Education Week - September 7, 2016 - 5

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TEACHER PAY
35 of them were in the building at
the time, but none witnessed the
shootings. Kindergartners at the
time, they are now 4th graders. -AP

Calif. Lawmakers Approve
Alarm for School Buses
Legislation intended to prevent
children from being left unattended
on parked school buses in California
was headed last week to Gov. Jerry
Brown.
A bill approved unanimously in
the Senate comes in response to the
death of a 19-year-old autistic boy,
Paul Lee of Whittier. Lee was left
for hours on a hot school bus.
The measure would require
school buses to have child-safety
alarms. The alarm sounds when the
engine is turned off and requires
the bus driver to walk to the back of
the bus to turn it off. Deactivating
the alarm would remind the driver
to check for children still on board.
-AP

N.M. District to Install
Gun Safes on Campuses
Middle and high schools in Los
Alamos, N.M., will soon have gun
safes full of shotguns and semi-automatic weapons on campus.
The Los Alamos school board
late last month approved Police
Chief Dino Sgambellone's request
to have police-owned gun safes installed inside the schools. He said
the safes will help ofﬁcers respond
more quickly in the case of an active shooter. Often, the chief said,
valuable time is lost when ofﬁcers
have to run back to their cars to retrieve weapons they need to handle
a shooter situation.
The cases will be bolted down in a
secure area, and only police ofﬁcers
will have access to the equipment.
-AP

"One-Third of Teachers Moonlight to Support
Families"

In Poor Areas, After-School Programs Are in Demand
"America After 3PM Special Report: Afterschool in Communities of Concentrated Poverty"

One in 3 Texas teachers moonlights to make
ends meet, a new Texas State Teachers Association survey ﬁnds.
Those teachers work about 13 hours a week
at their out-of-school jobs and an additional 17
hours a week doing school-related work outside
regular school hours.
Most of the respondents-59 percent-were
major income-earners for their families. Seventy-nine percent were women, and 21 percent
were men.
The survey, which was conducted by researchers at Sam Houston State University, is not scientiﬁc, with just 837 of the union's 60,000 teacher
members responding. The average starting salary
for a new teacher in Texas is $38,828, although
the minimum starting salary is $28,080 for a
10-month contract. The average teacher salary
statewide in 2015-16 was $52,090, said the Texas
Association of School Boards.
-MADELINE WILL

For every child in an after-school program in a high-poverty community, two more are
waiting to get in, according to a report from the Afterschool Alliance.
The study drew on survey data collected in 2014 from more than 30,000 parents and
included 13,000 in-depth interviews to examine parents' thoughts on after-school and
summer learning opportunities. Respondents were identiﬁed as living in a community of
concentrated poverty if their ZIP code fell within a U.S. Census tract that has been designated as such or if they lived in a ZIP code with a poverty rate of 30 percent or higher.
The survey found that 24 percent of children living in areas of concentrated poverty participated in after-school programs, compared with 18 percent nationally. But the number
of students living in concentrated poverty who would take part in an after-school program
if it were available to them was 56 percent. The comparable average ﬁgure for the nation
as a whole was 41 percent.
For African-American families in those communities, the demand was even higher: While
27 percent of black students attended after-school programs, 71 percent said they would
attend such programs if they were available.
The Afterschool Alliance received support for its 2014 survey from ﬁve foundations, including the Wallace Foundation and the Noyce Foundation, both of which underwrite some
content coverage in Education Week.
-MARVA HINTON

DISTRICT LEADERSHIP
"Retention, Attrition, and Mobility Among
Teachers and Administrators in West Virginia"
Administrators in rural West Virginia schools
leave their positions at rates higher than their
peers in bigger and more urban districts, according to a recent report.
The Regional Educational Laboratory Appalachia studied retention, attrition, and mobility rates among teachers and administrators
in West Virginia districts to determine how
those rates vary depending on such factors
as size and locale. The study found teachers'
movements were similar in different types of
districts, but administrators were more likely
to move if they were less experienced or in a
smaller district. More than 12 percent of rural
administrators left their districts, compared
with about 8 percent of administrators in city
schools.
Teacher retention, attrition, and mobility rates
tended to differ based on experience level and salary, rather than district locale.
-JACKIE MADER
TEACHER GUIDANCE

Students Now Can Publish
Letters to Next President

"Eliciting Explanations: Constraints on When
Self-Explanation Aids Learning"

The National Writing Project
and PBS member station KQED
in San Francisco have launched a
website, Letters to the Next President 2.0, that will publish thousands of students' letters on the
issues that matter to them this
election season. The initiative is
aimed at secondary students who
might not be able to vote but still
have opinions about policies being
discussed in the campaign-and
what they hope will be the next
president's priorities.
Teachers can create accounts on
the website and invite their students
to register and then submit letters in
written or multimedia formats.
In the letters published so far,
students are most concerned about
abortion rights, education-college
costs, sexual education, and equity-immigration, and issues surrounding racial profiling and the
Black Lives Matter movement.
The website will accept letters
through Nov. 8. Published ones
will remain on the website through
the new president's ﬁrst 100 days
in ofﬁce.
-MADELINE WILL

When students explain incorrect thinking,
they could very well be cementing their own
misunderstandings, says a recent literature
review.
Bethany Rittle-Johnson, a psychology professor at Vanderbilt University, looked at 85
peer-reviewed studies on self-explanation,
or the process of generating explanations to
make sense of new information. She found
that while prompting self-explanation is generally good practice and can improve learning, there are some caveats.
"If kids are just off explaining their own
thinking without guidance, then they can
be spending their time essentially justifying
stuff that's wrong," she said. Instead, students should explain things they know are
correct-or things they know are incorrect.
The review was published online in August in
the journal Psychonomic Bulletin and Review.
-LIANA HEITIN

EARLY LEARNING
"Oakland ECE Household Interview Results"
In the lower-income neighborhoods of
Oakland, Calif., 70 percent of parents read
to their young children at least three days
a week, according to a survey of 420 par-

ents conducted in the spring by the Kenneth
Rainin Foundation, a local philanthropy.
The survey covered ﬁve Oakland neighborhoods. One of them, North Oakland, is increasingly white and middle class. The others
are predominately working class to poor. The
differences in the responses between neighborhoods were pronounced enough that the
surveyors separated the North Oakland responses in several calculations. For example,
93 percent of North Oaklanders read to their
children daily, compared with 70 percent for
other communities.
Setting North Oakland aside, low-income
parents listed more positive parenting behaviors than they are often given credit for. More
than 70 percent said they hugged their children, told them they loved them, and tucked
them in at night seven days a week. Sixty-eight
percent said they went to the library several
times a month. More than half had 10 or
more children's books at home.
But the parents in the neighborhoods outside
North Oakland were also more likely to have
misconceptions about which activities are most
helpful for young children. A third of them-but
none of the North Oakland parents-mistakenly
thought letting a toddler read the same book
over and over would keep the child from learning new words.
-LILLIAN MONGEAU
TRANSGENDER STUDENTS
"Suicidality, Self-Harm, and Body Dissatisfaction
in Transgender Adolescents and Emerging Adults
with Gender Dysphoria"
Thirty percent of transgender students attempt suicide, ﬁnds a new study by the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, and
many other such students show problems at
school.
Medical-center researchers analyzed the medical records of 96 transgender students ages 12
to 22 who had visited the hospital's transgender
clinic since 2013.
They found students transitioning from female to male were at higher risk for self-harm
than those transitioning from male to female;
by contrast, boys in general have higher suicide rates than girls. More than 60 percent of
all the transgender students had a history of
being bullied at school, more than 19 percent
had gotten into ﬁghts at school, and nearly a
quarter had been suspended or expelled. More
than 17 percent also reported repeating a
grade at school.
The authors suggest that professionals who
work with the students should be aware of

warning signs of depression and self-harm, particularly for those who express problems or concern over the way they look with regard to gender. The study was published in August in the
journal Suicide and Life Threatening Behavior.
-SARAH D. SPARKS

RESEARCH USE
"Better Evidence, Better Choices, Better Schools"
The Every Student Succeeds Act will give
states and districts more authority to be creative in improving schools, but they will need
support to use research and data effectively, according to a report by the Center for American
Progress think tank and the Knowledge Alliance, a professional group for federally funded
research organizations.
The approach to using research evidence
under the No Child Left Behind Act, ESSA's
predecessor, offered "a fairly narrow set of criteria for what evidence should count in school
improvement decisions," focused on so-called
"gold standard" randomized controlled studies,
the report says. ESSA still favors that type of
study, but also allows states to incorporate a
wider array of research methods.
The authors recommend that states support
clearinghouses for high-quality evidence, rather
than listing state-approved programs. They also
call for more training for district ofﬁcials on how
to evaluate research and incorporate it into
school improvement planning.
-S.D.S.
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
"Measurement Instruments for Assessing the
Performance of Professional Learning
Communities"
Professional learning communities are a
popular way of helping teachers work together
to solve problems and improve instruction, but
it can be hard to judge how effective they are.
A new guide from the Regional Educational
Laboratory Mid-Atlantic outlines 49 evidencebased measures districts can use to assess
those groups. It details 31 quantitative and
18 qualitative measures that gauge a variety
of aspects of a professional learning community, including: shared and supportive leadership, shared values and vision, collective
learning and application, personal practice,
and supportive conditions for structure and
relationships.
The authors recommend districts consider
the goals of their groups and tailor assessments
based on local needs.
-S.D.S.

EDUCATION WEEK | September 7, 2016 | www.edweek.org | 5

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Education Week - September 7, 2016

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