Education Week - August 29, 2018 - 4

NEWS IN BRIEF
In Midterm-Campaign Ads,
Education Is a Wallflower
Watching to see if a "blue wave" helps Democrats take
control of one chamber of Congress next year? Don't expect a lot of education talk to wash up on shore.
The nonpartisan Cook Political Report has worked
with CMAG Kantar Media to study how often different issues like education, health care, immigration,
and taxes, as well as President Donald Trump, were
mentioned in House and Senate campaign ads since
the beginning of this year.
Mentioned by just 31,582 ads in 2018, education
appeared in the second-fewest ads among the 11 issues and people studied. In fact, only House Minority
Leader Nancy Pelosi got fewer mentions. By contrast,
more than five times as many ads mentioned health
care than the number that mentioned education.
-ANDREW UJIFUSA

The Lovejoy Independent school district in Texas
last week became the first K-12 school system in the
country to roll out the MadeSafe Alert System, a
security technology in which all staff members are
outfitted with personal panic buttons they can use to
sound the alarm on anything from school shooters to
medical emergencies.
The panic buttons look like a key fob and can be
attached to a lanyard. They contain wireless transmitters that provide precise location information
after a red button is depressed for three seconds.
Those transmissions are communicated to "gateway" devices installed throughout the facility. The
gateway devices transmit information directly to law
enforcement and other designated first responders.
The surge in companies offering new K-12 security
technologies follows last school year's high-profile
shootings at high schools in Florida and Texas.
-BENJAMIN HEROLD

In Anticipation of Major Hurricane,
Hawaii Shuts Down Public Schools
All of Hawaii's public schools were closed down last
week in anticipation of a powerful hurricane.
The state education department said schools were
expected to reopen Aug. 27. Many are used as emergency shelters.
Because of Hurricane Lane's anticipated arrival,
state workers were told to stay home as well, unless
they are considered essential employees.

Mark Humphrey/AP

Texas District Outfits All Staff
With Panic-Button System

Testing Troubles
Tennessee Gov. Bill
Haslam last week
announces a statewide
tour to hear ideas to
improve the state's
problem-plagued onlinetesting process. The tour
will include six stops for
teachers, administrators,
and technology and
assessment coordinators
to discuss recent
problems administering
the tests and offer
suggestions for
improvements.

The National Weather Service said Lane was
forecast to move dangerously close to the main
Hawaiian islands as a hurricane late last week,
potentially bringing damaging winds, prolonged
heavy rainfall, and life-threatening flash-flooding.
-ASSOCIATED PRESS

New York and Virginia Now Requiring
Schools to Teach About Mental Health
Students returning to Virginia and New York
classrooms in the coming weeks will be required to
participate in mental-health education as part of
their health and physical education courses.
A new law in Virginia requires a mental-health
curriculum for 9th and 10th graders.
A similar measure took effect in New York on
July 1. The first-of-its-kind law requires schools
to address mental health in health education programs for grades K-12.
Other states have responded to an increase in
mental-illness rates with increased funding for school
counseling and training teachers to recognize the

ARE PARENTS, SCHOOLS ON THE SAME PAGE ABOUT 'SOFT SKILLS'?
A new survey by NWEA-Gallup finds while parents, teachers, and school and district
leaders generally agree on the so-called "soft skills" students need, fewer parents
prioritize their children being assessed on them.
The ability to apply what they have
learned in school to real-world situations

66%
75
80
83

Problem-solving skills

72
76
84
87

Critical-thinking skills

69
72
83
86

The ability to view issues or problems
from different perspectives

63
60
70
73

Teamwork, that is, the ability to work
with others

58
50
71
75

Percent very
important to:
n Parents
n Teachers
n Superintendents
n Principals

SOURCE: Gallup

Report Roundup

symptoms of mental illness in order to better refer
students to mental-health resources.
-SASHA JONES

Florida High Court Removes Obstacle
To Release of School Shooting Video
The Broward County sheriff's office released videos last week from cameras surrounding the building at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in
Parkland, Fla., where 14 students and three staff
members died Feb. 14 during the first three minutes of a shooting rampage.
The release came hours after the state supreme
court refused to hear a motion from the Broward
school board seeking to block it. The board had contended that releasing the video might reveal security
blind spots. Prosecutors also opposed release because
it could be evidence in a criminal case.
Among the images the videos show are students
running silently from the building where their
classmates are being slaughtered. A staff member
rushes up in a golf cart and heads inside. The deputy
assigned to the school takes cover, never entering.

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TEACHER RETENTION

RECESS

"Leaving School Early: An Examination of Novice
Teachers' Within- and End-of-Year Turnover"

"Individual and Environmental Correlates of
School-Based Recess Engagement"

By the end of their third year of teaching, little more than 1 in 3 novice educators are still
teaching in the school where they started their
careers-and a quarter of those don't even wait
for the end of the school year to leave.
A new study in the American Educational Research Journal tracks teachers' leaving month
by month in their first three years on the job.
It finds students whose teachers left midyear
lost 54 days' worth of academic growth-nearly
a third of a school year-compared to students
whose teachers stayed all year.
Training mattered: While teachers from university-based education programs were most
likely to switch schools midyear, teachers from
alternative-training programs were more likely
to leave teaching altogether.
-SARAH D. SPARKS

Longer recess and more adult involvement
are a recipe for getting students more active
during recess, finds a new study in the journal
Preventative Medicine Reports.
Researchers from Oregon State University
attached fitness trackers to 4th to 6th graders to record their school activity. They found
recess made up less than 6 percent of the
students' day but 27 percent of their physical activity. While recess averaged about 23
minutes across schools, the study says when
recesses stretched to 30 minutes, students
were more physically active throughout the
period.
But the strongest predictor of how active students were during recess was the level of adult
involvement-not directing games, but partici-

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Education Week - August 29, 2018

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