Disabled Advocates Hail ED’s Athletics Dear Colleague Letter

Diverse Education (3/18) reports on the “renewed thrust to create and expand opportunities for disabled athletes” in the wake of the “Dear Colleague” letter from ED’s Office for Civil Rights last year reminding schools “of their legal obligation to provide opportunities for disabled athletes.” The piece notes that advocates for disabled students “applaud the directive as a game changer that will have the same impact for disabled athletes as Title IX did for women’s sports.”

Commentary: SAT Overhaul Won’t Correct Test’s Flaws

USA Today (3/14) editorializes about the College Board’s recent announcement of plans to overhaul the SAT, saying that most of the changes being planned “won’t make much difference.” The paper argues that among the test’s “inherent shortcomings” is the fact that there tends to be a direct correlation between wealth and higher scores, saying that “rejiggering the test” won’t alleviate the “intractable social problems” that lead to poor academic performance. Instead, USA Today suggests, colleges should improve the way that they “misuse” the test.

        Meanwhile, in an op-ed in USA Today (3/14), National Center for Fair & Open Testing public education director Bob Schaeffer writes that the SAT is “is supposed to predict college academic performance accurately and fairly while resisting short-term coaching,” but argues that it achieves none of these goals. He dismisses the proposed changes as “little more than marketing bells and whistles,” citing research indicating that such metrics as grades in high school are “better predictors of undergrad academic performance” than are college entrance tests.

Delayed School Start Times May Benefit Teens

In a front page article, the New York Times (3/14, Hoffman) reports that across the US, numerous school districts have moved high-school starting times to later in the day to accommodate the fact that adolescents “are developmentally driven to be late to bed, late to rise.” University of Minnesota researchers, “funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, studied eight high schools in three states before and after they moved to later start times in recent years.” In a report published March 12, “they found that the later a school’s start time, the better off the students were on many measures, including mental health, car crash rates, attendance and, in some schools, grades and standardized test scores.”

        The AP (3/14) also covers this story.

LATimes Hails California’s Common Core Implementation

An editorial in the Los Angeles Times (3/14) describes the perception that New York “botched” its implementation of the Common Core Standards and hails California’s “opposite approach,” noting that though it met resistance from the Obama Administration, “California was right.” The piece says that New York “jumped feet first into the new standards, administering tests based on them,” adding that Education Secretary Arne Duncan “only worsened matters by dismissing the outcry as coming from ‘white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were.’” The Times says that California has not experienced the level of backlash that New York has because “Gov. Jerry Brown set aside $1 billion for implementation, including teacher training, and plans to invest at least as much again next year.” Moreover, “schools and teachers will not be held accountable for results on the new standardized tests this year and possibly next.”

        California Paper Hails Common Core Testing Waiver. A San Jose (CA) Mercury News (3/14) editorial praises California legislators for voting to “suspend our outdated standardized tests a year earlier than planned” in favor of Common Core-aligned assessments, also praising them for standing up to “threats from US Education Secretary Arne Duncan to withhold billions in federal funds for poor kids because the state had violated federal accountability law – even though Duncan had issued waivers to dozens of other states.”

Google Faces Lawsuit Alleging Student Data Abuses

Education Week (3/13, Herold) reports that Google is facing a lawsuit alleging that “the data-mining practices behind Google’s Gmail electronic-messaging service violate federal and state wiretap and privacy laws,” noting that the firm has “acknowledged scanning the contents of millions of email messages sent and received by student users of the company’s Apps for Education tool suite for schools.” Noting that Gmail is an integral part of the Apps for Education portal, Education Week reports that plaintiffs allege that the firm “went further, crossing a ‘creepy line’ by using information gleaned from the scans to build ‘surreptitious’ profiles of Apps for Education users that could be used for such purposes as targeted advertising.” The piece notes that ED’s recent student privacy guidance “appears to deem the alleged practices of Google Apps for Education as violating FERPA.”

Analysis: Extending California Transitional Kindergarten Would Cost $1.46 Billion

EdSource Today (3/13, Mongeau) reports that a new analysis from the California Department of Education finds that a bill in the California state Senate “to expand transitional kindergarten to all 4-year-olds would be more expensive than originally predicted” and would cost $1.46 billion “in addition to the $901 million already being spent on the current transitional kindergarten program.” The piece notes that the bill’s sponsor had said that the plan would cost $990 million.

SAT Changes Said To Magnify Education Gap

In a Wall Street Journal (3/12, Arguelles, Subscription Publication) op-ed, Randolf Arguelles, who heads a test prep center and reviewed applications to UC Berkeley for eight years, argues that the SAT is the only objective measure of a prospective student. Further, Arguelles argues that changing the SAT will extend, not mitigate, the socioeconomic education gap by privileging test takers from suburban districts. Arguelles concludes that the old SAT provided a fair and unbiased means of measurement, and proposed changes will underscore disparities.

NEA Backing Bill To Reduce Federal Testing

Alyson Klein writes at the Education Week (3/12) “Politics K-12” blog that the National Education Association is backing legislation sponsored by Rep. Chris Gibson (R-NY) and Rep. Krysten Sinema (D-AZ) that would significantly decrease “the federal footprint on standardized testing.” Noting that similar legislation has failed in the past, Klein writes that under the bill, “states would assess their students only in certain grade spans” instead of “testing students in reading and math in grades 3 through 8 and once in high school.”

        THE Journal (3/11) also covers the NEA’s backing of the bill, noting that the union “issued a lengthy endorsement of the legislation, praising the bill’s sponsors and slamming high-stakes standardized testing as harmful to students and detrimental to education.”

College Board Announces SAT Overhaul

Education Week (3/12, Adams) continues coverage of the recent announcement that the College Board is redesigning the SAT to make “substantive shifts aimed at making the exam more ‘focused’ and ‘useful,’” noting that the overhaul “offers strong echoes of the Common Core State Standards, which board President David Coleman helped write.” The article notes that the change comes two years after rival test ACT “eclipsed” the SAT, and describes the “mixed” reaction to the announcement. Education Week reports that the Education Trust’s Christina L. Theokas “applauded the effort,” though Wake Forest University sociology professor Joseph Soares dismissed the changes as “a PR maneuver.”

College Board Announces SAT Overhaul

Education Week (3/12, Adams) continues coverage of the recent announcement that the College Board is redesigning the SAT to make “substantive shifts aimed at making the exam more ‘focused’ and ‘useful,’” noting that the overhaul “offers strong echoes of the Common Core State Standards, which board President David Coleman helped write.” The article notes that the change comes two years after rival test ACT “eclipsed” the SAT, and describes the “mixed” reaction to the announcement. Education Week reports that the Education Trust’s Christina L. Theokas “applauded the effort,” though Wake Forest University sociology professor Joseph Soares dismissed the changes as “a PR maneuver.”

California Attorney General, Lawmakers Offer Legislation On Truancy

The Los Angeles Times (3/11, McGreevy) reports that California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris and lawmakers yesterday held a news conference to announce “a package of bills aimed at improving the tracking of absenteeism and the evaluation and use of measures to keep kids in school.” Harris said that last year, “30% of elementary school students were truant,” adding that truancy leads to children who “fall behind and too many never catch up.” She argued that falling behind leads to dropping out, which leads to prison, saying, “There is a direct match between public education and public safety.” Five bills are in the package, with one requiring an annual report from the attorney general on truancy and effective counter truancy programs, and another requiring the state Department of Education to collect data on truancy. A third requires county School Attendance Review Boards, the fourth requires annual reports from the boards, and the fifth requires annual reports from county prosecutors an programs to reduce truancy.

        Reuters (3/10, Bernstein) also reports on the news conference and the proposed legislation.

California District Sees Improvement With Competency-Based Learning Model

The Wall Street Journal (3/11, Banchero, Subscription Publication) reports on competency-based learning focusing on the Lindsay Unified School District in Lindsay, California, where students are not divided by ages but by levels, so that one class may contain students from 11 to 14 years old working on the same material. Only once they master the material do they pass on to the next level. That means that some students move quickly to more advanced levels. There are now 29 states that allow such models, and the Administration has awarded Race to the Top funding to Lindsay and other districts to implement the model. The district, nearly all of whose students are Latino and all qualify for free lunches, has shown improvements on state tests since adopting the model. In addition, suspensions and gang membership fell.

Schools Implement “Genius Hour” In Which Students Pursue Own Interests

CNN (3/10, Grinberg) reports on the “genius hour” at Thomas Middle School in Arlington Heights, Illinois, “an 80-minute period every Monday” when students “work on projects entirely of their choosing.” The idea came from “Google’s 20% time initiative, which allows employees to dedicate 20% of working hours to their own ideas.” It is said to be part of something called “student-driven learning” which is reportedly being tried at a number of schools.

California Bill Would Boost Common Core Implementation Funding By $1.5 Billion

EdSource Today (3/7) reports that a bill introduced in the California state Assembly on Wednesday would extend Common Core implementation funding for another year, noting that $1.25 billion has already been allocated for the effort. The piece notes that the funding would go “to support teacher training, textbooks and other instructional materials and technology upgrades needed to carry out the transition to Common Core State Standards.”

Study: Responsive Classroom Social Skills Technique Improves Test Scores

The Washington Post (3/7, Layton) reports that new research indicates that the “popular” Responsive Classroom teaching method, intended to boost elementary school students’ social and emotional skills, “also leads to academic achievement,” noting that the study “found that children in classrooms where the technique was fully used scored significantly higher in math and reading tests.” The Post reports that the lead author, University of Virginia professor of education Sara Rimm-Kaufman, “said the results are important during a period of increased emphasis on academic results.”