Education Week - September 6, 2017 - 4

NEWS IN BRIEF
The U.S. Department of Education is weighing
changes to its signature Civil Rights Data Collection
for the coming school year, including asking districts
for new information on computer science and internet connectivity, while scaling back requirements for
collecting Advanced Placement test data.
The department wants to stop asking districts for
data on how well students do on the tests but would
keep in place how many students take them.
That's caused concern among some educators,
civil rights groups, and the College Board, which
sponsors AP. They're worried that looking only at
participation in the courses will gloss over whether
students, including historically disadvantaged
groups, are mastering college-level work.
The collection tracks everything from school
suspensions to early-childhood education to
access to advanced coursework. Both of President
Barack Obama's secretaries of education pointed to
the civil rights data collection to highlight resource
disparities between high- and lower-poverty schools.
-ALYSON KLEIN

injunction requiring school officials to allow a transgender high school student to use the boys' restroom.
The appeals court said the district's policy likely
violated 17-year-old Ashton Whitaker's rights under
Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and
the 14th Amendment's equal-protection clause.
The Supreme Court granted review of a case out of
Virginia last term, but it sent the case back to a lower
court after the Trump administration rescinded guidance that had interpreted Title IX as requiring schools
to allow transgender students to use the restrooms
that correspond to their gender identity. -MARK WALSH

N.C. College Opens High School
On Campus for Aspiring Teachers
The University of North Carolina at Charlotte has
launched an on-campus high school for aspiring teachers. The new high school, located in the same building
as the education school, is the result of a partnership
between the university's Cato College of Education
and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system.
The Charlotte Teacher Early College High School
opened its doors to 50 9th graders last month. Students will spend their first two years completing high

Videos Show Cheerleaders
Forced Into Splits in Denver

A Wisconsin school district is asking the U.S.
Supreme Court to decide whether school policies
that require transgender students to use restrooms
corresponding to their biological sex violate Title IX
or the U.S. Constitution.
The Kenosha school district last month appealed a
federal appeals court ruling in May that upheld an

Report Roundup

MULTIRACIAL STUDENTS
A new Brookings Institution analysis of National Assessment of Educational Progress
data shows multiracial 12th graders performed on par with white students (within the
margin of error) in most subjects, and outperformed white students in reading.
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Size of test score gap

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Reading

U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos last
week picked a former official at an embattled forprofit university to head the agency's unit investigating fraud at for-profit colleges, prompting criticism that the Trump administration was promoting
industry interests.
Since taking office six months ago, DeVos
has moved to rescind two key Obama-era regulations that sought to deter for-profit colleges from
misrepresenting their programs to students and
failing to provide the education they need to get

A police-brutality scandal that remains one of
the most shameful episodes in Chicago's history
is about to become a topic taught to public school
students.
The Chicago school system announced last
week that it had launched a pilot program
in six schools last year in which students
were taught about police torture inflicted on
African-American suspects by a group of detectives under the command of former Police
Commander Jon Burge from the 1970s until
the early 1990s.
The story of what happened-the dozens of
men who were tortured into confessing crimes
they didn't commit-will be part of the curriculum for every 8th grader and high school
freshman in the district. The rollout comes more than two years after the
City Council approved an ordinance that called for the city to pay $5.5 million in reparations to the torture victims, issue a formal apology, provide
other benefits such as free tuition to the victims and their families, and
teach students about the scandal.
-ASSOCIATED PRESS

Wis. District Asks High Court to Resolve
Transgender Students' Restroom Use

Math

DeVos Hires Former For-Profit Dean
To Oversee Fraud Investigations

Chicago District Adds Scandal
On Police Torture to Curriculum

Cheerleading coaches and school administrators in
a Colorado district were placed on leave, and police
opened an investigation amid a series of videos showing high school cheerleaders screaming in pain while
being pushed into splits during practice.
The videos show eight cheerleaders at Denver's
East High School repeatedly being pushed into splits
while their arms are held up by teammates. In one
video, a girl repeatedly asks her coach to "please
stop."
Denver schools Superintendent Tom Boasberg said
such practices are prohibited. The East High School
principal, an assistant principal, the cheer coach, an
assistant cheer coach, and a district lawyer have been
placed on leave during the investigation, he said. -AP

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school requirements and in the remaining three years
tackle general-education college requirements while
training to lead classes of their own. By graduation,
they will have accumulated up to 60 college credits
that can be transferred to Cato College where they
can earn their teaching degrees.
Many high schools across the country have programs for aspiring teachers. But the Charlotte high
school may be among the first to be housed on a college campus.
-BRENDA IASEVOLI

Science

SOURCE: Brookings Institution

4 | EDUCATION WEEK | September 6, 2017 | www.edweek.org

Writing (2011)

James Foster/AP

Pitch to Scale Back Collection
Of AP Data Raises Eyebrows

Anthony Holmes, left, and Darrell Cannon, who were
tortured by former police, speak at a news conference
last week, where it was announced that Chicago
students will be taught about the police-torture scandal.

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SPECIAL EDUCATION
"Replicated Evidence of Racial and Ethnic Disparities
in Disability Identification in U.S. Schools"
Black and Hispanic children, as well as children of other minority races, are enrolled in special education at rates significantly lower than
those of their white peers, finds a new study in
the journal Educational Researcher.
Paul L. Morgan, an education professor at Pennsylvania State University, and George Farkas, an
education professor at the University of California, Irvine, argue that when comparing minority
children with otherwise similar white peers, white
children get special education services at a higher
rate while minorities may be missing out. This
replication study looked at the scores of nearly
400,000 students in the 4th, 8th, and 12th grades
who participated in the National Assessment for
Educational Progress.
Among 4th graders whose reading achievement
was in the lowest 10 percent nationally, 74 percent

of white students were receiving special education
services, versus 44 percent of black students with
similar reading achievement.
Other racial and ethnic groups with low reading achievement were also less likely than white
students to receive special education services. For
Hispanics, 43 percent were enrolled in special education, as were 34 percent of Asians, 48 percent
of American Indians, 43 percent of Pacific Islanders, and 66 percent of students of multiple races.
-CHRISTINA A. SAMUELS

EARLY-CHILDHOOD EDUCATION
"Mapping America's Child Care Deserts"
Half of Americans in 22 states live in "child-care
deserts"-places where there are more than three
children for every child-care slot-according to a
new geographic analysis by the Center on American Progress, a liberal think tank.
California and New York had the biggest underserved populations, with more than 60 percent of

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Education Week - September 6, 2017

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