Education Week - September 9, 2015 - 1

Education WEEk

VOL. 35, NO. 3 * SEPTEMBER 9, 2015

edweek.org:

BRE AKING NEWS DAILY

Unionization Bid
Sparks Discord
In L.A. Charters

Nick Cote for Education Week

By Stephen Sawchuk

GETTING ROOTED: Ian Salt, an 8th grader at STAR School, carries a harvest of tomatoes and peppers grown at a family farm on the

Navajo Nation in Leupp, Ariz. Ian's school integrates cultural experiences, such as working with local farmers, with students'
academic studies to build the skills and motivation to attend college.

Ariz. School Forges College Path for Rural Students
By Catherine Gewertz
Kira Butler's plan was to enlist in the Army right
out of high school. College? Probably not. But an unusual blend of experiences-chopping wood, harvesting crops for local farmers, playing basketball, and
hearing a stream of college hints from her teachers-
changed that.
UNMET PROMISES
Looking back now,
the 18-year-old sees
High-Achieving,
how dozens of threads
Low-Income Students
in her school and family experience wove together to build the skills, conviction, and opportunity to go to college. So she's packing
up this week for an unlikely journey that will trade
her bedroom in the Arizona desert for a dorm room
near the Canadian border.

The simple act of hauling out a suitcase makes Butler's college path an unusual one in rural America.
With few college options nearby, students in sparsely
populated areas enroll in college at lower rates than
their nonrural peers, and tend to stick closer to home
when they do pursue higher education. Those factors
put even the highest-achieving rural students at risk
of choosing a college that's not a good match for them.
The story of how Butler defied those odds reflects
the complex dynamics at play when students from
rural areas plan their lives after high school. Her
mother and father both attended college, so the idea
of going herself wasn't strange to Butler. But she felt
a strong call to uphold another family tradition: the
honor of military service. Butler's natural leadership
and academic abilities, and her skill as a basketball

Indiana's decision to close its
state-funded preschool pilot program to 4-year-olds who are not
legal U.S. residents has drawn national attention and raised sticky
questions about the access of such
children to education before they
reach kindergarten.
The news organization Chalkbeat
Indiana reported in August about the
restriction on undocumented chil-

FAFSA FORM

12 Many qualified students
leave money on the table
when they don't file the
Free Application for Federal
Student Aid.

PAGE 12 >

Immigration Debate, Pre-K Access
Have Indiana Program on Hot Seat
By Christina A. Samuels

ABOUT THIS SERIES:
This package of
stories is the second
in an occasional series
examining the challenges
facing disadvantaged
students who show
academic potential.

dren, which Indiana officials say puts
the program in line with rules governing other social service programs
in the state. The preschool pilot is
now in its first full year of operation.
"It would not be terribly surprising
if there were calls in other states to
limit access to this scarce resource,"
said Margie McHugh, the director of
the Migration Policy Institute's National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy. In that role, she focuses on
PAGE 21 >

A bid to unionize a popular Los Angelesbased chain of charter schools has led to a protracted battle between the schools' management and the district teachers' union, at least
temporarily stranding some 700 teachers in
labor limbo.
The situation at the 27 campuses of Alliance College-Ready Public Schools illustrates
the tensions charter organizations face as
they evolve and mature: Merit pay, benefits,
and governance-all treated differently in
many charter schools than in regular public
schools-are key points of concern for teachers
embracing the union drive.
The conflict is also emblematic of sharp divisions already established in the Los Angeles
district's unique schooling landscape. Charters in Los Angeles are praised for generally
outperforming traditional schools, but have
also been criticized for high rates of teacher
PAGE 14 >

Newark Schools' Journey
To Local Control Begins
By Denisa R. Superville
Newark, N.J.

Christopher Cerf chatted with parents and
took photos in his first school board meeting
since being tapped as superintendent for the longtroubled district here, but questions remain as to
whether he will swiftly and ably steer the city's
public schools back to local control after 20 years
under state authority.
Gone was the rancorous atmosphere that had
come to dominate school board meetings during
the rocky tenure of Cerf's predecessor, Cami Anderson, who stepped down in early July. But the
new superintendent's first formal outing late last
month before about 200 residents, parents, students, and teachers was by no means a love-fest.
A former state education commissioner in
New Jersey who officially got the Newark job in
July, Cerf acknowledged that fact during a prePAGE 15 >

Teachers Nurture Growth Mindsets in Math
By Evie Blad
A blend of family attitudes, cultural ideas, and frustration often lead students to believe that math ability
is a fixed trait like eye color, teachers say. They believe
they are either born with the skills necessary to succeed in math class or they're not.
Those pervasive ideas and the way math has traditionally been taught can make it exceptionally difficult for math teachers to nurture growth mindsets
in their students, they say.
"There's a cultural mystique in mathematics and
sort of salient, counterproductive conceptions about
what it is, that it's somehow harder than art, which
of course is crazy," said Philip Uri Treisman, a math-

ematics professor and director of the University of
Texas' Charles A. Dana Center, which focuses on math
and science education.
"It has sort of cultural baggage with it that is not
helpful to the field," he said.
The concept of growth mindsets has gained a foothold in many schools, where teachers emphasize
that the brain can grow and change and that students don't enter school with a set of unchangeable
strengths and weaknesses. In general, that means
praising effort over personal traits and encouraging
students to learn from mistakes by developing new
strategies to approach problems.
As more schools buy into the research that shows
PAGE 10 >

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Education Week - September 9, 2015

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