Education Week - October 19, 2016 - 27

At this time, Mayerson is awaiting research on the effectiveness of the program and use of the website. Darwish
said her organization has captured both quantitative and
qualitative data from the 2015-16 school year that is being
reviewed by Robert McGrath, a research scientist at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey.
Jennifer Brown Urban, an associate professor of family
and child studies at Montclair State University, also in New
Jersey, said using technology is an emergent approach to
character development. "It's in the earlier, nascent stage
at this point," she said.

Technology Still Emerging
Brown Urban noted there are a handful of other character education programs similar to Mayerson's that utilize
web-based tools for pinpointing character strengths, such
as the UK-based Inspire>Aspire character development
program. The program is designed to help 10- to 18-yearolds explore their character, ideals, and values through a
poster template using Internet resources, according to the
organization's website.
But as more public and private schools use technology
in their classrooms for a variety of tasks, parent-advocate
groups are raising their own concerns about offering online
tools and apps such as Happify to children.
Most recently, Parents Across America, a nonprofit group
with 44 chapters across 25 states, issued a set of resources
warning of the "threats" posed by the expansion of tech-

Education WEEk

nology use in schools, including rising screen time for children, increased testing and data collection, and what the
group views as misguided teaching strategies based on lowquality digital products.
Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters,
an education advocacy group and co-chair of the Parent
Coalition for Student Privacy, questioned whether schools
should be using tools such as Happify to assess and train
students in terms of social-emotional qualities.
"It's an unproven product which has many serious privacy, educational, and psychological concerns associated
with it that a lot of parents would be unhappy to hear
about," Haimson said, adding that some parents feel nervous about assessing their kids' character issues.
Although Happify has its own terms of use and privacy
policies detailing use of the platform for children younger
than 13, Ochs said that there is a separate privacy agreement in place for schools. Also, all social media options are
turned off or disabled for the school version. Mayerson deactivates student information over the summer and creates
fresh accounts in the fall before students return to school.
In addition, when students first start using the platform,
all posts are private until the school elects to turn on the
community feature, which creates a confined online community monitored by school staff. The goal of the program
is to create a "walled garden" so students are only communicating with one another, said Ochs.
When utilizing the platform, students and teachers within
the community can see students' user names, school name,

VOL. 35, NO. 14 * DECEMBER 9, 2015

edweek.org:

BRE AKING NEWS DAILY

On Horizon:
NCLB's End,
Duncan Exit

1 1

Education WEEk

VOL. 35, NO. 15 * JANUARY 6, 2016

edweek.org:

BREAKING NEWS DAILY

Bill to Overhaul ESEA
Undercuts Some Aspects
Of Secretary's Legacy

Doyle Maurer/Education Week

By Andrew Ujifusa

Students walk between classes at Collins Middle School in Fayette County, W.Va. The orange fencing stands between them and a building that closed
in January because it was deemed unsafe for student occupancy. Similar closures have sparked debate in the county.

School Facilities Fuel State-Local Tensions in W.Va. District
By Daarel Burnette II
Fayetteville, W.Va.

After losing half their school system's K-12
students over a period of decades, residents
of Fayette County, in the heart of this state's
coal country, have long been fighting over
which schools to close and which would get
new facilities.
So Michael Martirano, who took over as West
Virginia's state superintendent in 2014, decided to
solve the problem himself by proposing a plan that
would shutter seven of the district's 18 schools and

move most of its high school students into a new,
$56 million facility.
Because the district's academic resources are
spread so thinly throughout the 600-squaremile county, students are failing state tests at
an alarming rate, he said, and the outdated
facilities, more than a half-century old, are
at risk of caving in. Last winter, an engineer
deemed many of the schools too hazardous for
use, prompting the state to condemn parts of
elementary and middle schools, some of which
are still heated by coal.
But Martirano has faced intense pushback

from citizens of the county who say the state
is attempting to fracture its tight-knit communities, send students on hours-long bus
rides to unfamiliar neighborhoods, and saddle
its taxpayers, mostly elderly and on fixed incomes, with a 15-year, $11 million loan they
didn't ask for. A state agency that will vote
next week on whether to help fund the plan
has also expressed reluctance to support Martirano's proposal.
"The people have not been listened to and
they're very frustrated-and they should be,"

PAGE 19>

With the ink
barely dry, the
Every Student
Succeeds Act is
both blueprint
and work in
progress

Locked-Up Youths
See Grim Prospects
In Many States

PAGE 14>

By Denisa R. Superville

systemwide programs are rolling
out slowly. New York City, which
plans to spend $81 million on the
project, has a 10-year implementation timeline, for instance.
But an elementary school district outside Phoenix has already
gone full throttle with an essential element of computer science:
programming, also known as coding. For the second year in a row,
every kindergarten through 8th
grade student here in the Avondale Elementary district is taking
PAGE 10>

Nick Cote for Education Week

Avondale, Ariz.

The New Federal K-12 Law

See comprehensive highlights of the
Every Student Suceeds Act. PAGE 17

DIGITAL DIRECTIONS

While there's a growing consensus that K-12 students should
learn some computer science, especially given the 1 million computing
jobs that are expected to go unfilled
by 2020, there's less agreement on
how school districts can make that
happen.
The Chicago, New York, and San
Francisco districts have committed to teaching computer science
to students of all ages, but those

INSIDE ESSA

YOUR ESSA CHEAT SHEET:

In Ariz. K-8 District, All Grades
Learn Computer Programming
By Liana Heitin

At several points during the past year,
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who is stepping down Dec. 31 after
nearly seven years in office, has said his
biggest regret in the job is the amount of
time he spent lobbying Congress early
in his tenure to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
"This law's been broken for seven to
eight years," Duncan said last month,
at a forum hosted by The Wall Street
Journal as a bill to overhaul the law
was finally approaching the finish line.
"Folks are trying to work now in a bipartisan way."
That bipartisan process, though, has
produced legislation-the Every Student
Succeeds Act-that marks a big departure from what Duncan has championed,
in particular from major elements of the
Obama administration's approach to
K-12 accountability.
Case in point: The bill, which the
House of Representatives passed last
week by a vote of 359-64, would restrict

Third grader Iyana Simmons works on a coding exercise at
Michael Anderson School in Avondale, Ariz. The 5,600-student
school system, outside Phoenix, is in its second year of teaching
computer coding to students in grades K-8.

The quality of schooling for tens of
thousands of incarcerated juveniles
falls far short of the education their
peers receive in public schools, advocates say, raising major concerns
about the prospects of one of the
most vulnerable groups of students.
Even as the number of incarcerated juveniles dropped significantly
over the past decade, only 13 states
provide students who are behind
bars with the same types of educational and vocational services, including GED preparation, credit recovery, and postsecondary courses,
that students in schools receive, a
survey of juvenile-corrections agencies by the Council of State Governments Justice Center shows.
In a report released last month,
the council found that many states

A New Era in K-12 Policy

he year-end passage and signing of the Every Student Succeeds
Act represents more than just a rare bipartisan agreement
on the part of the nation's chronically polarized policymakers.
For the first time in more than a decade-and a half-century
after enactment of the country's main K-12 law-Congress has
redefined the federal role in elementary and secondary education. And it's
done so in a way that aims to enhance the authority of states and school
districts that had long chafed at the strictures of ESSA's predecessor, the No
Child Left Behind Act.
Now comes the really hard part: implementation. A special report on
ESSA in this issue of Education Week looks at what the law will mean for
virtually every aspect of public schooling when it takes full effect in the
2017-18 academic year. Topics include accountability and testing, teacher
quality, research, regulation, funding, early-childhood education, and thorny
issues involving student groups that often lag behind their peers.
See Pages 10-21.

President Barack Obama
signs the Every Student
Succeeds Act, flanked by
Sen. Lamar Alexander,
R-Tenn., chairman of the
Senate Health, Education,
Labor, and Pensions
Committee, and by its
ranking member, Sen. Patty
Murray, D-Wash.

OTHER NEWS:

U.S. Ed-Tech Plan Outlined

Standards for Administrators

Union Case Before High Court

Legislatures Set to Convene

DIGITAL DIRECTIONS: The Department of

Guidelines for the supervisors
who oversee principals could help
redefine the job.

Arguments will focus on a
precedent that lets teachers'
unions charge nonmembers for a
portion of dues.

State lawmakers prepare for a
busy season, with fiscal issues
adding to the tensions in a number
of places.

> PAGE 22

Education shares its vision for how
schools should use technology for
teaching and learning.

> PAGE 8

> PAGE 9

PAGE 12>

REGISTER FREE Access selected articles, e-newsletters, and more!
Sign up now >> www.edweek.org
Personalized Learning: The Next Generation / edweek.org/go/personalized-learning

http://www.edweek.org http://www.edweek.org http://www.edweek.org/go/personalized-learning

Education Week - October 19, 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - October 19, 2016