Education Week - September 12, 2018 - 4

NEWS IN BRIEF
Detroit Schools Turn Off Drinking Fountains After
Tests Show Elevated Levels of Lead in Water
Thousands of Detroit public school students were told last
week to drink from district-supplied water coolers or bottled
water on the first day of classes, after the drinking fountains
were shut off because of contaminants in some water fixtures.
Superintendent Nikolai Vitti said that elevated levels of lead
or copper were found in fixtures at 34 schools. Test results are
pending for other schools.
The discovery of contaminated water in Detroit's schools follows a lead-tainted water crisis in Flint, Mich. Eager to not
undergo the same health and financial fallout as Flint, officials decided no students in Detroit's 106 public schools should
be subjected to drinking potentially contaminated water until
a solution can be found and the water declared safe. School
officials believe old fixtures, not the water source, may be to
blame.
-ASSOCIATED PRESS

Texas Refuses to Pay for Educating
Children Living in Migrant Shelters
Texas won't use state funding to educate immigrant children
housed in federal detention.
The Texas Education Agency told a charter school group
that local schools wanting to serve migrant students in federal custody can't do so with state education funding, according to a letter obtained by the Houston Chronicle. Texas
officials say schools still could voluntarily provide help to
shelters.
The wave of minors who have crossed the border into the
United States has raised questions about what role, if any,
states should play in educating them. Texas officials say it is
the federal government's responsibility.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement requires
school-aged children housed in shelters to have their educational needs assessed within three days of arrival, to receive
six hours of structured instruction on weekdays, and to receive
special education services if they are eligible.
-AP

Group Pushes Vendors and Districts to Sign
Computer Science Accessibility Pledge
A leading group supporting the "computer science for all"
push in schools wants vendors, investors, districts, and others
to publicly commit to supporting improved accessibility for
students with disabilities.
For vendors and developers, that means taking such steps
such as putting captions on videos and ensuring compatibility

with screen readers for visually impaired students, according
to the nonprofit CSforALL Consortium. The pledge calls for
curriculum developers to assess their existing tools, create
an improvement plan, develop guidance on accessibility for
educators, and make the issue a priority.
The Accessibility Pledge also asks districts and state education groups to focus on acquiring computer science content
that is accessible and to provide teachers with professional
development on supporting students with disabilities, among
other steps.
And the pledge calls on corporations and foundations to ask
themselves such questions as, "Is the program or content delivered accessible to students with a broad range of disabilities?"
So far, more than 40 vendors, school districts, and state departments of education have joined the pledge. -BENJAMIN HEROLD

Teachers Paid Significantly Less Than
Comparable Professionals, Study Finds
The wage gap between teachers and comparable professionals has grown over time, with teachers now earning 18.7 percent less than other college-educated workers, according to a
new analysis.
The paper published by the Economic Policy Institute
found that the "teacher-wage penalty" has increased significantly-teachers earned just 1.8 percent less than comparable workers in 1994. And although teachers do receive
better benefits packages than their peers who were also
college-educated, those benefits only mitigate part of the
gap: Including benefits, teachers face an 11 percent compensation penalty.
Low pay was a major factor driving the widescale teacher
strikes and protests in Arizona, Colorado, Kentucky, North
Carolina, Oklahoma, and West Virginia last spring. Four of
those states had the largest wage penalties in the country:
Arizona had a 36.4 percent wage gap, North Carolina's gap
stood at 35.5 percent, Oklahoma's at 35.4 percent, and Colorado's at 35.1 percent.
Overall, teachers' weekly wages lag by more than 25 percent
compared with similarly educated professionals in 16 states.
There are no states where teacher pay is equal to or better
than that of other college graduates.
-MADELINE WILL

Arizona High Court Boots Ballot Measure
To Tax More-Affluent for School Funding
A state supreme court ruling that threw out a school funding ballot measure set for November has lit a match under an
already combustible midterm election in Arizona.
The state's high court late last month said the language of

Proposition 207, which would have asked voters to provide
$690 million more to schools through a tax on the state's wealthier residents, was confusing to voters and didn't adequately explain its fiscal impact.
Teacher activists and Democratic candidates for state office
immediately pounced on the ruling as unfair and partisan.
Democrats used statewide teacher walkouts this spring to
bring attention to stagnated funding from the GOP-controlled
legislature that they say has left schools unable to provide
students with basic services.
The ruling also lit up dormant social-media pages and
sparked teacher protest. "All of those days and hours getting
signatures and walking to houses with my toddler and my
son knocking on doors, and they're not letting the will of the
people decide," Alexis Aguirre, an Osborn district teacher told
the Arizona Republic during a protest outside the court. "They
robbed us of that."
-DAAREL BURNETTE II

Texas Supreme Court Allows Cheerleaders
To Display Bible Verses at School Games
Cheerleaders in a small city in east Texas can continue to
display Bible verses at football games, the state's highest court
has decided, bringing them closer to the end of a yearslong
battle with their school district.
Since the lawsuit was filed six years ago, multiple courts
have sided with the cheerleaders at the Kountze district, ruling they have a First Amendment right to display religious
messages at school events. The Texas Supreme Court late last
month rejected a request by district officials to rethink those
rulings, handing the cheerleaders yet another victory.
The cheerleaders sued after school officials told them they
could not display Bible verses on their banners at school sporting events. The officials ended up changing the policy, but reserved the right to restrict what the banners said because they
counted as government speech.
-TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

Georgia District Using School Buses to Teach
'Sight' Words to Elementary Students
One of the largest school districts in Georgia is turning its
bus drivers into teachers who command "rolling classrooms."
The drivers are helping to teach elementary students "sight"
words through a new program that began this year in the Fulton County district. Sight words are those like "the" and "you"
that can't be sounded out easily and that young children are
encouraged to memorize.
Through the program, a new sight word is introduced on the
bus each week on a magnetic sign that goes up at the front.
After the week is over, the word goes on the ceiling of the bus,

Report Roundup

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COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
"2017 National Population Projections"

STEADY INCREASE PROJECTED FOR
SCHOOL ENROLLMENT
The latest data from the National Center for Education Statistics show
enrollment continuing to climb in public schools nationwide and predict
the increase to continue through 2025.
51,619
51,488

52,059
51,883
51,712

51,317
51,146
50,971
50,701

50,803
(numbers in millions)

2019

2020

2021

2022

2023

SOURCE: Mobile Digest of Education Statistics, 2017

4 | EDUCATION WEEK | September 12, 2018 | www.edweek.org

2024

2025

2026

2027
Getty

2018

In 2030, Americans 65 and older will outnumber children younger than 18 for the first
time in the country's history, according to a
new U.S. Census report.
By 2035, the projections suggest 1 in 5
people-78 million-will be of retirement
age, compared with 76.7 million school-age
children.
During the same time, the Census estimates
less than half of U.S. children will be non-Hispanic white alone, and the percentage of multiracial children is expected to more than double,
from 5.3 percent today to 11.3 percent in 2060.
By that year, about 36 percent of children will
be only non-Hispanic white, while more than
55 percent of retirement-age Americans will be
non-Hispanic white.
The Census indicates the changes come
from new population models that better reflect falling death rates and longer life expectancy for immigrants in the United States.
Those demographic changes may alter

teacher-staffing pools and community support for public schools.
-SARAH D. SPARKS
SCHOOL CLIMATE
"Lessons From the First Round of the Mindsets
and the Learning Environment Initiative"
Students' school environments can affect
their academic mindset-whether they believe intelligence and other skills are fixed
or can be improved through effort-and that
mindset affects how they react to future
school environments, creating a feedback loop.
That is one of the just-published, early
takeaways from a interdisciplinary research
project begun in 2016 by the Mindset Scholars Network, which involves 14 separate research studies, some of them longitudinal, on
the ways that "educators, school systems, and
structures can convey messages to students
that they belong and are valued at school."
The group also reported that early studies
suggest researchers and educators should
think broadly about what they consider a
school environment, noting that aspects from

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Education Week - September 12, 2018

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