Education Week - November 1, 2017 - 5

through charter schools and vouchers. Fuller cited
competition for visibility and funding in the increasingly crowded school choice advocacy realm.
The writing has been on the wall. A year and a half
ago, BAEO started shedding some of its state chapters
and launched a national campaign to reimagine and
redesign the organization. But that fizzled out, said
Fuller, when the effort didn't yield ideas that were
"transformative" enough. He also noted the growing
criticism of school choice from such groups as the
NAACP and Black Lives Matter.
-ARIANA PROTHERO

Judge Tosses Lawsuit Targeting Law
Restricting Collective Bargaining
A judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by Iowa's
largest teachers' union challenging a new law that
eliminated most collective bargaining rights for public workers.
In his ruling, the judge said the law does not violate
workers' constitutional rights to equal protection.
The Iowa State Education Association filed the
suit that claimed the measure creates two classes
of public-sector employees, unfairly targets unions
for collecting dues through payroll deductions, and
creates an unfair election system for unions.
-AP

Transitions

CHRIS MINNICH,
the executive director of
the Council of Chief State
School Officers for the
past five years, in January
will become the executive
director of NWEA, a
nonprofit organization that
crafts assessments for
students.
Previously, Minnich worked
on assessments for the
publisher Harcourt, and
he served as the director
of testing at the Oregon
education department.

Chicago School System Enrollment
Declines by Nearly 10,000 Students
Enrollment in the Chicago public schools is down
by nearly 10,000 students from a year ago.
The district announced last month that 371,382 students attend public schools, including privately run
charter schools. Last year's head count was 381,349,
down about 11,000 from the previous school year. The
district planned on an enrollment decline of about 8,000
students for this year. In 2002, enrollment was 438,589.
District officials blame much of the steady decline in
the number of students on falling birthrates and slower
immigration patterns. They also point to an exodus of
residents from the city's South and West sides.
-AP

New Mexico Moves to Defuse
Outrage Over Science Standards

STEVEN STAPLES
will retire in January as
Virginia's chief schools
officer after three years on
the job.
He is a former
superintendent of the York
County school district in
the state and a former
executive director of the
Virginia Association of
School Superintendents.

New Mexico's public education secretary said
last week the state will adopt widely used school
science standards in their entirety in response to
public outrage over proposed changes that omitted
references to global warming, evolution, and the
Earth's age.
Christopher Ruszkowski said a final version of the
New Mexico standards would replicate the Next Gen-

DATA-BASED DECISIONMAKING
"Roadmap for Effective Data Use and
Research Partnerships between State
Education Agencies and Education
Researchers"
State structures can make the difference
in whether local education research partnerships are effective, according to a new report
by the Data Quality Campaign.
Based on an analysis of local research alliances, networked districts, and other emerging research partnerships, the group laid out
steps states can take to build sustainable research groups to improve education, including:
* Governance policies to provide consistent,
transparent, and secure access to student
data for researchers;
* Model agreements to set how data are
shared and how students' privacy is protected;
* Active education of the public about what
research is being conducted and how it will be
used to support education policy decisions; and

eration Science Standards developed by a consortium
of states, with a half-dozen added passages tied to local
accomplishments in science and industry.
An earlier proposal contained about 35 New Mexico-related passages-detracting from the core mission of science education in the eyes of many critics.
A public hearing on the earlier version drew scores
of impassioned pleas for the state to reconsider and
adopt an unedited template. The critics included
leading scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory, science teachers' associations, faith leaders,
teachers, and administrators.
-AP

Following Outcry, Mississippi District
To Again Teach To Kill a Mockingbird
A Mississippi school district will resume teaching To Kill A Mockingbird after the book was pulled
from a junior high reading list.
Biloxi district administrators removed the novel
from the 8th-grade curriculum last month after the
district received complaints that some of the book's
language "makes people uncomfortable."
School officials said they would begin teaching it
again in class this week. Students, however, have
to ask to participate and return a permission slip
signed by a parent.
The district had become the focus of a national
public outcry when it pulled the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, which deals with racial inequality in a
small Alabama town.
-AP

NFL Player Donates Year's Salary
To Support Educational Equity
Philadelphia Eagles defensive end Chris Long will
donate his paycheck from the last 10 games of the
National Football League season to groups that support educational equity and opportunity in Boston,
St. Louis, and Philadelphia.
Long, who is from Charlottesville, Va., and is white,
had already pledged to donate the salary from the
first six games this season to fund scholarships in
his hometown, where violence broke out this summer during a white-supremacist rally.
In Boston and Philadelphia, Long's foundation will
support Summer Search Boston and Summer Search
Philadelphia, which provide mentoring and job opportunities for low-income students and students of
color. In St. Louis, the funds will go to College Bound,
which commits to getting low-income children to and
through college, and the Little Bit Foundation, which
works with schools to provide students with such necessities as clothes and school supplies.
-D.R.S.

* Support to build state and district capacity to design, conduct, and use education
research.
-SARAH D. SPARKS

SPECIAL EDUCATION

IMMIGRANT STUDENTS

Parents who use the Individuals with
Disabilities Education Act's complaint
procedures are significantly more likely
to have hearings ruled in their favor than
parents who go through the more commonly used hearing officer, says a new
study in the Journal of Special Education
Leadership.
Researchers analyzed random samples
of 50 IDEA rulings based on complaint
procedures and 50 based on hearing officers in each of five states. They found
that for rulings based on complaint procedures, parents succeeded in their claims
half the time, while they succeeded only
24 percent of the time a hearing officer
was used. PParents were also less likely
to succeed before a hearing officer when
they did not have their own lawyer, the
study found.
-S.D.S.

"Race for Results: Building a Path to
Opportunity for All Students"
Children of immigrants are more likely to
struggle in school and more likely to live in
poverty than children of U.S. natives, a new
Annie E. Casey Foundation report concludes.
Nationally, there are 18 million children
who live with immigrant parents. The vast
majority of those children, 88 percent, are
U.S. citizens; at least 5 million of them have
at least one parent who is undocumented.
The Casey Foundation report found that
a smaller percentage of English-language
learners from immigrant families score at or
above proficient on state reading and math
tests when compared with students from nonimmigrant families.
-COREY MITCHELL

"The Complaint Procedures Avenue of the IDEA"

David Guralnick/Detroit News via AP

BLOG OF THE WEEK

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, left, and
first lady Melania Trump chat with students
during a visit to Orchard Lake Middle School.

Senators Query
DeVos on Bias
Democratic lawmakers want to know how
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos
will work to stop bullying, harassment, and
discrimination in public schools.
In a letter last week, nine senators-
including Sen. Patty Murray of Washington,
the top Democrat on the Senate education
committee-asked the secretary what
resources the Department of Education
was providing schools in order to counter
"the recent increase in hateful and
discriminatory speech and conduct." They
also asked for the number of ongoing
investigations by the department into
student-on-student harrassment based on
factors such as race, religion, and sexual
orientation, as well as whether the federal
task force on bullying prevention initiated
by President Barack Obama would continue
on DeVos' watch.
The senators also took a potshot
at President Donald
Trump, arguing that his
remarks on Twitter have
"normalized" homophobia,
misogyny, and other forms
of discrimination, and
that his words have hurt
students. They cite recent
incidents in schools, from
Sen. Patty Murray
swastikas drawn to Latino
students blocked from entering class by a
human chain of other students, to buttress
their concerns. And they pointed to a
survey of more than 10,000 K-12 educators
across the country that found 80 percent
reported "heightened anxiety on the part of
marginalized students."
The very same week the letter went out,
DeVos and first lady Melania Trump visited
a middle school in West Bloomfield, Mich.,
to kick off the "Week of Inclusion," part of
National Bullying Prevention Month. "By
our own example, we must teach children
to be good stewards of the world they will
inherit," a White House announcement
about the trip quotes Mrs. Trump. "We need
to remember that they are always watching
and listening. It is our responsibility to take
the lead in teaching children the values of
empathy and communication that are at the
core of kindness, mindfulness, integrity, and
leadership."
DeVos has repeatedly said she is dedicated
to creating a safe and positive environment
in schools. Critics have charged that
her support for rescinding Obama-era
protections for transgender students belie
those public statements. Democrats and
DeVos have also regularly sparred about
the department's approach to civil rights.
Democratic senators charge that she is
ignoring incidents of discrimination at
school or sweeping them under the rug,
while DeVos has said she is taking a more
efficient approach to such complaints.
-ANDREW UJIFUSA
Education Week - November 1, 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - November 1, 2017
