The mostly white city of Gardendale, Ala., will end its fight to form its own school district and break off from the heavily black school system of surrounding Jefferson County.
The decision—which comes two weeks after a federal appeals court ruled that Gardendale couldn’t form its own district—draws to a close a yearslong legal battle. That ruling reversed a lower-court decision that would have allowed Gardendale to proceed with its plan, even after the judge concluded that race was the main motivator for the split.
As part of their push to break off from Jefferson County, the city formed a school board and hired a superintendent in 2014.
The campaign came to a halt last week when Gardendale’s mayor and school board president sent a letter to the Jefferson County board of education, informing the district that it will not appeal the court of appeals decision.
The Trump administration may shift the focus of its school-choice agenda to a group of students that the federal government has a special responsibility for: children connected to the military.
Creating education savings accounts for the children of military personnel has support among some conservatives. But some advocates for military families have been cautious about embracing the idea.
Still, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos said in a recent interview at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington that there’s clearly an appetite among military families for more choice.
“I know for a fact that for more than a third of active-duty military families that have school-age children, their decisions where they go, or where they don’t go, or whether they continue to serve, hinge very heavily on the opportunities they have for their children’s education,” DeVos said. In a 2017 survey by the Military Times, 35 percent of service members with children said dissatisfaction with their children’s education was a “significant” factor in deciding whether or not to continue with their service. “So I think we have an opportunity in that regard to empower them with some more of those choices.”
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In a typical high school civics class, students learn about local and federal government and media literacy, as well as citizenship and participation. They might learn how to contact their local representative, use social media for advancing a cause, or debate an issue they feel strongly about. But few students—and only a small fraction of adult citizens for that matter—participate in a highly contentious national debate.
Mere weeks after the Parkland, Fla., high school shooting that killed 17 students and educators, the news cycle would normally be winding down. But this tragedy doesn’t seem to be fading from memory quite as fast as previous school shootings. The reason is obvious: Parkland’s teenage students aren’t staying quiet.
As mass shootings become a disturbing cultural norm, the country’s reaction seems to follow a familiar pattern. America collectively gasps. We watch footage of children filing out of a school, arms raised. We rage on Twitter. We share political memes, shaming or congratulating the nation’s lawmakers for their “thoughts and prayers” refrain. We make donations to whichever side we’re on. And then we move on. Until more bullets fly…
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Now just over a year in office, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos continues to be a lightning rod in the field of American education. The debate over her K-12 philosophy and policy ideas remains vigorous in many quarters. Education Week’s opinion editors were interested in hearing from people in the field about what they believe matters most when it comes to schooling children. To that end, we asked a handful of participants to briefly consider if they were given the chance to sit down with the secretary, what issue or course of action would they urge her to prioritize, and how would they make their case. This is what they had to say. —The Editors
Higher Education
It’s no secret that change is underway in education and beyond. Industries are morphing, jobs are shifting, and new careers are emerging because of technology. A century-long trend toward a highly skilled workforce is accelerating, and our economy will demand greater levels of education.
More Americans, both young and old, will need education beyond high school. And our institutions will have to evolve in profound ways to meet their needs.
That’s why we must seize this moment as Congress debates the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, which governs colleges and universities and provides them with federal financial support. Our national legislative framework must enable and encourage the changes we will need over the next decades to build a stronger system for higher education. Our country has changed significantly since the act was last reauthorized in 2008…
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Last spring’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District reaffirmed the importance of providing, in the words of Chief Justice John Roberts, an “appropriately ambitious” education for the nation’s 6.7 million children with disabilities. The court ruled that in order for school districts to meet their obligations under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, they must offer students with disabilities an individualized education plan that enables them to make progress and be adequately challenged to meet their full potential.
The court described this standard in its ruling as a “fact intensive exercise.” From our vantage, that fact-intensive exercise must include processes to ensure that schools actually provide the mandates that appear in each student’s IEP.
In recent years, there have been substantial structural improvements to existing special education practices. Schools now typically place greater emphasis on educating students with disabilities in general education classes and have adopted stringent guidelines to ensure that students with disabilities have access to the general education curriculum.
Despite these improvements, the U.S. Department of Education determined in July that fewer than half of the states are meeting their obligations under IDEA. Most of those states failing to follow educational guidelines have done so for at least two years…
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When the Every Student Succeeds Act was signed into law two years ago, leaders from both sides of the aisle hailed it as a rare and remarkable display of bipartisanship. The measure represented a significant rollback of the federal government’s footprint in education policy and the dawn of a new era of state autonomy. Both of us see the new law as an opportunity for states to sidestep the gridlock that has overwhelmed Washington and to take charge in determining a new path forward.
We have been watching the action closely in states, and there’s no point in sugarcoating: ESSA has gotten off to a rocky start. Turnover in leadership at both the federal and state levels wasn’t a surprise, but complicated matters. In many states—including the states where we helped shape education policy, North Carolina and Indiana—the process of drafting new accountability plans surfaced tensions among the multiple entities responsible for putting the new law into effect.
In spite of this turmoil, states—to their credit—have come to the table to fix things with a sense of urgency. Every state has now submitted an ESSA plan. Some have already been approved, and it shouldn’t be long now before the rest follow suit.
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President Donald Trump is seeking a roughly 5 percent cut to the U.S. Department of Education’s budget for fiscal 2019 in a proposal that also mirrors his spending plan from last year by seeking to eliminate a major teacher-focused grant and to expand school choice.
In order to achieve those proposed spending cuts, the president copied two major education cuts he proposed last year: the elimination of Title II teacher grants and the 21st Century Community Learning Centers. Those two cuts combined would come to about $3.1 billion from current levels. Overall, 39 discretionary programs would be cut, eliminated, or “streamlined.”
“Decades of investments and billions of dollars in spending have shown that an increase in funding does not guarantee high-quality education,” the Office of Management and Budget states in the budget document. “While the budget reduces the overall federal role in education, the budget makes strategic investments to support and empower families and improve access to postsecondary education, ensuring a future of prosperity for all Americans.”
On the other side of the ledger, Trump is seeking $1 billion for new private and public school choice programs called Opportunity Grants. This new funding could also help schools that go for the weighted-funding pilot. He also wants $500 million in federal charter school funding, an increase of roughly 50 percent from current spending levels, which is also the same as his first budget blueprint.
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This is going to be a confusing year because Congress still hasn’t finalized last year’s spending plan, for fiscal year 2018, which started on Oct. 1 and generally impacts the 2018-19 school year. Congress recently passed legislation extending funding for all programs at fiscal year 2017 levels.
Trump’s newest proposal, though, will lay out his administration’s asks for fiscal year 2019, or the 2019-20 school year for most programs.
London and Philadelphia — Is virtual reality finally ready to make inroads in K-12?
Technology companies are making a fresh push, and some market dynamics could provide them a tailwind. But there’s plenty of reason to remain skeptical.
That’s the takeaway from Education Week’s reporting from two conferences last month: Bett, a global ed-tech trade show hosted in London, and EduCon, a gathering of progressive educators and technology enthusiasts in Philadelphia.
Reasons to be bullish include new hardware advances, falling prices, and a wave of districts that will soon be looking to replace their existing computers and laptops. As a result, more than 15 percent of U.S. schools will have virtual-reality classroom kits by 2021, predicts Futuresource Consulting, a U.K.-based market-research firm.
“You’re going to see increasing adoption of this immersive technology,” said Ben Davis, a senior analyst for the group.
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The selective outrage of partisan ideologues in the education space is a well-known phenomenon and nowhere is that more on display than in the muted reaction to the scandal surrounding the 2017 graduation rate that has been unraveling in Washington in recent weeks. With the release of the final report of the audit ordered by the city’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, we know, unequivocally, that more than one-third of the Washington public schools’ class of 2017—a total of 900 students—were only granted diplomas because their teachers and administrators flouted attendance policies and misused credit-recovery programs.
One would think that the loudest accountability hawks in the education reform movement would be beside themselves, writing op-eds, and taking the battle to Twitter in the name of justice for students. But as the details of the graduation-rate investigation by NPR and Washington’s local public radio station (WAMU) have emerged, these avatars of accountability have been uncharacteristically silent. The very same folks who are quick to jump on the slightest whisper of wrongdoing in virtual charters and voucher programs, for example, have suddenly lost their aversion to dishonesty and fraud. When the reforms they support are carried out by people they like and align with politically, their commitment to accountability appears to soften. And maybe that would be understandable, except that students and families suffer when silence settles over a deliberate and well-orchestrated injustice inside a school system.
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The mostly white city of Gardendale, Ala., will end its fight to form its own school district and break off from the heavily black school system of surrounding Jefferson County.
