nonbinding guidance telling districts to reserve a portion of CARES
Act funding to provide equitable services, like tutoring, to all private school students. But critics argued that the law only directs
districts to provide equitable services to low-income students. 
On July 1, the department published an interim final rule
that gives districts two choices for equitable services. In one
scenario, they can limit equitable services just for low-income
private school students, but then they have to send CARES
aid only to public schools that got Title I aid for disadvantaged
students in the last school year. In the other, they can provide
equitable services to private school students in general and
then have the freedom to provide CARES relief to public
schools regardless of their Title I status.
The attorneys general seem to have Congress' research arm
on their side. In a report published earlier this month, it said
the evidence suggests DeVos' approach to equitable services
does not match the law.

Even With More Experience, Black Administrators and Women
Less Likely to Be Promoted to Principal Than White Men
Who's more likely to get promoted to principal: a) a white man; b) a
Black man; c) a Black woman; or d) a white woman?
No surprise here. The answer is: a) a white man. But dig a little
deeper into new research by Lauren P. Bailes, an assistant professor of education leadership at the University of Delaware, and Sarah
Guthery, an assistant professor at Texas A&M University-Commerce,
and you will find some revelations.
In their study, published in AERA Open, the pair found that Black
men got that promotion faster than women of any race and that Black
and white women were similarly situated in attaining that goal.
What's more, men in the study sample had, on average, less experience-as much as 20 months less-than women, despite being more
likely to be selected for a principalship.
The researchers looked specifically at assistant principals and how
they end up shaping the administrative labor force. Black assistant
principals had to wait longer-more than half a year-than their white
peers to become principals and were 18 percent less likely to earn the
2 | EDUCATION WEEK | July 15, 2020 | www.edweek.org

promotion than equally qualified white candidates. And at the high
school level, it took women of all races more than two-thirds of a year
longer to be promoted to the principalship, and they were about 5 percent to 7 percent less likely to be promoted than men.
So who's responsible for helping to change these patterns? The researchers put the responsibility pretty squarely on the shoulders of
superintendents, who have the most control over who ends up leading
the schools in their districts.
The findings resonate with the nation's current conversation over
structural racism and how it's replicated in public institutions, including schools. But the researchers noted that there's room for optimism,
too: Lots of qualified would-be-principals are waiting in the wings.
"If offers a lot of hope to realize there are people in the pipeline
who are qualified and are interested in leading schools, and they
can choose to really invest in those people," said Guthery.  "And it
might be a lot shorter timeline than you would think to close some
of these gaps." 

BRIEFLY STATED CONTRIBUTORS:

Stephen Sawchuk, Sarah D. Sparks,
and Andrew Ujifusa. Edited by Karen
Diegmueller.
http://www.edweek.org
Education Week - July 15, 2020

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