Education Week - September 23, 2015 - 4

NEWS IN BRIEF
Interactive Constitution
To Be Used in AP Curricula

Vernon Bryant/The Dallas Morning News/AP

A new "interactive" version of the
U.S. Constitution will be made available to teachers and students as a
feature of the curricular materials
for Advanced Placement classes.
The multimillion-dollar tool,
which allows users to explore constitutional debates through the eyes
of legal scholars with a wide range
of political perspectives, is a project
of the National Constitution Center.
The College Board has crafted lesson plans using the Interactive Constitution for its AP government and
politics courses. A module for AP
U.S. History is under development.
Students can use the interactive
tools to read and analyze founding
documents and link directly to an
AP theme or learning goal.
-BENJAMIN HEROLD

Florida Testing Disruptions
Caused by Foreign Hackers
A cyberattack that disrupted Florida's statewide exams was vast, but
the culprits are "likely based somewhere outside the United States,"
and law-enforcement officials said
last week that they have closed
their six-month investigation without suspects or a motive.
In a summary, state education
officials said that no student information was compromised, and measures installed to thwart further attacks seem to be working.
The attacks began the first week
of March as the state launched its
exams. Though an outside vendor
initially took the blame for widespread login problems, students and
teachers across the state hit a multitude of other problems. State lawenforcement officials and the FBI
found evidence of a cyber assault.
-TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

Target Will Close Out
School-Giving Program

FROM SUSPECT TO STAR
Ahmed Mohamed, 14, was
handcuffed and detained by
police in Irving, Texas, last week
after bringing a homemade clock
to school that he showed to his
teachers, who thought it might be
a bomb. Police have since closed
the case, but Ahmed was
suspended from school for three
days. The MacArthur High School
student has become a
social-media sensation, getting
encouragement from President
Barack Obama, Facebook founder
Mark Zuckerberg, and a NASA
scientist, among others.
Observers have suggested police
and school officials overreacted
because the boy is Muslim.

Target Corp.'s Take Charge of Education program, in which it sends
1 percent of every Redcard holder's
purchase to a school of his or her
choice, will be ending next spring.

The 18-year-old program has
given $432 million to tens of thousands of schools around the country.
The retailer started notifying
schools last week that it will wind
down the program and shift its corporate social-responsibility focus to
health and wellness. The company
says schools received an average
of $370 a year from the program,
though some received thousands of
dollars a year.
-TNS

Website Creates Database
Of Preschool Regulations
The website Noodle, which is aiming to be a national clearinghouse
for information on early-childhood
programs, has created a database
that outlines the child-care and preschool regulations for each state.
Regulations vary widely among
states. The rules also can differ depending on whether the child-care
program is in a center or inside a
provider's home, and on the age of
the children under care.

Washington State Teachers' Unions End-and Begin-Strikes
Teachers in Seattle and in one other Washington
state district ended their strikes last week, while the
union in another district there walked out.
After winning a 9.5 percent pay raise over three
years, mandatory 30-minute recesses for elementary students, a longer school day, and more say
over standardized tests, Seattle teachers ended
their weeklong labor action. The union's full membership was scheduled to vote on the contract
Sept. 20.
Teacher salaries in Seattle range now from about
$44,000 to more than $86,000.
Teachers, substitutes, and support staff complained that the city's high-paid technology industry
had priced them out of living in the city where they
teach, especially given that they had gone six years
without a cost-of-living increase.

4 | EDUCATION WEEK | September 23, 2015 | www.edweek.org

The Seattle City Council also threw its support behind the striking educators.
This year, facing a court order to increase spending
on education, state lawmakers came up with money
for new teachers and supplies.
Elsewhere in the state, teachers in Pasco voted
overwhelmingly last week to approve a contract
agreement and end their two-week strike.
It's a two-year deal with raises of 4.25 percent and
4.45 percent, in addition to raises passed by the legislature.
A superior-court judge had ordered the Pasco
teachers to return to work, but the union remained
on strike, and the judge levied an $8,000 fine.
Meanwhile, teachers in Kelso, Wash., walked out
last week after last-minute talks with district officials over pay and other issues failed. -ASSOCIATED PRESS

The guide includes links to where
parents can find out about inspection reports and any history of rules
violations. Noodle is free to users.
-CHRISTINA A. SAMUELS

Charter School Test Scores
Take Dive in California
State test scores of many once
high-flying charter schools in California have plummeted-even more
so than those of their regular public
school counterparts.
Among them is Rocketship Education, which has attracted generous
high-tech funding and national attention for its success with students
deemed hardest to educate, but now
is grappling with some test scores
no better than those of surrounding schools. At its flagship Mateo
Sheedy school, once the third-highest-performing in the state among
elementary schools serving lowincome children, just 36 percent of
students met or exceeded English
standards, and 44 percent met or

exceeded math standards.
One possible explanation is that
the state's new Smarter Balanced
Assessment Consortium tests are
far more difficult, and the scores
reinforce the difficulty in educating
students in high-poverty areas.
-TNS

$50 Million Contest Seeks
Redesign of High Schools
Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow
of Apple founder Steve Jobs, has
launched a $50 million competition
to create new high school designs
that maximize student engagement
and achievement.
An unusual feature of the Super
School Project is that it places student and community voice at its center. Leaders are kicking off an eightcity tour to publicize the competition
and collect input.
According to the Los Angeles
Times, the project is seeking feedback
from students, teachers, civic leaders,
artists, and others to "create high

| TRANSITIONS |
Michael Hinojosa, a former Dallas schools superintendent,
is the lone finalist to lead the district again.
The school board is expected to make the
appointment final at the end of a 21-day waiting
period. He has been serving as the interim
superintendent since late June.
Hinojosa previously led the Dallas schools from 2005 to 2011. He then
served as the superintendent of the Cobb County, Ga., school system
until May 2014. Recently, he worked as an education consultant.
Jean-Claude Brizard, a former Chicago schools CEO, will
join Cross & Joftus, an education and consulting firm,
as a partner and vice president.
He headed the Chicago school system from May
2011 to October 2012. Before that, he was the
superintendent of the Rochester, N.Y., district.
Brizard started his career in the New York City
schools, where he worked as a teacher, principal, central office
administrator, and regional superintendent.

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Education Week - September 23, 2015

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