Education Week - October 25, 2017 - 4

NEWS IN BRIEF
Young Children's Use of Mobile Tech
Triples in Short Span, Survey Finds

Gabrielle Lurie/San Francisco Chronicle/Polaris

Young children are spending more time using
mobile devices like a smartphone or tablet than
ever before, according to a new survey from Common Sense Media.
The amount of time that children in the study,
ages 8 and younger, spent engaging with screen
media on mobile devices has tripled since 2013,
from 15 minutes to 48 minutes a day.
Still, there hasn't been a net increase in overall
media use. Children averaged 2 hours and 19 minutes of total screen time a day, almost the same as
in 2011. Instead of watching DVDs, sitting in front
of the television set, or playing video games on a
console, however, children are increasingly watching digital video clips or playing app-based games
on mobile devices.
-SARAH SCHWARTZ

Miss. High Court Says State Not
Obligated to Fund School Budget Formula
The Mississippi Legislature does not have an
obligation to fully fund a school budget formula
that was put into law two decades ago, the state
Supreme Court said last week in upholding a ruling from a lower court.
Twenty-one school districts sued the state in
August 2014, seeking more than $235 million to
make up for years of shortfalls from when lawmakers didn't fully fund the Mississippi Adequate
Education Program.
The formula is designed to give school districts
enough money to meet midlevel academic standards, but it has been short-funded most years.
Hinds County Chancery Judge William Singletary
ruled against the school districts in July 2015, saying the formula is not a mandate. -ASSOCIATED PRESS

Oregon and South Dakota Losing
Embattled State Schools Chiefs
The chief state school officers in both Oregon and
South Dakota are leaving their posts.
Melody Schopp, South Dakota's education secretary, said she will retire in December, an announcement that came while her department deals with
allegations that it ignored warnings about potential
misuse of federal funds. Hired in 2011, she is one of
the nation's longest-serving state superintendents.
Meanwhile, Oregon's chief, Salaam Noor, resigned this month, amid stagnant state test scores,
one of the lowest graduation rates in the country,

Charred Ruins

and an increasingly hostile political climate. He
was hired a little more than two years ago.
The average tenure of state chiefs has rapidly declined in recent years, to around two years, alarming policymakers and practitioners as state departments take on even more responsibilities under the
Every Student Succeeds Act.
-DAAREL BURNETTE II

Wildfires in Northern
California's wine
country that have killed
at least 42 and ravaged
thousands of acres of
land and structures
inflicted major damage
on Cardinal Newman
High School in Santa
Rosa. Most of the main
office, library, and 20
classrooms at the
Roman Catholic school
were destroyed. The
fires continued to rage
last week.

N.Y. Charter Schools Get Go-Ahead
To Certify Their Own Teachers
Some charter schools in New York state will soon
be allowed to train and certify their own teachers,
likely the first instance of a charter school being
granted such authority.
The State University of New York charter schools
committee this month approved the controversial
measure for schools it oversees. Under the new
rules, prospective teachers must have far fewer
hours of instruction and classroom practice than
those on a typical certification pathway. They also

Report Roundup

won't have to earn a master's degree or take all
state teacher-certification exams.
Some of the state's top education officials
have criticized the action, and the state's teachers' unions have sued to block the new rules.
-ARIANNA PROTHERO

North Carolina Drops Charges
Against Ferguson, Mo., Superintendent
Authorities in North Carolina have dropped
charges that had accused the Ferguson-Florissant, Mo., schools superintendent of misusing a
credit card from his former school district.
Superintendent Joseph Davis was arrested on
charges of obtaining property by false pretense in
August. He had been indicted for using a credit
card belonging to the Washington County district
to secure a hotel room for $98.41 and a Hertz
rental car for $41.17 in January.
Watsi Sutton, a lawyer who represents Davis,

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UNION PARTICIPATION DOWN OVER TIME
Since the 1999-2000 school year, the percentage of public school teachers who
participated in a union or employees' association dropped 9 percentage points.

TESTING
"Does Test Preparation Mean
Low-Quality Instruction?"

Percent of Public School Teachers in a Union or Employees' Association

80%

79.1%

77.6
76.4

73.8

74
72

69.9

70
68
1999-2000

2003-2004

2007-2008

2011-2012

SOURCE: Schools and Staffing Survey and National Teacher and Principal Survey, 2017

4 | EDUCATION WEEK | October 25, 2017 | www.edweek.org

2015-2016

Merely getting rid of standardized tests is
unlikely to significantly elevate the quality
of teachers' lessons without other reforms,
finds a study in the journal Educational Researcher.
In an analysis of hundreds of videotaped
teacher lessons, a pair of researchers found
that explicit test-prep strategies were linked
to declines in instructional quality-but not
consistently across several school districts, and
generally, not severely.
But the study throws cold water on the idea
that better tests will lead to more-consistent,
higher-level instruction in classrooms-a common
refrain among testing advocates. In fact, teachers working in districts with more-sophisticated
testing regimes also taught weaker lessons when
they engaged in test prep. The study drew on

surveys of about 300 4th and 5th grade teachers,
each of whom had submitted three to 10 lessons
for analysis.
-STEPHEN SAWCHUK
SCHOOL LEADERS
"Preparing to Lead:
Lessons in Principal Development from
High-Performing Education Systems"
The highest-performing education systems on
international tests each take a systemic approach
to recruiting, training, and deploying school leaders, finds a report by the National Center on Education and the Economy.
Researchers from the Australian research
group Learning First analyzed principal training
and development in Ontario, Singapore, Hong
Kong, and Shanghai. They found that the systems, which routinely score in the top 10 in math,
science, and literacy on an international test, had
similar approaches to training principals. For example, principals are explicitly trained to manage

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Education Week - October 25, 2017

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