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Civil-rights reviews focus on several school districts, state | Education | The Seattle Times
Civil-rights reviews focus on several school districts, state | Education | The Seattle Times
Civil-rights reviews focus on several school districts, state
Five civil-rights reviews are under way in Washington school districts — two in Seattle Public Schools, one in the Lake Washington School District, one in Yakima and one statewide probe related to Title IX.
Seattle Times education reporter
Along with investigating Seattle Public Schools’ record on student discipline, the U.S. Department of Education has four other civil-rights reviews under way in Washington schools.
Seattle is the focus of two of the probes — the investigation into whether black students are disciplined more frequently and more harshly than white students, which came to light two weeks ago, plus a second review that focuses on students learning English.
Federal officials also say they are looking at programs for English-language learners in the Lake Washington School District and at anti-harassment policies and practices in the Yakima School District, plus what appears to be a statewide review related to gender issues in athletics.
All five reviews were initiated by the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, as part of a four-year-old push by the Obama administration to more aggressively enforce civil-rights laws covering public schools.
The education department does not discuss why it chooses specific school districts to investigate, but a spokesman said that in general, it initiates reviews on issues that “are particularly acute or national in scope.”
In Yakima and Lake Washington, school officials said they got the impression that they were randomly chosen for what amounted to a routine audit.
They said their districts submitted information requested by the Office of Civil Rights more than a year ago, and have not yet heard what federal officials concluded, or even whether the reviews are completed.
In Seattle, a spokeswoman said district officials have no sense of why their district is under review.
While black and other minority students have long been disciplined at a higher rate than whites and Asians in Seattle schools, it’s not clear whether the problem is worse here than in many other school districts across the state and nation.
In nearly every state
From 2009 through the end of last year, the civil-rights office has launched about 100 civil-rights investigations involving at least one school district in nearly every state.
Those investigations, known as compliance reviews, are just part of the office’s caseload, most of which stems from complaints filed by parents or community members.
The department’s proactive efforts have won praise from those who say there was a drought of education civil-rights cases under the previous administration.
“Finally, the Department of Education is back in the business of protecting the civil rights of children who attend public schools,” said Judith Browne Dianis, co-director of the Advancement Project, a national civil-rights organization based in Washington, D.C.
Browne Dianis defended the education department’s decision to press school districts to change policies and practices that have discriminatory outcomes, regardless of whether officials intended to discriminate.
But the department also has been criticized by others who feel it is overreaching.
Civil-rights laws are important and should be enforced, said Roger Clegg, who worked as a top civil-rights lawyer at the Justice Department under Presidents Bush and Reagan. But Clegg said that the Obama administration’s focus on data, especially in discipline, may cause school districts to stop punishing students who deserve it in order to get their numbers right.
The education department, he said, “risks finding school districts in violation of the law when they have not treated anybody differently on the basis of race.”
Apparently all ongoing
In Washington state, the investigation into racial disparities in discipline in Seattle Public Schools, launched in mid-2012, is the most recent of the five proactive reviews under way.
It doesn’t appear that any of the five have yet concluded.
Jim Bradshaw, the education department spokesman, said Monday and again on Tuesday that he could not get an answer to that and several other questions until later this week.
Few details were available about each review, although education department officials have said they seek to ensure students aren’t disciplined more harshly based on their race, and that limited proficiency in English is not an obstacle to learning.
In Seattle, the review of services for students learning English appears to have started in 2009.
A spokeswoman said that information she received from the education department also indicated that federal officials are looking at whether the district discriminated against some students when it closed several schools a number of years ago. The department seemed to have concerns about minority students and those learning English.
In the Lake Washington School District, spokeswoman Kathryn Reith said school officials received a letter in September 2010 saying their district had been selected for one of several compliance reviews involving English-language services.
The district’s understanding, she said, was that it was chosen because its students speak so many languages — anywhere from 70 to 90, depending on the year. About 5.5 percent of students don’t speak English as their first language, she said.
The civil-rights office asked the district for a lot of information, such as what services it offers students learning English, how it identifies those who need services, and how it communicates with their parents.
Federal officials also have interviewed district administrators and teachers, she said.
The Yakima School District received its letter in February 2011, which asked for 21 different types of data, much of it having to do with policies and practices about discrimination and harassment on the basis or race, color, national origin, gender or disability, said Assistant Superintendent Jack Irion.
Irion said he and other staff members ended up sending boxes of materials to federal officials — everything from student handbooks to two-and-a-half years worth of data on disciplinary incidents.
The person with information about the statewide athletics review was not available, according to a spokesman for the state’s education department.
Federal education officials have been quoted as saying that they prefer to reach voluntary agreements on changes, and that has happened in at least a handful of school districts in other states, including Oakland, Boston and Los Angeles.
In the Oakland case, which involved discipline, Russlyn Ali, then assistant secretary for civil rights, said in a news release that the agreement to overhaul the discipline system was unprecedented and a model she hoped to see repeated across the country.
Linda Shaw: 206-464-2359 or lshaw@seattletimes.com. On Twitter @LShawST
dese.mo.gov/divadm/finance/topicsandprocedures/documents/sf-AAttendanceReporting.pdf
dese.mo.gov/divadm/finance/topicsandprocedures/documents/sf-AAttendanceReporting.pdf
Homebound
A student who by necessity requires instruction to be provided at home may be counted for full attendance if the
student has received a minimum of 5 hours of instruction per week by a certificated teacher. If the instruction is
below 5 hours then the student’s attendance is only based on actual hours of instruction (such as 4 hours of
instruction is only counted as 4 hours of attendance, the remaining hours are reported as hours of absence).
A student who requires instruction to be provided at home because of physician approved medical reasons or who
has been suspended from school and has an IEP may be enrolled full time in MoVIP as an alternative to the above
referenced format.
• If a qualified homebound student is served using a MoVIP state-funded seat, the district
receives the 15% of the state aid per weighted average daily attendance the student would
have generated as outlined in statute.
• If a district is paying MoVIP tuition to serve a qualified homebound student full-time, the
student may be counted for full-time attendance.
• Any other students who are receiving instruction at home through MoVIP for reasons other
than the two referenced in the second paragraph of this Homebound section will be counted
for full attendance if they receive 5 hours of instruction per week by a certificated teacher.
If the instruction is below 5 hours then the student’s attendance is only based on actual
hours of instruction (such as 4 hours of instruction is only counted as 4 hours of attendance).
Note – Student time spent on virtual education courses outside the school day cannot
count for attendance hours except for qualified home-bound students as
outlined above.
Homebound
A student who by necessity requires instruction to be provided at home may be counted for full attendance if the
student has received a minimum of 5 hours of instruction per week by a certificated teacher. If the instruction is
below 5 hours then the student’s attendance is only based on actual hours of instruction (such as 4 hours of
instruction is only counted as 4 hours of attendance, the remaining hours are reported as hours of absence).
A student who requires instruction to be provided at home because of physician approved medical reasons or who
has been suspended from school and has an IEP may be enrolled full time in MoVIP as an alternative to the above
referenced format.
• If a qualified homebound student is served using a MoVIP state-funded seat, the district
receives the 15% of the state aid per weighted average daily attendance the student would
have generated as outlined in statute.
• If a district is paying MoVIP tuition to serve a qualified homebound student full-time, the
student may be counted for full-time attendance.
• Any other students who are receiving instruction at home through MoVIP for reasons other
than the two referenced in the second paragraph of this Homebound section will be counted
for full attendance if they receive 5 hours of instruction per week by a certificated teacher.
If the instruction is below 5 hours then the student’s attendance is only based on actual
hours of instruction (such as 4 hours of instruction is only counted as 4 hours of attendance).
Note – Student time spent on virtual education courses outside the school day cannot
count for attendance hours except for qualified home-bound students as
outlined above.
Missouri lawmakers introduce legislation to halt Common Core Standards | Newsmagazine Network
Missouri lawmakers introduce legislation to halt Common Core Standards | Newsmagazine Network
As public school districts across the state rush to align their curricula with the new Common Core State Standards they must have in place by 2014-15, state legislators are fighting to put on the brakes.
Rep. Kurt Bahr, R-O’Fallon, is the sponsor of House Bill 616, which would prohibit the Missouri State Board of Education from adopting the new standards and nullify all actions up to this point to implement them. Sen. John Lamping, R-Ladue, is sponsoring an identical piece of legislation, Senate Bill 210, in the Missouri Senate.
Bahr said he has three objections to the new standards: the process by which the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) adopted them, the cost and the logistics of getting the state’s 500-plus school districts ready to administer the standards’ requisite online assessments.
“What people don’t realize is it’s not the traditional No. 2 pencil and fill-in-the-bubble type of test,” said Bahr. “This is online testing.”
The Missouri Constitution gives DESE the right to establish standards, and Bahr does not dispute this, but he said DESE adopted the standards before securing the funds to implement them.
“The problem is every school in Missouri has to have the bandwidth, the Internet capability, for entire classes to be online at the same time. And that is, for a lot of areas, a massive capital improvement that we do not have the funds for,” he said.
Bahr said the House of Representatives has the “power of the purse,” and DESE usurped this power.
“DESE cannot create a bill and then hand it to the General Assembly and say, ‘Pay it.’ That is unconstitutional,” said Bahr. “So their adoption of standards is permissible. Their adoption of online assessments, which will be very expensive to implement, is unconstitutional unless we, the General Assembly, authorize it.”
Bahr said he has no idea how much implementing the new standards will cost, but he said DESE applied for $389 million in federal Race to the Top funds in 2009 – and he uses this as a barometer to gauge how much the new standards might cost.
“I see that and say,’ OK, well even if they’re only half right, we’re looking at nearly $200 million,’” said Bahr.
DESE spokeswoman, Sarah Potter, disputed those numbers and said the cost of implementing the new standards “has very little to do with Race to the Top” funds.
“Everything that we’ve done so far with Common Core has been done with our existing budget,” said Potter. “And what the districts have done is just to take whatever money they were spending on their professional development before and spend it on retraining teachers to teach the Common Core State Standards.”
Potter said that more than 200 districts are “pro Common Core” and well on their way to aligning their curricula to the new standards and training their teachers to teach them.
“For them to stop at this point would be such a waste of money and a waste of time,” Potter said.
She added that putting the brakes on the new standards would be a step backwards for public education.
“And that’s the last thing that our education system needs is to move backward and to waste time and money in implementing some really wonderful standards – some things that are really making an amazing difference in this state for education,” said Potter.
As for the cost of implementing the new standards, Potter said DESE is waiting for the results of a survey being conducted by Smarter Balanced, the state-led consortium designing the online assessments, to determine how ready the state’s schools are to administer the new online tests. She said she expects to have the results of that survey in the next month or two.
“Once we know exactly what we need, we will develop a plan and we will seek an appropriation, if necessary, to equip every school appropriately,” said Potter. “But we just don’t know what the extent of the need is at this point.”
“Are the standards better? Will the students be better in the long run? Maybe. But in the short run, we can’t afford it,” he said.
House Bill 616 passed out of the Committee on Downsizing State Government on March 14. Next, it will go to the Rules Committee before being debated on the House floor. Currently it is not on the calendar.
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Saturday, March 23, 2013
2012 Digital Learning Report Card | Digital Learning Now
2012 Digital Learning Report Card | Digital Learning Now
Overall Score
F
1. Student Eligibility
F
2. Student Access
A
3. Personalized Learning
C
4. Advancement
C
5. Quality Content
D
6. Quality Instruction
C+
7. Quality Choices
F
8. Assessment and Accountability
F
9. Funding
F
10. Delivery
F
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