Education Week - September 13, 2017 - 5

STUDENT WELL-BEING

bled to arrange their own local internet service.
Many were able to arrange for broadband at prices
far cheaper than what the state was paying.
-AP

Transition

New York Charter Authorizer Proposes
In-House Teacher Certification
A major charter school authorizer in New York state
is pushing to allow teachers at its charters to teach
without earning a master's degree or passing certification exams, requirements that other public school
teachers must meet.
Instead, the teachers would have to complete the
charter schools' own training programs, according to
the proposal from the State University of New York
Charter Schools Institute, which currently authorizes
167 charter schools.
Most New York public school teachers hold education
degrees, pass licensing exams, and get master's degrees,
all of which could be bypassed if in-house certifications
of charter school teachers are approved by a SUNY
board of trustees committee.
-BRENDA IASEVOLI

New Jersey Set to Return Control
Of Public Schools to Newark
Two decades after seizing control of the school system in Newark, New Jersey was expected to return
the 40,000-student district to local control this week.
Gov. Chris Christie said that the state board of education was to vote this week to make it official.
The state took over the district in the mid-1990s,
citing years of mismanagement, chronically low test
scores, and crumbling infrastructure. Christie said
the city's schools have come a long way and cited the
$100 million donation to Newark for education made
in 2010 by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. -AP

Colorado Beefs Up Programs and Staff
To Prevent Student Marijuana Use
HADAR HARRIS, a
human-rights lawyer, is the
new executive director of the
Student Press Law Center.
Among her previous
work, she served as the
executive director of
the Northern California
Innocence Project, which
works to exonerate the
innocent and to reform the
criminal-justice system;
the executive director of
the Center for Human
Rights & Humanitarian
Law at American University
Washington College of Law;
and the executive director
of the Congressional
Human Rights Caucus,
a bipartisan legislative
service organization
of the U.S. House of
Representatives.

Chance the Rapper to Honor Educators
With Annual Awards Show
Forget movie stars and pop artists-Chance the Rapper wants to honor educators.
The Grammy-winning artist from Chicago announced this month that he would organize the inaugural Twilight Awards, "highlighting teachers, parents,
principals, and students who convey leadership." The
ceremony will be held in Chicago in June 2018 and be
hosted by James Corden, the late-night television host
known for Carpool Karaoke. Chance also promised special guest performances.
Chance, whose real name is Chancelor Bennett, also
announced that his nonprofit, SocialWorks Chicago, had
raised $2.2 million to give to arts education programs at

scores were much higher than their fellow
students who had not attended KIPP on
Woodcock-Johnson reading skills tests,
approximately equivalent to going from
the 66th to the 80th percentile. The KIPP
students showed similar gains in math,
outperforming peers on the WoodcockJohnson's applied math skills test to the
tune of an approximate increase from the
47th to the 60th percentiles. -MARVA HINTON
MATHEMATICS
"A Meta-Analysis of Schema Instruction on
the Problem-Solving Performance of
Elementary School Students"
Helping students to categorize different types
of word problems can help elementary-age students tackle a common challenge in math class,
according to a new analysis of 21 studies in the
journal Review of Educational Research.
"Problem-solving" in math-also known as

20 Chicago public schools. Earlier this year, the 24-yearold donated $1 million to the Chicago district. He has
been a strong advocate for protecting funding to the
cash-strapped school system.
-MADELINE WILL

Colorado has given 42 school districts and charter
schools a combined $9.2 million to hire people and
craft programs to keep marijuana out of the hands
of students.
The money is going to schools located near legal pot
shops and is provided from the proceeds from marijuana sales. Districts are hiring nurses, social workers, and counselors with the grant money.
A state advisory committee found more than 5 percent of high school students in Colorado use marijuana daily. That's about the same rate as in 2005,
nine years before the state permitted the sale of
marijuana to adults.
-AP

People Putting Less Faith
In Four-Year Degrees, Poll Finds

Gun Violence
Plagues Cities
Of All Sizes
An Associated Press and USA Today Network
analysis of Gun Violence Archive data-gathered from media reports and police press releases, and covering a 3½-year period through
June of this year-reveals that aside from Chicago, smaller cities lead the country in the rate
of shootings among people younger than 18.
While most of the violence occurs off-campus, students nonetheless are affected. They
can be injured or killed walking to and from
school, waiting for the school bus, attending
sporting events, sitting outside doing their
homework-or just thinking about what
may lie around the corner.
Of the 10 cities with the highest rates of
teenage shootings, most have populations of
fewer than 250,000 and were nearly all similar in size. Among them are Savannah, Ga.;
Trenton, N.J.; Syracuse, N.Y., Fort Myers, Fla.;
and Richmond, Va. Chicago is the lone largepopulation city high on the list.

U.S. TEENS INJURED OR
KILLED BY GUN VIOLENCE

Americans are increasingly doubting the value
of a four-year college degree, according to an NBC/
Wall Street Journal poll.
The poll still tilts in favor of the bachelor's degree, but by the slimmest of marWilmington, Del.
gins: Only 49 percent of the 1,200 adults
Chicago
1.85
surveyed think that a four-year degree
is worth the cost because it will lead to
Savannah, Ga.
1.72
good jobs and higher lifetime earnings.
Trenton, N.J.
1.61
Forty-seven percent doubt it will.
New Orleans
1.5
Skepticism about college degrees is
particularly high among men, young
Syracuse, N.Y. 1.28
adults, and people who live in rural
parts of the country, according to the
Wall Street Journal. Majorities of those
groups doubt that a bachelor's degree is
worth the cost.

3.36

Rate per 1,000 people

SOURCE: AP

-CATHERINE GEWERTZ

Correction
A Q&A in the Sept. 6, 2017, issue of Education
Week, "What Makes a School Good? It's More Than
Test Score," misstated the date of Jack Schneider's
previous Commentary, published in 2013. It noted
also that he had more than one child and that the
Somerville, Mass., district had received a zero
school rating in a Boston Globe online tool. In fact,
the district's rating was deemed low.

story or word problems-involves drawing information from text rather than mathematical notations, and it is considered one of the
more difficult skills for students to master.
Analyzing studies of more than 3,400 elementary students, researchers found students who were taught to identify the underlying category of a word problem, write its
corresponding algebraic equation, identify
the solution to the equation, and then check
whether the solution is "reasonable" in the
story's context improved on story problems on
average half of a standard deviation, which is
considered a significant effect. -SARAH D. SPARKS
STUDENT WELLNESS
"Attainment of '5-2-1-0' Obesity
Recommendations in Preschool-Aged Children"
Preschoolers don't eat enough healthy
foods or get enough exercise, according
to a new study by the Cincinnati Chil-

dren's Hospital Medical Center.
Researchers studied nearly 400 preschoolers over the course of one 24-hour
period at school and at home to find out
if the children were meeting what's known
as the 5-2-1-0 daily guidelines, which
recommend children eat at least
five servings of fruits and vegetables,
watch less than two hours of screen
time, participate in one hour of physical
activity, and consume no sugar-sweetened
drinks.
Only one child actually met those guidelines. Less than 1 percent met the physical
activity guidelines, while only 17 percent
consumed at least five servings of fruit and
vegetables. Half of the students did not
drink sugar-sweetened beverages, while
81 percent had less than two hours of
screen time a day.
The study was published online in August in the journal Preventative Medicine
Reports.
-M.H.

Several other smaller and mid-sized cities
also showed high levels of teenage gun violence,
but the rates began to level out after the top six.
Experts and officials cite such contributing
factors as:
* Poverty and a sense of hopelessness in
the most violent neighborhoods. Syracuse,
a university town that once cranked out air
conditioners and televisions, now has a poverty
rate of 35 percent.
* Deep divisions. While Savannah's antebellum mansions, gnarled live oaks, and marble
monuments to war heroes drew more than 13
million visitors last year, away from the picturepostcard oasis of southern charm, the scenery
quickly shifts to decaying neighborhoods, abject
poverty, and deadly violence.
* Size. In tightly packed neighborhoods,
insults and perceived insults ricochet like
shots in an echo chamber. One shooting inevitably leads to speculation about who will
be targeted next.
* Social media. It can accelerate the
threats, and the danger. Teenagers whose
brains are years from fully maturing are
roaming the streets with a gun in one pocket
and a smartphone in the other.
In Wilmington, which has the highest rate,
data show that roughly 3 out of every 1,000
adolescents are injured or killed annually
from gun violence. That is almost twice the
rate reported from Chicago and just over
nine times the national average as reported
for 2015 by the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention.
The news organizations sought to measure
teenage gun violence in America's cities because it is something the federal government does not track on a regular and comprehensive basis.

Education Week - September 13, 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - September 13, 2017