Education Week - November 16, 2016 - 5

REPORT ROUNDUP

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SCHOOL SCHEDULES

| TRANSITION |
Tony Dearman has been
named to head the Bureau
of Indian Education, which
has oversight of nearly 200
schools in some 20 states.
The federal
bureau has faced
scrutiny after
a governmentwatchdog report
found that
officials had
failed to ensure that regular
inspections were carried out
at dozens of schools, where
safety hazards surfaced.
Dearman, who is Cherokee,
previously served as an
associate deputy director of
the BIE. Officials said his
appointment as director
came after he helped the
agency reorganize to give
tribes more control of their
local schools.

rooms, after a federal investigation
showed that the district was shifting students into restrictive settings with no individualized rationale for doing so.
The U.S. Department of Education's office for civil rights, in a Nov.
4 resolution letter to the district, said
that about 16 percent of students
were receiving special education services in 2013-14. Of those, more than
80 percent spent some time outside
the general education classroom during the school day.
Their individualized education
programs often contained boilerplate
text. But not all the students appeared to have that need.

"Workin' 9 to 5: How School Schedules Make
Life Harder for Working Parents"
The disconnect between the school day and
workday may cost parents nationwide $55 billion a year, with mothers in low-wage, less flexible jobs taking the worst hit, finds a study by
the Center for American Progress.
Researchers surveyed the nation's largest
school districts about their schedules and policies in 2015 and also analyzed data from the
federal Schools and Staffing Survey for the
2011-12 school year.
On average, schools closed 29 days a year,
excluding summer recess but including an
array of staff professional-development days
and local holidays, the study found. That's
more than 10 days longer than the average
private-sector worker gets off in paid vacation
and holidays.
The study suggests professional development
for teachers should be incorporated into the
school day, such as using staggered schedules
for teachers.
-MARVA HINTON
DUAL ENROLLMENT
"Dual Enrollment in the Context of Strategic
Enrollment Management"
Most higher education institutions view
dual-enrollment programs as an important
tool for recruiting students and managing
their overall enrollment strategies, finds
a new survey from the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions
Officers.
Seventy-eight percent of responding institutions said they use the programs, which allow
high school students to earn college credit, as

a way to recruit students. But 22 percent of the
colleges that offer dual-enrollment programs
reported that they've had difficulty getting
those credits to transfer to other colleges or
universities.
That may mean the programs may not give
students as much of a boost in college if students want to attend a different program after
high school.
-CATHERINE GEWERTZ
EARLY-CHILDHOOD EDUCATION
"A Portrait of Head Start in the South"
Head Start children in Southern states are
poorer than Head Start children nationwide,
and their teachers earn less, finds a new analysis of Head Start programs by the Institute for
Child Success, an early-childhood policy and
research organization based in Greenville, S.C.
Eighty-one percent of Southern Head Start
students have families with income at or below
the federal poverty line, which in 2016 is
$24,300 a year for a family of four. Nationally,
about 72 percent of children qualified for Head
Start by virtue of their families' income.
Head Start teachers with a bachelor's degree in the South also earned nearly $27,900
a year, compared with the national average of
nearly $30,900 for teachers with that education level.
-CHRISTINA A. SAMUELS
CHARTER SCHOOLS
"Leadership Characteristics and Practices in
South Carolina Charter Schools"
Charter school principals in South Carolina
are overwhelmingly veteran school leaders, but
more than half are new to the charter sector,
according to a study by the Regional Educational Laboratory Southeast.

Researchers found 88 percent of charter
principals in the state had at least six years
of leadership experience, but 52 percent had
led charter schools for two years or less.
Charter principals, like the average principal nationwide, worked about 60 hours a
week, but the principals studied reported
close to 70-hour workweeks in their first
year at charters.
Principals reported rarely facing staffing problems or interference from their
school boards, but said their biggest challenges came from state agencies and authorizers.
-SARAH D. SPARKS
MATH
"Assessing Impacts of Math in Focus:
A Singapore Math Program"
Math in Focus, a mathematics program
based on Singapore-style instruction, was a
little better than other math programs that
used hands-on activities, according to a randomized controlled trial published in the most
recent issue of the Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness.
In the first experimental evaluation of a
program based on Singapore Math in the
United States, the study found students
in grades 3-5 scored higher on a standardized test in classes that used the Singapore
Math program than those using other curricula. The program focuses on teaching students to visualize and make mental models
of problems, emphasizing word problems
rather than memorization.
However, the researchers found not all
the classes fully implemented the Singapore
program, and some other types of curricula
used similar features, such as inquiry-based
lessons.
-S.D.S.

Worries About School Climate
Motivate Home Schoolers
"Home Schooling in the United States: 2012"

-CHRISTINA A. SAMUELS

Financial analysts at one Wall
Street rating agency last week
dropped the Chicago school district's
credit rating again, less than a week
before the district was expected to
sell hundreds of millions of dollars in
long-term bonds.
Standard & Poor's pushed the
school system's bond rating one
notch deeper into junk territory-
to the agency's B grade -and
said the decision was based on
what are by now familiar financial
concerns.
Those include the district's reliance on short-term borrowing to
cover daily expenses, plus $55 million in costs added to this year's
budget by the recent Chicago
Teachers Union pact.
-TNS

CORRECTION
A story in the Nov. 2, 2016, issue
of Education Week on curriculum
resources at the National Museum
of African-American History and
Culture misspelled the name of
the Nashoba Brooks School in Concord, Mass.

Why do parents home-school? Worries about
safety, drugs, and peer pressure at school, according to new federal data.
A report by the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics
estimates that 1.8 million children were taught
at home in 2012. That's only a sliver-about
3.4 percent-of the total K-12 population, but the
percentage of American students being homeschooled doubled from 1999 to 2012.
The report bases these estimates on a sample from survey data collected between 1999
and 2012.
A large majority of home schooling parents said
they chose to home-school their children because
of concerns over the environment in their original schools. Ninety-one percent said factors such
as safety, drugs, or negative peer pressure helped
drive them to home-school their children.
Home-schoolers skewed overwhelmingly
white-83 percent-and more than 90 percent
lived above the poverty line.
More than 30 percent of middle and high school
home-schoolers took online courses. Of those, 25
percent took courses through a district school,
22 percent from a charter school, and 21 percent
through a private school.
The survey also looked at parents' education
levels and teaching preparation. An estimated
26 percent of home schooling parents have a
bachelor's degree, and 18 percent had a master's degree.
-ARIANNA PROTHERO

Didn't
attend a
course
Getty

Chicago's Bond Rating
Takes Another Hit

75%

TRAINING FOR HOME
SCHOOLING PARENTS
Federal data find that 3 out of
4 parents who home-school had
no formal preparation. Most of
the rest had received at least
some online training.
Course method
Online and in person

Online only

In person only

SOURCE: National Center for Education Statistics

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Education Week - November 16, 2016

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